Military Cemetery on Prandoty Street
Kraków Cemeteries
A historic cemetery (Stare Miasto district), right next to Rakowicki Cemetery, covering about 11 hectares. It was founded in 1920 on the former drill ground of the Austrian army's sappers. The first to be buried here were soldiers and officers of the Polish Army, veterans of the January Uprising, soldiers who fell in the Polish-Soviet War, and Silesian and Greater Poland insurgents. During the Second World War German soldiers and British prisoners of war were buried here too, and in 1945 soldiers of the Red Army. Today scholars, artists and sportspeople rest here as well, and a new Avenue of the Distinguished runs along Prandoty Street. Some plots form War Cemetery No. 388.
History
Kraków was home to a strong Austrian garrison but had no separate military cemetery. The fallen were buried at Rakowicki Cemetery, where more than 9,000 soldiers were laid to rest during the First World War. The cemetery on Prandoty Street was established in 1920 on a former training ground of the Austrian army's sappers and initially had 10 sections. Buried here were soldiers and officers of the Polish Army with their families, veterans of the January Uprising, those killed in the Polish-Soviet War, and insurgents from the Silesian and Greater Poland uprisings. After 1945 the city took over the management of the cemetery, sections for soldiers of various armies were created and civilians began to be buried here too. There is a section with 146 Polish soldiers killed in September 1939, a British war plot with 522 people, a section with 1,578 Soviet soldiers and two sections with 2,750 German soldiers. In section VI, grave no. 11, lie the parents and brother of John Paul II: Emilia and Karol Wojtyła and Edmund Wojtyła. General Bernard Mond, the painter Wacław Taranczewski and the doctor Mieczysław Słaby, a defender of Westerplatte, are also buried here.
Did you know?
Next to the Monument to the Kraków Eaglets stands the gravestone of a Georgian second lieutenant, Niko Agniaszwili, who served in the 4th Podhale Rifles Regiment and died in 1928. The slab bears the inscription: "God, give Georgia back her freedom!"