Burial rituals and funerary services in the Polish community in Lvov in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries

The article’s goal is to highlight burial rituals and funerary services in the Polish community in Lvov in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries as the issues are rarely discussed in academic research. Poles (who prevailed in the city) were typically Roman Catholics. The funerary ritual was modelled by the Catholic tradition. In the last decades of the 19th century, funeral parlours emerged in Lvov to render services to the city’s affluent and poor inhabitants alike.

The cemetery in Navaria near Lvov: research into the Polish national heritage in the lost Eastern Territories

Cemeteries are important sources of information on local and regional social history. Historic sepulchral objects, typically located in cemeteries (crosses, headstones, tombs, grave chapels), with well-preserved inscriptions and epitaphs, are also important source material in genealogical research. Today, of special importance is documenting the survived objects of sepulchral art in cemeteries located in the Eastern Territories lost by Poland. This article is an attempt at presenting the events and names of Poles who lived in Navaria near Lvov, a town later transformed into a village, based on the old crosses and headstones which have survived in the local cemetery, together with other source materials. There are few objects commemorating Poles in the historical part of the cemetery in Navaria where Poles were buried until the mid-1940s. In the past several decades, a majority of the Polish graves were destroyed. The remaining ones are testimony of Poles’ presence in Navaria.