German leader visits Warsaw memorial

WARSAW, Poland — In a gesture of humility, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder bowed on the steps of a memorial to the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation and expressed shame Sunday for the "immeasurable suffering" inflicted by Germans when they crushed the revolt 60 years ago.

Schroeder became the first German chancellor to attend an anniversary of the two-month uprising, which ended with 200,000 Warsaw residents dead and most of the city systematically destroyed by the Nazis.

He bowed on the steps of the Warsaw Uprising Memorial as a lone trumpeter played taps. Just before, sirens sounded across Warsaw at 5 p.m., the hour the uprising began on Aug. 1, 1944.

"Today we bow in shame in the face of the Nazi troops' crimes," Schroeder said. "At this place of Polish pride and German shame, we hope for reconciliation and peace.

"Never again must we allow such terrible wrong. This task unites the peoples of Europe."

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski called Schroeder's visit historic.

"We were divided by an abyss filled with pain and blood," Kwasniewski said in his speech. "Today we welcome the chancellor as a representative of a friendly and close nation, as an ally and a partner."

But when Schroeder joined Secretary of State Colin Powell and Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at another monument to Polish freedom fighters, he was booed by a crowd that included many uprising veterans. One man held up a sign, "Heil Schroeder."

"Schroeder's presence is against my sense of what is right," said Leokadia Borzezinska, who watched Warsaw burn in 1944 as an 8-year-old girl. "The uprising is a very Polish experience."

Wojciech Wiewiorowski, 76, who was showing his grandson places where he fought, told The Associated Press, "I do not feel good about this. We have a proverb in Poland that says Germans are better off one meter under the ground."

Remembrance of the 63-day battle against Nazi troops by Poland's poorly armed and out-manned Home Army resistance movement and civilians — even children — has provoked an outpouring of patriotism in Poland.

Powell expressed "admiration for the spirit that kept freedom alive during those terrible days of World War II," drawing an allusion to Poland's military support in Iraq.