Polish War Graves in the UK: CWGC, Newark and Northolt

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Most Polish soldiers, airmen and sailors who died in Britain during the Second World War lie in war graves maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). You can search their names free in the CWGC online database, which gives rank, unit, date of death, cemetery and grave reference. The largest Polish plot in Britain is at Newark-upon-Trent Cemetery in Nottinghamshire, and the Polish War Memorial at Northolt in west London lists Polish airmen who died in the war.

Poles who survived the war and settled in Britain are a different case. Their graves are ordinary civilian graves in municipal and church cemeteries, found through council burial registers, Deceased Online and volunteer gravestone projects. Both kinds of grave can give you the rank, unit and sometimes the birthplace you need to take the research into Poland.

What the Commonwealth War Graves Commission does for Polish war graves

The CWGC commemorates the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the two world wars. It covers deaths between 4 August 1914 and 31 August 1921 and between 3 September 1939 and 31 December 1947, including people discharged from service whose death in those periods was caused by their war service.

Polish forces were not part of the Commonwealth, but the CWGC also looks after more than 60,000 graves on behalf of non-Commonwealth nations, mostly in its own war cemeteries and plots, and Polish graves are among them. The Commission calls these foreign national graves. Their headstones differ in design from the standard Commonwealth headstone, which is why a row of Polish graves in a British cemetery looks distinct from the RAF graves beside it.

How to search the CWGC database for Polish service personnel

The CWGC’s Find War Dead search on cwgc.org is free and needs no registration. The Commission’s own advice is to start broad: enter the surname, initials and the war, then narrow the results.

  • Choose Second World War. Nearly all Polish war graves in Britain date from 1939 to 1947.
  • Use the served with filter and pick Polish. You can combine it with served in (army, air force or navy) and with the country of commemoration, here the United Kingdom.
  • Try the surname with and without Polish letters. A record may show Wlasnowolski rather than Własnowolski, and a name first written down by a British clerk may carry a variant spelling.
  • If you know the cemetery, search by cemetery instead and read through the Polish burials there. This is often faster for common surnames such as Nowak or Kowalski.

A CWGC record for a Polish casualty typically gives the rank (often in Polish, for example Plutonowy, Porucznik or Kapitan), the service number, the unit or squadron, the date of death, and the cemetery with the grave reference. Age and next of kin, common on Commonwealth records, are often missing for Polish personnel.

Newark-upon-Trent Cemetery: the Polish war graves plot

Several RAF stations around Newark in Nottinghamshire were home to Polish Air Force squadrons, and a plot in Newark Cemetery was set aside for RAF burials during the war. That plot is now the war graves plot. According to the CWGC, it holds nearly all of the cemetery’s Commonwealth war burials and all 397 of its Polish war burials. Most served in the Polish Air Force, and a smaller number were soldiers, including members of the Polish Parachute Brigade killed in a single training accident on 8 July 1944.

The memorial cross, President Raczkiewicz and General Sikorski

A stone memorial cross to the Polish airmen, inscribed Za Wolność (For Freedom), was unveiled in the plot in July 1941 in the presence of President Władysław Raczkiewicz and General Władysław Sikorski, Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile.

General Sikorski was killed in the air crash at Gibraltar on 4 July 1943 and was buried at Newark on 16 July 1943, in a vault built by Polish sappers at the foot of the memorial. His remains were returned to Poland in September 1993 and now rest in Wawel Cathedral in Kraków. A large commemorative stone to him remains at Newark.

President Raczkiewicz died in 1947 and was also buried at the foot of the memorial. Many guides, including the CWGC’s own cemetery description, still give Newark as his resting place, but this is out of date. After ceremonies at Newark on 6 November 2022, his remains and those of two later presidents in exile, August Zaleski and Stanisław Ostrowski, were taken to Warsaw and reburied on 12 November 2022 in the Temple of Divine Providence.

Newark also has a later civilian section where Polish veterans asked to be buried near their wartime comrades. These are not CWGC war graves, so search the council’s burial records rather than the CWGC database. An All Souls ceremony for the Polish Air Force dead is held at the plot on the last Sunday in October each year.

The Polish War Memorial at Northolt and other Polish plots

The Polish War Memorial (also called the Polish Air Force Memorial) stands beside the A40 near RAF Northolt, on the edge of South Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Northolt was the base for Polish fighter squadrons at various times during the war. The memorial was unveiled on 2 November 1948 by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder. Designed by the sculptor Mieczysław Lubelski, it is a Portland stone column topped by a bronze eagle.

The memorial carries the names of Polish airmen who died in the Second World War. Further names were added when it was restored in the 1990s. It was listed at Grade II in 2002 and upgraded to Grade II* in 2020. A name on the memorial is not a grave: many of the airmen are buried abroad or have no known grave, so check the CWGC database for the burial place.

