St. John Cemetery in Bydgoszcz () is a Catholic cemetery. Together with the Old Parish Cemetery, it is one of the oldest surviving necropolises in Bydgoszcz.https://plwiki.pl/Leksykon/Cmentarz_katolicki_%C5%9Bw._Jana_w_Bydgoszczy Leksykon – St. John Cemetery
Location The cemetery is located in the Stary Fordon district, on the eastern outskirts of Bydgoszcz, near the Vistula River. The grounds border Cechowa Street to the east, between Pielęgniarska and Kryształowa streets.
History The cemetery belonged to the St. Nicholas parish until 1990, when the new St. John's parish took over. It was founded after 1780 as a result of new Prussian burial regulations.Cmentarz św. Jana w Bydgoszczy A previous churchyard cemetery existed since 1555 near St. Nicholas' Church.Gąsiorowski, Bogdan Paweł; Zyglewski, Zbigniew. Cmentarze fordońskie. In: Dzieje Fordonu i okolic. Bydgoszcz 1997.
The cemetery was recorded during a parish visitation in 1781 and became the main Catholic burial site for Fordon until the late 1920s.
St. John's Church was built between 1878 and 1879 for the local Evangelical community, which also had its own cemetery to the east. That cemetery was desecrated after World War II and only one gravestone survived.Gąsiorowski, Bogdan Paweł; Zyglewski, Zbigniew. 1997. In 2017, a lapidarium was unveiled to commemorate it.Lapidarium unveiled Some remains were moved to the Evangelical-Augsburg Cemetery. A 2015 drought on the Vistula exposed old gravestones used as riverbank reinforcement.
From 1850 to 1950, a prison cemetery of the was located nearby.
In 1990, the cemetery was officially taken over by St. John's Catholic parish and underwent restoration in the 1990s. A lapidarium was formed and older stones were preserved, although some were damaged during the work.
In 1991, the cemetery was added to the heritage register.https://odeszli.pl/artykuly/7,186072,28967728,cmentarze-w-bydgoszczy-adresy-telefony-godziny-otwarcia.html
Description The cemetery covers 0.5 hectares and had about 1,000 burials as of 1996.Woźniak, Zbigniew. Bydgoskie cmentarze. In: Bydgoska Gospodarka Komunalna. Bydgoszcz 1996. The oldest preserved grave is an iron cross from 1839 marking Rev. Ignacy Krieger.
Notable tombstones are kept in the lapidarium. Outside the lapidarium lie graves of prominent residents. A mass grave contains victims of the Selbstschutz executions of October 1939.
Gallery
References
Bibliography Gąsiorowski Bogdan Paweł, Zyglewski Zbigniew: Cmentarze fordońskie, in: Dzieje Fordonu i okolic. Edited by Zdzisław Biegański. Kujawsko-Pomorskie Towarzystwo Kulturalne. Bydgoszcz 1997. Woźniak Zbigniew: Bydgoskie cmentarze, in: Bydgoska Gospodarka Komunalna. Bydgoszcz 1996.