In July this year, eight residents of Bolesławiec travelled to the Eastern Borderlands to rescue Polish cemeteries. They were three students from Bolesławiec schools (Wojciech Synowiec, Wioleta Nizioł and Marek Roszkowski), history teacher Elżbieta Hołyńska-Grzesiak, editor Bogdan Mazurkiewicz, driver Damian Oleś and Barbara Smoleńska, the campaign coordinator on behalf of the Complex of General and Vocational Schools in Bolesławiec.
“The places we travel to are peaceful, but despite this, some parents were worried about their children, so we went in a smaller group,” Barbara Smoleńska explains.
This year, the residents of Bolesławiec were to work at as many as three cemeteries: in Kołodno, Opryłowce and, as usual, Sieniawa. The second cemetery was assigned to the group from Bolesławiec because ZSOiZ works closely with the motorcyclists of the Katyń Rally, who look after this particular site.
The campaign participants spent two days in Kołodno. “We managed to recover two gravestones with beautiful inscriptions,” the project coordinator sums up.
A considerable surprise awaited the residents of Bolesławiec in the aforementioned Opryłowce. The cemetery had become overgrown with wild thickets, 2.5–3 metres high, resembling the notorious Sosnowsky’s hogweed. Barbara Smoleńska asked one of the Ukrainians whether anything had ever been mowed there, since the cemetery is cared for by the motorcyclists of the Katyń Rally. The Ukrainian replied that they had mowed everything there. Mrs Smoleńska thought she had misunderstood her interlocutor and, after returning home, contacted a motorcyclist she knew. He told her that they really had mowed everything, but the vegetation grows back at precisely that pace. Next year, the motorcyclists are expected to go there with suitable chemical agents.
Moreover, the campaign participants also took a two-day trip during which they visited, among other places, Zarvanytsia (as Mrs Barbara says, it is a Greek Catholic Częstochowa), Buchach (well known to the residents of Bolesławiec, as trips there were organised by Rev. Ludwik Rutyna and the late Adam Zając), the village of Trybuchowce (one of the ZSOiZ students participating in the campaign had a grandmother who once lived there), Kamianets-Podilskyi, Khotyn, Zbarazh and the convent in Yazlovets. The nuns welcomed the group from Bolesławiec so warmly that next year some of the campaign participants will probably take care of the local cemetery.
It is also worth mentioning that a woman from Bolesławiec was supposed to travel to the Eastern Borderlands with the eight residents. She had a half-sister in Tarasivka near Zbarazh and had never visited her family’s hometown. Unfortunately, the woman fell ill just before the departure. She therefore gave Mrs Barbara the name and surname of her relative. In Tarasivka, the Bolesławiec team met a woman who spoke Polish. It turned out that the Bolesławiec woman’s sister had already died, but her daughter and two sons were still alive. When the residents of Bolesławiec knocked on the door of the daughter mentioned above, they learned that she had gone to work in Poland. Her husband was there, however. During the conversation, all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly began to fit together. The result? About a month and a half later, the woman from Bolesławiec met her family from Ukraine. “I am very pleased that thanks to these trips our young people are discovering new depths of awareness within themselves and becoming more sensitive,” B. Smoleńska concludes.
At the end of August, Mrs Barbara travelled to the Eastern Borderlands again. Together with Bolesławiec Deputy Mayor Kornel Filipowicz, she attended the unveiling ceremony of the Adam Mickiewicz monument in Zbarazh. Bolesławiec connections and recognition for the Lower Silesian campaign were also evident there. Mikołaj Falkowski of the Mosty Foundation was very pleasantly surprised by how much the Poles had managed to accomplish at the cemetery in Zbarazh. The city mayor added that it was the Poles who showed Ukrainians how to preserve the memory of their ancestors. The name Bolesławiec was mentioned more than once, especially since the Bolesławiec delegation was the only one to lay a bouquet of flowers beneath the monument to our Bard.
We will return to this subject. For now, we encourage you to watch a programme devoted to the campaign, which will be broadcast on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. on TVP Wrocław and on Wednesday at 6:25 p.m. on TVP Polonia.