The Bolesławiec Senior Citizens’ Council has submitted a request to Mayor Piotr Roman to name part of the city’s Planty parkland along Głowackiego Street “Stefania Tajcher Rose Square.” City councillors will consider the draft resolution on the matter at the May session. The justification for the document states:

(…) Stefania Tajcher arrived in Bolesławiec on 7 September 1945 wearing a camp “prison uniform”. The city was devastated. There were no schools or school administration. Stefania Tajcher began working at the County Office, dreaming of organizing a Polish school in the near future. With this goal, she personally went to the education authorities in Legnica, where she received support from Marian Dziubiński.

Upon her return, with the instructions she had received, she immediately began the pioneering organization of a school. Her aim was to organize a school for the children of Polish families arriving in Bolesławiec in repatriation and resettlement transports. Following a staff meeting attended by Stefania Tajcher, Marian Dziubiński and Eugenia Trzaskowska (later Trzaskowska-Mazur), it was decided that the school year would begin on 1 October 1945.

From the memoirs of Eugenia Trzaskowska-Mazur: “Miss Tajcher wrote an announcement about school enrollment on the reverse side of former German forms and put it up on a post by the school (the former German school at 6 Komuny Paryskiej Street) and by the town hall.”

She searched the ruins of houses for equipment, furniture and materials useful for furnishing the classroom and transported them on a handcart. This is how residents remembered her. A teacher in a “prison uniform”, who loved children and cared about their education.

Later that same year, seeing the enormous need, after Christmas 1945 Stefania Tajcher and Marian Dziubiński (who had already moved to Bolesławiec and become the first post-war School Inspector) opened the first class of a general secondary school—that is how I LO began.

Stefania Tajcher became the first head of Primary School No. 1 in the 1945/1946 school year. She also taught German at the so-called eleven-year school (the I LO building). Stefania Tajcher wrote the following in her diary under the date 8 October 1945: “On 1 October 1945, a solemn service and the opening of the first school in Bolesławiec took place. And so 1 October 1945 will be written in Bolesławiec in letters of gold, because after more than 600 years, a school was established in the Piast Lands, in the Polish town of Bolesławiec.” The history of Bolesławiec education was written in “letters of gold”, but the name Stefania Tajcher was also written in “letters of gold” forever.

What do you think? We invite you to join the discussion.