Anna Szydlowska died in a car accident in Germany on 16 January 1946 . Colonel Szydlowski, the commander of the Polish military who liberated Axel, did not want her to be buried in German soil. Following his request to the city council, permission was granted to bury Anna's body in the Catholic cemetery.

The cemetery also contains civilian victims who died during the 1944 liberation. The largest grave belongs to the Lievens family. A grenade attack in their air-raid shelter on Armendijk (now Polenstraat) in Axel killed three family members.