Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as the largest cities in Palestine at the time, were the places where the largest number of Polish civilian refugees who arrived in 1939-1941 as part of the evacuation from Hungary, Romania and the Balkans, and then in 1942, settled. - from the USSR via Iran. Not only civilians, but also soldiers, from among whom the 2nd Polish Corps was formed, arrived in these areas.

The Christian cemetery in Jaffa belongs to the parish church of the Franciscan Fathers of the Custody of the Holy Land, dedicated to St Anthony of Padua. The earliest Polish burials in this cemetery date back to 1937. The Polish plot includes a refugee quarters, where 59 people who died during World War II and just after the war are buried - employees of the military and civilian state administration of the Second Republic, Polish officers and soldiers, volunteers of the Women's Auxiliary Service, children rescued from the USSR and other Poles who stayed in Jaffa during the war.

Between 1977 and 1979, new Polish burials appeared next to the cemetery, then after 1997, several children of other nationalities were also buried between the Polish graves.

The first reconstruction of the cemetery and some of the tombstones was carried out in 1947. Although the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland were not interested in the graves of refugees from the USSR, the Polish clergy of Jaffa and the local Polish community remembered them. After 1990, the Polish Embassy in Israel and the "Polonica in Israel" Foundation joined in the care.

In 1991, with funds from the Embassy granted by the Consular and Emigration Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the surroundings of the graves were cleaned up, the fence was partially repaired and the two most damaged grave slabs were replaced with new ones.

In 1998, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland financed the making of an inventory of all Polish graves, some of the inscriptions were already illegible at that time and, despite efforts, seven burials remained unidentified. In 2006, renovation work was carried out with funding from the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Remembrance. A granite monument in the shape of a milepost was erected at the end of the main alley of the cemetery, with a rectangular shape, characteristic of cemeteries for refugees from the USSR, and topped with an eagle bas-relief. The monument bears the inscription in Polish and English: "IN TRIBUTE / TO THE POLES / RESTING IN THIS CEMETERY / CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS / OF THE 2ND POLISH CORPS / GEN. WŁADYSŁAW ANDERS / FORMER PRISONERS OF WAR AND PRISONERS / OF THE SOVIET GULAGS / WHO DIED ON THEIR WAY TO THEIR HOMELAND / IN THE YEARS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR / AND AFTER ITS END // POLAND REMEMBERS ABOUT YOU! / RZECZPOSPOLITA POLSKA / Warsaw Tel Aviv-Jafa / 2007".

In 2018. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage funded further renovation work carried out by the Armenian Foundation to improve the seating of the crosses. Within the framework of the task subsidised by the Minister's Programme "Sites of National Remembrance Abroad", the Foundation is currently taking care of the Polish graves in the Jaffa cemetery, which consists of supervision and constant maintenance of order.

For more detailed information about this cemetery, see the monograph by Prof. Dr. Artur Patek - Polish Cemetery in Jaffa. Z dziejów Polonii w Izraelu, Kraków 2016. The author managed to reconstruct the names of 7 people commemorated as NN on the basis of archival research.