The Warsaw Rising Museum, which documents the 1944 uprising against the Nazis by the Polish resistance, has created a 3-D film to document the Nazis' destruction of the city.

Museum director Jan Oldakowski said it took two years of research by Polish historians and 40 special effects wizards to create the five-minute film capturing a pivotal moment of the Second World War.

The team used historic photos and maps to create a computer simulation of a 3-D flight over the city in 1945, revealing piles of rubble and nearly every building in ruins.

Oldakowski said the film, titled Miasto Ruin (City in Ruins), is a tool that will help teach Polish history to young people.

"Young people do not understand what it means that Warsaw was in ruins; they think it was just a few collapsed houses," Oldakowski said during a showing of the film to reporters in Warsaw. "Nor were we, at the museum, fully aware of what the city looked like."

The Platige Image studio, which made the film, had to work with masses of documentary material to get an accurate picture of the destruction, said the studio's Michal Gryn.

The filmmakers started with a helicopter ride over the city to get a contemporary image, then filled in the tale of destruction from historic photos and paintings.

"It was a unique project to build a 3-D model of authentic city ruins and make five minutes of film from it," Gryn said. "I don't think that anyone in the world has done this."

IN 1944, the Polish Home Army and thousands of volunteers held out for 63 days against the Nazis in an uprising that attempted to push back against the brutality of the occupation.

The Poles believed that the Russians would come to their aid, but that never happened, and after the war, Stalin suppressed the history of the uprising. Many Poles believe the Allies let them down in the battle.

In retaliation for the Polish resistance, Hitler ordered the city destroyed block by block. Every bridge and building of any significance was bombed and many civilians were murdered. By the time the Germans were finished, only 1,000 people were living in the city, which formerly had a population of 1.3 million.

An estimated 250,000 civilians and 18,000 Polish soldiers died in the uprising and its aftermath.

The Warsaw Rising Museum opened in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the uprising, to tell the story of Poland's resistance.

City in Ruins will be shown at the museum, which gets about 500,000 visitors annually.

With files from The Associated Press