What happened
In 1776 Father Wacław Tomaszek (Václav Tomášek), the Czech parish priest of Czermna, noticed human skulls and bones in a bank by the bell tower. Together with the gravedigger J. Langer and the sexton J. Schmidt he began digging them out and uncovered huge quantities of remains – victims of the Thirty Years' War, the Silesian and Seven Years' Wars and the epidemics that swept through the Kłodzko region. Moved by a visit to the catacombs of Rome, the priest decided to build an ossuary. The chapel was erected in 1776–1784, and for almost twenty years the priest and the gravedigger collected more bones from the area; work on the decoration lasted until 1804. The walls and vault are covered with about 3,000 tightly packed skulls and long bones, and another 20,000–30,000 rest in the crypt. Among the bones stand two wooden angels bearing the inscriptions “Arise from the dead” and “Come to judgement”. The altar displays, among others, the gravedigger Langer's skull, a Tatar's skull and skulls with bullet marks.
Witnesses
Father Wacław Tomaszek, gravedigger J. Langer and sexton J. Schmidt; today the chapel is one of the main attractions of Kudowa-Zdrój.
Explanations and hypotheses
The chapel holds no mystery – it is one of the few ossuaries of its kind in Europe and the only one in Poland. Tomaszek and Langer decided that after death their own remains would also rest in the chapel. In front of the entrance is a plaque with a trilingual inscription from 1914: “In memory of the victims of wars, and as a warning to the living”. The place is chilling not because of legends but because of the scale of death it records; photography inside is forbidden.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Kaplica Czaszek w Czermnej (oficjalna strona) – Jak powstała Kaplica Czaszek?
- Waldemar Brygier, Ziemia Kłodzka (Oficyna Wydawnicza „Rewasz”, 2010)
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