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Wągrowiec

 Wągrowiec  (Wongrowitz) is a town in west-central Poland, 50 km from both Poznań and Bydgoszcz. Since the 18th century it has been the a seat of a powiat. Administratively it is attached to the Greater Poland Voivodeship. The town is situated in the middle of the ethnographic and historical region of Pałuki within Greater Poland and the Chodzież lake area (Pojezierze chodzieskie), on the river Wełna and its tributaries Nielba and Struga, as well as on the shores of Durów Lake.

Geography
The region around the town is rich in lakes. The town itself sits in the middle of Lake Durowskie (jezioro durowskie). The Wągrowiec municipal area boasts a rare attraction: two rivers, the Nielba and Wełna cross there, without commingling.

Administration
Wągrowiec is constituted as a gmina miejska, or municipal commune. The city is also the seat of the rural commune of Wągrowiec, as well as of powiat of Wągrowiec.

Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999, Wągrowiec was previously a part of the Pila Voivodeship (1975–1998).

Economy
Wągrowiec is an important rail and road junction. There are several notable industries in the town, including the machinery factories (a branch of the Hipolit Cegielski factory in Poznań and a branch of the Zremb machinery factory), major food processing plants (a mill, meat canning factory and a milk yard) and a furniture factory. The town is also a centre of tourism, with several hotels along the shores of the lake.

History
The town was founded as a small village called Prostynie by the Cistercian monks from the monastery in Łekno in 1319. In 1381 the name of Wągrowiec is mentioned for the first time in connection with the place. By that time the town received city rights, most likely modelled after the Magdeburg Law. It was a private church town, administratively located in the Kcynia County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown. At the end of the 14th century, King Władysław II Jagiello gave the city the privileges of market and fair, and in 1396 the Cistercian monastery was moved in.

The town soon started to prosper. In the 15th and 16th centuries it was an important centre of trade, commerce, and manufacture (mostly textiles). In the 16th century, the Cistercians founded a school in Wągrowiec. This prosperity came to a halt during the Deluge, when in 1656 the town was captured, pillaged and burnt by the forces of Charles X of Sweden.

After the Second Partition of Poland, Wągrowiec in 1793 was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia and was confiscated from the Cistercians in 1797. Initially a part of the newly created province of South Prussia, it was in 1807 transferred to the Duchy of Warsaw, a state allied to the Napoleonic France. After Napoleon's defeat and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Wągrowiec was again annexed by Prussia; this time it was made a part of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Poznań.

The populace was subjected to anti-Polish policies, including Germanisation. In 1835 the Cistercian monastic order was dissolved, and its property was confiscated by the Prussian authorities. In the 1830s, the Marianie secret resistance organization of Polish gymnasium students was formed in the town. On February 9, 1849, the autonomy of the Duchy was cancelled, and Wągrowiec — under the Germanized name of Wongrowitz—became part of the Province of Posen. In 1888 a railroad line linking Wągrowiec with Poznań was opened. In 1906–1907, local Polish school children protested against Germanisation, and the protests spread to nearby villages. German teachers used corporal punishment for the protests, especially flogging, and older students were expelled from the gymnasium.

After World War I, in 1918, Poland regained independence and Wągrowiec became the first town of northern Greater Poland to be liberated by the Poles during the Greater Poland Uprising. Polish inhabitants of Wągrowiec formed an insurgent unit, led by Włodzimierz Kowalski, a teacher from the nearby village of Czerlin, which fought in various battles in northern Greater Poland in 1919. The town was reintegrated with the Republic of Poland, and the local populace had to acquire Polish citizenship or leave the country. This led to a significant decline of ethnic Germans, whose number within the district decreased from 16,309 in 1910 to 8,401 in 1926 and further to 7,143 in 1934.

Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the end of the invasion of Poland, which started World War II in 1939, the town was annexed by Nazi Germany. Already on September 7, 1939, German troops carried out a massacre of eight Poles in Wągrowiec. During the German occupation, Wągrowiec was part of the German Reichsgau Wartheland and its name was changed by the Nazis to Eichenbrück. Germany operated a Nazi prison in the town. Poles from various settlements of the region were imprisoned in the town, and afterwards, on December 8, 1939, the Germans carried out a massacre of 107 Poles, including activists, participants of the uprising of 1918-1919, teachers, students, farmers, merchants, in the forest near Bukowiec, north of Wągrowiec. Many Polish inhabitants were expelled to the more easterly areas of German-occupied Poland (General Government) as part of the implementation of Lebensraum policies. In August 1944, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local members of the Home Army, the leading Polish underground resistance organization. Wągrowiec was liberated in January 1945 and the expelled Polish inhabitants returned. Polish schooling resumed in February 1945.

