By blind fate or divine plan, the poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, who fell in love with Krakow, died and was buried in Manchester's South Cemetery. Her grave is not the only Polonica in Europe's second largest cemetery. Inquisitive tourists will find many more Polish traces in this city of the dead.

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska - the lady of Polish literature
This poet, painter and playwright, born in 1891, was regarded as a lady of Polish literature, and was also called the "poetess of love and nature". Even before the Second World War, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891-1945) travelled extensively and visited, among other places, Italy, Turkey and North Africa. When, due to the turmoil of history, she left Poland in September 1939, she never returned to her homeland. Together with her husband Stefan Jasnorzewski, an airman in the Polish Air Force in Great Britain, she settled in Blackpool, at an RAF base. The pilot was consumed by military duties and Maria, not knowing English, spent whole weeks alone.

She felt abandoned, despite the constant presence of her compatriots, with whom, however, she was unable to establish a closer relationship. She tried to drown her sorrows by getting involved in Polish affairs. She collaborated with "Wiadomości Polski, Polityczne i Literackie", as well as "Polska Walcząca" and "Nowa Polska". Despite this, she wrote in her diaries: "I miss Poland, home, my parents", and in another place, already after the death of her father, the painter Wojciech Kossak, she confessed: "A fear [...] terrible and shattering".
Her deteriorating health also added to her longing for her loved ones. In 1944, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, which gave fatal metastases to her spine. Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska was hospitalised in a Manchester hospital and died here on 9 July 1945. She was buried in the local cemetery and in August 1973 the ashes of her husband Stefan Jasnorzewski, a participant in the Battle of Britain 1940, were laid to rest beside her.

The largest cemetery of the irreplaceable
Southern Cemetery, Manchester's Southern Cemetery is Europe's second largest necropolis. It was created in 1879, almost 100 years later than Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery. Its design was entrusted to architect Henry John Paull and surveyor James Gascoigne Lynde. The result was a remarkable space which, years later, English Heritage placed, along with chapels and other sepulchral buildings, on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens for its historical significance.
French writer and politician Georges Clemenceau believed that 'cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people' and this phrase perfectly describes the people buried here. Thus, the ashes of Jerome Caminade, known as the prototype of Sherlock Holmes, or Captain John William "Jack" Alcock, who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight, were deposited in the Manchester necropolis.

Polish Safona's grave in Manchester
Among the monuments, slabs and crosses, there is no shortage of Polish accents. Perhaps the most important is the tomb of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (née Kossak) and her husband.
The contemporary tombstone was erected thanks to the efforts of the Association of Polish Writers Abroad and the English Polish community. It was made of black granite and - unlike the tombstones we are used to in Poland - has the vertical form of a stele, without a slab lying on the ground. Instead, a small flowerbed, a kind of pot in which flowers are grown, presumably tended by the local Polish community, has been set into the ground. This brings to mind the poet's lyric in which the Polish Safona writes: "The royal grave, in lilies, in roses, / Today clouds over with smoke.".
A golden cross is carved into the left-hand side of the rectangular stele, ascetic in form, while an epitaph of the same colour is carved in the centre:
From the Kossaks / Maria Jasnorzewska / Poet / Died 9.7.1947 / Stefan Jerzy Jasnorzewski / Capt. Pil. / Died 23.8.1970 / This stone was erected / by the union of Polish writers abroad / and the Polish community in commemoration of / this great Polish poetess / A.D. 1973
The poet's gravestone monument is often decorated with a red and white flag or ribbon.

Monument commemorating Katyń 1940
The Polish national colours are also to be found elsewhere in Manchester's South Cemetery. Next to the Jasnorzewskis' grave, the other Polish feature of this necropolis is the Katyn Monument. Made of white stone, it was conceived as a composition of thirteen variations of a number.
Its basic form is a triptych of rectangular slabs: the smaller ones on the sides - finished in the shape of an equilateral triangle with small faults, and the central one - higher, in the form of an equilateral triangle at the top. The panels are decorated with carved inscriptions and images - in the central part at the top is the emblem of Poland with a crowned eagle, and below is a two-line inscription: "1940 KATYÑ / Starobielsk, Kozielsk, Ostashkov". The side sections are engraved with the same inscription in English and Polish, as well as laurel wreaths with a sword. The stone planes are set on a triple pedestal in a stepped form. In its main part there are three metal plaques with the following inscriptions:

. On 29 April 1990, during the dedication ceremony of the monument in honour of those murdered at Katyn, soil from the graves of Polish prisoners of war from the Kozelsk camp was deposited.
On 29 April 1992, soil from the graves of the murdered Polish prisoners of war from the camp in Starobielsk was deposited.
On 29 April 2001 earth was laid from the graves of the murdered Polish prisoners of war from the Ostashkov camp near Mednoye.

The memorial was designed by the architect Tadeusz Leisz, who also rests in the Manchester cemetery.

Polish Garden of Remembrance in Manchester
Although the Southern Cemetery is not a military necropolis in the strict sense of the word, soldier burials form a significant part of it. These include the gravestones of 17 Polish soldiers, the graves of 775 victims from both world wars, including those transferred from other cemeteries in Manchester.
The highlight of this special war-martyrdom is the small Second World War Museum located within the necropolis. It brings together photographs, postcards or medals from the era. Particularly noteworthy is the part of the exhibition devoted to Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska. Among the twenty-four heroic and important figures cited by name, the Pole is the only woman! In the museum's book you can read the poet's biography and see her photograph.
The only thing missing from the South Cemetery in Manchester, and worth drawing the attention of the Polish community to, is the lack of clear directions and signposting as to exactly where the Jasnorzewskis are buried. So, as the writer herself noted: 'You can change something - go and change it - and you can't, go and take the obstacle'.