“Memory of the dead lasts only until are paid with remembrance.”
Wieslawa Szymborska
Perhaps like nowhere else, in Poland the month of November is a time of great significance for the country’s history, tradition and culture. Leaves falling from the trees, frost-nibbed flowers and fog hovering over bare fields make us more acutely aware that something is passing away to the other side of the shadow, to the other side of life. Our national tradition is deeply rooted in Christianity. It is no mere coincidence that the month is filled with anniversaries for the Polish people to observe, such as the November Uprising that broke out on November 29, 1830, the independence of Poland declared on November 11, 1918, and the battle of Lwow from November 1 to November 22, 1918.
In Poland, each generation gave the country its own sacrifice of blood and each generation left graves, weeping orphans and talks of countrymen long into the night.
Given the great number of nameless fighters in great battles, they need to be remembered since not all of the fallen were identified. They were buried in graves marked as “unknown soldier: ” Arches and monuments were raised to remember those silent, unknown contributors to great victories.
The history of tombs of the unknown soldier (cenotaphs) goes back to the time of Frederick Simon, a citizen of France and president of many associations in that country. Approving his suggestion, on November 9, 1918, France’s parliament decided to honor one oi the unknown soldiers and set the date for November 11, 1920. The remains were to be laid to rest under the Arch of Triumph ( L’Arc de
Triomphe) in Paris. In the town of Verdun, on November 10, a young French soldier laid a wreath on one of eight caskets. Thus, the remains of the unknown soldier were chosen. A similar celebration was held at Westminster Abbey in London on November 11, 1920. This idea of having tombs of the unknown soldier spread to many other countries and across the world.
Poland’s tomb to honor the unknown soldier began in an act of spontaneity. Early in 1922, the press brought out first articles demanding that the memory of nameless soldiers be honored. The dispute about a place was solved accidentally. On December 2, 1924, a per son whose name remains unknown laid a granite slab under the arcades of the Saski Palace in Warsaw – carved on the slab were the words “here rests the unknown soldier”. People began to bring flowers to the place, candles were lit, hats were taken off to pay tribute and to salute. This was the ultimate confirmation oi the need to have the cenotaph in that particular place. After World War II, the Saski Square was renamed Victory Square. Its present name is Jozef Pilsudski Square.
Colonnade of the Saski Palace the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the background behind the monument to Prince Poniatowski. Photo.:pl.wikipedia.org
The history of Poland’s Tomb oi the Unknown Soldier is quite remarkable. In 1925 architect Stanislaw Ostrowski produced a design to be located under the arcades of the Saski Palace in Warsaw.
He placed gratings, with the eagle on it, at the central point of the, arcades, On the right hand-side, he put the military order called the Cross of the Brave, on the left-hand side – that of the Virtuti Militari.
Four plaques giving the names oi numerous battlefields were attached to the surrounding pillars, while bronze containers tilled with soil samples from the battlefields were displayed on separate bases.
Soon after this, the place from where the remains of the unknown soldier were to be exhumed, became a matter of public debate. The Cemetery of Young Eagles (Cmentarz Orląt) of Lwow was finally chosen as the exhumation place. If we are to believe that this was decided by fate, it could mean that history is made of co-incidences. For, it is difficult to find that kind of a strong emotional relationship arising out of patriotism and of remembrance of deceased and living people. To fully understand the relationship, one needs to recall Poland’s history over the last fifty years during which some events were ignored or passed over in silence and when ‘Friendship Train’, as they were called, were never allowed to stop at the Lyczakowski Cemetery of Lwow and at the Cemetery of Young Eagles which is a part of the former.
LWÓW has a special place in the history of Poland. Ages ago, it was a trade center at the crossroads of two important trade routes – the one for amber (which was northbound and southbound) and that tor silk (westbound and eastbound). For many centuries, the city was Polish.
However, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Armenian and Jewish communities used to live there as good neighbors, later on absorbing also Austrians and Germans.
Throughout the period of the partitions, the city was the unquestionable capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. The east Poland’s first partition. Thus, the intellectual and patriotic upheaval of the King Poniatowski era did not eventually reach that region. Austria’s policy was pursued to achieve the effect of centralized government words, the political goal was to be that of denationalization of the Slav population.
Romanticism took powerful hold of the minds of young people in Galicia. Its climax came with the November Uprising. A few years before, at the end of the second decade of the preceding century,
Lwow’s cultural life began to thrive. Lwow University came to be the source of Polish intellectual elites. The Ossolinski National Library was made available to Polish intellectuals, thereby enhancing the growth of Polish sentiments.
