I feel honored by the invitation to speak at this ceremony not only on behalf of veterans, but on behalf of all those whose fate, like mine, led them to the town on the Bóbr after years of war, wandering, wounds and suffering. Like a small tree seed that fell onto the turbulent waters of a river and is carried by the current far and for a long time, until at last, clinging to the bank, it immediately puts out roots—initially small—which, having taken hold of the bank, reach ever deeper and farther, and from them grows a mighty tree whose crown sweeps the clouds. And new seeds falling from this tree give rise to a new destiny...
I am speaking, perhaps this may sound immodest, on behalf of those who, beginning in 1945, created the history of this city and now bear its burden. Only a handful of us remain; their representatives are in this room. At this point I must apologize, on behalf of the organizers of these commemorations, that not all the pioneers of those first years were invited here, and that some were invited on Monday afternoon to the “Pegaz” club for a meeting of the generations of settlers who arrived here in 1945 and those born here that year. Today’s ceremonies begin a lengthy series of commemorations, which will conclude with the anniversary of the victory—a victory that was very bitter for us Poles—and, I believe, everyone will be able to take part in one of the commemorative events.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of those who created the history of our city sleep the eternal sleep... This morning we paid tribute to them at the Roll Call of the Fallen and laid flowers. But their shadows are here with us, in this room... so let us bow to the memory of the Bieniaszkos, Kumoszes, Skoczenies, Kłossowskis, Wawrzynowiczes, Padewskis, Kuneckis, Fronczaks, Tyrankiewiczes, Gałkiewiczes, Wojciechowskis, Skorupas, Jamrozs, Bigosińskis, the Gromadzki priests, the Lekawskis, Muchas and many, many others who served the city.
We lived through half a century in this city and Bolesławiec Land! That is a long time even in the course of history, let alone in a human life. And yet it seems that this entire half-century flashed by like a year or two!
On the screen of our memories, the memories of people who settled here half a century ago, events remain recorded—still alive and radiating brightly... They pass before our eyes like frames of a film strip, telling us what it was like then... There is neither the space nor the time for me to present even fragments of these memories... It would take many hours...
I cannot overlook the great role of the Bolesławiec garrison and military settlement in strengthening Polish statehood and developing Bolesławiec Land—through all those years! The highly valued Father Prelate Władysław Rączka did not forget this two hours ago in his homily during Holy Mass. We thank him for that. During Mass we thanked God that we had survived the war and that we had created a second family home here, in place of the one we had left back east, although our roots had been there for centuries...
Small homelands, as Czesław Miłosz wrote, are limited, rooted in the past, always as close as one’s own body... Instead of homelands, nations are assigned states, which are a mechanical creation... Miłosz continues. People long for the small homelands that were Podolia, Volhynia, the Vilnius Region, the Navahrudak Region, the Grodno Region, or perhaps Bosnia... Over the last half-century we have created a NEW, SMALL HOMELAND here on the Bóbr! Bolesławiec Land!!!
I will return for a moment to the role of the garrison in the life of the city and Bolesławiec Land. Who remembers the first parade of the Polish Army at the end of May 1945 before a handful of Poles—everyone wore a white-and-red armband on their sleeve? It was then that Dąbrowski’s Mazurka was played here for the first time and Polish marches rang out across the burned-out market square. How proudly, though perhaps awkwardly, some two thousand soldiers stood at attention; how quickly, at a trot, cannons with horse-drawn teams, horse-drawn machine-gun carts and a cavalry squadron passed by, making as much noise as possible in this city, so that this act would seal the city’s return to the Motherland! In this room I can see the soldiers who marched in that parade. Who remembers the role played by the Soldiers’ House located in the city center, called Mexico because of the disturbances caused for us by Red Army officers? Who remembers the strange parades in the spring and summer of 1945, involving an entire regiment with weapons, while military horses, remarkably, pulled ploughs, harrows and seed drills, and by the end of summer reapers! The army first cleared the fields of mines, then sowed grain on 90% of the county’s arable land, which had lain fallow, and by the end of summer harvested it and stacked it in hayricks! The threshing was already carried out by arriving agricultural settlers.
There is no time to discuss these matters more fully. But I cannot omit the overnight march of the entire Second Army from April 8 to 9. The soldiers walked in the cold and rain, in drill uniforms, carrying many kilograms of equipment... and their nightly 50-kilometre marches from near Wrocław to the front on the Nysa lasted many days... I can see many of them in this room... Let us bow our heads in memory of nearly 40 Polish soldiers who fell on Bolesławiec Land, particularly in the villages during the march through our region... They also died immediately after the war from mines, tragic accidents or exchanges of fire between Polish and Soviet patrols. Their burned bones, after exhumation, rest in the Bolesławiec cemetery. Military guards stood there today, and we laid flowers...
Here, a sad reflection arises concerning the description of THIS army as not a Polish army but a Polish-speaking one. It is true that this army was subject to political manipulation, that officers from the middle ranks upward were strangers to us—Russians—and it is true that this army was subordinate to the Red Army command, just as in the West commands were subordinate to the Allied forces... But the masses of soldiers, junior officers and all non-commissioned officers were Poles and believed that by serving in this army they were serving their homeland... Many of them had endured Soviet deportations and gulags...
That is enough about the army, ladies and gentlemen...
