The names of nine miners from the Wujek mine, who were killed by police during the pacification of the plant at the beginning of martial, law have been inscribed on a commemorative plaque in Tychy. It was placed at the base of a five-meter-high model of a mining carbide lamp, which illuminated the first settlement in Tychy.
Weighing over 700 kg, made of stainless steel and glass, the lamp is a landmark of the historic Housing Estate A in Tychy – famous for its socialistic and realistic architecture, reminiscent of Cracow’s Nowa Huta in style and atmosphere.
Because the housing estate built in 1951-55 was also built for miners’ families, in the 1960s a model of a miner’s carbide lamp was set up there in today’s Bursche Street – the kind used in Polish mines up to that time, and later replaced by battery-electric lamps. With time the lamp of Tychy was destroyed; after reconstruction, it was put into operation again in the summer of 2009. The light is activated along with the street lighting.
Four years ago, an unusual monument was dedicated to the memory of nine miners from the Wujek coal mine. Now, on the initiative of Aleksandra Wysocka-Siembiga, a councillor from Tychy, the names of the miners murdered, are inscribed on the commemorative plaque. During the pacification of the mine on 16 December 1981, nine miners were killed.
The plaque, mounted at the base of the lamp, was technically accepted on Thursday (8 July). “I would like to thank the authorities of Tychy for granting my request and adding the names of the murdered miners to the plaque,” councilwoman Wysocka-Siembiga wrote on social media.
The death of the Wujek miners was the greatest tragedy of martial law; December will mark the 40thanniversary of this event.
Housing Estate A was the first of the so-called New Tychy estates named with successive letters of the alphabet. In 1950 the Presidium of the Polish People’s Government decided to build a bedroom town for the Upper Silesian Industrial District in the vicinity of the Tychy settlement. A year later the project of its first part – authored by Prof. Tadeusz Todorowski from the Silesian University of Technology – was ready.