Editorial note. By decision of the City Board, the neglected and trampled mass grave of anonymous soldiers at the municipal cemetery in Bolesławiec will undergo full renovation, permanent documentation and spatial development. A stone enclosure is being built around the space containing the fallen soldiers’ ashes; the soldiers’ names known from documents will be engraved on a marble plaque, while two historic soldiers’ Eagles will be carved into sandstone slabs. In this way, the demand of the Association of Combatants of the Republic of Poland will be fulfilled: they called for the memory of compatriots who fell fighting for freedom to be preserved with dignity. The mass grave (lying nearby, overgrown with grass) contains the ashes of the following soldiers:
From the 1st Armoured Corps, which at the end of the first ten days of April 1945, together with the 2nd Army, passed through Bolesławiec and the surrounding area in order to concentrate along the Lusatian Neisse and set out for battle on the morning of 16 April. They died tragic deaths in Kliczków on 10 April 1945 during the Corps’ daytime halt (after which the Corps continued towards Ruszów): privates Michał Gajda, son of Jan, date of birth unknown; Mikołaj Nowosadny, son of Kazimierz, born in 1918; Wiktor Radomski, son of Józef, date of birth unknown; and Kazimierz Swiderski, son of Jan, born in 1922. They were soldiers of the 1st Motorized Infantry Brigade and the 4th Armoured Brigade (T-34 tanks). They were buried in Kliczków; after the war, they were exhumed and moved to the cemetery in Bolesławiec.
From the 2nd Artillery Division accompanying the 2nd Army. They passed through Bolesławiec together with the 2nd Army.
Captain Grzegorz Jagonow, son of Jan, born in 1914, of the 50th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, and Corporal Aleksander Jęczmiewski, born in 1921, of the 44th Howitzer Artillery Regiment. They fell on 15 April 1945 near Bolesławiec. From the 7th Infantry Division, part of the Polish 2nd Army, which passed through the Bolesławiec area on the night of 9 April: Second Lieutenant Szymon Łabanow, son of Mikołaj, born on 20 April 1922, of the 38th Light Artillery Regiment, and Private Jan Marzec, son of Feliks, born in 1924. They fell in April 1945. From the 8th Infantry Division, part of the 2nd Army, which passed through the Bolesławiec area on 9 April 1945: Warrant Officer Walenty Iniankin, born in 1922, of the 37th Light Artillery Regiment, and Private Franciszek Łyskowski of the 32nd Infantry Regiment. They fell in unknown circumstances while marching through Bolesławiec and the surrounding area. Other, less clearly identified units of the Polish 2nd Army were also passing through Bolesławiec and the surrounding area.
Piotr Fizin, rank unknown, born in 1907, of the 25th ...; unit not more precisely identified. They died tragic deaths after the war, in 1945–1946.
1. Sappers who died while clearing settlements and farmland near Bolesławiec; the exact location is unknown, probably in the Gościszów–Milików area, where mining was heaviest because the front line remained there for several weeks. They fell together on the same day, 13 June 1946. They were: Lieutenant Tomasz Nowak, born on 12 December 1923; Privates Karol Brylski, born on 15 May 1921, and Mieczysław Król, born on 4 March 1924.
2. Lieutenant Bolesław Walkiewicz died on 24 November 1945 (born in 1918).
3. Two privates from the 40th Infantry Regiment died simultaneously on 15 June 1946. They were Zenon Śliwiński, born on 15 January 1921, and 17-year-old (!) Corporal Bronisław Bereźnicki, born on 5 October 1929. And finally, Private Stanisław Synecki, born on 24 July 1925, of the 40th Infantry Regiment. He died tragically on 12 June 1947. During the exhumation of soldiers’ ashes from graves in 1984, at the old cemetery, a porcelain doll and a small porcelain horse were found in one soldier’s already-rotten backpack. The poor fellow must evidently have wanted to bring his children a keepsake from the war.
These are all the names. The rest remain nameless, and we will probably never be able to establish who they were or when they fell. Let us recall, as we have already written, that all of them were buried (or exhumed from Kliczków) at the Catholic cemetery on 22 Lipca Street (today Lubańska Street). When this cemetery was closed in the mid-1980s, their ashes were moved from individual graves and placed in a common grave on Śluzowa Street. Until the mid-1970s, the graves had birch crosses with plaques bearing personal details. Then, through the stupidity of the MZGK director (or someone else?), the rotted crosses were ordered burned together with the plaques, and concrete crosses with a small plaque reading “unknown Polish soldier” were put in their place. Thus we lost such valuable information about the fallen. To finally exhaust the subject of the graves of Polish soldiers in Bolesławiec and Bolesławiec Land, let us recall that:
1) In Parowa, at the cemetery beside the church, there is a common grave of three Polish soldiers “who fell in 1945.” They are: Senior Sergeant Tadeusz Stopiński, Private Zbigniew Zakrzewski and Private Stanisław Chowanowski. “They died tragic deaths.” Their comrades had to cast the gravestone, writing the names clumsily in the fresh concrete. The residents of Parowa would not allow the ashes to be taken to the 2nd Army cemetery in Zgorzelec. They must have been soldiers of the 5th Infantry Division, which stopped to rest during its march to the front on 10 April.
2) At the Soviet war cemetery on Willowa Street there are graves of Polish soldiers of the Polish 2nd Army who fell in Bolesławiec or the surrounding area between 14 and 20 May 1945, when the 2nd Army was returning from the war to the country. At that time, the Soviet cemetery was being built. They must have died tragic deaths. They are: Gunner Sergeant Stanisław Smoliński, Corporal Kazimierz Wierciński and Corporal Stanisław Tobis—all aged 19. The nearby grave of Gunner Henryk Pohibiełka was removed, and the fallen Polish soldier’s ashes were transferred to his parents’ grave at the municipal cemetery on Śluzowa Street. By a strange twist of fate, the fallen soldier’s parents settled in Bolesławiec during the second wave of repatriation from the USSR, the so-called Gomułka-era wave.
There was also a common grave of Polish soldiers who died of their wounds in the field hospital in Bożejowice belonging to the 1st Armoured Corps (the 7th medical-sanitary battalion). After the war, the ashes were moved to the 2nd Army cemetery in Zgorzelec.
Let us also not forget the symbolic grave of Italian soldiers who died tragically after the city was taken by the Red Army, which liberated a group of several hundred Italian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. They were Calabrone Bettino, Solda Vittorio and Giuseppe Caffalero. The grave is on the right, at the foot of the hill with the cemetery chapel. These graves had previously been at the cemetery on Lubańska Street. Their comrades made uniform marble crosses. In the 1960s, the ashes of the Italian soldiers were exhumed and moved to the Italian cemetery near Warsaw.
It is worth knowing that just beyond the cemetery fence on Śluzowa Street, on the southern side along a row of poplars known as Italian poplars (tall and slender), there was a mass grave of Italian soldiers who died in a camp located in the buildings of the post-war POM, an area bordering the cemetery.
Every death is cruel. We have in our hands a list of people who died tragic deaths, in circumstances we will never know: Polish and Italian soldiers on Bolesławiec land. Torn from their family homes, some still barely more than boys, they went at the call of the Homeland to fight in the name of a sacred cause. Their sudden deaths are the cruelest. Honour their memory.