Throughout the city, posters of the pop star have been defaced with slogans from the Polish resistance movement under Nazi occupation during World War II.
Some 50,000 people have added their names to an online petition, which read, ``Let us pay tribute to the living and deceased insurgents who fought for their country. Let us not allow our holidays to be desecrated’’.
Veterans of the uprising have criticised as inappropriate the queen of pop's plan to go on stage on the day they remember the 1944 battle that claimed the lives of some 18,000 of their comrades, up to 200,000 civilians, and left Warsaw in ruins.
Sirens are to sound at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Wednesday, for a minute of silence to mark the exact moment the 63-day battle between poorly armed and outnumbered resistance fighters and the occupiers began.
Madonna is expected to take to the stage at the National Stadium some four and a half hours later.
Concert organisers have sought to appease critics by opening the show with a short video of the 1944 heroes.
In Aug. 2009, Madonna caused an outcry in the predominantly Catholic country when she held a concert on the day to mark the assumption of Mary into heaven.
``Madonna wants to mock Poles once again,’’ the Catholic group Krucjata Mlodych, which organised the petition, said.
President Bronislaw Komorowski, accompanied by his aunt Helena Wolowicz, a veteran of the uprising, visited the graves of some of the fighters on Wednesday.
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