The Ukrainian Memorial Stone in Losone: 80 Years of History

Iryna Mykhalkiv-Vynnyk

Member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine

"To the Fighters for the Freedom of Ukraine, 1918–1946"

In 2017, I prepared a research article for the Ukrainian press about Polish soldiers who were interned in Switzerland during the Second World War.

Why did this particular topic attract my attention? Because in several Swiss cantons I came across so-called Polish Roads(Polenweg), while in Ticino there is a road known as Strada dei Polacchi.

Strada dei Polacchi is a forest road crossing a low mountain near the small village of Arcegno in the canton of Ticino. Nearly one kilometre of this narrow but well-built road had to be carved directly into solid granite. One of the rock faces bears a large painted Polish coat of arms — a white eagle on a red background. Nearby stands a metal plaque, installed in 1995, bearing an inscription in Italian and Polish:

"This road was built during the Second World War by Polish soldiers interned in Switzerland."

Before 1939, Galicia was part of the Second Polish Republic, which meant that many Ukrainians—primarily Galicians—served in the Polish Army. This prompted me to begin researching their story. I contacted local municipalities, Ukrainian historians, a Swiss history student writing a thesis on the subject, and several archives. Eventually, I travelled to the Swiss Federal Archives in Bern hoping to establish how many Ukrainians had been among the internees.

Unfortunately, the archives could not provide a definitive answer. The surnames of Galicians, Lemkos and Poles were often nearly identical, while religious affiliation—whether Roman Catholic or Orthodox—could not reliably distinguish one group from another.

Once I had gathered information from both Swiss and Polish sources and my article had already gone to print, I received a reply to one of my letters from the Patriziato Losone (the local civic corporation of Losone).

The letter came from Stanislao Pavlovski, the son of one of the former Polish internees. During our meeting, he told me about an old stone located near the military barracks below the Church of Madonna di Arbigo in Losone. According to him, the stone bore an inscription in Cyrillic, yet nobody knew what it said.

The granite monument stood almost hidden behind bushes, resting directly on the ground. Covered with moss and darkened by decades of weather, it carried the inscription:

"To the Fighters for the Freedom of Ukraine, 1918–1946."

It is difficult to imagine another monument of this kind anywhere else in Western Europe. It is a unique historical memorial.

But how did it come to be here?

The 2nd Polish Rifle Division Interned in Switzerland

On the night of 19–20 June 1940, the 2nd Polish Rifle Division, numbering 15,863 soldiers and commanded by General Bronisław Prugar-Ketling, crossed the French–Swiss border into the canton of Jura together with the French 45th Army Corps and several hundred civilians. They still possessed the weapons and horses that had remained after fierce fighting against German forces in occupied France.

In total, 41,869 military personnel were disarmed and interned by the Swiss authorities.

The 2nd Polish Rifle Division (2e Division d'Infanterie Polonaise) formed one of the major units of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Between 1939 and 1940 it was stationed and trained alongside the French Third Army and, together with the 1st Grenadier Division, was intended to become part of the French XX Army Corps. Colonel Prugar-Ketling, promoted to the rank of General while commanding the division, had already earned distinction in earlier military campaigns.

According to information published by the Ukrainian Red Cross Committee in Geneva, approximately 3,000 Ukrainians serving in the Polish Army were among those interned in Switzerland.

In the spring of 1941, the division was divided into smaller units and dispersed among camps throughout Switzerland. The internees were assigned to large-scale labour projects, including road construction in forests and mountainous areas, bridge building, forest clearance for agricultural use and land reclamation.

During five years of internment they built 63 bridges, constructed 450 kilometres of roads, cleared 1,300 hectares of forest, reclaimed 1,000 hectares of previously uncultivated land, and extracted approximately 90,000 tonnes of material from quarries.