“Poles! The hour of vengeance has come. Today die or prevail! Let us go, and let your breasts be Thermopylae for your enemies!”

This is what journalist Bruno Korotyński wrote in 1924 about the slaughter in Warsaw’s Praga district. It was one of the last, and at the same time most tragic, episodes of the Kościuszko Uprising. On 4 November 1794, after the Polish army had been defeated, Cossacks slaughtered about 20,000 civ