While making their way to freedom from various parts of Soviet Union, Polish refugees crossed Krasnovodsk and Caspian Sea to reach Anzali Port. In 1942, that port became a gate of liberty for thousands of Poles. Furthermore, it was the first city on the wandering route, where Poles themselves and British took care of starving exiles. As a result of agreement with Soviet authorities, Anzali became the most wanted place for thousands of Polish refugees in that period. Upon a short quarantine, the refugees were transported from Anzali to camps of evacuation in Tehran, Ahwaz and other Iranian cities.

Thanks to the personal intervention of Colonel Alexander Ross, the representative of MERRA (Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration), Polish and British bases of evacuation were established in Anzali, capable of receiving some 2500 refugees a day from Soviet Union. Thanks to the cooperation with Polish and American Red Cross organizations, the bases could receive two large evacuation lots including the soldiers and civilians in March, April and August 1942. The Command of Camp of Evacuation No. 1 in Anzali and the Personnel performing superhuman work made it possible to save many human beings, above all children, who were coming in utter exhaustion on ships full of refugees.

In spite of this aid and care of Polish and British people, many refugees, however, remained forever in Anzali. They were buried in Polish plot of the Local cemetery of Armenian Community in Anzali.

The staff and Colonel Stanislaw, Chief Commander of Liquidation Committee of Camp of Evacuation No. 1 took personal care of the arrangement of the cemetery. In November 1942, Mr. Karol Bader, the contemporary legate of the Republic of Poland acknowledged those efforts in writing: ”Your attitude full of reverence towards the last resting place of those of our compatriots, who did not live to see the return to their Fatherland will be a visible evidence of the efforts Polish Government keeps making unremittingly in order to protect all Polish citizens, whom the war expatriated from their domiciles and threw in very hard conditions.”

Polish authorities acquired the territory to arrange Polish Plot from the management of Armenian Community in Anzali, by concluding appropriate agreement with Armenian Community in 1942. The plot was a larger part of Armenian cemetery. In 1942, 639 Poles were buried there (163 soldiers and 476 civilians). They died upon arrival to Anzali. The cemetery was surrounded by a high wall, with an iron gate, with brick portal engraved with an inscription reading: “Polish Cemetery”. Moreover, a stone cross was placed on the portal flanked by two stone Jagellonian Eagles.

The graved with wooden crosses are placed on four grounds of burial of identical area. Long ago, there was a modest plate in the center with an inscription reading:
”Polish Wanderers!
Exiled from their Homeland by shear force
returning homesick to their nests
gnawed by penury and disease
had to sleep here in foreign soil.
1942”

According to other sources, the inscription was different:
”Pray God for souls of Polish soldiers, women, men and children removed from their Fatherland, making their way home consequent to exile, prisons and camps, deceased on foreign land and buried here”.

In 1955, the diplomatic agency of the Polish People's Republic reconstructed the cemetery and modified simultaneously the decoration of the graves. Tombstones in pink cement, with names of the buried, were made then similarly as in the cemetery in Tehran. Furthermore, rows and alleys between the graves were traced out and the territory was planted with hedges.

In 1964, on the initiative of Polish diplomatic agency, the deteriorated memorial plate was replaced and on that occasion, the inscription was changed. It reads now:
“In remembrance of Polish soldiers, women, men and children coming back home, dead on foreign land and buried here in 1942”.

The cemetery in Anzali is the second largest Polish cemetery in Iran. Today, on the initiative of the Council of Protection of War and Martyrdom Remembrance and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tehran, the cemetery has been subject to throughout repair works.