WARSAW -- With the dauntless spirit of adolescence, Zofia Kuratowska set out at the age of 13 for what she thought would be a "great adventure" -- the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.


It was a bold but doomed enterprise, done in by a Soviet decision not to help the resistance fighters. When it ended two months later, 200,000 Poles were dead -- including Kuratowska's boyfriend -- and the city wept bitterly when the uprising ended. Soon after, she and her mother were huddled in a freight car as the Nazis shipped 700,000 people out of the city.


Half a century later, Poles are holding solemn ceremonies and making sure the younger generations know what happened.


Attending commemorations starting this weekend are Vice President Al Gore, German President Roman Herzog and British Prime Minister John Major. Russian President Boris Yeltsin said he was too busy to attend, but will send a representative.


On Aug. 1, 1944, the date that Poland's government in exile chose to begin the fight to free the capital, Poland had been occupied by the Nazis for five years and the Soviet army was nearing Warsaw's eastern suburbs.


Kuratowska, who grew up to become speaker of the Polish senate, said it was a "natural thing" to join the Home Army, the country's biggest resistance force. Thousands of other youngsters felt the same way.


She joined the Dromaderki, or Lady Dromedaries, a 100-strong unit commanded by her aunt that delivered bulletins and messages to fighters and field hospitals.


Josef Stalin did not share the Poles' desires. He ordered the Red Army to halt on the east bank of the Vistula River and let the Poles bleed themselves out in 63 days of futile battles with the Germans. "Everyone counted on Soviet troops." Kuratowska recalled. "We did not expect them to stop."


When the Soviets marched into Warsaw in January 1945, they found a gutted city whose population had been evacuated by the retreating Germans. Poland was subsequently to endure 44 years of Communist dictatorship.


The 40,000 Home Army soldiers in Warsaw had great spirit but pitifully few weapons. Only about 10 percent had anything at all -- Molotov cocktails, rifles, a handful of submachine guns and scarce ammunition.


They faced well-armed regular German troops and an elite Panzer unit, the SS Herman G?ring Regiment.


Kuratowska recalled her daily rounds under fire, crawling through basements and sprinting past barricades. "Since I was 13 I did not fear anything but I had a feeling of a great adventure," she said.


The Home Army initially took control of much of the city, but the Germans soon regained the upper hand. By early September, only part of central Warsaw remained in Polish hands, the insurgents having been forced to flee the Old Town through the sewers.


One September day, hope revived.


"It was a nice sunny day ... we heard the sound of heavy transport aircraft," Kuratowska said. "Suddenly, the sky blossomed with hundreds or thousands of parachutes and crowds rushed to the streets to watch."


It was the only daylight Allied airdrop, but most of the supplies missed their mark and were seized by the Germans. Other aid drops, at night, were also unsuccessful.


Stalin refused to let the Americans and British use Soviet air strips to supply the insurgents. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow branded the uprising "political adventurism," favoring the Kremlin-installed Polish administration in eastern Poland.