There were two of them: the older, more experienced pilot, Franciszek Żwirko, and the younger, talented designer, Stanisław Wigura. The divided Poland of the late 1920s needed such a duo - hungry for success and already boasting international laurels. The idols of our great-grandparents. Sometimes in the grease, always in the clouds.

The last flight and death of Żwirki i Wigura in Cierlicek
On 11 September 1932, the plane piloted by Franciszek Żwirka and Stanisław Wigura crashed in Cierlicko Górne in Zaolzie. They were flying to Prague for another competition. The flight was due to take place on Saturday, but for unknown reasons they postponed it until early Sunday morning....

Two broken trees - that was the first thing witnesses who arrived on the scene saw. In a memoir book about his father, Henryk Żwirko describes this moment:

On the ground, the remains of the plane; next to it, on a forest path, lay the body of a man. He was dead, massacred. They were looking for another one. He was lying a dozen metres away. Documents slipped out of his windbreaker jacket - it was Żwirko [...]. Gendarmes and soldiers arrived at the crash site. The bodies of the two airmen were carried on a plain cart, covered with straw, to the cemetery chapel by the church. Two soldiers took up guard duty.

Żwirkivisko in Cierlicko - commemoration of Żwirki and Wigury
No one remembers anymore who named this place "Żwirkowisko", but the name probably originated from the fact that it was Franciszek Żwirka who was first found in Cierlicko after a plane crash. The actual graves of the aviators are at the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw, but in Cierlicko, 89 years after the accident, there is not only a symbolic burial place for Żwirka and Wigura, but also a commemorative stone and a monument.

The gravestones are almost identical and consist of low-growing graves, topped by a boulder with a sort of crushed top. A cross is carved in the upper part, a granite plaque with the inscription 'Żwirko' is placed below, and the grave of the co-pilot bears the inscription 'Wigura'. Both gravestones are surrounded by a wrought iron metal fence.

Between the graves is a monument. It functions under different names and there are different interpretations of it. Some say it is a monument to an aviator, others to Icarus. The dual authorship of the obelisk is intriguing - on the Polish side it is the sculptor and medallist Jan Raszka, and on the Czech side it is Julius Pelikán, thanks to whom the sculpture also survived the war. The object has the form of a statue consisting of three parts. Its base is a rectangular stone pedestal with plaques in Polish and Czech. The inscription reads "To the memory of Polish aviators Żwirki and Wigury, who died in the crash of their plane on this spot". The core consists of stacked stone blocks. At about one-third height, there is a break in the form of a hoop with carved emblems - an eagle and a Czech lion with a double tail. It is crowned by a classicist figure of an aviator-Icarus, evoking the risen Jesus on the one hand and the victorious Nike on the other. The figure of the young man is clad in a headband, called a perizonium. In his right hand he holds a branch, possibly a palm branch, taken from Christian martyrdom symbolism, with his left hand he supports himself against the propeller of an aeroplane, on his head he is wearing aviator goggles, while his feet, in counterpoint, touch the hemisphere - implicitly the Earth. The monument is surrounded on the sides by a small metal fence.

The monument is complemented by a stone with the inscription "ŻWIRKO / WIGURA / 11.09.1932", which the scouts hid during the war to save a reminder of the former cemetery. In addition, in 1999. A Czech from Cierlicko founded a granite cross as a symbolic token of the friendship between the two countries. Also worth mentioning here is the Polish House located in the town, which is famous not only for its aviators' memorial chamber, but also for its cultivation of Polish traditions and customs.

Franciszek Żwirko and Stanisław Wigura
. Lieutenant, and posthumously captain, Franciszek Żwirko was born in 1895 in Święciany (today's Lithuania). He did not immediately associate his life path with aviation. Like many of his compatriots at the time, he was conscripted into the Tsarist army, where he reached the rank of lieutenant. When Poland regained its independence, he completed his first aviation course, and from September 1921 he was officially flying aircraft bearing the white and red emblem. The skies became the meaning of his life - he wanted to pilot, race, beat records, but also to infect others with his passion. It was during popularisation events at the Academic Aeroclub that he met Wigura.

