Poland remembers saints and souls

By ⋅ November 2, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

by Dave McGuire

November 1st and 2nd are All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day in Poland. Every year the entire country heads to the cemeteries to tend to graves, light candles, pray, and also socialize.

The holiday is solemn and religious, but not morose. Outside cemeteries are stands selling candles, flowers and traditional wreaths to decorate graves. There’s also food, candy, balloons, toys… it’s a bit like a carnival. There are plenty of traditional snacks to be had, like little ringed bread, called obwarzanki, are strung on a rope like beads on a rosary and taste a bit like angel food cake.

It’s expected that up to 30,000 people will visit Powązki, Warsaw’s main cemetery, where military and cultural heroes of Polish history are buried. After dark, the cemetery lights up with thousands of candles and an atmosphere that is both respectful and lively.

Most Poles leave the cities and head out to the small towns where they’re from. It’s not unheard of for one family to visit five or six cemeteries. The traffic on Poland’s rural roads and highways is therefore heavy. Every year, in an unwelcome bit of irony, dozens of people die in car accidents on the roads, sometimes from drunk driving.

The Polish rail companies have run extra trains, and Warsaw’s public transit system has special cemetery buses and trams to help with the traffic. Police have put an extra 10,000 officers on duty this weekend in an attempt to lower the death toll.

Discussion

4 comments for “Poland remembers saints and souls”

  • Andrzej Kozlowski

    I loved your program about Powazki cemetery and the celebration of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day in Poland.
    I am from Poland and those were my favorite days of the year. I miss the feeling of somber joy at the candle lit graves in beautiful autumn colors and cold fresh air. There is enormous warmth and profound sense of connection with the unknown in those celebrations, that – once experienced – are to be missed forever.
    Thank you.

  • http://www.global.ucsb.edu/faculty/appelbaum.html Rich Appelbaum

    I was offended by today’s program on Poland’s All Saints/All Souls Day. No mention was made of the three million Jews who perished in Polish concentrations camp, which included Auschwitz/Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Gross-Rosen, Majdanek, Sobibor, Sutthof, and Treblinka. Although a great deal of attention was paid to today’s events in Warsaw, including the Powązki cemetery, no mention was made of the fate of the approximately 400,000 men, women, and children who were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto, almost all of whom eventually perished in the camps, were felled by by disease, or were killed during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

    Was this just an omission on the part of NPR’s “The World,” or does Poland’s annual acknowledgment of the dead make no reference to the Jews who perished there? Are there no Jewish cemeteries? How do the estimated 100,000 Jews that live in Poland today celebrate All Saints/All Souls Day?

    I would have expected “The World” to at least ask this question.

  • fritz rieger

    My Polish grandmother (born in Green Point Brooklyn, 1885) told me that the Halloween night mischief in her neighborhood was for gangs of boys to pummel the churchgoing adults with socks full of flower. The adults would be wearing their Sunday best black overcoats which would get covered with flour. She may have been referring to the All Soul’s day prayers

  • http://www.mcphanis.blogspot.com Jane

    My son was an exchange student in Poland and described this custom to me upon his return. It sounds wonderful. A Polish Day of the Dead. I really wish we had such a custom in this country.

FUNDERS