There is a commemorative plaque dedicated to Stefania Tajcher, Bolesławiec’s first postwar teacher and organizer of education. It was installed in... the square named after Stefania Tajcher (near the Municipal Public Library – Knowledge Center). The official unveiling will take place soon.

Let us recall. In May, we reported that the Bolesławiec City Council adopted a resolution “on naming a square within the city of Bolesławiec.” Seventeen councillors voted in favor.

Earlier, the Bolesławiec Council of Seniors had submitted a request to Mayor Piotr Roman to name part of the city’s green areas along Głowackiego Street “Rose Square named after Stefania Tajcher.” The justification for the document stated:

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

After returning with the instructions she had received, she immediately set about 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 teachers’ council meeting attended by Stefania Tajcher, Marian Dziubiński and Eugenia Trzaskowska (later Trzaskowska-Mazur), it was decided that the school year would begin on October 1, 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 glued it to a pole by the school (the former German school at 6 Komuny Paryskiej Street) and by the town hall.”

In the ruins of houses, she searched for equipment, furniture and materials useful for furnishing a classroom, and hauled them away on a cart. This is how residents remembered her: a teacher in a “striped 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 postwar School Inspector) opened the first class of a general secondary school; this was the beginning of I LO.

Stefania Tajcher became the first head of the newly established 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). In her diary, Stefania Tajcher wrote under the date October 8, 1945: “On October 1, 1945, a solemn service and the opening of the first school in Bolesławiec took place. And so October 1, 1945, will be written in golden letters in Bolesławiec, because after more than 600 years, a school was established in the Piast Lands, in the Polish town of Bolesławiec.” The history of education in Bolesławiec was written in “golden letters,” but Stefania Tajcher’s name was also forever written in “golden letters.”

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

The late Paweł Śliwko on Stefania Tajcher: https://pawelsliwko.blogspot.com/2015/07/wielka-misja-stefanii-tajcher.html.

See also the entry from Stefania Tajcher’s diary: https://istotne.pl/boleslawiec/wiadomosc/ovS/z-pamietnika-stefanii-tajcher.