The Yozhma special settlement was established in 1930 by expropriated ("de-kulled") peasants displaced from central Russia. By March 1940, they were relocated to other forest areas in the Pinsk region, and Polish citizens deported from the Polish territories annexed to the USSR in 1939 were placed in Yozhma. - 63 families, a total of 279 people.
Poles who died of illness and exhaustion from hard work were buried in the forest 300 m from the settlement, crosses with the names of the dead were placed on the graves. The exact number of people buried here is not known. The regime of the special settlement was abolished on the basis of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR on amnesty for Polish citizens of 12.08.1941 and in the course of 1942 all Polish families left Yojma. After their departure, the cemetery was left unattended and the settlement ceased to exist in the mid-fifties.
In 1989-1990, the cemetery was found by a Piniega ethnographer. In 2008, on the initiative of the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in St Petersburg, an expedition was organised to the vicinity of the former specposiol. It was then established that nine crosses standing upright and fragments of 20 others had been preserved in the cemetery. Inscriptions on four of the crosses were difficult to read, and it was possible to read the following inscriptions: "The late Zofia Kwiatkowska born. 9 IX 35 r. d. 7 IX 41', 'The late Józefa 15 X 1867 - 21 I 1942 / The late Wiktor Nowodworscy 3 V 1866 - 24 VI 1941'. In 2011 a group of young people from Krakow erected a memorial cross here.

Compiled by T. Zachara / MKiDN, VI 2025

Teresa Zachara (MKiDN)