Rasos Cemetery

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Rasos Cemetery (Lithuanian: Rasų kapinės, Polish: Cmentarz na Rossie) is an old cemetery in city of Vilnius, Lithuania.

[edit] History

Founded in 1769 by Bazyli Miller, the mayor of Vilnius, in the place of an ancient pagan temple. He was also the first person to be buried there. It received the name after the surrounding borough of Rasos. In 1801 a chapel and a belltower were built. After 1844 the cemetery received a new, neo-gothic shrine. It was built by Józef Bohdanowicz, a local priest, and Jan Waszkiewicz, professor at Vilnius University. In 1920 a small military cemetery was built near the entrance for the soldiers who died in the city during the Polish-Bolshevik War. It was rebuilt in 1935-1936 by Wojciech Jastrzębowski, who also designed the tombstone where the heart of Piłsudski's is enshrined.

Until September 18, 1939, when the Red Army entered the city, a honorary guard of three soldiers stood there at all times. Three unknown soldiers who refused to give up their arms to the Soviets in 1939 were shot on the spot and are now buried next to Marshal Piłsudski's heart. Part of the cemetery contains graves of Polish Home Army soldiers, who fell during the Second World War. Their graves, demolished after World War II, were rebuilt by the funds of Republic of Poland in 1993.

Graves of Polish soldiers who fell in 1939
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Graves of Polish soldiers who fell in 1939

After the war the cemetery's name reverted to its original Lithuanian name of Rasų cemetery, also spelt as Rasos cemetery. The whole necropoly was to be destroyed in the 1980s as the Soviet authorities planned a major motorway to be built directly through the cemetery. Due to a press campaign led by Polish-language "Czerwony Sztandar" (Red Banner) newspaper and economical difficulties the destruction was halted.

Tomb of Antoni Wiwulski in Rasos Cemetery
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Tomb of Antoni Wiwulski in Rasos Cemetery
Tomb of Jonas Basanavičius
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Tomb of Jonas Basanavičius

[edit] Notable people

There are many famous Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarussians buried there. Among them are:

There is also a mass grave of Poles kidnapped in Vilnius by the Bolsheviks in 1919 and shot in Daugavpils.

[edit] References

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