Polish quarters in the Catholic-Chaldean cemetery, photo Armenian Foundation, 2019
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Fotografia przedstawiająca Polish quarters in the Catholic-Chaldean cemetery
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ID: WOJ-000387-W (IR-0001)

Polish quarters in the Catholic-Chaldean cemetery

ID: WOJ-000387-W (IR-0001)

Polish quarters in the Catholic-Chaldean cemetery

Between 1942 and 1945, in the village of Ahwaz, there was a transit camp for Polish refugees who left the USSR with General Anders's Army. Both soldiers and civilians came here. The camp was organised by the British authorities and was initially of a military nature. After the evacuation of Polish soldiers to the Middle East, it was managed by the Delegation of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare of the Republic of Poland and the Square Officer.

Poles who died in Ahwaza were buried in a separate plot in the local Catholic and Chaldean cemetery. The lists contain 118 names of civilian and military refugees who were laid to rest here. In September 1944, the remains of 22 people (20 military and 2 civilians) were exhumed and moved to the war cemetery in Basrah (Iraq), but almost all of them are now also symbolically commemorated in the Ahwaza cemetery.

In 1965, the Embassy placed a slab of pale stone in the plot with the inscription: "To the memory of the Poles who died away from their homeland buried here between 1942 and 1945 - Embassy of the Polish People's Republic in Tehran 1965". Two monuments without inscriptions were also moved here at an undetermined time.

Subsequently, surveying and sewage works were carried out at the necropolis, as a result of which some graves were leveled. In 1976, the entire Polish quarter was flooded and silted up due to flooding. It remained unattended for a long time.

In 2007. The Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom funded the reconstruction of the quarters - the named gravestones were made of stone slabs laid on the concreted rows of graves. In 2016, a monument was erected - a milepost, characteristic of the cemeteries of soldiers of the Anders Army. In 2017. Ministry of Culture and National Heritage carried out renovation and construction works here.

In 2018, at the request of the family of Pavel Zalewski, who was buried in this cemetery, the Department of Cultural Heritage Abroad and War Losses, in cooperation with the Information and Search Office of the Polish Red Cross, established on the basis of archival research that it was he who was commemorated with an epitaph plaque with his first name given, without his surname. The inscription was completed by the caretaker of the cemetery.

At present, the cemetery is under constant care within the framework of a task subsidised by the programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage "Sites of National Remembrance Abroad". The care (supervision, cleaning, minor repairs) is carried out by the Armenian Foundation.

Publikacja:
27.10.2022
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