Notable architecture and other attractions

 * The Gothic parish church with a belfry containing Renaissance polychromies dating to (1587)
 * A Baroque Cistercian monastery (late 18th century)
 * Late Baroque Cistercian church (late 18th century, burnt in 1945, rebuilt in 1946-1962)
 * Opatówka abbey – the former seat of the Cistercian abbots, now a regional museum
 * Pyramid of Lakiński – the pyramid-shaped tomb of a Polish captain who served in Napoleon's army
 * The Dębina oak tree reserve with trees more than 200 years old and up to 40 metres tall, just outside the city limits
 * A 5 floor residential high-rise with a large red-white painted mast on top

Cuisine
Wągrowiec is one of the production sites of the Greater Poland liliput cheese (ser liliput wielkopolski), a traditional regional Polish cheese, protected as a traditional food by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland.

Sport
Nielba Wągrowiec is the town's professional sports club consisting of a football section and a handball section. The men's handball team plays in the second tier, but it also played in the top division, most recently in 2015. The men's football team competes in the lower professional and semi-professional leagues.

Education
In Wągrowiec, there are five primary schools and four secondary schools, including two vocational schools. Two private colleges opened branches in Wągrowiec, Gnieźnieńska Szkoła Wyższa Milenium and the Akademia Nauk Stosowanych im. Księcia Mieszka I w Poznaniu.

Twin towns – Sister cities
Wągrowiec is twinned with:
 * 🇩🇪 Schönwalde-Glien, Brandenburg, Germany
 * 🇩🇪 Adendorf, Lower Saxony, Germany
 * 🇭🇺 Gyula, Hungary
 * 🇷🇺 Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast, Russia
 * 🇫🇷 Le Plessis-Trévise, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France
 * 🇩🇪 Burladingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
 * 🇩🇪 Muggensturm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Notable people

 * Jakub Wujek (1541–1597), author of one of the oldest translations of the Bible into the Polish language
 * Adam of Wągrowiec, organist and composer was a Cistercian monk in town, died (1629)
 * Karl Eduard Arnd (1802–1874), German historian and author
 * Max Gerson, (1881–1959), German physician
 * Stephan Rittau (1891–1942), Wehrmacht general
 * Fritz Steuben (1898–1981), German author

title: Wągrowiec


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Wałcz

Wałcz ( pronounced ; Deutsch Krone) is a county town in Wałcz County of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland.

Granted city rights in 1303, Wałcz has become the administrative, industrial and cultural center of the Wałcz Lake District with the city itself situated on the banks of the Raduń and Zamkowe lakes. Wałcz is located in the southwestern portion of West Pomeranian Voivodeship. The closest cities are Szczecin 130 km, Bydgoszcz 115 km, Piła 26 km, Poznań 120 km, Gorzów Wielkopolski 107 km and Koszalin 120 km.

Historically, the town belonged to the province of Greater Poland and formed part of Poland until the Partitions of Poland. Afterwards, from 1772 to 1945 it was part of Prussia and, from 1871 to 1945, it was also part of Germany, before being reintegrated with Poland.

Geography
According to a report from 2002, Wałcz has an area of 38.16 km2 of which 41% is used for agriculture and 17% is forest.

There are two large lakes within the town limits: Raduń (area - 227.10 ha, length - 6050 m, shoreline - over 19000 m, maximum depth - 25.6 m, average depth - 10.4 m) and Zamkowe (area - 129.57 ha, length - 3350 m, shoreline - over 10950 m, maximum depth - 41 m, average depth - 12.9 m). There are also four smaller lakes within the town limits: Cegielnia, Chmiel Duży, Chmiel Mały, Raduń Mały, and several more within a short distance of Wałcz, including Ostrowiec Wielki, Łubianka, Łabędzie. Lake Raduń is spanned by the Kłosowski suspension bridge.

The town occupies 2.17% of the total area of Wałcz county.