In the year of 1870, Galicia was formally declared politically autonomous, and the Polish people took over a number of public and social functions, which culminated in almost full control of the region’s elementary and high schools. From 1871 to the end of World War I, Polish representatives held the positions of the region’s governor, parliamentary marshal and the city of Lwow’s mayor. Thus, the Austrian policy and the Polish aspirations toward independence combined to prevent the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism. Threatened by the prospect of complete assimilation into the Polish element, young Ukrainian intellectuals began to disrupt the ties in an attempt to protect their own identity. it was at that time that the conflict of national interests was starting to surge with unprecedented seriousness, thereby having all the symptoms of chauvinism. Lwow University came to be a sensitive center for the reason that efforts were made to tum some Ukrainian departments there into a separate educational facility. Beginning in 1910, rallies and riots were a constant feature nearly every month.
The time from 1914 to 1920 was politically difficult for the city of Lwow. Whether the city of Lwow was to be within what boundaries was still an open issue in the six-year interval. Within the city limits and in the suburban areas, there were fights and the city changed hands now and then. Depending on their outcome, either Polish, Ukrainian or Austrian flags were flying over the city. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted in bloody fights between its Polish and Ukrainian populations.
In Polish history, this time is recorded as the defense of Lwow. A special place is assigned to the Polish young people, university, college and high school students, who took part in the battle’s tor the defense of the city. The heaviest fighting came on November 22, 1918, and most resistance came from such places as the Cadet Officer School, Henryk Sienkiewicz High School, Lwow Polytechnic and Lyczakowski Cemetery. A 14-year old high school student Jerzy Bitschan was killed in action at the Cemetery on November 22, 1918. His memory is preserved in a poem by Maciej Szuszkiewicz as follows:
Painting by Wojciech Kossak
Maciej Szuszkiewicz – tr. Joanna Schier
“In a navy-blue uniform, more fragile than a reed,
Not a youngster, but a child, he ran in an alley.
Where are you dragging this gun bigger than you?
Where, boy?
To join the student battalion.
My brother went, father went, and I want to do the same,
Only it took me longer to say good-bye to Mother.
She cried When I was leaving.
Come back, war is not a joke.
– I’ll return, Sir, but like in Sparta,
with the shield or…
Shhh, be silent, darkness is approaching,
It’ll hear you unaware and throw a spell on you.
– I’1l come back!
And he came, but not with the shield, but on it.”
As soon as the fighting was over, the Polish authorities decided to move the bodies to a designated area, adjacent to the Lyczakowski cemetery. An association was established to take charge of the project, known as the Guard of Polish Heroes‘ Graves, a body that comprised civil, church and military dignitaries oi the city. Funds were raised, an artistic and construction commission was appointed, and a contest was announced for a mausoleum.
The winner of the contest was Rudolf Indruch, a student of architecture at the Polytechnic of Lwow. As there was considerable cost cutting, the winner decided to otter his design without any reward, to honor the memory of his heroic friends and to donate it to the people of Poland.
Indruch’s design was made with a grandiose purpose. its construction was supervised by Antoni Nestarowski, an architect and father of one of the young eagles and spanned the years until the outbreak of World War II. It was never finished. At its first stage, a rotund chapel and catacombs were erected to accommodate the remains of 72 exhumed bodies. The act of consecration took place on September 23, 1925, with the attendance of the veterans of the January Rising, veteran.
Legionnaires, Polish Army generals headed by General Wladyslaw Sikorski, clergy headed by the Archbishop of Lwow Boleslaw Twardowski and the people of Lwow. A month after this, the remains were exhumed and transported to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.
On October 30, 1925, three bodies of unknown soldiers were exhumed, one of which was a private, the other one – a sergeant and the third – a corporal. Their caskets went on display in front the chapel.
One of them was selected as a symbol of sacrifice for the homeland, by Mrs Jadiwiga Zagulewicz who had lost her son in the lighting and never found her son’s body.
On October 31, 1925, alter the funeral mass at the basilica of Lwow, the remains of the soldier (a private) were laid in a special casket made of fir and oak wood and of zinc. The body was escorted from Lwow to Warsaw in a special train which had been used to bring the remains of Henryk Sienkiewicz from Switzerland to Poland.
In Warsaw, a special funeral mass was celebrated at the Cathedral of St. John and the funeral procession went from there to the Saski Square. The funeral procession included the then President of Poland Stanislaw Wojciechowski, Minister of Military Affairs Wladyslaw Sikorski and Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, colors carrying parties and thousands of the people of Warsaw.
