The heaviest fighting in the Carpathian Mountains involving the Polish Legions took place at Rokitna (in 1915) and at Rarańcza (in 1915 and 1918). Fighting also took place in other towns in Bukovina. From 17 May to 13 August 1938, the Romanian society "Cultur Eroilor", working under the aegis of the local Ministry of Military Affairs, exhumed the remains of Polish legionaries killed in Bukovina. Sixty-three exhumations were carried out in 20 villages. The exhumed remains of the legionaries were placed in metal coffins and placed in the basement of the Jesuit Church in Chernivtsi. This was supposed to be a temporary burial - until the construction of a chapel-mausoleum in Rarańcza. However, this construction did not take place and the corpse remained in the crypt of the church in Chernivtsi.
After the Second World War it was planned to convert the church into an Orthodox church, but finally the archive was placed here. Due to the change of use of the building, in 1952 the crypt with the graves of the legionaries was walled up and a marble plaque was placed on the wall with the inscription in Russian and Romanian: "Here lie the ashes of 60 Polish soldiers who died during the war between 1914 and 1917".
The crypt was discovered in 2015, after the church was handed over to Catholics. In addition to the 60 coffins, it contained a banner with the White Eagle and a small field altar with a wooden plaque above it with the inscription in Polish "Here are buried 59 Poles and one Russian Cossack".
In 2015, with funds from the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Remembrance, the crypt was renovated and solemnly consecrated on 24.06.2017. In 2018, a new plaque (in place of the previous one) with an inscription in Polish was placed at the entrance to the crypt: "Here / were buried / 60 Polish soldiers / fallen in the war / 1914-1917". The work was carried out by the Armenian Foundation in the framework of a task co-financed by the programme of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage "Sites of National Remembrance Abroad".

Compiled by T. Zachara / MKiDN, IX 2025