In the summer of 1944, General Władysław Anders decided to create a cemetery in the so-called Valley of Death between Monte Cassino and Hill 593, in the area of the heaviest fighting of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division. The architects Wacław Hryniewicz and Jerzy Skolimowski were the authors of the design for the entire establishment. The earthworks and stonework were carried out by a platoon of Polish sappers and a couple of hundred Italian workers under the direction of engineer Tadeusz Muszyński. The ceremonial opening of the cemetery took place on 1 September 1945, i.e. on the sixth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, but work on its completion dragged on for several more months. The cemetery occupies a gently sloping hillside, accessed from the Benedictine Abbey on Monte Cassino. The entrance is guarded by two stone eagles with upraised wings, carved in travertine by the Italian artist Duilio Cambellotti. The stone soldiers' tombs are placed amphitheatrically on nine terraces. The last and highest terrace is topped by a retaining wall, in the central part of which there is a stone altar table and the emblems of the 2nd Corps troops carved next to it. Above the cemetery proper, on a slope gently rising towards Hill 593, a cross has been marked out with arms 50 m long, at the intersection of which is a stone relief with an image of the Polish national emblem.

The battles of Monte Cassino
In the fighting at Monte Cassino, more than 1,000 soldiers died and around 3,000 were wounded. They came from all parts of the Polish Republic, largely from its eastern provinces. On most of the graves stand mostly simple Latin crosses. Among the fallen there were also Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Jews, hence in the necropolis you can find quarters with Orthodox crosses and matzevot with a Star of David. After 1945, three special gravestones were erected in the cemetery: that of Field Bishop Józef Gawlina (burial in 1965), General Władysław Anders (burial in 1970) and his wife Irena Anders (burial in 2011).