Boys’ games – when supplies became scarce, I specialized in making homemade guns—primitive wooden pistols—loaded from the front with gunpowder and shot or nails. In the 1940s, a Soviet Army military unit was stationed in Bolesławiec, and part of the town—the area least damaged by the war—was separated into a closed district inhabited by the families of Soviet officers. This miniature Soviet town in Bolesławiec directly bordered my Stalin Street and included what later became H. Sawickiej, Nowotki and K. Miarki streets. Such a neighborhood had far-reaching consequences for me and my peers, because “Russians,” and therefore strangers, lived there behind the fence. The boys from the other side spoke a different language and were our natural “enemies,” and enemies had to be fought. So we abandoned our neighborhood feuds in order to unite against our common enemy, organizing combat units equipped with slingshots, homemade guns, signal pistols and carbide bottles. Thus armed, the “Polish army,” led by an ensign carrying a white-and-red flag, stormed the border fence, which was of course defended by the “Red Army,” while a red flag with a hammer and sickle fluttered above its forts.
Such battles ended in fires, destroyed fencing and broken windows, and sometimes the militia or Soviet soldiers had to intervene. Certainly, these fierce fights had no political or ideological subtext—we were, after all, 10 to 13 years old—but were simply an ordinary need to release boys’ aggression toward those who were “different.” My fondness for the military made me eagerly await Sundays, when compact companies of the Polish Army marched along my street to church. Dressed in my Sunday best, I would jump into the orchestra’s last row and march with the soldiers.
Another form of entertainment, and at the same time a way to earn money, was providing transport services. There were no baggage carts then; their role was played by cart drivers who brought their horse-drawn wagons to the railway station to transport travelers’ luggage. It should be remembered that in those memorable years, travelers’ luggage often consisted of the contents of entire freight wagons: furniture, machines and farm animals—in other words, the worldly possessions of our compatriots arriving from all over Poland and the world. Small boys were a makeshift source of competition for the cart drivers, transporting— for a small fee—bundles, suitcases and small children on their ladder carts to addresses in Bolesławiec and nearby villages. I did not actually need to earn money, but my friends’ independence and financial self-sufficiency impressed me, so I too would set out with my “baggage cart” for the station, knowing that the train from Wrocław arrived twice a day: at 4:30 p.m. and, I think, 8:40 p.m. Unwittingly, I also witnessed important historical events that were preserved in my memory in their own way. One such event was the dismantling of the German eagle from the town hall tower. That day I stood with a crowd of residents in the market square and, from a safe distance, cordoned off with hemp rope, watched two brave sailors hanging near the top of a rope ladder. They cut pieces of the metal eagle with a blowtorch and dropped them onto the pavement, while the people loudly expressed their joy. In place of the fallen eagle, they installed a little flag, which I think still exists there to this day.
Another memorable event for me was the 1947 elections to the Sejm. I literally trampled on a colorful carpet of thousands of propaganda leaflets, brochures and posters covering the town’s streets. Of course, I understood nothing of what was happening around me, but I enthusiastically collected those printed materials, and several still remain in my archive. I also took part, in my own way, in the great campaign to clear the town of rubble, and I dare say there was probably not a single resident who refused to participate in this worthy undertaking. Even my 10-year-old mind registered the population’s widespread enthusiasm, and one could, for example, observe a scene like this: a dozen or so people rhythmically tugged on a long rope thrown over a burned wall of a building, trying to bring it down. Seeing this, passersby eagerly grabbed the end of the rope, helping to bring down the dangerous ruin. Another group of people laid narrow-gauge railway tracks with turnouts, while more volunteers loaded rubble. The little wagons were pushed to the end of the track, where cart drivers waited to haul the rubble outside the town. I had great fun laying the tracks, and the greatest delight was spinning around on the turnout’s turntable.