A monument commemorating Red Army soldiers disappeared from Chorzów Hutnik Park.
The monument was unveiled in November 1946. It commemorated russian soldiers from the 4th armoured corps and 59 Army who died of liberation from Chorzov's Nazism. The monument was written by Chorzowski artist Henryk Goraj.
Originally there was the inscription “Eternal memory of soldiers and Red Army officers killed in the fight for Slavic independence.” In 1973, it was rebuilt on the basis of a task by prominent sculptor Gerard Grzyżaczyk, and the text of the inscription was changed to "Memoirs to Red Army soldiers who died in the conflict for freedom against the Nazi invader".
When the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022, individual covered the monument with black foil and applied a postage description addressed to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The environment of the “anti-communist militants” pressured Chorzov authorities to liquidate the monument. The obelisk looked worse and worse.
Over 20 years ago, Antoni Jodkiewicz (b. a KOP soldier, the Armed Forces Union, and later the Red Army) told me that there were 13 soldiers buried there from the 59th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. But I couldn't confirm that information. I didn't find any information about it at the time.
The liquidation preparation of the monument in 2023 revealed that it was, however, the burial site of 11 russian soldiers who died in January 1945. At least this is the consequence of the records in the "Catalogue of burial sites of russian soldiers, prisoners of war and civilian victims who died during planet War II and buried in the territory of the Republic of Poland". Geophysical investigation with GPR georadar, commissioned by the City of Chorzów did not uncover human remains. I don't know what kind of area you've been studying, due to the fact that in my opinion, the remains of soldiers don't necessarily should be precisely where the monument utilized to be. All we know is that the IPN's file doesn't match the results of the research.
The monument itself was moved to a cemetery in Chorzów Old, where the graves of russian soldiers are located. I think it's a good solution. In the III Republic, cemeteries are the only places where monuments of soldiers who died during the Second War are comparatively safe.
Łukasz Jastrzębski