How and when such a great ethnic and cultural mosaic of settler groups arriving from all over the world merged into one living organism beating with a single Polish heart—God alone knows! It is not known when it happened. The settlement processes of Bolesławiec Land, studied by no one, are extraordinarily interesting and complicated. Let us listen to where the settlers came from... As in the song sung by Fetting—they headed west along the route of the Great Bear, hanging their rifles and muskets in the shade of the trees...
The first settlers were demobilized soldiers of the 13th Cavalry Regiment, which was stationed here at the end of May, and a group of officials who arrived at the beginning of May 1945 from the Kielce Region and prepared administrative personnel for Lower Silesia.
They were followed by military settlers from various regiments, older-year soldiers demobilized in 1945. The most compact and distinctive settlement group consisted of military settlers from the town of Świrz in Podolia, who had served in one of the Second Army’s regiments. They had lived in that town for centuries; during the war they waged a continuous defensive struggle against fascist Ukrainian units, sometimes defending themselves in the church. It was as if they had brought the entire town with them, including its parish priest, Father Semen, the bells, the church furnishings, the library and the equipment of the village fire brigade. They could bring only the buildings. Their wartime experiences were to be the subject of a documentary film, but when the film crew arrived, the protagonists were already sleeping the eternal sleep... The defense of a Soviet military hospital against extermination, organized by the parish priest, was an utterly incredible event.
On the morning of September 17, 1945, the first transport of repatriates arrived from the Polish oil basin around Drohobych and Boryslav... They got off frightened and uncertain of their fate; no one welcomed them, just as in May no one had welcomed the regiment returning from the front which, as I mentioned, held the first parade. Many fellow countrymen, including those from Drohobych, are in this room. They rendered great service to the city.
Later, former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, including prisoner-of-war camps, settled here by chance, among them Warsaw insurgents forcibly employed under murderous conditions as laborers in the Third Reich. Either their homes lay in ruins or remained beyond the cordon... Many therefore settled here permanently. From spring 1946, some 16,000 fellow countrymen from Bosnia arrived en masse—brave partisans, settled mainly in the villages. They raised our countryside from the ruins and developed agriculture.
After them came displaced people from poor, rocky Podhale and overcrowded Rzeszów Region. I will never forget the traditional highlander and Rzeszów weddings, whose scripts had not been written! Then a large group of Poles—miners from France and Belgium—settled here; they had emigrated there between the wars in search of bread.
I will never forget the Polish soldier of the Chinese army who arrived with his Chinese wife. The Chinese driving licence he submitted for exchange lay there for many months before an interpreter of Chinese could be found.
Individual heroes of the fighting in the West also arrived, having rejected offers to settle somewhere across the great seas... I can see them here too.
Many Home Army soldiers pursued by the UB found refuge here using false papers... here they could hide. Many died under assumed names; others came forward after 1956...
And finally, several dozen Lemko families were brought here in the summer of 1947...
I remember that every conversation between two previously unacquainted residents of our city always began with the words: Where do you come from, sir? Then came the answer... We always recognized people from Lviv and Vilnius by their distinctive dialect and accent. Until one year, when in response to this kind of question I received an answer from a young man: What do you mean, where from? From Bolesławiec, of course! I felt foolish... I never asked anyone again...
But the final group of settlers were repatriates, including many Home Army soldiers and gulag prisoners, from Soviet Russia, settled in Bolesławiec in approximately 80 families. New homes and jobs were prepared for them, as well as places for approximately 120 families settled in the countryside, in rebuilt farmsteads that had stood empty since 1945. They received land, livestock and deadstock, and interest-free credit assistance...
There was no other county in these new lands with such a rich ethnic and cultural settlement mosaic, from which a new community was born, free of prejudice...
Strange, but although these people had been strangers to one another, they were remarkably kind and supportive, so willing to help one another... and we are so lacking these things today...
How happy each cleared street made us—streets that everyone cleared of rubble every Sunday for years, while farmers removed the rubble without payment. How happy we were when the pigsties and cowsheds standing in the city center were demolished, making way for the high-rise apartment blocks that stand there today...
We must bow to the memory of the first mayors, county heads and chairmen of the national councils, whom other counties envied us... We owe today’s appearance of the city, its economic development and the creation of new factories from the ground up to them!!! They knew how to inspire society to work selflessly. Time does not allow me to give examples...
Highly honored ladies and gentlemen... I am already finishing; I am exceeding my time limit!!! We, the pioneers of Bolesławiec, call ourselves that—I will explain another time where the term came from: there was the newspaper “Pionier,” and the “Pionier” cooperative in Bolesławiec... We are leaving this world. The next round anniversary, for example the 60th anniversary, and further returns to the Motherland will no longer bring us together here. We will depart confident about the future of our city and municipality, which are our pride... Their fate rests in good hands, those of the new, young councilors...
When Julian Tuwim was our age, he said: “Old age is not so terrible; what is terrible is that, being old, one is sometimes still young...” —which could be said of more than one of us, couldn’t it, Mr. Adam Kowalski??
And now, seriously, the final words...
May the history of our new, small homeland, presented so vividly in the address and speeches, flow onward into the future. Historical knowledge is a book that teaches, while also bringing forecasts and imperatives. And may the fragments of memories of the pioneers of this small homeland, our grandmothers and grandfathers, add flavor to the history of our city’s last half-century!!!