The Patriotic Federation, which brings together 32 non-governmental organisations and social environments from all over Poland, wants to create a “Base of Graves of January Insurgents”. It is to consolidate, verify and complete the existing records of war graves and graves of veterans of the uprising.

The aim of the project is to create an easily accessible, online register, which will make it possible to locate the graves of participants in the uprising. Each resting place will be marked on a map with GPS coordinates, each point will contain a photo and information about the insurgent, battles and events related to the place. The idea is that everyone in their area will be able to see where a veteran or participant of the 1863-1864 battles lies and what events took place in the area.

“Since 1989, there has still not been one complete database of the graves of the January Insurgents. At present, we know of 700 places listed in various databases and records kept by the responsible institutions. Unfortunately, they are often unverified, erroneous and also contain memorials that are not graves”, says Eugeniusz Gosiewski, coordinator of the project financed by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister.

The first step will be to integrate, verify and update the existing databases. Then, thanks to a group of historians, regionalists and local communities caring for insurgents’ graves, the databases will be supplemented with new information and graves not yet included in the records. Each of them will be reported to the registers kept by the responsible institutions, especially to the registers of voivodes in order to be taken under the care of the Polish state.

The graves of insurgents are between 100 and 160 years old, so many of them may be in a catastrophic condition and require renovation. Therefore the creation of a unified register is so important.

“The upcoming 160th anniversary of the uprising is a good opportunity to do so”, announces Gosiewski.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński