Everyone has some kind of holiday: a name day, a birthday, anniversaries. Nations, countries and cities have their holidays too. During my generation’s upbringing in the interwar period, national holidays and anniversaries were celebrated very solemnly. What joy those celebrations brought, how ceremonious they were!
On November 11, for example, solemn parades were held. Behind the columns of soldiers marched young people, scouts and Riflemen. All the residents poured into the streets.
During the years of the Polish People’s Republic, we were manipulated and steered by propaganda—that is true. Various holidays and anniversaries were given excessive propagandistic grandeur.
But must we now undergo some kind of punishment or penance? Today my Homeland does not even have a national holiday. I do not know whether there is any such country in the world. THE TIME OF ANTI-ANNIVERSARIES HAS COME!
February 12 marked the 49th anniversary ... or, as some prefer: the liberation of our city, its occupation by Soviet troops, or its return to the Motherland? On February 12, 1945, after centuries, Bolesławiec became a Polish city.
We want to erase this anniversary from history. Yet nothing can be erased from history!
I did not see a single Polish white-and-red flag on any municipal building. Not even my (our) “Głos Bolesławca” uttered a word. A taboo? Was it ashamed? Afraid? Perhaps the metal flag bearing the cut-out year “1945” should be removed from the town hall tower?
Or perhaps modern residential urban planning was the work of the Germans? Perhaps it is not true that the city’s population is three times higher than in 1939? Or is it also a lie that, directly opposite the City Hall, where there is now a square with a fountain, there once stood former-German pigsties and cowsheds?
For us, those who came here in 1945 because we had been expelled from our family homes in the Eastern Borderlands, this is a great anniversary. THE ANNIVERSARY OF OUR RETURN AND SETTLEMENT IN THIS LAND. Our children and now-adult grandchildren were born here. We rebuilt this city with our nearly bare hands. Every new house and every new workplace brought us joy. Today, no one remembers the pioneers or many other matters. Let us not blame military settlers, civilian repatriates from the Eastern Borderlands, or settlers from Yugoslavia for the Stalinist regime and the distortions of the past years.
Włodzimierz Kowalski From the editorial office:
Indeed, we overlooked the anniversary of Bolesławiec’s return to the Motherland. Last year (although we did not demand an academy ceremony or any other post-Communist “gala,” but merely stated the historical fact), a member of the City Board publicly condemned us for it, and the City Board, “as punishment,” did not give us—and still has no intention of giving us—a penny in subsidies for “Głos.” After an article by Mr. “eko” appeared in “Słowo Polskie,” condemning our article about the anniversary of Bolesławiec’s return to Poland and accusing us of unintended intentions, one of the Readers sent us the following letter: “...After reading your article and Mr. eko’s article, I delved into the pages of history once again and found a trace indicating that Bolesławiec was not liberated by any Red Army, but only by Turkish troops under the command of EK THE IMBECILE...”