As a consequence of building the military hospital, a cemetery was located in its vicinity. The first burial took place in 1849. Up to the outbreak of the First World War, 1.500 soldiers of different nationalities from within the multi-ethnic Habsburg Kingdom were buried in the military necropolis. In 1914-1918 it became the place of rest for at least 1.200 people who died in the Wadowice military hospitals from their wounds, and above all due to the epidemic diseases. In 1915, this cemetery was incorporated into the war burial system of Austria-Hungary (Military Cemetery No. 473). At the same time, the section of Jewish soldiers buried at a nearby Jewish cemetery was given the number 474B. During the war, the cemetery No. 473 was extended because there was not enough space to bury all the deceased. It was still used after the end of the Great War due tothe presence of a POW camp in the town. In 1918-1921, during the wars for the borders of the Second Republic of Poland, over 2,100 soldiers were buried here. Among those buried were Poles, but also, among others, Bolshevik soldiers (including Belarussians and Ukrainians), Lithuanians and Ukrainians serving in the armies of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian People’s Republic. In the 1930s, some of the bodies were exhumed and reburied in collective graves thus decreasing the area of the necropolis. After the Second World War 1.399 Soviet soldiers were exhumed from makeshift war cemeteries in several locations within the then Wadowice County and transferred to the military cemetery in Wadowice. Soldiers buried in collective graves also included German soldiers killed in Tomice and Wadowice in January 1945.
