The issue of Poland’s post-war borders was discussed by the so-called Big Three, that is, the heads of government of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union (Tehran, 1943; Yalta and Potsdam, 1945). In accordance with the initiative of England and the United States, the German population was to be resettled from the territories intended to be granted to Poland, with the western borders based on the Oder and Neisse rivers. It was rightly written at the time that “after the war, Poland was given a desert full of ruins and weeds along the Oder and Neisse, and Poland transformed this land into a flourishing region, bearing fruit in the pulse of life.” The process of settling the Western Territories took place under extremely difficult economic conditions caused by wartime destruction. The Polish population arriving in Silesia and taking possession of the lands along the Oder and Neisse can essentially be divided into three groups, apart from the local indigenous Polish population. First, Poles from central Poland, Greater Poland and Pomerania came to the abandoned territories, sometimes immediately after the front had passed—most often “on their own initiative.” The second group consisted of so-called re-emigrants: Poles arriving from France, Yugoslavia, Germany, Romania and other European countries. The third group consisted of Poles expelled from the country’s eastern borderlands. The situation in the Western Territories was far from easy. In journalistic writing, they were called “tragic lands.”A Polish priest came to these lands together with the Polish people, working alongside them—sometimes in poverty, but with tremendous enthusiasm—to forge new paths toward the future on land devastated by war.As a result of the lost war, the former Piast lands belonging to Germany, extending as far as the Oder and Lusatian Neisse, were assigned to Poland. Consequently, the former Archdiocese of Wrocław, except for small areas west of the Lusatian Neisse near Zgorzelec, returned almost entirely within Poland’s borders. Until 1945, Protestants predominated in these lands. At that time, ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Archdiocese of Wrocław was exercised by Cardinal Adolf Bertram, who left for his residence in Jawornik in the Sudetes before the siege of Wrocław and died there on 6 July 1945. In Cardinal Bertram’s absence, ecclesiastical governance in the Archdiocese was exercised in Wrocław by the Vicar General, Bishop Józef Ferche (died 1968), Auxiliary Bishop of Wrocław, and several canons, including Fr. Franciszek Niedźbała.To coordinate pastoral ministry in the Archdiocese under the new post-war conditions, Fr. Kazimierz Lagosz organized a gathering of Polish priests working in Lower Silesia on 26 July 1945.After the death of Cardinal Adolf Bertram on 6 July 1945, the newly elected Capitular Vicar, Fr. Dr. Ferdynand Piontek, authorized Fr. Kazimierz Lagosz by a special decree that summer to organize pastoral care for Polish settlers.Meanwhile, on 12 August 1945, Cardinal August Hlond, Primate of Poland, arrived in Wrocław and went to see the Capitular Vicar, Fr. Dr. F. Piontek.After regaining his freedom, the Primate of Poland, following the end of the war and during his stay in Rome, received broad powers from the Holy Father Pius XII to regulate ecclesiastical relations in Poland, particularly in the Recovered Territories. Cardinal Hlond informed the Capitular Vicar, in the presence of Prelate Fr. Dr. J. Negwer, that it was the Holy Father’s wish to establish Apostolic Administrators of Polish nationality in these territories and for the Capitular Vicars to resign from exercising their jurisdiction in the territories administered by Poland. The Cardinal presented Prelate F. Piontek with the appropriate declaration of resignation, prepared at the Secretariat of State in Rome. The document issued by the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs was dated 8 July 1945, two days after Cardinal Bertram’s death. The Cardinal then went to Bishop M. Kaller in Warmia and persuaded him to resign as well.With the other Ordinaries responsible for the remaining parts of the lands incorporated into Poland—that is, with Prelate Dr. Hartz in Piła, the General Vicars of the Prague and Olomouc sections, and the bishops of Berlin and Meissen—Cardinal Hlond did not negotiate. Instead, on the basis of the aforementioned powers, he appointed Apostolic Administrators on 15 August 1945. In Wrocław, this was Fr. Dr. Karol Milik; in Opole, Fr. Dr. Bolesław Kominek. On 1 September 1945, both newly appointed Apostolic Administrators, Fr. Dr. Karol Milik and Fr. Dr. Bolesław Kominek, arrived in Wrocław and presented their appointment documents to the General Chapter.Under extremely difficult conditions, yet with great enthusiasm and courage, Apostolic Administrator Fr. Karol Milik, together with Fr. Alfons Przybyła, his chancellor, began work in the Lower Silesian vineyard.The fate of Bolesławiec and its parish was closely connected with the events described above. Bolesławiec was liberated on 12 February 1945: ... the 7th Guards Tank Corps of the 3rd Tank Army, which had already outmaneuvered Chojnów on 10 February that year and set out along the road to Bolesławiec, reached its outskirts with its forward units in the evening and engaged in combat with the city’s numerous garrison. The Germans intended to defend Bolesławiec stubbornly, as it was a strong resistance center protecting the operational direction toward Görlitz and Dresden. The fighting for the city was fierce. Armored units struggled to break through the barricaded streets. On the evening of 11 February, the 31st Infantry Division under Colonel Ivan Chilchevsky, from the 78th Corps of the 52nd Army, reached the city. After establishing cooperation with the 7th Tank Corps, it began joint street fighting for the center of Bolesławiec. The battle for the city continued throughout the night and into the morning of 12 February; by the late morning, the enemy garrison had been defeated and the city was free.”We read about the liberation of Bolesławiec in the war communiqué of 12 February 1945: “(...) The troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, advancing on the western bank of the Oder, captured Bolesławiec (Bunzlau) on 12 February—a major transport hub and a strong German resistance point on the Bóbr River...”As a result of the fighting for Bolesławiec, more than 1,400 houses, or almost 60% of all buildings, lay in ruins. The historic Old Town fell victim to the war. Seventy percent of the residential rooms burned down, and most of the surviving buildings were unfit for use. Devastated industrial plants, destroyed municipal infrastructure, burned hospitals and schools—this was the condition in which Bolesławiec returned to Poland after centuries. The German population moved beyond the Neisse, leaving Poland with “an uninhabited rubble field and a mined rubbish dump.”The first Polish settlers in Bolesławiec were soldiers of the Polish Army who had taken part in the fighting along the Vistula, for Warsaw, the Pomeranian Wall and Berlin. “In mid-May 1945, the brigade (the 11th Independent Barrier Brigade) was transformed into the 12th Special KBW Regiment, which, under the command of Colonel A. Iwaszkiewicz, was sent to Bolesławiec. At the end of May, the exhausted soldiers reached the barracks, creating the first garrison in the town on the Bóbr. The city was frightening in its ruins and emptiness. The few administrative authorities took over the Town Hall building, while a handful of Poles settled in what later became the ‘Piast’ Hotel in the Market Square. The summer of the first year of freedom was coming to an end. Demobilization affected half of the regiment’s soldiers. They formed the first permanent settlement group in the city and county, gaining the name of pioneers over the years.