Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino
- Interments:
- 8view records
- Active from:
- 01.09.1945
- Categories:
- Fraternal Cemetery (common grave)
- Monuments:
- 0
The Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino holds the graves of over a thousand Poles who died, storming the bombed-out Benedictine abbey atop the mountain in May 1944, during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The religious affiliations of the deceased are indicated by three types of headstone: the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox headstones feature different forms of the Christian cross, and the Jewish headstones bear the Star of David.
The cemetery also holds the grave of General Władysław Anders, who had commanded the Polish forces that captured Monte Cassino. Anders died in London in 1970.
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The Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino holds the graves of over a thousand Poles who died, storming the bombed-out Benedictine abbey atop the mountain in May 1944, during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The religious affiliations of the deceased are indicated by three types of headstone: the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox headstones feature different forms of the Christian cross, and the Jewish headstones bear the Star of David.
The cemetery also holds the grave of General Władysław Anders, who had commanded the Polish forces that captured Monte Cassino. Anders died in London in 1970.
The Polish memorial at Monte Cassino bears the following two inscriptions
The first, based on the Epitaph of Simonides, reads:
Passer-by, go tell Poland
That we have perished obedient to her service
The other translates from Polish:
For our freedom and yours
We soldiers of Poland
Gave
Our soul to God
Our life to the soil of Italy
Our hearts to Poland
An anthem, The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino — composed on the eve of the Polish storming of the German stronghold — memorializes the Polish soldiers who gave their lives. The refrain is familiar to all Poles:
The red poppies on Monte Cassino
Drank Polish blood instead of dew...
O'er the poppies the soldiers did go
'Mid death, and to their anger stayed true!
Years will come and ages will go,
Enshrining their strivings and their toil!...
And the poppies on Monte Cassino
Will be redder for Poles' blood in their soil.
Sources: wikipedia.org
15.03.1944 | Kampania włoska: rozpoczęła się trzecia bitwa o Monte Cassino.
15 marca (operacja „Dickens”) rozpoczęło się trzecie, najbardziej krwawe z dotychczasowych, natarcie tymi samymi siłami, poprzedzone bombardowaniem: w ciągu trzech i pół godziny 575 ciężkich i średnich bombowców oraz 200 myśliwców bombardujących zrzuciło na miasto i okolice blisko 1100 ton bomb, a artyleria wystrzeliła ponad 10 000 pocisków. Po tym przygotowaniu ogniowym, w trakcie którego Cassino zostało zrównane z ziemią, na pozycje niemieckie uderzyły ponownie trzy dywizje: 4. hinduska (trzy brygady piechoty), 2. nowozelandzka (również trzy brygady) i 78. brytyjska (dwie brygady piechoty i brygada pancerna).