The Warsaw Uprising began sixty years ago. Not the ghetto uprising--the other one that essentially destroyed the city as the Nazi regime was entering its death throes. It was a true display of the evil of both Hitler and Stalin.

By the way, I happened to watch "The Pianist" last night, and I was amazed at the level of destruction shown in the movie, and was wondering how accurate it was.

I haven't seen the movie, but I visited the city two years ago. From what I saw in the museums and guidebooks, the city was pretty much leveled. A case in point is the city palace.

When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, among the first things they did was to go to the city palace, drill holes about one meter apart along all the basement walls, and pack them with explosives. The idea was to obliterate anything associated wtih an independent Poland or symbolic of a Polish ethnic/national identity. The project was interrupted several times, dragging it out long enough that several Poles (curators and others) were able to sneak in and haul out the furnishings, artwork, doors and millwork, floors, fixtures, etc. over time. Near the end (possibly during the uprising), the installation of the explosives was finally completed and the palace was completely leveled -- three stories of walls a meter or more thick, down to the ground level.

The nearby market square was likewise razed, and was rebuilt based on a half-dozen or so centuries-old paintings of the city which were, as it turned out, rescued from the city palace.

What is amazing about Warsaw nowadays is how much of the old city has been restored -- just looking at the place, you wouldn't know that the city palace or the market square or other parts of the city had been rebuilt from the foundations up. An odd contrast -- both Warsaw and Essen (Germany) were around 85% destroyed in the war: Warsaw, in Communist Poland, was restored in meticulous, authentic detail while Essen, in the free West, was rebuilt primarily in the bland International style that would seem to be more in keeping with the Stalinist East.

Some of my relatives were Jews in the Ukraine, where they got pretty much the same sort of treatment. And you're absolutley right, this is the absolute best argument for the second ammendment and is why, despite my thoroughbred liberal pedigree, I am a staunch gun-rights advocate (and a pretty good shot). This was one of the major reasons why I liked Dean so much -- he had a 100% rating from the NRA.

I've been meaning to see The Pianist one of these days; now I want that to be sooner rather than later.

Some of my ancestors came from that area of the world, which is why almost at the same time I was learning to walk my Dad began to teach me to shoot and fight. And why he was frothing-at-the-mouth against any gun registration.