In the Moldavian town of Berezovka (formerly Laszki in the Kingdom of Poland), an obelisk commemorating the site of the heroic death of Hetman Stanislaw Żółkiewski has been preserved. Let us learn more about its history.

In the midst of vast kolkhoz fields and orchards, near the village of Berezovka (Moldavian Berezovca, formerly called Laszki), just a few kilometres from the border between northern Moldova and Ukraine on the Dniester River - which was the border between the Polish Kingdom and the Moldavian Empire for several hundred years - an interesting but rarely visited monument has been preserved. It is an obelisk commemorating the place of the heroic death in 1620 of Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski. Undoubtedly, he was one of the brightest figures in our national image. Thoroughly educated, a valued collaborator of kings Stefan Batory and Sigismund III, a prudent statistician concerned about the welfare of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an outstanding strategist, the victor from under Kluszyn and the conqueror of Moscow, and finally an aged commander who, at the age of seventy-three, deliberately laid down his head in a clash with the Turkish invasion.

The Battle of Cecora
Almost all of us remember from school that the hetman died in the losing battle of Cecora. In fact, the place of Żółkiewski's death is more than 180 km from Cecora. The battle in a bend of the Prut River took place on 18 and 19 September 1620. The clash remained inconclusive and the Hetman, commanding the army of the Republic, ordered a retreat. After two weeks, the army moving in defensive formation - constantly, but unsuccessfully, attacked by the superior Turkish-Tatar forces - reached the vicinity of the border Dniester. On the night of 6-7 October, however, the thinned ranks became disorganised and panic set in, which the Tatars took advantage of, launching a sudden and effective attack. Hetman Stanislaw Żółkiewski, who was abandoned by most of his troops, was killed, fighting with a gun in his hand. His head, attached to a spike, was sent to the Sultan in Istanbul by the Turkish leader Beylerbej Iskender Pasha, who had it hung over the entrance to his palace.

During the retreat from Cecora, the Rzeczpospolita suffered one of the most severe defeats in its history; arguably the greatest since the Battle of Varna and the death of King Ladislaus III. The extent of the defeat was difficult to imagine. The Chancellor and Great Hetman of the Crown died (in contemporary terms: the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces); his deputy, Field Hetman of the Crown Stanisław Koniecpolski, was taken prisoner by the Turks; and the Crown army went to pieces.

Stanisław Żółkiewski's ill-prepared Moldavian campaign was the prologue to the Polish-Turkish War of 1620-1621. Militarily, the Polish-Lithuanian state retaliated almost a year later, during the victorious (first) Battle of Chocim (September-October 1621). The ensuing peace also restored the political status quo.

Commemorating the death of Hetman Żółkiewski
The original monument commemorating the heroic death of Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski was erected as early as 1621. The monument was funded by his widow, Regina of the Herburt family, and the construction was supervised by her son, Jan Żółkiewski (wounded during the battle and bought by his mother from Turkish captivity together with his father's corpse for the gigantic sum of 3 million zlotys), under the protection of a private army flag. A plaque with a gilded inscription-quotation from the third book of Horace's Ódas-was placed on the monument, perched on a small barrow hiding the ashes of those killed in the battle: "Quam dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (How sweet and honourable it is to die for the fatherland). The shape of the monument is known from Napoleon Orda's lithographs and survived until 1868, when, in search of treasure, an inhabitant of a nearby village destroyed the obelisk and dug up the barrow.

The restoration of the monument in its present form is an interesting and uplifting chapter in the history of Polish monument conservation. In the years 1908-1912, on the initiative of the Social Committee for the Rebuilding of the Monument to Hetman Żółkiewski (established back in 1903) and the Society for the Protection of Monuments of the Past from Warsaw (founded in 1906), the monument was rebuilt. In September 1908, the chairman of the Committee, Count Tomasz Łubieński, and the architect and restorer of monuments, Kazimierz Skórewicz, carried out a site inspection of the remains of the monument. Kazimierz Skórewicz was the author of the reconstruction project, probably carried out in 1912.

Contemporary monument in Berezovka
The contemporary sandstone monument, standing on a barrow 20 m in diameter and 2 m high, has the form of a granular obelisk (8.45 m high), separated by a cornice at 2/3 of its height. The obelisk is crowned by a forged steel cross (140 cm high). In the upper part, on the front (north) side, there is an inscription plaque made of labradorite. The wrought-iron Latin inscription, in the form of a conventionalized text (slightly different from the original), contains an exhortation to the reader to learn from the example of the Hetman the truth of the Hortian maxim. It then goes on to praise Stanislaw Żółkiewski as a victorious leader and exemplary citizen of the Republic for which he gave his life.

The monument luckily survived the exceptionally turbulent 20th century in this area. Due to the deteriorating condition of the monument over time, in 2003. Due to the deteriorating condition of the monument over the years, in 2003 the Polish Community Association carried out comprehensive renovation and conservation works using funds from the Senate of the Republic of Poland. In the course of this work, a bilingual inscription (in Polish and Romanian) was attached to the obelisk.

In 2020, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, Polish conservationists carried out the necessary work on the obelisk in Berezovka. The project of the Foundation "Helping Poles in the East" was financed from the grant programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage "Sites of National Remembrance Abroad".