Powązki Military Cemetery

Ogólne informacje

Powązki Military Cemetery is an old military cemetery located in the Żoliborz district, western part of Warsaw, Poland. The cemetery is often confused with the older Powązki Cemetery, known colloquially as "Old Powązki". The Old Powązki cemetery is located to the south-east of the military cemetery.The military cemetery holds the graves of many who have fought and died for their country since the early 19th century, including a large number involved in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, the September 1939 Campaign, and the ill-fated 1944 Warsaw Uprising against Nazi Germany.It was founded in 1912 as an annex to the Catholic cemetery, but after Poland regained independence in 1918, it became the state cemetery, where some of the most notable people of the period were buried, regardless of their faith.A large part of the cemetery is occupied by graves of Polish soldiers who died in the Warsaw Uprising. Most of the graves were exhumed between 1945 and 1953 from the streets of Warsaw. In many cases, the names of the soldiers remain unknown, and the graves are marked only by the Polish Red Cross identification number. Until the early 1950s, brothers-in-arms of many dead soldiers organised exhumations of their colleagues on their own, and there are many quarters where soldiers of specific units are buried. Also in the cemetery are several mass graves of (mostly unknown) civilian victims of the German terror during World War II, especially during the Warsaw Uprising. There are mass graves of political prisoners executed during the Stalinist period, which lie under the graves of Communist figures. It took a change in the law to enable researchers to begin the recovery of these remains. As of August 2015, that work was ongoing.