History
In the High Middle Ages the region of modern Wałcz was a boundary territory between Pomerania and Greater Poland. It was included within the emerging Polish state in the late 10th century, and was integrated into the Kingdom of Poland again in the early 12th century. Later, as a result of the fragmentation of Poland, it became part of the Duchy of Greater Poland. Except for a brief period of Brandenburg rule (in the 14th century), it remained part of Poland until the first partition in 1772. After the town was recovered by King Casimir III the Great in 1368, it was a royal town and county seat, administratively located in the Poznań Voivodeship of the Greater Poland Province. In 1618 Jan Gostomski, starost of Wałcz, brought the Jesuits to the town, who founded the Jesuit College, nicknamed the "Wałcz Athens", in the 1660s, which as today's ''I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Kazimierza Wielkiego'', is one of the oldest high schools in northwestern Poland.

During Prussian and German rule, Wałcz was known by the newly given name Deutsch Krone. It was initially part of the Netze District, which while formally separate was ruled from the Province of West Prussia after 1775; it formally became part of West Prussia following the 1807 Treaties of Tilsit which partitioned the Netze District. In 1781, the Jesuit College was transformed into a Royal Gymnasium, whose director was Józef Dalski. Lessons in Polish were held until 1831, when the school, similar to the town, was subjected to Germanisation. However, its director from 1866 to 1890 was a Pole, Antoni Łowiński. At that time, Polish lessons were restored as an optional, additional course for students, and a secret Polish youth philomath organization Ul operated in the school. Łowiński's gravestone at the local cemetery is the only one facing away from the main cemetery alley, because the German administration opposed using Latin inscriptions, instead of German. In 1831–1832, one of the main escape routes for insurgents of the Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the town. After the First World War it was one of the few towns of historical Greater Poland that were not included in the borders of Poland after regaining independence in 1918. Deutsch Krone, having a predominantly German population, remained part of Weimar Germany and was part of the Posen-West Prussia province until 1938 when it was assigned to Pomerania. During World War II, the Germans operated a labor camp for French and American prisoners of war from the Stalag II-B prisoner-of-war camp in the town. The Polish resistance conducted espionage of German activity in the town. The town was occupied by the Red Army on 12 February 1945. After the end of World War II, the town became again part of Poland according to the Potsdam Conference and renamed to its historic name Wałcz. Also in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement, its German inhabitants were expropriated and expelled. The town was repopulated by Poles, most of whom were themselves expelled from the former eastern territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union.

Numerous pre-war ruins of German fortifications and bunkers are found in woods surrounding Wałcz, especially in proximity to the lakes. Most of them however are inaccessible – blown up or filled with soil, to prevent accidents with careless tourists.

From 1975 to 1998, the town was administratively part of the Piła Voivodeship.

The lack of heavy industry in Wałcz and the surrounding areas has helped the city to maintain relative ecological cleanliness and is an excellent location for rest and relaxation. It has a post office that was built during the reign of Napoleon.

Sport
Next to the suspension bridge on Lake Raduń in a beechwood forest is an Olympic Training Facility, the 'Bukowina'. Immediately after World War II, Winand Osiński and Olympic coach Jan Mulak founded the training centre and began training with the Polish track and field teams who represented Poland during the 50s and 60s. Poland's Olympic kayak team trains here to this day.

On this lake is also the City Centre for Sport and Recreation (MOSiR - Miejski Ośrodek Sportu i Rekreacji) which makes a wide range of sporting equipment available, including motor boats, kayaks, water bikes and the leisure boat Delfin. The centre also serves as a starting point for numerous walking and biking trails as well as kayak excursions. The so-called Pętla Wałecka, a kayaking route that traverses six lakes begins here and ends at Lake Bytyń Wielki.

Situated on the shores of the lakes are numerous beaches, swimming areas, camping spots and sporting equipment rentals.

Architecture
Among the more important architectural sites in Wałcz:
 * From the Middle Ages: market center, town hall in neo-Renaissance style.
 * Court in classical style from the early 19th century next to the Wałcz Regional Museum (Muzeum Ziemi Wałeckiej)
 * Saint Nicholas church (Kościół św. Mikołaja), Gothic Revival
 * Saint Anthony church (Kościół św. Antoniego), Gothic Revival
 * Main Post Office, Gothic Revival
 * Former Jesuit College

Climate
Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb". (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).

Demographics
Demographics of Wałcz as of 2020 according to Statistics Poland:

In 2002, the average income per person was PZL 1,268.39.

