Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw

rdf:langString Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw

rdf:langString Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw were Poles who, after the end of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent planned destruction of Warsaw by Nazi Germany, decided to stay and hide in the ruins of the German-occupied city. The period of hiding spanned as long as three and a half months, from the day of the capitulation of the uprising, October 2, 1944, until the entry of the Red Army on January 17, 1945. The hideaways lived in the ruins of houses, basements, and bunkers which had been prepared ahead of time. They lived in extremely dire circumstances, while the city was being destroyed around them. Some managed to escape Warsaw, many were captured and killed by the Germans, while others survived until the withdrawal of German troops. The estimates of the number of hideaways vary from several hundred to approximately two thousand. Even though the majority of the Robinsons perished during the war, most of the information about their circumstances comes from those who survived. The largest group of hideaways consisted of around 36 individuals who were led by two medical doctors. The Robinsons also included a group of Jewish Combat Organization (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) Warsaw ghetto fighters, who managed to leave the ruined city in mid-November. The terms "Robinson Crusoes" or "Robinsons" for the hideaways appeared almost immediately, and were popularized in many contemporary and later works, including memoirs, newspaper reports, and films, by both writers and the "Robinsons" themselves, the most famous of whom was the composer Władysław Szpilman, whose story was the subject of the films, The Warsaw Robinson (1950), and The Pianist (2002).