As to the place and date of birth of engineer Stanisław Wigura, historians still disagree. Some assume that it was Żytomierz (today's Ukraine) in 1903, others that it was Warsaw in 1901. Nevertheless, it is certain that Wigura displayed his construction talents and passion for aviation from an early age. During the Polish-Bolshevik War, he served in a field artillery regiment, and two years later he already founded the Aviation Section of the Student Mechanics Circle at the Warsaw University of Technology. Together with Stanisław Rogalski and Jerzy Drzewiecki, he constructed the first sports aircraft, called RWD after the initials of their surnames. It was with this RWD-2 that Żwirko and Wigura circumnavigated Europe between 9 and 6 September 1929, and on 6 October of the same year they won the First South-West Poland Flight. From then on, the duo became almost inseparable, and with each successive aeronautical success, they gained new fans.

The most famous Polish pilots
Żwirko and Wigura reached the apogee of their fame in 1932 after winning the "Challenge" International Tourist Aircraft Competition, held 20-28 August in Berlin. The newspapers at the time wrote: "Everything ceased to matter!", "Europe's aviator elite distanced. Fierce battles in the last competition. Enthusiasm at the airport. Dabrowski's Mazurka in the face of 50,000 Germans at Berlin airport'.

And suddenly, a dozen days later, all successes were no longer important. The same newspapers thundered: "All Poland covered in mourning", "They died the death of heroes. May the earth be light to the conquerors of the skies". The coffins with the bodies of the pilots were transported to Poland on special trains, which stopped in major cities so that mourners could pay tribute to the heroes. In Warsaw alone, the funeral ceremony of Żwirki i Wigury at the Powązki cemetery was attended by Marshal Piłsudski and, according to accounts from the time, up to 300,000 people.

Aerial cemetery in Cierlicko
Shakespearean writer Jan Kott wrote that "The most visible sign of the dead, their still last presence on earth, is the grave". This is also the case of Franciszek Żwirka and Stanisław Wigury. They only moved their bodies to the church in Ko¶cielec, and immediately began to secure the 'relics' left behind. Fragments of the plane, pieces of equipment and, perhaps most importantly, two trees broken in the crash. Right next to them hung the inscription "Żwirki i Wigury start to eternity".

A committee under the patronage of the Polish consul in Ostrava, together with the local Polish community and the Moravian-Silesian Aero Club, decided to buy the site and make it a memorial. Unfortunately, Polish-Czechoslovak relations at the time were not the warmest, the memory of armed conflicts and disputes over so called Zaolzie was still alive and diplomatic cooperation was not very good.

Plans for a memorial lay dormant for many years before they were finally realised in Čierlick. A bell was also cast, to which the Polish state contributed by donating demobilised cannons for melting down. Although here, too, great politics stood in the way twice. First the Czechs refused to allow the bell to be transported to Cierlick, then the Germans requisitioned the 13-tonne giant for their army. Then, too, the chapel, referred to, because of its shape, as a mausoleum, and even the tree stumps, known as death masts, and everything that made up the aerial cemetery in Cierlicko were destroyed.

Things did not get any easier after the war either. First the birch cross on the fence was abandoned, then there were disputes over the inscription on the memorial. The local authorities reportedly placed the inscription "To the airmen killed in the fight against fascism for freedom and democracy" there. However, the custodian of Żwirkowisko, Jan Przywara, declares that he has not found any, apart from verbal, confirmation of the insertion of such a phrase. What is certain, however, is that after the Polish intervention in 1957, a plaque appeared that is still known today. Although it does not contain historical misstatements, discerning observers will notice the word "fallen", which according to linguists clearly refers to death on the battlefield.

However, all indications are that on the 90th anniversary of the plane crash, thanks to the cooperation of the two nations, a commemorative plaque entitled 'Start to Eternity' will once again hang above Žvirkovisko.