Let us recall: a plaque commemorating the victims of the Smolensk disaster is to be installed on the defensive walls at Kubika Street in Bolesławiec. It turned out, however, that some members of Bolesławiec’s right wing object to this location. In March this year, a letter on the matter was sent to President Piotr Roman by: Law and Justice councillor Jan Russ, Ryszard Łoś of the “Gazeta Polska” Club, and Rev. Edward Bober, an honorary citizen of Bolesławiec.

“It is good that there is an intention to commemorate people of the highest calibre who died in Smolensk,” Jan Russ told “ii” at the time. “But on a wall, it is like on a fence. There is no proper access to this place; where would the honour guards stand, where would wreaths be laid? And Bolesław Kubik was a captain in the Security Office.”

Moreover, the open letter also reached Law and Justice parliamentarians, who could read in it that Bolesławiec residents wanted to install the Smolensk plaque on the street of a “UB officer.”

“First let us build the plaque, and then change the street,” commented Bolesławiec City Council councillor Eugeniusz Jabłoński, the originator, initiator and author of the design for the plaque commemorating the victims of the Smolensk disaster. “But I absolutely do not agree to changing the location.”

Our Reader wrote in a comment beneath information that the street’s name might be changed:

A very interesting piece of information from Mr Russ that Kubik was a UB captain. I have not found any mention of this in the historical materials available to me.

Bolesław Kubik, by way of reminder, was Bolesławiec’s first post-war Polish mayor. He died in circumstances that have not been fully explained in 1945. (This was written about by Paweł Skiersinis in the article How did Bolesław Kubik die? A highly controversial case).

We asked Zdzisław Ambramowicz, a history enthusiast and expert on the history of Bolesławiec and the surrounding area, about Kubik’s links to the security service. He told us that the mayor’s name never appeared in that context in the book by Dr habil. Robert Klementowski about the Bolesławiec UB.

We therefore contacted Dr habil. Robert Klementowski of the Wrocław branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, author of the work “We Are All Physical Labourers… The Public Security Office in Bolesławiec (1945–1956).” “In this book I wrote who worked in the UB, and Kubik was not among them,” the scholar told “ii”. “It is nonsense. People with such ranks were not sent to county towns. At most, he could have been a lieutenant. Besides, Bolesław Kubik held an administrative position, not an operational one. If he had been a UB officer, he would have worked in the UB, rather than being mayor.”

As Dr Klementowski emphasised, the source materials contain no information that Kubik was a UB officer. Bolesław Kubik does appear in the IPN archives, but this concerns a militiaman from Legnica who began his service in 1948, three years after the death of our city’s mayor.

“I do not know what this stems from,” the scholar emphasises. He adds that it may simply be a rumour passed down since the post-war period.

We will return to this topic.