Let us recall that, in response to the massive and increasingly powerful bombing raids by Allied aviation, the Germans dispersed the armaments industry and located small plants in smaller towns, small settlements and almost all villages in Bolesławiec County. They were located particularly in forested areas, such as the Lower Silesian Forests, which cover almost the entire northern area of the Bolesławiec region. In the forests beyond Lipiany, Strachów, Trzebień and Parowa, entire towns of barracks were built, housing armaments plants. Numerous armaments-industry plants were also established in Bolesławiec and Nowogrodziec. For example, there were aircraft plants in the buildings of the so-called CONCORDIA (today “Sława”) and glider-construction plants for airborne troops on the site of what is now the “Metalplast” area. In the kilns of brickworks, primers for cartridge cases of many calibres were fired. (Today, a district of single-family houses stands on this site, behind the Energy Plants.) Cast-iron foundries in Gromadka and Ławszowa produced mortars and infantry grenade launchers, as well as ammunition for them. It should be noted that in Gromadka, until 1956, the Soviet forces administered the cast-iron foundry and did not allow the repatriation to Germany of the German workers and their families employed at the foundry. German children had a German school here until 1956. The Soviet Army produced mortars and ammunition in Gromadka until 1956. On the land around Bolesławiec and in Bolesławiec itself, during the Second World War there were several dozen prisoner-of-war labour detachments, “Arbeitskommandos”. Several prisoner-of-war labour detachments from “Stalag VIII a” in Zgorzelec were located in Bolesławiec, Nowogrodziec, Gromadka, Grodzanowiec and Zebrzydowa, and there was one labour detachment in almost every village, even in such small villages as Krępnica, Golnice, Kliczków and Łąka. We do not know the nationalities of the prisoner workers. Presumably, Polish soldiers formed the core of these detachments. The prisoner workers were employed mainly in plants producing for the needs of the army, sawmills, gravel pits, ceramic-clay mines and agricultural estates. According to German sources, there were two prisoner-of-war labour detachments from “Stalag VIII a” in Zgorzelec in our town, bearing the numbers 55 and 56. These sources do not give the prisoners’ nationalities or the places where they were held and worked. We also know from witnesses that, by a large gravel pit located in the forest south of Bolesławiec (on the Bolesławiec–Lwówek road), before the military shooting range, there was a barracks for prisoners—British soldiers employed in extracting gravel and loading it onto lorries. We have another trace of the existence in our town of a labour detachment consisting of French soldiers. They must have been employed here or in villages near Bolesławiec. The Germans did not manage to evacuate them, and after Soviet troops entered our town, the French soldiers lived in the house at the corner of Prusa and Karpecka Streets (on the courtyard side). To prevent them from being disturbed, they painted on the entrance door from the courtyard: “17 French soldiers live here.” The inscription was painted over many years after the war, during the first renovation of the tenement house. In July 1945, the French left by bicycle for France.