All Saints Day

All Saints Day in Poland is probably the third biggest holiday of the year (after Christmas and Easter). People travel back to their family homes, and it is a day to remember the deceased. They travel to where their parents or grandparents are buried. It is a day spent in cemeteries and with families. But cemeteries are the focus. In fact, my University is closed Monday to allow students time to return from their home and families.

The stores have been preparing for this day with lanterns, candles and flower arrangements since the day we arrived a month ago. It is a pretty big deal.

I am first going to direct you to Lisa’s blog for a great description of the day and our weekend http://anamericanhouseholdinpoland.blogspot.com/2009/11/all-saints-day-and-more.html.

As for more on the cemetery where we chose to spend our All Saints Day, frankly the reason it was chosen is that we can see it from our front door. It is about 100 yards away. However, it was not until recently that we learned it is a very special cemetery. It is the resting place for all those Gdansk citizens killed (in their words murdered) between 1939 and 1945 by the Germans. So now, I get the added benefit of playing historian too.

The rows of headstones all note the date and in many cases the circumstances of their death. It is a walk through a terrible time in this city (and country).

The back row has people who were killed during the first couple of weeks of WWII ,which as you may recall started in Gdansk on September 1, 1939. There was really no military force in Gdansk (I think the records show about 100 troops total in the city on September 1st).  So all these are civilians that were killed as the German troops and tanks poured in.

Lisa mentions our parish priest who was arrested on September 2, 1939 right at the church we currently attend. He was beaten severely, placed into the local concentration camp (Stutthof) and finally taken out and executed on Good Friday, 1940. He has a frequently visited headstone and is on his way for beatification and maybe sainthood.

The cemetery also holds some of the remains and a large monument to a group of Polish Postal Workers who held off the Germans for several days. It was the first known resistance to the incoming German troops. After they ran out of ammunition, they were either shot on site or immediately tried.  A group of 38 postal workers was tried, sentenced and executed in the same day. The small group of Postal Workers are considered Polish national heroes for their resistance to the much, much larger German force. (this picture is of the actual Postal Workers who finally surrendered and were marched away. They were executed a little later. And then the memorial at our cemetery to these same workers.)

Finally, the vast majority in the cemetery are people that were “murdered”. Any Pole suspected of any resistance in this area was sent off to the Stutthof Concentration Camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutthof_concentration_camp. When they died of the conditions or were executed by hanging, shot or via gas chamber, they were brought back to this cemetery. Stutthof is about 45 minutes east of our house. It held “prisoners” and Jews from this part of the country. Lots of grisly things occurred at this lessor known camp (like the experimental making of soap from humans, think about it). I would say at least half of the cemetery is full of people who perished at Stutthof.

Other Poles suspected of resistance never even made it to the camp- they were shot in the Gdansk streets by the Gestapo. They have markers too.

You can see these two headstones. On the side, one says “Murdered at Stutthof Camp” and other one says “Murdered by the Gestapo”. If you look at the engraving (you might have to double-click to enlarge- "zamordowany" means murdered.)

So in addition to having a nice All Saints Day to remember those who have gone before us, we also found this wonderful memorial to a terrible time in our newly adopted city.

I really like the way the Poles celebrate All Saints Day. It is a very nice and somber holiday based around family; past and present. The lanterns make the cemeteries glow from a great distance away.