Transportation
One national road goes through Wałcz: 22 from Kostrzyn nad Odrą to Braniewo. Regional roads 163 from Kołobrzeg and 178 to Oborniki also pass through. Rail service from Piła was renewed in 2007, while 3 other rail lines previously serving Wałcz have been discontinued. Bus service in the Wałcz region is provided by PKS Wałcz which also provides connections to Poznań, Szczecin, Bydgoszcz, Kołobrzeg and Gorzów Wielkopolski. Express bus services, KomfortBus, KSK Poznań, PKS Piła, PKS Szczecin, PKS Kołobrzeg and others also stop in Wałcz.

Local bus service
Local bus services are provided by ZKM (Zakład Komunikacji Miejskiej). There are 14 ZKM bus routes serving the city as well as several nearby towns and villages. Some of the bus lines are school-related and only run on school days.

Notable residents

 * Antoni Perzyński (born 1767), Polish priest and director of the Wałcz gymnasium
 * Ludwig Riess (1861–1928), German-born historian and educator, noted for his work in late 19th century Japan
 * Friedrich-Carl von Steinkeller (1896–1981), Wehrmacht general
 * Josef Rudnick (1917–2009), German businessman and CDU politician
 * Marian Matłoka (1918–1986), Polish sprint canoer, competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics
 * Godela Habel (born 1929), German painter and artist
 * Anna Bukis (born 1953), former Polish female athlete, competed in the 1980 Summer Olympics
 * Grzegorz Kołtan (born 1955), Polish sprint canoer who competed the 1980 Summer Olympics
 * Robert Strąk (born 1967), Polish politician, elected to the Sejm in 2005
 * Mirosław Czech (born 1968), Polish politician and journalist, deputy of the Sejm II and III
 * Tomasz Goliasz (born 1968), Polish sprint canoer, competed at the 1996 Summer Olympics
 * Tadeusz Drzazga (born 1975), retired male weightlifter, competed the 2004 Summer Olympics
 * Joanna Piwowarska (born 1983), Polish pole vaulter, competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics
 * Łukasz Woszczyński (born 1983), Polish sprint canoer, competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics
 * Krzysztof Głowacki (born 1986), Polish professional boxer
 * Michał Kubiak (born 1988), Polish volleyball player, a member of Polish national team and World Champion

Twin towns and sister cities
Wałcz is twinned with:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wałcz


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Piła

Piła (Schneidemühl) is a city in northwestern Poland and the capital of Piła County, situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. Its population was 71,846, making it the  city in the voivodeship after Poznań and Kalisz and the largest city in the northern part of Greater Poland. The city is located on the Gwda river and is famous for its green areas, parks and dense forests nearby. It is an important road and railway hub, located at the intersection of two main lines: Poznań–Szczecin and Bydgoszcz–Krzyż Wielkopolski.

City name
Piła is a Polish word meaning "saw". This was a typical name denoting a village of woodcutters belonging to a local noble. The German name Schneidemühl means "sawmill".

Overview
Piła traces its origins to an old fishing village. Following the German colonist movement of the 13th century, and particularly after the end of the first Mongol invasion of Poland of 1241, many German colonizers came to this densely wooded area of Poland. General immigration of German settlers diminished, however, when Poland, under King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1447–1492), finally defeated the Teutonic Order in 1466.

Early history
A Slavic settlement of woodcutters in the fishing village Piła may have existed before any of the later villages and surrounding towns of the area were established. Thus, in the 14th century Piła grew to some extent because of its position on the Gwda a mere 11 km from where it joins the river Notec. Yet, the settlement developed less than others that were on such major water routes as the rivers Warta or Vistula. Piła's simple layout of unpaved streets and primitive clay and timber houses gave little protection to its inhabitants and was still far from becoming a commercially interesting locale. If one were to credit a Privilegium (charter) of the early 1380s as evidence, a document associated with the building of a church in Piła and ascribed to the very young Polish Queen Jadwiga of Poland—a copied document that still existed in the archives of the town before 1834—then that period could well be regarded as the time when the village of Piła/Snydemole was elevated to the status of town. The recurring double naming Piła-Snydemole may be because two originally separate localities took their name from the water-powered sawmill that had been part of the town's raison d'être from the beginning.

