The issue was revisited by Mayor Piotr Roman during the December session of the City Council. He informed the councillors that, following the entry into force of the so-called de-communization law, he had written to the IPN asking whether Kubika Street, named after Bolesławiec’s first postwar mayor, needed to be renamed. The head of the Institute’s Wrocław branch replied that “the presumption that Bolesław Kubik was a UB officer is not confirmed by documents held in the IPN archival collection.” Piotr Roman stressed that he would not comment on the matter. He only added that Bolesław Kubik’s family was deeply saddened by the whole situation.

Let us recall that we were the first to write about the matter as early as April this year, in the article Was Bolesław Kubik a secret-police officer? IPN: That’s nonsense! We reported at the time that a plaque commemorating the victims of the Smolensk air disaster was to be mounted on the defensive walls on Kubika Street in Bolesławiec. However, it turned out that some members of Bolesławiec’s right wing did not like the location. In March this year, a letter on the matter was sent to Mayor Piotr Roman by Law and Justice councillor Jan Russ, Ryszard Łoś of the “Gazeta Polska” Club, and Rev. Edward Bober, an honorary citizen of Bolesławiec.

“It is good that there is an intention to commemorate people of the highest calibre who died in Smolensk,” Jan Russ told us at the time. “But on a wall it would be like on a fence. There is no proper access to this place; where would the honour guards stand, where would wreaths be laid? And Bolesław Kubik was a captain in the Security Office.”

Moreover, the open letter also reached Law and Justice parliamentarians, who could read in it that the people of Bolesławiec wanted to install the Smolensk plaque on a street named after a “UB officer.”

“Let us build the plaque first, and then change the street,” commented Bolesławiec City Council councillor Eugeniusz Jabłoński, the originator, initiator and author of the project for the plaque commemorating the victims of the Smolensk air disaster. “But I absolutely do not agree to changing the location.”

Our Reader wrote in a comment below the information that the street’s name might be changed:

A very interesting statement by Mr Russ that Kubik was a UB captain. I have found no mention of this anywhere in the historical materials available to me.

Bolesław Kubik, to recall, was Bolesławiec’s first postwar Polish mayor. He died in circumstances that have not been fully explained in 1945. (Paweł Skiersinis wrote about this in the article How did Bolesław Kubik die? A highly controversial case.)

We asked Zdzisław Ambramowicz, a history enthusiast and expert on the history of Bolesławiec and the surrounding area, about Kubik’s alleged ties to the secret police. He replied that the mayor’s surname never appeared in that context in the book by Dr Habil. Roberta Klementowskiego about the Bolesławiec UB.

We therefore contacted Dr Habil. Robert Klementowski of the Wrocław Institute of National Remembrance, author of the work “We Are All Manual Workers… The Public Security Office in Bolesławiec (1945–1956).” “In this book, I wrote who worked for the UB, and Kubik was not among them,” the scholar told “ii.” “It is nonsense. People with such ranks were not sent to county towns. At most, he could have been a lieutenant. Besides, Bolesław Kubik held an administrative position, not an operational one. If he had been a UB officer, he would have worked for the UB rather than been mayor.”

As Dr Klementowski stressed, the source materials contain no information that Kubik was a UB officer. Bolesław Kubik does appear in the IPN archives, but this refers to a militiaman from Legnica who began his service in 1948, three years after the death of our city’s mayor.