<p class="title">It has been 80 years, but Polish pensioner Zofia Burchacinska has no trouble recalling the day her city, sometimes called the "Polish Guernica", became the first target of World War II.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It was dawn and still grey out. I was woken up by a strange sound, a strong roar I'd never heard before," the now 91-year-old said of the heavy bombing of Wielun on September 1, 1939.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Suddenly, the ceiling cracked and all the glass shattered. That's because our windows looked out on the street where the first bombs fell, on a hospital further down," she told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The attack on the small central city of Wielun has been called a kind of Polish-Jewish Guernica.</p>.<p class="bodytext">But the raid, at the beginning of World War II, is less well-known than the Nazi bombing of the Basque town two year earlier, during the Spanish Civil War -- captured in Picasso's masterpiece.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The exact number of Wielun's victims has never been established, but estimates range from several hundred to more than 1,000 killed. At the time, the city had a population of 16,000.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Wielun, where children, women and the elderly died, is a symbol of total warfare," said Jan Ksiazek, a historian and director of a local museum.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Total warfare is the style of warfare that includes waging war not just on military, but on civilian targets.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The shrill sound Burchacinska heard as an 11-year-old was that of the sirens the Germans had attached to the landing gear of their dive bombers to scare the target populations.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The order to bomb Wielun was given by General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, who also led the German unit that razed Guernica in 1937.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The similarities are striking: both cases involved bombing civilians of a defenceless city to spread panic.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"My mother and I fled across the marketplace, which was already full of rubble. Part of the square was on fire, the flames were fierce," Burchacinska said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"I didn't return to Wielun until after the so-called liberation, with the arrival of the Bolshevik army," she added.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"I didn't recognise the city. My father had to lead me by the hand to school. There was no more marketplace, there were no more streets."</p>.<p class="bodytext">Only around 20 witnesses of the bombing still live in Wielun. Tadeusz Sierandt, eight years old at the time of the attack, also remembers the horror.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"People were running in all directions, they were fleeing, some without clothes. I saw dead bodies, the wounded.... Smoke, noise, explosions. Everything was burning," he told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Wielun was gradually rebuilt after the war. Today it is a bustling, beautiful city of 25,000 people with well-maintained streets and parks. It is proud of its identity as a former royal city founded in the 13th century.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The only place where you can see blast marks is on the ruins of the parish church downtown, which shows you the extent of the destruction," deputy mayor Joanna Skotnicka-Fiuk told AFP. Everything else was rebuilt.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Wielun maintains ties to Germany by staying in touch with its partner cities. This year the relations will reach an unprecedented level with a joint visit from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda on the 80th anniversary.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Some have asked why the German army targeted a city without any military significance. The answer may lie in Wielun's ethnic makeup.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The Germans were likely aware that Wielun was a bicultural city. The Polish population dominated, followed by the Jewish population," historian Tadeusz Olejnik told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In 1939, one-third of the city's residents were Jewish, he said, adding that "there was no German minority here, unlike in other cities in central Poland."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"When the bombs fell on the sleeping city, razing it, residents fled the inferno in droves, blocking roads and complicating the Polish army's movement," the Wielun-based academic said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Jews who survived were first enclosed in the Wielun ghetto, then as part of Adolf Hitler's so-called "Final Solution" they were sent either to the Lodz ghetto or the Chelmno nad Nerem death camp, where they were killed in gas vans.</p>
<p class="title">It has been 80 years, but Polish pensioner Zofia Burchacinska has no trouble recalling the day her city, sometimes called the "Polish Guernica", became the first target of World War II.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It was dawn and still grey out. I was woken up by a strange sound, a strong roar I'd never heard before," the now 91-year-old said of the heavy bombing of Wielun on September 1, 1939.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Suddenly, the ceiling cracked and all the glass shattered. That's because our windows looked out on the street where the first bombs fell, on a hospital further down," she told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The attack on the small central city of Wielun has been called a kind of Polish-Jewish Guernica.</p>.<p class="bodytext">But the raid, at the beginning of World War II, is less well-known than the Nazi bombing of the Basque town two year earlier, during the Spanish Civil War -- captured in Picasso's masterpiece.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The exact number of Wielun's victims has never been established, but estimates range from several hundred to more than 1,000 killed. At the time, the city had a population of 16,000.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Wielun, where children, women and the elderly died, is a symbol of total warfare," said Jan Ksiazek, a historian and director of a local museum.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Total warfare is the style of warfare that includes waging war not just on military, but on civilian targets.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The shrill sound Burchacinska heard as an 11-year-old was that of the sirens the Germans had attached to the landing gear of their dive bombers to scare the target populations.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The order to bomb Wielun was given by General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, who also led the German unit that razed Guernica in 1937.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The similarities are striking: both cases involved bombing civilians of a defenceless city to spread panic.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"My mother and I fled across the marketplace, which was already full of rubble. Part of the square was on fire, the flames were fierce," Burchacinska said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"I didn't return to Wielun until after the so-called liberation, with the arrival of the Bolshevik army," she added.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"I didn't recognise the city. My father had to lead me by the hand to school. There was no more marketplace, there were no more streets."</p>.<p class="bodytext">Only around 20 witnesses of the bombing still live in Wielun. Tadeusz Sierandt, eight years old at the time of the attack, also remembers the horror.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"People were running in all directions, they were fleeing, some without clothes. I saw dead bodies, the wounded.... Smoke, noise, explosions. Everything was burning," he told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Wielun was gradually rebuilt after the war. Today it is a bustling, beautiful city of 25,000 people with well-maintained streets and parks. It is proud of its identity as a former royal city founded in the 13th century.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The only place where you can see blast marks is on the ruins of the parish church downtown, which shows you the extent of the destruction," deputy mayor Joanna Skotnicka-Fiuk told AFP. Everything else was rebuilt.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Wielun maintains ties to Germany by staying in touch with its partner cities. This year the relations will reach an unprecedented level with a joint visit from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda on the 80th anniversary.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Some have asked why the German army targeted a city without any military significance. The answer may lie in Wielun's ethnic makeup.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The Germans were likely aware that Wielun was a bicultural city. The Polish population dominated, followed by the Jewish population," historian Tadeusz Olejnik told AFP.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In 1939, one-third of the city's residents were Jewish, he said, adding that "there was no German minority here, unlike in other cities in central Poland."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"When the bombs fell on the sleeping city, razing it, residents fled the inferno in droves, blocking roads and complicating the Polish army's movement," the Wielun-based academic said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Jews who survived were first enclosed in the Wielun ghetto, then as part of Adolf Hitler's so-called "Final Solution" they were sent either to the Lodz ghetto or the Chelmno nad Nerem death camp, where they were killed in gas vans.</p>