Documented references to Snydemole and Piła are reportedly found in parish church sources of 1449, where there is mention of a sawmill and of the name of the current wojewoda (governor) Paul. Evidence also exists of a letter from 1456 by the Brandenburg Friedrich II Hohenzollern who had bought the Neumark region from the Teutonic Order in 1455. The letter is addressed to bishop Andrzej of Poznań and to Łukasz Górka, the local Starosta, the royal constable of Wielkopolska. The elector complained that in prevailing peace times some burghers of Snydemole and Piła were making raids on his lands. This accusation may tend to give additional credence to the earlier claim that Queen Jadwiga in the 1380s was indeed the founder of the town of Piła.

City rights
Until 1480 Piła was a town owned by the nobility, belonging to Maciej Opaliński who later presented his holdings to King Casimir IV Jagiellon, at which time Piła became a royal town. Administratively it was located in the Poznań County in the Poznań Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. It is known that ten years later the burghers of the town were accused and penalized for tax evasion that had been occurring over a period of five years. However, King Sigismund I the Old—during whose reign immigration of numerous Jews from the Iberian peninsula, Bohemia and German states was encouraged—bestowed municipal rights upon the town of Piła on 4 March 1513, a landmark decision. This was an important achievement for Piła since it gave the burghers not only status, but also the rights to self-administration and its own judiciary. The administration of the town's affairs was now in the hands of three legislative bodies, elected from among the burghers. They were the council with the mayor, jury court and the elders of the guilds. Only the position of the Wójt remained in the hands of the crown or its deputy, the Starosta. The sovereign, however, remained the ultimate judge, warlord and owner of the land. Being free from the arbitrariness of a Castellan or of Wojewoda (governor of the province)—Piła's town folk took advantage of the town's privileges by owning property, carrying on any trade and enjoying the right to hold much needed market fairs.

16th century
Economic circumstances or personal feuds may have been responsible for the frequent changes of ownership of the town, as Piła was 'purchased' in 1518 by Hieronymus von Bnin; the document outlining the deed and ownership during his lifetime was given to him by King Sigismund I in 1525. Following the demise of Bnin, the town became the property of the dynasty of the mighty Gorka family. This family, secretly leaning toward Protestantism and in power until the 17th century, included some of the wealthiest landowners and most influential nobles of Poland and was known to be benevolent to their town's folk.

In 1548 Piła obtained a privilege that banned any foreign potter from the town's markets, and in 1561 a fishing privilege was obtained. Piła was part of the Poznań Voivodeship, the region divided into the four starostwa (land holdings) of Poznań, Kościan, Wschowa and Wałcz, the latter encompassing the Starosty Ujscie-Piła, the area between the rivers Gwda, Notec and Drage. Stara Piła, the old Piła, a town that never had walls, was slow to grow.

By the middle of the 16th century, many German Protestant craftsmen and traders, driven out of Bohemia by religious persecution during the Reformation, settled in numerous towns in the region. Some may have settled in Piła too, yet in 1563 the small town had no more than 750 inhabitants. They are known to have lived in 153 houses, primitively built, primarily with timber and clay, covered with straw and grouped mainly around the Old Market. When King Stephen Báthory of Poland confirmed two of the town's privileges on 3 September 1576, the burghers were granted the right to hold their weekly market on a Monday (instead of Thursday), an important feat. Over the following 150 years, numerous privileges and charters were re-issued by the Polish crown, mainly as a result of loss by fire. By 1591 a statute allowing apprenticeships in various trades was obtained. In 1593 King Sigismund III Vasa confirmed old privileges of Piła.

17th century: Queen Constance reshaping the town
When the widowed Sigismund III Vasa married princess Constance, an Austrian archduchess from the House of Habsburg, in 1605, he presented the town of Piła, together with the lands of the domain of Ujście, as a wedding gift to his new bride. She became responsible for changing Piła in several ways over the next few decades. Acting in concert with the tenets of the prevailing Catholic Counter Reformation, the queen first attended to what seemed closest to her heart. She saw to it that numerous Protestant churches in the region of Wałcz, the most German of areas where seventeen Protestant villages existed, be handed over to the Roman Catholic clergy, hounding many a German Protestant burgher in the process.

