On the initiative of Barbara Sykulska, a history teacher, and Małgorzata Matyjaszczuk, a Polish teacher, the Balkan Tea was held at Janusz Korczak II General Secondary School in Bolesławiec. Among those attending the meeting were Halina Waniak, head of the Association of Returnees from Bosnia, Their Descendants and Friends, Jan Bujak, author of the book “Galicians and Serbs”, and members of the Jutrzenka Municipal Song and Dance Ensemble.
The first to speak was Mirosław Sakowski, the school’s head: “Our aim is to establish cooperation between II LO and a school in Bosnia. Of course, we also intend to pursue the most important goal—to preserve the memory of those who lived there and came to Bolesławiec County. We want the younger generation to remember those events.”
“I am very pleased that Bosnia is being discussed more and more often,” Halina Waniak emphasized. “People often say that home is where your heart is. This simple message best explains why so many of us return in our memories to the time of settlement in Bosnia. You cannot simply cut yourself off from your roots. This is our heritage. Today, thanks to the Balkan Tea, we return in our memories and spirit to those places.”
Preserving it from oblivion—that was also the idea behind Jan Bujak’s book “Galicians and Serbs”, which can be purchased at the Agora bookshop in the Market Square. It is the first part (the author plans to publish three more) of a story about the fate of Poles who found themselves in the Balkans and later returned to their homeland.
Jan Bujak did tremendous work. He spent three years gathering material for the book. This involved several trips and going through thousands of pages of various documents. Writing the text itself took him a year.
He published the book at his own expense. And not for profit—he simply gave away most of the copies. Among those who received “Galicians and Serbs” was a man without an education who had worked in construction since he was young and had never read a book in his life. “He read this one for a week. Day and night. He told me he could not tear himself away from it. That is my greatest success,” Jan Bujak says with a smile.
The writer was born in Bosnia. He settled in our county when he was two years old. “For a very long time, I was not interested in the fate of my ancestors,” he admits. “However, the stories told by my parents and their friends persuaded me to present these extraordinary accounts, which had never been publicized or documented. The generation of returnees is already essentially passing away, and Bolesławiec does not even have a memorial room.”
As the author himself points out, he presented authentic events while adhering to chronology. However, he described them in the form of a story, focusing primarily on emotions. “When I encountered a particularly cruel case, I changed the names of the book’s protagonists,” he confesses.
The next part of the work, describing the fate of Poles in the Balkans in 1920–1940, is already complete and will reach the Agora bookshop in July. The third installment will discuss World War II, while the fourth will cover the repression suffered by returnees in our county at the hands of the communist security service.
The meeting was enhanced by a performance by II LO students and a mini-concert by the well-known Jutrzenka Municipal Song and Dance Ensemble, which performed, among other songs, the major hit “Bałkanica” by Piersi.
We will return to this topic.
(information: ii)