Kopiec Józefa Piłsudskiego

This guide to the Piłsudski Mound in Kraków opens on a spring night in 1953, when a Soviet-era tank climbed the hill and turned its gun on a granite emblem of Poland's Legions. It rewinds to 1934, when veterans of the independence fight began raising an earthen mound by hand, a project that became a memorial after Marshal Józef Piłsudski died the following year. Poles across the country sent soil from battlefields, prison yards and family graves to be carried up this hill by volunteers, earning it the name the Grave of Graves.