After one of the town's frequent fires in 1619, the queen—in a benevolent gesture and as her 'present' to the burghers of Piła—appropriated funds from the large estate to have the old burnt-out wooden Catholic Church rebuilt. Alas, given the random, close proximity of houses to one another, town fires occurred with such regularity in numerous communities during that period that in 1626 another devastating fire broke out in Piła. This time the entire town was laid to ashes, including the newly built church. Constance subsequently charged her secretary Samuel Targowski on 15 July 1626 to survey what was left of the town. His proposal for a new layout was to be drastic for Christian burghers; to the developing Jewish community it was most consequential and of particular detriment. Constance also decided on a distinct segregation of Jews and Christians. The Jewish community was to resettle in a ghetto, what was to become a virtual town within a town. The new site, from thereon often referred to as Judenstadt, the Jews' town. To demarcate the newly created ghetto, the decree called for a sizable trench to be dug to surround the Jewish quarters where feasible; otherwise a tall wooden fence had to serve to close in the area completely.

A new church arose in 1628. Unlike most other buildings in town, the choir room section of this edifice was to remain intact in its original form until 1945. New houses were constructed of brick and stone and the town was reconstructed in plain Renaissance style. Polish Kings confirmed old privileges of Piła again in 1633 and 1650, and granted new privileges in 1660, 1670 and 1688, which were then confirmed in 1716. On 24 July 1655, during the Deluge, Swedish troops captured the predominantly Lutheran town and destroyed most of its buildings and infrastructure. During October 1656, a Polish troupe of Stefan Czarniecki's army sought retribution upon the largely German and Protestant burghers of Piła, accusing them of collusion with the Swedes. During the consecutive Great Northern and Seven Years' Wars similar havoc was visited upon the remaining inhabitants. To add to the plight, it was discovered that the plague had been carried in.

In the Kingdom of Prussia and the Duchy of Warsaw
With the signing of the definitive treaty to divide Poland between Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1772, the First Partition of Poland was accomplished. Piła became part of the Kingdom of Prussia and was officially renamed Schneidemühl. After Frederick II of Prussia signed the Ownership Protocol of his Polish lands on 13 September 1772, he created out of the northern parts of Greater Poland and Kuyavia the Département Westpreussen. Part of that area was later also known as the Netzedistrikt, a governmental administrative district consisting of a wide strip of land both sides of the river Noteć (Netze), stretching from it source north of Września (Wreschen) to the border of the Neumark. Frederick II initiated new German Protestant colonization in opposition to Polish Catholics.

In the year 1781, another huge fire occurred, which devastated half the town. Although Prussian authorities had brought in chimney sweeps and regulations that spelled out fire emergency tasks, hardly anyone in the town was prepared for a major conflagration. 44 houses, 37 stables and 17 barns burned down.

In 1793 Piła was recaptured for a short period by a Polish army led by Colonel Wyganowski. Following Prussia's defeat in the battle of Jena and Greater Poland uprising (1806), and after signing the Peace of Tilsit of 7 July 1807, Piła became part of the semi-independent Polish Duchy of Warsaw.

19th century: industrialization and railway hub
After the Congress of Vienna of 1815, Prussia regained the town once again. Under the Prussian administrative reforms of 1816–18, the town became part of the Kolmar District within the Bromberg Region of the Grand Duchy of Posen. On 1 January 1818 Kreis Kolmar was established, with its seat in Piła / Schneidemühl, which in 1821 was moved to Chodzież. One of the main escape routes for insurgents of the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the city.

The Polish language was restricted from offices and education and the city saw a significant influx of German settlers. By 1834 Schneidemühl had barely recovered from the worst outbreak of cholera of 1831, an epidemic that affected the town's burghers to such an extent that a special Protestant cholera cemetery had to be laid out in the town's suburb Berliner Vorstadt. In the summer of 1834 the city was again struck by a fire that destroyed a large part of the city centre and the city archives. The city was rebuilt shortly afterwards.

In 1851 the city was connected to Berlin and Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) by the Prussian Eastern Railway. An architectural artifact which remains from the railway development period is a historical roundhouse.

The Germanisation policy of the Prussian and Imperial German government replaced its Polish identity with a German one. By the end of the 19th century the city had become one of the most important railway centers of the region and one of the biggest towns in the Province of Posen. It was turned into a Prussian military garrison town. Schneidemühl was revisited by a catastrophe, known as the Brunnenunglück, or the 'calamity of the well' that made national headlines. The drilling of an artesian well in August 1892 went horribly wrong and led to unexpected widespread flooding of many of the streets laid out in 1834, causing numerous houses to simply collapse and leaving more than eighty families without shelter. The worst was that this disaster came only a few years on the heels of unexpected flooding caused by the spring thaw of March 1888 that had turned the Küddow into a raging river, when many people were forced to use rowboats to navigate the streets.