The procession route was lined up with national flags and military insignia. All the churches in Warsaw rang their bells. Around 1:00 p.m. the funeral procession reached the monument of Prince Josef Poniatowski. The Knights of the Order of Virtuti Militari removed the body from the gun carriage and carried it on their shoulders to a resting place. Four urns with earth samples from the battlefields were put around. There were no speeches made, only the army officer choir sang a cantata in tribute to the soldier. After the performance by the choir, silence was broken up by the salute of 21 guns. Following this, one minute of silence was observed across the rand. The steel slab was then overlaid with a granite slab with the wording of “Here lies the Polish Soldier, fallen for the Homeland.”
Since then, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw has been the place of national remembrance and the laying of wreaths at the Tomb is always part of diplomatic and military events.
This was the situation until the year of 1939. In September that year, the battlefields were again strewn with the bodies of soldiers, both known and unknown. The German occupation followed after the lost campaign of September 1939. The. The Saski Square was in German hands throughout the Warsaw Uprising came on August 1, 1944Uprising. The Square was destroyed, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was buried under a heap of rubble, at the time of the insurgents fighting against the Nazi troops commanded by General Stahel.
Destroyed Saski palace – December 1944. Photo: pl.wikipedia.org
When Warsaw was liberated on January 17, 1945, a guard or honor was mounted in matter of hours at what used to be the Tomb and then was a heap of rubble. Since there were no candle lights, a bonfire was lit. The first guard was a man wearing a winter cap and backpack filled with grenades. Then the place was taken over by women soldiers.
During the restoration. a metal ornament was added to the tomb, designed by H. Grunwald. The original plaques were not restored, and new ones were put in to give the names of the battlefields from the time of 1939 to 1945.
Soil samples from 24 battlefields in Europe were deposited at the rebuilt Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on May 8, 1945. It was only in 1990 that the original plaques were restored to the Tomb and new ones were added. At the present time, 18 plaques are placed beside the Tomb to remember the battlefields starting from the early beginnings of the State oi Poland. As is natural, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is given special respect, with the guard of honor mounted there 24 hours a day. Alumni of Poland’s military schools are gathered there to be promoted to their first officer ranks. Foreign delegations from other countries lay wreaths at the Tomb.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
by Tadeusz Kubiak – tr. Joanna Schier
Here the ashes were gathered.
From the farthest world war fronts.
A proud tombstone,
Nameless grave alt in flowers.
Here many a mother
Heavily her head bows,
As if on the grave of her own
Lost son.
Here the flags half-mast flow,
Laurel wreaths arrive,
Here we swear in whisper:
No more war!
Nevermore!
Guards of honor at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Photo: pl.wikipedia.org
Cemetery of Young Eagle. Photo:pl.wikipedia.org
The Cemetery of Young Eagle, also known as the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwow, is a part of the oldest necropolis in Lwow – the Lychakow Cemetery.
The name of the cemetery comes from the nearly three thousand children and teenagers buried there – students of local high schools and universities, as well as the mostly young intelligentsia, known as the Young Eagle.
In November 1918, in the absence of regular units of the Polish Army in the city, they voluntarily fought against the Ukrainian troops stationed in Lviv, who were trying to take control of the city after World War I. But young Poles also fought and died in the summer of 1920 on the outskirts of the city. They repelled the attacks of the Red Army during the Polish-Bolshevik war.
In Lwow, the Young Eagles Cemetery has had a different story. After World War II, the city itself and the former Eastern Galicia were included in the borders of the former Soviet Union. What was left untouched by the war has been destroyed by the planning policies of the city authority. The Polish heroic defenders of Lwow have become a nearly hostile element for Ukraine. The cemetery has been closed and a highway cuts through a part of it.
A destroyed monument of glory. As of 1974. Photo: pl.wikipedia.org
In the 1980s, the then Minister of Culture Aleksander Krawczuk succeeded in negotiating a settlement with the Ukrainian authorities on the reconstruction of the Young Eagles Cemetery. A Polish company started restoration works to save what could be saved – the graves. Its works, however, came to a halt since the mixed commissions of the two countries could not reach agreement on the kind of wording to be placed on the tombs.
Symbolic lions at the Lwow Cemetery of Young Eagle
In 1971, the Soviet authorities removed the lions’ statues from the Cemetery of Young Eagle. The statues returned to the cemetery again in December 2015.
Their return is the result of the efforts of the Cultural Heritage Foundation. The permission to erect them was given by the Ukrainian conservator of monuments, Lila Onyshchenko.
The lions were to be renovated, and by then they had been covered with slabs.
After many years, on May 20, 2022, the authorities of Lviv decided to re-unveil the statues of lions at the Young Eagle Cemetery, guarding the entrance to the necropolis symbolic of Poles.
The article comes from the archival collection of the magazine POLISH NEWS.