Rejtana Park in Łódź – a forgotten cemetery hidden beneath the ivy
I found Rejtana Park almost by accident while staying in Łódź. I wasn't looking for it, and I certainly didn't expect to find a place that would leave me thinking about it long after I had walked away.
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At first, what caught my attention was how quiet it felt. The park is quite dark and heavily overgrown, with ivy covering large parts of the ground and climbing through the trees. There is something slightly mysterious about it. You can hear the city around you, but once you step inside, it feels strangely separate from it.
And then there is the architecture.
Modern blocks and newer buildings seem to press right up against the greenery. Some of the older buildings, dating from the PRL period, look as though they have their own stories to tell. Every now and then, you can even catch sight of huge industrial chimneys in the distance – one of those details that instantly reminds you that this is Łódź, a city built on industry.
But I had no idea, when I first walked through the park, that I was actually walking through what used to be a cemetery.
The former Wizner Cemetery
Rejtana Park stands on the site of the former Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery, commonly known as Cmentarz Wiznera. The cemetery was established at the end of the 19th century, in 1898, by the Evangelical parish of St John in Stare Rokicie.
For decades this was a real cemetery, with graves, tombstones, trees and the people of Łódź who had been buried there. It remained in use until the 1960s, with the last burials taking place around 1968.
Today, it is difficult to imagine what the place must once have looked like.
There are still traces of the old cemetery. The historic neo-Gothic entrance gate has survived, as has the former gardener's and funeral house. Parts of the old boundary wall can also still be found, while fragments of tombstones are scattered around the park.
And this is probably the part that stayed with me the most.
When you come across pieces of old gravestones lying among the trees and ivy, it is impossible not to wonder about the people whose names were once carved into them. Someone chose those stones. Someone stood beside those graves. Families came here, remembered their relatives and eventually disappeared themselves.
Now, in many places, all that is left is a fragment of stone half-hidden in the vegetation.
A park, but also a place of memory
The cemetery was gradually cleared in the 1980s, and the process was completed around 1986. Some remains and more valuable gravestones were transferred to the Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery in Sopocka Street.
That is why Rejtana Park feels different from an ordinary city park. It isn't simply somewhere with old trees and paths. There is another layer underneath it – something that you cannot always see immediately, but which is still there.
I actually found the park rather neglected. The ivy is beautiful, but in places it has taken over almost completely. The whole place feels a little too wild, as though nobody has quite decided what it should be.
Perhaps that is precisely what makes it so interesting.
At the same time, I couldn't help thinking that even if the cemetery no longer exists, its history deserves to be visible. If fragments of gravestones are still here, why shouldn't visitors know what they are looking at?
It seems to me that places like this should not simply become anonymous green spaces.
They are part of the history of the city.
The old gate and the forgotten details
The old cemetery gate is one of the things that makes the history of the place easier to understand. Standing there, you can almost imagine the park as it looked many decades ago, before the paths, playgrounds and modern buildings appeared around it.
The former gardener's or funeral house adds to that feeling.
There are also smaller details that are easy to miss. Old trees, fragments of walls and stones hidden beneath the ivy all suggest that this was once a very different place.
And perhaps this is what I like most about Łódź.
You can be walking through an ordinary-looking neighbourhood and suddenly discover something that completely changes the way you see it.
A patch of greenery turns out to be a cemetery. An old building turns out to have been connected with a factory. A quiet street follows the route of something that disappeared decades ago.
Łódź is full of these layers.
There is another cemetery nearby
There is also another, much smaller cemetery close to the park, at Rejtana Street. This one belongs to the Evangelical-Reformed community and is still a cemetery today.
The former Cmentarz Wiznera was an Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery and no longer exists as a functioning cemetery. The cemetery nearby is Evangelical-Reformed and remains an active historic burial ground.
The fact that two different Protestant traditions have left their mark in such a small part of Łódź says something about how diverse the city once was.
Łódź was never simply a Polish city with one story. Germans, Poles, Jews, Czechs, French and many other communities helped to create it. You can still find traces of that complicated history if you know where to look.
Rejtana Park today
Today, Rejtana Park is a place where nature has almost taken back what the city once built.
I liked that atmosphere, although I also felt that the park could be cared for better.
There is a difference between a place being naturally wild and a place simply being neglected. Rejtana Park sometimes feels as though it sits somewhere between the two.
And perhaps it is difficult to decide what should happen to a place like this.
Should it become a beautifully restored park?
Should the remains of the old cemetery be marked more clearly?
Should there be signs explaining who was buried here and what happened to the cemetery?
I don't think a place like this needs to be turned into a museum. But I do think its story should be easier to discover.
Because once you know what happened here, you see the park differently.
A forgotten part of Łódź
What stayed with me after visiting Rejtana Park was not one particular building or monument. It was the feeling that the history of the place is still there, just underneath everything that came afterwards.
But pieces of the past remain.
For me, that is what makes places like Rejtana Park worth visiting. Not because it is the most spectacular park in Łódź, but because it makes you stop and ask questions.
Who was buried here?
What did this part of Łódź look like a hundred years ago?
Why were the graves removed?
And how much of the old city is still hiding beneath the one we see today?
Rejtana Park doesn't give you all the answers.
Perhaps that is why it stays in your mind.
It is a quiet, slightly mysterious piece of Łódź – a place where the greenery hides the remains of a cemetery and where the past hasn't completely disappeared, even though the city has tried to move on.
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