First World War and Imperial German military aviation technology
On 1 April 1914 Schneidemühl was disentangled from the Kolmar District and became an independent city (or urban district; Stadtkreis) within the Bromberg Region. In the months before the outbreak of World War I, in April 1914 the Albatros Flugzeugwerke established the so-called Ostdeutsche Albatros-Werke (East German Albatros Works, abbreviated "O.A.W.") in Schneidemühl for construction of military aircraft for the Fliegertruppe air service of the German Army throughout the war — it later undertook license production of Fokker's famous Fokker D.VII fighter during the last year of World War I.

During the First World War, the Germans operated a prisoner-of-war camp in the city, initially taking mainly Russian POWs (including Poles and Latvians conscripted into the Russian Army) but later including prisoners from most Allied nations including Britain and Australia. A telling account of life in the town during that period survives in the form of the diary of Piete Kuhr, then a young girl whose grandmother worked at the Red Cross canteen at the railway station.

As a provincial capital within the Weimar Republic
After World War I, in 1918, Poland regained independence, and the Greater Poland Uprising broke out, which aim was to reintegrate the region with Poland. Local Poles were persecuted for their pro-Polish stance by the Germans, who also held Polish insurgents in the local prison. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and after much protest by the German majority of its population, Schneidemühl was not included in the Polish Second Republic. After the Greater Poland Uprising, the new Polish-German border ran 5 km south of the city. On 21 July 1922 Schneidemühl became the administrative centre of the new Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia Province, a body of self-rule encompassing those three disconnected parts of the former Province of Posen and the westernmost parts of the Province of West Prussia, which were not ceded to Poland and of the Posen-West Prussian Schneidemühl Region, a body of central government supervision comprising the same provincial area. In 1925, with the sudden influx of the Optanten, inhabitants of areas annexed by Poland who opted not to become Polish citizens and left for the reduced German Reich. Schneidemühl's population swelled by about 10,000 to 37,518, creating considerable publicity in Germany.

In 1930 Schneidemühl replaced Tütz (Tuczno) as seat of the Catholic jurisdiction, which was promoted from Apostolic administration to Territorial Prelature of Schneidemühl within the Eastern German Ecclesiastical Province. The city experienced a short period of growth followed by a period of decline in the early 1930s. High unemployment and the ineffectiveness of local administration led to rising support for the NSDAP.

Nazi rule and Second World War
With the onset of the Nazi period and the beginning of the Gestapo's harassment of political and racial undesirables, the climate for Schneidemühl's shrinking Jewish community (which had reached over 1,000 members during the mid-19th century) changed irreversibly — institutionalized antisemitism had arrived in Schneidemühl.

In March and September 1938, a Verwaltungsgliederung, or administrative reform, merged the three territorially unconnected parts of the Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia province into the respective neighbouring Prussian provinces of Brandenburg, Silesia and Pomerania — placing the bulk of former Posen-West Prussia with the districts of Deutsch Krone, Flatow, Netzekreis, Schlochau and Schneidemühl into Pomerania. Schneidemühl remained the headquarters of the government region, reduced by the districts ceded to Brandenburg and Silesia, but enlarged by four previously Brandenburgian and Pomeranian districts and renamed as Posen-West_Prussia (Regierungsbezirk Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen) for reasons of tradition, as of 1 October 1938. During the pogrom of 9/10 November 1938 the freestanding structure of Schneidemühl's 100-year-old synagogue became a prime target for the Nazis who set fire to it. In 1939, in the city and the region, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Polish activists, who then were imprisoned in a temporary camp in the city before deportation to Nazi concentration camps, some were even tortured. In October 1939, a German camp for Sinti and Romani people was established. The city's 300-year-old Jewish community was destroyed when on 21 March 1940, on the order of Gauleiter Schwede-Coburg, the last remaining Jews, together with more than 500 Jews of the surrounding area within an 80 km radius, were arrested and held prisoner in various locations in the city. A large number of them were subsequently taken to the forced labour camp Radinkendorf and the Glowno prisoner camp outside of Poznań and held there in detention under inhuman conditions. Over the following two years they were taken to various labour camps, hospices, hospitals in Pomerania, Bielefeld and Berlin. Those who had not committed suicide or had perished during that period were deported to concentration camps, the last in 1943. During World War II a camp for civil prisoners-of-war named "Albatros" was established. Poles expelled from Gmina Dziemiany in Gdańsk Pomerania were used as forced labour in the local aviation industry. Also seven forced labour subcamps of the Stalag II-B prisoner-of-war camp and a forced labour camp, which was subordinate to the local prison, were operated in the city. Several British POWs escaped, and then the Polish resistance facilitated their further escape through the port of Gdynia by sea to Sweden. The local Home Army also maintained contact with Polish POWs held in the Oflag II-C camp.

