I would like to add a few words to the interesting text by Fr. Z. Lec about the post-war history of the Bolesławiec parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. From June 1945, when a Polish regiment was stationed in Bolesławiec, army units filled the church every Sunday. Before the morning Mass, the entire regiment assembled in the barracks square. Soldiers and officers marched through the town in close formation, often accompanied by a military band or loud singing. The army made up half of the congregation attending the service. The return to the barracks took place in the same manner. This continued until Marshal K. Rokossowski was sent to us from Moscow. Although Fr. Z. Lec wrote about the soldiers’ participation in services, I wanted to show how that participation took place.
From May until autumn 1945, every Sunday, as well as on weekdays, our holy services were held in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and celebrated by chaplains of the Italian army. The singing and sermons were in Italian. The few Poles living in our town at the time willingly attended these Masses. They preferred services celebrated by Italian clergy to those celebrated by German clergy.
Let us recall that until autumn 1945, a large Italian male community numbering several thousand stayed in our town. They were soldiers of the Italian army who, until the summer of 1943, had fought on the Italian front as Germany’s allies, and then refused to obey orders, were disarmed and placed in prisoner-of-war camps. One of these camps was located on the grounds of the post-war POM, among dozens of barracks that no longer exist. The newest section of the cemetery, on the POM side, lies within the former camp grounds. Many prisoners died. They were buried in mass graves at the site where a row of Italian poplars visible from the cemetery now stands. In the 1970s, the graves were exhumed and the ashes of the Italian soldiers were taken to an Italian cemetery near Warsaw. It was not established that they had been executed. The ashes of several of them rest in front of the cemetery chapel, on the right-hand side. They were moved there when the old cemetery on Lubańska Street (formerly 22 July Street) was cleared. And one final point. During the winter school holidays, children and young people performed numerous nativity plays on the stage in the parish hall. Today, this small hall is located above the “Veritas” shop. At that time, the tenement building belonged to the parish. Schools also organized nativity performances on their own premises. Nativity plays returned during the so-called October Renewal in 1957–58. In the hall above “Veritas”, despite its already catastrophic technical condition, nativity performances were held once again. Deputy Bolesław Piasecki secured the building from the municipal authorities for PAX and rebuilt it. All of this is worth recording in the parish chronicle.