All Saints' Day. A very important holiday in Poland. Instead of Hallowe'en, we celebrate a solemn remembrance of those who passed. It is around this day that the cemeteries are full of people, and flowers, and candles. Some people will never visit a family grave save for that one day, so it is very important to make it special. People will spend hundreds of zloties on decorating and lighting the tombstones.
Also, unusually, many cemeteries stay open all night. This photo was taken late at night at the Doły Cemetery in Łódź, which dates back to 1896 and holds catholic, lutheran, orthodox , baptist, pentecostal, muslim, mariavite, military and non-denominational graves. It is one of Lodz's largest necropoliae, and oddly enough, straddles a street called Smutna- which means 'sad'.
All of the lights you see in these pictures are candles. There was at least one on every grave.
I don't have any family there- I went to Warsaw early in the morning and visited my paternal grandparents' grave. We do it every year.
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