A place that requires thoughtfulness. My children enjoyed the changing of the guard.
08.07.2013The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw - the most famous Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Poland is located in Warsaw, on Marshal Jozef Pilsudski Square. It is a fragment of the three central arcades of the Saski Palace, which was destroyed during World War II. It was created in 1925 on the initiative of General Juliusz Tarnawa Malczewski with the full approval of Wladyslaw Sikorski, then Minister of Military Affairs. The Chairman of the Temporary Committee for the Construction of the Monument to the Unknown Soldier was General Jozef Haller, with General Tadeusz Rozwadowski acting in his stead. From the battlefields where the Polish soldier shed blood, the remains of one unknown soldier, whose corpse was excavated on October 29, 1925 from the Cemetery of Defenders of Lviv, were selected by lot (the selection was made by firemaster Józef Buczkowski, the youngest cavalier of the Order of Virtuti Militari of the Warsaw district). The selection of the corpse was made by Jadwiga Zarugiewiczowa, a Polish Armenian native of Kut nad Czeremoszem, the mother of two fallen defenders of Lviv, including one of the heroes killed at Zadwórze, whose corpse could not be identified either. On October 30-31, the corpse was solemnly transported by special train to Warsaw and ceremoniously buried on November 1. Urns with soil from the other battlefields were placed next to the coffin. After the funeral, an eternal candle was lit next to the grave. Two months after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, between December 27 and 29, 1944, the Germans demolished the Saski Palace, while the grave itself was damaged and covered with rubble. After the war, after it was cleared of rubble and new plaques with the names of World War II battle sites were erected, an eternal candle was lit again next to the grave on May 8, 1946, and urns with soil from 24 battlefields were inserted. It is interesting to note that the fragments of the columns visible today were created after the war, during work on the grave. As a result of war damage, entire columns collapsed. On April 18, 1989, soil taken from the graves of Polish officers murdered in Katyn was deposited in the grave.
05.07.2013
