PIONEERING TIMES
I was born in the same year as the Polish Pope. I want to describe the pioneering times in our town. I was a young wife and the mother of a several-year-old son, who was born in 1944. I lived in Warka on the Pilica River; from there, we left for the West in a wagon from Grójec. Three families travelled in it. The journey lasted from 1 to 15 March 1947. We arrived on Palm Sunday, 15 March. My first steps led me to the church, where a service was taking place. But heaps of rubble lay next to the church; I wondered that the church had survived. We stayed with a military settler on Graniczna Street. He had a house in Kraśnik Dolny. The host kept four cows; his name was Jan Kisiel. I milked them every day and sold the milk to neighbours, while the owner came for the money once a week. This stranger loved my little son very much. His wife and 16-year-old daughter had died here; perhaps that was the source of his affection for the small child.
On 5 April 1947, my husband went to work at the “Wizów” factory for the first time. We received ration cards and later an apartment renovated by the plant at Wałowa Street, which I still occupy today. At that time, people arrived from France, Germany, Yugoslavia and Ukraine, and foreign speech rang out on our street. One heard the native language least often, although several years had already passed since the war. At the site of today’s PKO building there was a marketplace, with horse-drawn carts loaded with farm produce; pigs, calves, cows and horses were sold there. However, a strange language was used: shoes were “meszty”, a piglet was a “paciuk”, and so on. A real Tower of Babel...
After a year, loudspeakers were installed, which we called “kolkhoz loudspeakers”. They broadcast music and information about the town’s history (a chronicle). For example, I learned that Bolesławiec had running water earlier than Paris.
The clearing of rubble began around the Town Hall in the Market Square, and the “Toscano” café was established. We were indignant that it was not a Polish name. But the local radio station reported that an Italian architect had rendered great service to the town, as well as a legend that his 18-year-old daughter Urszula had been beheaded with a sword in the local church, where she was also buried by the altar.
I gave birth to two children here. Around the site of today’s Children’s Home lived about 500 sisters from Evangelical religious orders, who later left for Germany; one of them—Sister Otto, a Hungarian—was turned back at the border. The nuns served as nurses and even substituted for doctors. I remember explosions on the Bóbr River in the spring of 1948. The Russians were throwing grenades into the water and catching the larger fish they had stunned, while the smaller fish floated away with the current. At that time, I would enter the shallow water and catch large quantities of stunned fish, even sharing them with my neighbours (...). I spent most of my life here. Of my first neighbours, only Mrs Szmajduch and her husband (she is a Silesian) and my husband and I are still alive. The children have started families of their own. And my neighbours and I form a good family, a close-knit community. I love this town, and it seems to me the most beautiful in Lower Silesia.
EUGENIA GIZA, resident of Wałowa Street
HOMAGE TO BOLESŁAWIEC MEDICINE
The first symptoms of the illness appeared in October last year and manifested themselves as increased thirst. Not ignoring this, I had all the tests done, and they turned out to be very positive. Yet the illness progressed slowly but steadily. I was admitted to the Internal Medicine Department of the Municipal Hospital in Bolesławiec with suspected “latent” diabetes.
After comprehensive and thorough examinations, this suspicion was not confirmed. Meanwhile, I was drinking incredible amounts of fluids and would gladly have kept them permanently at my lips. Then, suddenly, one day Dr KRZYSZTOF BAK, head of the Internal Medicine Department, told me that he already knew the cause of my ailment and, moreover, had a medicine for me whose effects needed to be tested.
My body responded almost immediately. This is a spontaneous case of a disease of the pituitary gland, and among a thousand different complications of brain diseases, the Bolesławiec doctors “picked out” my rare case—the first they had encountered at our hospital. They made the correct diagnosis and administered the proper medicine. Today I put one drop of the medicine into my nose once a day, and my problem is over. The medicine works through digestive enzymes.
I wish to pay tribute to our Bolesławiec medical professionals and offer my heartfelt thanks to Dr KRZYSZTOF BAK, Ms J. DLUŻYK, who looked after our ward, and all the doctors, nurses and support staff for the wonderful atmosphere, care and restored health, as well as the fresh, tasty meals.
IRENA LENARTOWICZ