Grave digger “grabarz”

Digging graves is definitely an essential service but a low status job. After being a potter, my 4x great grandfather Blazej Wisniewski worked as a grave digger. He also was a farmer. His father Mateusz also was a grave digger. Traditionally, this might have been one of the tasks of the church sexton but they may also have used temporary help. If done as part of the sexton’s duties, landscaping of the cemetery and interacting with the mourners may have also been part of the job. The graves were dug before heavy equipment was available. To hand dig a grave, a wooden frame is usually placed over the intended area. A spade would be used to remove the top layer of sod following this outline. Shovels and picks might also be used. A nearby box would be used to hold the removed soil and be covered and left there until after the burial. While in our present day, machines may have replaced a lot of the labor involved, crowded cemeteries often require the continued use of hand digging. The job of grave digger may never be gone but the need lessens over time. In 2005, only 46% of the people in Poland indicated that they would prefer burial upon their death. Check out the Eastern Europe grave digger competition: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/10/slovakian-brothers-crowned-fastest-gravediggers-central-europe-trencin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravedigger https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235917983_Burial_rituals_and_cultural_changes_in_the_polish_community_-_a_qualitative_study Picture credit: Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons