Hello I'm James Rogers and this is the history hit World Wars podcast a

podcast dedicated to that turbulent period in history between 1914 and 1945.

In this episode I speak with a lean and of a bilska a historian in the Second World War who researches Auschwitz, but also the Warsaw Uprising.

Now, Alina has undertaken assiduous research into a little known aspect of Poland's traumatic, as we know horrendous wartime experience,

by going through the memoirs of those who lived through the Vola Massacre.

In this massacre, no one was left unscathed, as a brutal mass killing of men women and children took place and in fact it even included the repeated and systematic targeting of hospitals and schools and this all took place in the Vola District of Western Warsaw.

When detailing a history like this, it's important not to shy away from the hard realities of war.

So please be aware that this episode contains some details which you might

find difficult to listen to. Hi, Alina. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Hi, James, thank you so much. It's really great to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer.

Yes, of course, because you present the History Hack Podcast.

Yes, so History Hack, check us out on Instagram, Twitter and

Facebook and we cover like so much different various history just two girls

deciding to run a podcast basically and it is fantastic fantastic. But today, well I know that your work

focuses on the Warsaw Uprising and that ferocious fight by Polish resistance to

free Warsaw from German occupation in 1944. But today you're going to take us that

a little bit deeper into this period by telling us about the Vola massacre. What happened

at Vola? So it's basically something that people don't actually talk about.

We call it the Volla Massacre.

So in Polish, it's at Jezvoli,

but it wasn't just in Vollar, it was the surrounding areas as well, but we call it the Volar massacre.

So let's stick with Volley instead of getting a little bit complicated.

So for people who don't know, Poland rose up against the Germans on the 1st of August

...