Walk into the Warsaw Uprising Museum in Poland’s capital, and it won’t be long before you’ll begin to feel the eeriness that comes with being surrounded by death.1 One exhibit allows visitors to cower inside a replica of the sewers where members of the Polish underground resistance used to hide while fighting the Nazis. Another exhibit shows original film footage of the destruction of Warsaw; by January 1945, after the Polish forces surrendered, 85 per cent of the city’s buildings had been flattened. A third is dedicated to the child soldiers and nurses who died fighting for freedom. Around 16,000 members of the resistance were killed fighting in the streets. But the actual death toll was much larger. During and after the uprising, an estimated 150,000 civilian men, women and children died, mostly in mass executions.