The official website of the city
Jastrzębie-Zdrój is a city where freedom was born. It was here that on September 3, 1980, after many hours of negotiations, the Jastrzębie Agreement was signed, which became the final touch of the August Agreements. You will be able to feel the atmosphere of those days thanks to the Freedom Trail, which, running through eleven points in the city, will allow you to see its history and character.
-Jastrzębie-Zdrój, a city founded in 1963, during the socialist Polish People’s Republic, was to be a new city. New, because it was built from scratch, but also creating a worker-miner, devoted to the people’s power. Who could then, in the 1960s, assume that it was the workers of the mines - newcomers from almost every region of Poland, who would mark their path to freedom here, that they would hammer the proverbial nail into the coffin of the communist system, of which they were to be builders and guards. In this way, Jastrzębie miners went down in the history of Poland, but also of Europe. It can be said without exaggeration that it was also in our city that the transformations that changed the face of our country began
- we read in the trail description..
The concept of the trail was selected in a nationwide competition. Its author is Katarzyna Barczyńska-Łukasik. On the Freedom Trail, there will be the Monument of the Jastrzębie-Zdrój Agreement, the Spa Park, the church “on the hill” and the bathhouse of the former Moszczenica mine (where the Heritage and Dialogue Institute will operate). The trail planned in this manner is associated not only with the most important events on the historical map of Jastrzębie, but also with memories that many residents recall with nostalgia - for example about the queue committees that were created near Supersam, or the construction of blocks at III Estate
-Jastrzębie-Zdrój is also the prose of life. Residents met in queues, at the market, in a few but crowded premises or bars. The opening of a real hairdressing salon or confectionery diversified the grey, communist reality. In addition to major political breakthrough events, life here went on with its own rhythm. People started families. Successive generations of Jastrzębie residents were born into the world. This is how the community rooted here was born
- says Katarzyna Barczyńska-Łukasik.
All these stories were meticulously noted by Katarzyna Barczyńska-Łukasik and described with fluency in the proposed trail so as to bring them as close as possible to both the residents and people from outside Jastrzębie.
On the basis of the trail developed by Katarzyna Barczyńska-Łukasik, an audio-guide is planned to be published.
