Palmiry Cemetery

The Palmiry Memorial sits inside Kampinos National Park north of Warsaw. Between 1939 and 1943 the Gestapo and SS carried out secret nighttime mass executions here, killing more than 1700 Polish civilians including much of Warsaw's intellectual, political and sporting elite. Victims were trucked in from Pawiak Prison, shot at the edge of pre-dug pits and buried in place. After 1945 the graves were exhumed and the dead reinterred in neat rows of white birch crosses that still define the site. A modern visitor centre documents individual biographies and the logistics of the killings. Walking the sandy path from the car park through the pine forest to the cemetery is one of the quietest and most painful experiences in Polish remembrance.