Polish War Cemeteries

The concept for the spatial development of the sites where Polish prisoners of war – victims of the Katyn massacre – were murdered (Katyn) and later buried (Katyn, Kharkiv, Mednoye) was selected through an architectural competition in 1996. The winning design was created by a team led by sculptor Zdzisław Pidek from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and Andrzej Sołyga from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
The construction of the cemeteries was preceded by exhumation work commissioned by the Council for the Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom. Polish research teams recovered the remains of victims from mass graves, along with thousands of personal belongings preserved in the soil. Today, these artefacts form one of the most important collections of the Katyn Museum.
The Polish War Cemeteries were officially opened in 2000. For the families of the Katyn victims, this marked the long-awaited burial of their loved ones — after sixty years of waiting. In 2012, a fourth cemetery was opened in Bykivnia near Kyiv. All of these memorial sites were created through the efforts of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites.

Katyn

At the entrance to the Polish War Cemetery stand two pylons bearing Polish military eagles. To the left is a wooden cross known as the “Primatial Cross”, brought here in 1988. At that time, it stood against a monument bearing a false inscription attributing the Katyn massacre to the Germans.
The cemetery is shaped as a burial mound and surrounded by a wall. Along the wall are individual memorial plaques bearing the names, surnames, dates and places of birth, as well as professions or ranks of the victims.
The central feature is the Gate of Memory, inspired by the Holy Sepulchre and the stone rolled away at the Resurrection. It symbolises hope and the belief that truth cannot remain hidden. The names of all victims are engraved on the gate as if printed. The gate is open, and a cross visible through its opening symbolises the triumph of truth.
In front of the gate stands an altar-table, a place of gathering and prayer. Beneath the gate hangs a bell whose muted sound rises from underground, symbolising a truth that cannot be concealed. The bell bears the text of the oldes, Polish medieval hymn to Mother of God (“Bogurodzica”) and the word “Katyn”.
The cemetery contains six mass graves of officers and two individual graves of Generals Bronisław Bohaterewicz and Mieczysław Smorawiński. The mass graves are marked with cast-iron plates and crosses emerging from the ground. The execution pits are marked as dark patches in the forest landscape — stripped of vegetation, they remain permanent scars that cannot be erased.
Opposite the Gate of Memory are plaques representing different religious denominations of citizens of the Second Polish Republic buried in Katyn.

Piatykhatky, Kharkiv

The burial site lies within the area known as the “Black Road”. The execution pits containing the remains of Polish officers and Ukrainian citizens were discovered along this symbolic route. To emphasise the scale of the crime, the path is marked with black basalt paving stones.
The graves take the form of burial mounds, indicating the number of victims in each. Cast-iron crosses rise from the mounds—Roman Catholic for Polish victims and Orthodox for Ukrainian victims.
The cemetery is organised around the loop of the “Black Road” and irregular grave outlines, intersected by a symmetrical avenue with individual memorial plaques. These plaques resemble archaeological traces of a long search for truth.
At the centre stands a two-part black wall with an underground bell and a cross. The surface of the wall is inscribed with the names of all victims, forming a collective epitaph. In front is an altar-table for worship and remembrance. Beneath the structure hangs a bell whose muted sound comes from underground, symbolising truth that cannot be hidden. The bell bears the word “Kharkiv” and the medieval hymn “Bogurodzica”.
On the opposite side stands a collective Orthodox memorial with the names of Ukrainian victims. The main entrance is marked by pylons bearing the Polish and Ukrainian national emblems. Between the entrance and the cemetery are plaques representing different religious traditions of those buried here.

Mednoye

The cemetery is shaped as a burial mound surrounded by a wall, symbolically separating the living world from the sacred ground of the victims.
Around the wall are individual memorial plaques bearing the names of those buried in 25 mass graves. Every family can find the name of their relative here.
The sequence of inscriptions ends with reliefs of the Cross of the 1939 Campaign and the Virtuti Militari Cross. The plaques are arranged as if they were part of an archaeological excavation, revealing a crime hidden for decades.
At the centre is the Gate of Memory, where the names of the victims are listed alphabetically, forming a monumental collective epitaph.
Two pylons bearing the emblem of the Polish State Police stand at the entrance. In front of the gate is an altar-table for prayer and remembrance. Beneath the gate hangs a bell whose muted sound rises from underground, symbolising truth that cannot be concealed. Each mass grave is marked as a mound topped with a cross, blending into the surrounding forest.

Bykivnia-Kyiv

Since the 1930s, particularly during the Great Terror of 1937, victims of Stalinist repression were buried in the forest near the village of Bykivnia, now within the city limits of Kyiv. The bodies of those executed in Kyiv prisons were brought here at night, often by truck or via the Kyiv–Brovary tram line. A grim local saying preserved this memory: “Be careful, or you will end up on tram number 23.”
The existence of mass graves in the Bykivnia forest was first “revealed” in 1971. Early exhumations were carried out, and the remains were reburied in a collective grave, falsely described as victims of Nazi crimes from 1941–1943.
This falsification collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was acknowledged that the victims dated from 1934–1939. It was then suggested that among those buried were also victims of the Katyn massacre — Polish prisoners held in prisons in western Ukraine, including Stryi, Lviv and Stanislaviv.
Since 2001, research teams led by Professor Andrzej Kola have carried out archaeological and exhumation work in Bykivnia. Between 2001 and 2012, the remains of 1,994 individuals were uncovered. Objects found with them confirm that they were citizens of the Second Polish Republic. In 2012, the fourth Polish War Cemeteries was officially opened.