Northwood Cemetery, also in Hillingdon and close to Northolt, has a war graves plot in Section H where a large group of Polish airmen are buried, together with the Czechoslovak pilot Josef František, who flew with No. 303 (Polish) Squadron. Smaller groups of Polish war graves are spread across many British cemeteries near former airfields, hospitals and army camps, especially in Scotland, where the Polish Army was based for much of the war. The CWGC search by cemetery is the reliable way to find them.

Polish veterans who died after 1947: municipal and church cemeteries

Many Polish servicemen in Britain at the end of the war never went home. Thousands joined the Polish Resettlement Corps and settled in British towns (see our guide to Polish veterans’ resettlement in Britain). When they died, from the 1950s onwards, they were buried or cremated as civilians. Their graves are not in the CWGC database, even when the headstone carries a military badge.

Where to look

  • Council bereavement services. Local authorities hold burial registers for their cemeteries and crematoria. Most will search by name and year, and many charge a fee for a search or a copy; check the council’s website.
  • Deceased Online. A burial and cremation register site covering a number of UK councils and other burial authorities. Searching by name is free; viewing the register scans, grave details and cemetery maps requires payment. Check its coverage list first, as many councils are not included.
  • Church burial registers. Catholic parish burials and older Church of England registers are usually at the diocesan or county record office.
  • Gravestone photograph projects. Volunteer sites such as Find a Grave and BillionGraves hold photographs and transcriptions of headstones. They are useful finding aids, but check the transcription against the stone or the register.
  • The death certificate. A death registered in England or Wales gives age, occupation, address and cause of death. See our guide to birth, marriage and death certificates in England and Wales.

Polish veterans were often buried in clusters in the cemeteries nearest to Polish parishes, resettlement camps and hostels, so if you know where the family lived in the 1950s, start with that town’s main municipal cemetery.

Reading a Polish inscription on a British gravestone

A veteran’s headstone often says more than the register. Inscriptions are commonly in Polish, sometimes with an English line added. Common words and abbreviations:

On the stoneMeaning
Ś.P. (świętej pamięci)Of blessed memory, placed before the name
Tu spoczywaHere lies
ur. (urodzony / urodzona)Born, often followed by a date and a place
zm. (zmarł / zmarła)Died
szer., kpr., plut., sierż., ppor., por., kpt., mjrPrivate, corporal, platoon sergeant, sergeant, second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain, major
żołnierz, lotnik, marynarzSoldier, airman, sailor
Spoczywaj w pokojuRest in peace

Look for a birthplace after ur.: a town such as Lwów, Wilno, Grodno or Stanisławów tells you the family came from the pre-war eastern provinces, now in Ukraine, Belarus or Lithuania. Battle names such as Monte Cassino, Tobruk or Falaise, a regimental or squadron badge, or a decoration such as the Virtuti Militari cross point to the unit he served in. The birthplace carved in Polish is often more accurate than the anglicised version on a British death certificate.

A worked example (illustrative)

Suppose a family finds a headstone in a Midlands municipal cemetery reading Ś.P. kpr. Jan Wiśniewski, ur. 12.3.1915 w Tarnopolu, zm. 4.6.1968, żołnierz 2 Korpusu. The council register gives the burial date and the grave’s other occupants. The stone adds a rank (corporal), a formation (the Polish II Corps, which fought in Italy), a full date of birth and a birthplace, Tarnopol, now Ternopil in Ukraine. None of that would appear in the CWGC database, because he died long after 1947. The next step is his service file, then the Tarnopol birth register.

From a grave in Britain to records in Poland

A war grave or a veteran’s headstone usually gives you three things to work with: a name in its Polish form, a service identity (rank, unit, sometimes a service number) and, on veterans’ stones, a date and place of birth.

  • Service record. Records of Polish personnel who served under British command are held by the Ministry of Defence, and GOV.UK explains how to apply. Our guide to MOD Polish service records covers who can apply and what the file contains, which often includes the birthplace and parents’ names given on enlistment.
  • Air force records. For the airmen at Newark, Northwood and Northolt, see Polish Air Force records in the UK for squadron records and personnel files.
  • Polish birth record. With a birthplace and date, the next record is the birth entry in the parish or civil register in Poland, or in the archives of Ukraine, Belarus or Lithuania for places in the former eastern provinces. Our guide to finding a birth entry in Poland shows how to find the right register.

Watch for spelling. A British register may record Wisniewski, Wishnevsky or an entirely anglicised name, while the headstone keeps the Polish spelling. Search all forms, and treat ages in burial registers with caution, as they were often supplied by a widow or a friend.

Official sources