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A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising is both a work of memory and a work about memory. Miron Bialoszewski [1922-83], the great avant-garde polish poet, memorializes the doomed uprising of the Polish population against their Nazi masters wchich began on August 1, 1944, and was eventually abandoned on October 2, 1944, with the physical destruction of Warsaw, street by street and house by house, and the slaughter of 200,000 civilians.

Bialoszewski concentrates on recalling the things he saw, felt, smelled, and heard. Each object is precious. Each possesses its own integrity which the violence of the Nazis will destroy. In reclaiming these objects, Bialoszewski combats the inner evil of the time he recounts, the thinking of those for whom the individual is meaningless and the moment is a fraud. In dwelling with loving concern on the cobblestones, glass jars, and the casual words of people spoken in passing, Bialoszewski sets himself against those for whom history justifies all actions and violence is a substitute for truth.