Ignacy Skorupka
A day later his body was transported to a garrison church in Warsaw, and shortly, he was given a state funeral at the prestigious Powązki Cemetery, attended by many government and military authorities; general Józef Haller presented him with a posthumous Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. His death became a political ploy, used by the opponents of Polish military commander and leader Józef Piłsudski, architect of the Polish strategy that led to the victory at Warsaw. His opponents labelled the battle "miracle of Vistula", and attributed the Polish victory to a number of causes, up to and including divine intervention, and Skorupka's martyr-like death became part of their attempt to minimize Piłsudski's fame. Several monuments, streets and other landmarks were dedicated to him in the Second Polish Republic; he became a central figure in several books, poems and dramas; and Pope Pius XI commissioned a wall painting of him by Jan Henryk de Rosen at the battle at the Castel Gandolfo. Another popular painting of him was created by Jerzy Kossak.
Wola massacre
The majority of these atrocities were committed by troops under the command of "SS-Oberführer" Oskar Dirlewanger and "SS-Brigadeführer" Bronislav Kaminski. Research historian Martin Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, wrote: 
"More than fifteen thousand Polish civilians had been murdered by German troops in Warsaw. At 5:30 that evening [August 5], General Erich von dem Bach gave the order for the execution of women and children to stop. But the killing continued of all Polish men who were captured, without anyone bothering to find out whether they were insurrectionists or not. Nor did either the Cossacks or the criminals in the Kaminsky and Dirlewanger brigades pay any attention to von dem Bach Zelewski's order: by rape, murder, torture and fire, they made their way through the suburbs of Wola and Ochota, killing in three days of slaughter a further thirty thousand civilians, including hundreds of patients in each of the hospitals in their path."
On 5 August, the Zośka battalion of the Home Army had managed to liberate the Gęsiówka concentration camp and to take control of the strategically important surrounding area of the former Warsaw Ghetto with the aid of two captured Panther tanks belonging to a unit commanded by Wacław Micuta. Over the next few days of fighting this area became one of the main communication links between Wola and Warsaw's Old Town district, allowing insurrectionists and civilians alike to gradually withdraw from Wola ahead of the overwhelmingly superior German forces that had been deployed against them.