In the center of the cemetery.

A gravesite with part of a propeller on top; the site is explained with an information panel.

Sergeant Alvin J. Ellin served as the Tail Gunner on the B-17 “St. Francis” (42-32104) of the 419^th Bomber Squadron, 301^st Bomber Group, 15^th Air Force. 

On December 17, 1944 “St. Francis” was part of a mission flying from Lucera Airbase in  Italy to bomb the synthetic oil manufacturing plants in Blechhammer (in present day Poland).  The plane was shot down while on the bombing run over the target and the entire crew bailed out.  The plane crashed near the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Upon landing, Sergeant Ellin was shot by a German Gendarme while reportedly attempting to escape.  The rest of the crew  survived: nine were taken prisoner and one evaded capture with the help of the Polish resistance. (Missing Aircraft Report {MACR} 10670).

Sergeant Ellin initially not identified, was buried in the local graveyard.  After the war his body was repatriated to the United States.  The local town remembers Sergeant Ellin by maintaining a cenotaph and celebrating his sacrifice each on December 17.  The cenotaph lies on the Polish “Route of Remembrance” (Trasa Pamieci), remembering sites associated with the Auschwitz Death Camp.

Sergeant Alvin Jerome Ellin was born on November 19, 1925 and was from Norton, Virginia.  He enlisted in the US Army Air Force (#15364395) in 1943; he was 19 at the time of his death.  After the war, he was reburied in the New Jewish Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The text on the grave is in Polish and translates to:

Here Rests

An Unknown

American aviator

fighting our freedom,

Who died heroically

Fighting against Nazism Oppression

Killed by a German Officer

on 17/12/1944

Year of my lord