Antakalnis Cemetery

Memorial to the victims of the January Events

Graves of Polish soldiers

Memorial of Red Army soldiers

Antakalnis Cemetery (Lithuanian: Antakalnio kapinės, Polish: Cmentarz na Antokolu), sometimes referred as Antakalnis Military Cemetery, is an active cemetery in the Antakalnis district of Vilnius, Lithuania. It was established in 1809.

Soldier burrials

12 of the 14 victims of Soviet Army forces' attacks during the January Events of 1991 and the Medininkai Massacre are buried here. Other graves include those of Polish soldiers perished in 1919–20, a memorial of Lithuanian as well as German and Russian soldiers fallen in World War I and Red Army soldiers of World War II (constructed in 1951, rebuilt 1976–84). In 2003, over 3,000 French and other soldiers of the Grande Armée of Napoleon I who took part in the 1812 invasion of Russia were reburied at the cemetery after their bodies were excavated some two years prior from French-dug trenches that were used by the victorious Russians as mass graves due to the frozen state of the ground; French and Lithuanian diplomats participated in the interment ceremony.^[1] The remains of 18 more soldiers from the army who were dumped into a different area were reburied in November 2010.^[2]

Famous interments

The famous people buried in the Antakalnis Cemetery include:

Algirdas Brazauskas (1932–2010), politician, first president of independent Lithuania, elected in 1993
Teodor Bujnicki (1907–1944), Polish poet
Ričardas Gavelis (1950–2002), Lithuanian writer, playwright, and journalist
Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961–2007), Lithuanian writer
Juozas Kamarauskas (1874–1946), Lithuanian painter
Vytautas Kernagis (1951–2008), singer and songwriter
Kostas Kubilinskas (1923–1962), Lithuanian poet
Justinas Marcinkevičius (1930–2011), poet and playwright
Janina Miščiukaitė-Brazaitienė (1949–2008), singer
Vytautas Šapranauskas (1958–2013), theater and film actor, television presenter, humorist
Ieva Simonaitytė (1897–1978), Lithuanian writer
Antanas Venclova (1906–1979), Lithuanian and Soviet writer and politician
Norbertas Vėlius (1938—1996), folklorist
Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938), Polish philosopher and historian

Saulės Cemetery

Former St. Peter and St. Paul parish cemetery

The Saulės Cemetery is another cemetery in Antakalnis sometimes referred to as Antakalnis Cemetery. It is the old parish cemetery of St. Peter and St. Paul Church, established in 1830 and is the place of rest of many noble Poles and Lithuanians.

Famous people buried here include members of Ogiński and Zawisza noble families, Lithuanian cultural figure Danielius Alseika (1881-1936), Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kazlauskas (1930–1970), Lithuanian cultural figure Petras Kraujelis (1882–1933), sculptor-modernist Teodoras Valaitis (1934–1974) and Józef Zawadzki (1781–1838), the editor of the first poems of Adam Mickiewicz.

References

↑ "Napoleon's Soldiers Finally Get a Burial". The Moscow Times. 2 June 2003.
↑ "Napoleon's defeated soldiers buried in Lithuania". BBC News. 29 November 2010.

External links

(English) Visitor's guide to Antakalnis Cemetery
Gallery of the cemetery