WARSAW – Visitors to the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising will with the help of an animated 3D film be able to grasp the scale of devastation inflicted on the Polish capital by Nazi German forces in the second World War.
Adolf Hitler brutally suppressed the 1944 uprising, reducing the once-elegant city of 1.3 million to a burning shell whose ruins sheltered fewer than 1,000 people.
The six-minute film City of Ruinssimulates the flight of an Allied B25 bomber of the type that flew sorties with supplies for the insurgents during their 63 days of struggle that are now a symbol of Poland's resistance to tyranny.
Using historical images and records, it recreates a detailed city model as it was after the uprising, with bridges across the Vistula River destroyed and whole districts including the Jewish Ghetto completely levelled.
"The film City of Ruinswas made because we couldn't use words and black and white photographs to describe what Warsaw looked like at the beginning of 1945," said Jan Oldakowski, director of the museum.
The release of the 3D film is timed to coincide with the 66th anniversary of the start of the uprising on August 1st, 1944.
Michal Gryn, of Platige Image, which made the film, said: “This is a world-scale project, because even the biggest Hollywood studios haven’t done anything like this – haven’t created a virtual city and filmed it in one shot.”
The museum is a major tourist attraction and drew 500,000 visitors last year.
The Soviet-backed communist regime rebuilt Warsaw virtually from scratch after the war, including its graceful Old Town of neo-classical buildings. – (Reuters)