Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in 1920., photo MKiDN, 2019
Licencja: all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war
Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in 1920., photo MKiDN, 2019
Licencja: all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war
Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in 1920., photo MKiDN, 2019
Licencja: all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war
Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in 1920., photo MKiDN, 2019
Licencja: all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war
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ID: WOJ-000108-W (BY-0356)

Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war

ID: WOJ-000108-W (BY-0356)

Cemetery of Polish Army soldiers killed in the Polish-Bolshevik war

On the hill vis-a-vis the church, in the place where the wooden parish church used to stand, soldiers killed in the battle fought on 3.06.1920 against the Soviets were buried here by the 36th infantry regiment, whose commander was Colonel Urlych. At least a dozen Polish soldiers died in the battle. In the 20-year interwar period, bodies of soldiers exhumed from the villages were transferred to the cemetery: Alaszkowszczyzna, Bielewicze, Borsuczyzna, Darewo, Daszczynki, Dąbrowa, Dubrova, Holbieja, Kality, Kamionka, Łosica, Łuczaj, Łukaszewo, Miadziałówka, Nowosiółki (Postawy district), Olszniewo, Pietrowicze, Piotrowicze, Potów, Promyszlady, Rogawskie, Świdno, Świnica, Teresdwór, Turczyn. At the end of the 1920s, a social committee was formed, which took it upon itself to clean up the military graves and give them a proper appearance. The consecration of this cemetery in 1936 was carried out by the parish priest of Dunidlovice, Rev. Stanislav Možejko. The then President of the Republic, Ignacy Moscicki, was present at the ceremony. There are 60 graves in the cemetery - 54 individual and 6 collective. The dominant feature of the cemetery was a plinth topped with a sculpture of an eagle - currently in the cemetery there is only the base of this plinth with inscriptions: plaque on the left wall: "Built through the efforts of the committee / remaining under the patronage / of Wiktor Niedźwiecki starost / and honorary members / of Józef hr. Tyszkiewicz / d-cyclist of the 38th P.P.L.A. (or: D.P.Ł.A.) colonel Ulrych" plaque on the front: "Presidium of the committee / president Waclaw Weber / secretary Władysław Bułat / [treasurer] Albert Nawrocki / Antoni Szkute" plaque on the right side: "Consecrated on 26 June 1936 / in the presence / of the Lord President of the Republic of Poland / Ignacy Mościcki / by the Rev. Prof. Stanisław Możejka". Behind the preserved remains of the plinth is a tall cross. The graves are arranged as follows: behind the main cross there are 3 rows of 11 graves each (including 3 concrete plaques on a common grave with 15 names of soldiers from the 36th IR killed on 3.06.1920 and a plaque with the name of Antoni Święcicki, a cavalier of the Order of Virtuti Militari), in front of the main cross there are 3 rows of graves on both sides - in the left rows there are 5 graves each, in the right rows - 4 graves each. On 18.09.1939, after the Soviets entered the territory of the Second Polish Republic, local scouts removed the copper eagle from the plinth in the cemetery and hid it in the ground. The stone plinth, on the other hand, consisting of three parts, was dismantled in 1945 (by order of the then authorities) and thrown into a deep pit. Since February 1990, care for the cemetery has begun again. One part of the destroyed plinth with the inscription was excavated and placed back in the cemetery. Thanks to the work of parishioners, grave crosses that had previously been buried to hide them were extracted from the ground. They were placed back in place. In 1991, on the feast of All Saints, a large concrete cross was placed in the cemetery. Since 1992, the district branch of the Union of Poles in Belarus in Postavy also started to take care of the cemetery. At that time, 20 new concrete crosses were made. The ceremonial consecration of the renovated cemetery took place on 2.11.1996. Another renovation of the cemetery was carried out in 2017-2018 by the Foundation Aid to Poles in the East within the framework of a task co-financed by the programme of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage "Sites of National Remembrance Abroad". Due to the considerable deterioration of the tombstone material, granite replicas were made. Several years earlier, a copper eagle was found from a plinth in the cemetery and underwent specialist conservation in Poland. The eagle is currently stored in the parish church in Dunilovichi. In 2019, the parish priest of Dunilovichi - Fr Jan Pugachev - informed representatives of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage that he had found the remaining parts of the plinth from the cemetery - the plan is to extract them, preserve them and place them in their original place in the cemetery.
Already after the cemetery's restoration, descendants of Czeslaw Orzechowski, who was killed near Duniłowicz, placed a provisional plaque in his honour on one of the unnamed crosses.

Publikacja:
11.06.2024
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