Cmentarz Żołnierzy Polskich, Wrocław

Cmentarz Żołnierzy Polskich is Wrocław’s cemetery for Polish soldiers and other Polish victims of the Second World War. At its centre rises the 1979 Monument to Polish Soldiers, designed by Łucja Skomorowska. Its two close-set concrete columns stand twenty-three metres high; their broken, irregular surfaces were conceived as the wings of Poland’s famed hussar cavalry.

Reliefs at their base recall the September 1939 campaign and the war’s final months, marked by the dates 1939 and 1945. This cemetery was created between 1968 and 1970, then enlarged through 1979, to receive 604 people. Most were Polish soldiers: men captured after the 1939 campaign who died in German captivity, and troops of the Polish Second Army killed at the front.

The cemetery also holds underground resistance fighters, civilian forced labourers, and people murdered under Nazi terror. The graves are set into four fields, following the shape of the hill. Each rectangular marker carries a name and is divided from its neighbour by a stylised Grunwald sword. Seven granite blocks at the entrance bear the war years, and national commemorations are still held here regularly.