The city became part of the Pomeranian Wall line of fortifications. In 1945 the town was declared a fortress by Adolf Hitler. During the East Pomeranian offensive it was captured by the joint Polish and Red Army forces after two weeks of heavy fighting on 14 February 1945. 75% of the city was destroyed and almost 90% of the historic city centre was in ruins.

Post-war Poland
As a result of the border changes agreed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, the city became again part of Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. The city's historic Polish name Piła was restored. The remaining local German population was expelled by Polish and Soviet troops from 1945 to 1948 in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, while Polish expelees from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and settlers from areas of central Poland, which were destroyed during the war, were resettled in the city. The historical city centre was only partially restored. In 1972 the Territorial Prelature of Piła was suppressed, its territory being reassigned to establish the Diocese of Koszalin–Kołobrzeg and Diocese of Gorzów.

In August 1980, employees of local factories joined the nationwide anti-communist strikes, which led to the foundation of the Solidarity organization, which played a central role in the end of communist rule in Poland.

In 1975 Piła became the capital of the newly established Piła Voivodeship (province), which started a period of fast development of industry in the area as one of the most important cities of the region. It remained a voivodeship capital until the administrative reform of 1999. It is known for its green areas and parks, as well as for its speedway club Polonia Piła who race at the Stadion Polonii Piła.

Climate
Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb". (Marine West Coast Climate).

Major corporations

 * Signify formerly known as 'Philips Lighting Poland", Piła
 * Quad/Graphics Europe, Piła (in the past known as Winkowski sp. z o.o.)

Attractions

 * Museum of Stanisław Staszic in his former house
 * 19th-century building of the former arsenal
 * St. Stanislaus Kostka's church, built in Neo-Gothic style
 * Holy Family's church, built in Neo-baroque style, formerly concathedral of the Prałatura Pilska
 * St. Anthony's Church with the biggest wooden figure of Jesus in Europe, 7 m tall (church built in 1930)
 * Two war cemeteries (Allied POWs from World War I and Polish and Soviet soldiers killed during the battle of the Pomeranian Wall during World War II); cemeteries are in uptown Piła, in Leszków.
 * Modern two-level shopping center "Atrium Kasztanowa"
 * Modern shopping center "Vivo!" (Piła), located next to railway station "Dworzec PKP - Piła Główna (en. Station PKP - Piła Main)
 * "Aqua Park" - water park
 * "Park na Wyspie" - big park located on island (wyspa) with open-air gym, playground, square and fountains

Piła constituency
Members of Parliament (Sejm) elected from Piła constituency: Members of Polish Senate elected from Piła constituency:
 * Adam Szejnfeld – Civic Platform
 * Jakub Rutnicki – Civic Platform
 * Stanisław Chmielewski – Civic Platform
 * Piotr Waśko – Civic Platform
 * Maks Kraczkowski – Law and Justice
 * Tomasz Górski – Law and Justice
 * Romuald Ajchler – Left and Democrats
 * Stanisław Stec – Left and Democrats
 * Stanisław Kalemba – Polish People's Party
 * Mieczysław Augustyn – Civic Platform
 * Piotr Głowski – Civic Platform

Municipal politics

 * The president of the Town of Piła: Piotr Głowski
 * Vicepresidents: Krzysztof Szewc, Beata Dudzińska
 * Town council chairman: Rafał Zdzierela
 * Town council vicechairmans: Paweł Jarczak, Janusz Kubiak

Sports

 * Polonia Piła – speedway team, 1999 Polish Champions
 * PTPS Piła – women's volleyball team playing in the TAURON Liga (Polish top division): Polish champions in 1998–1999, 1999–2000, 2000–2001, 2001–2002 seasons, 2nd place in 2005–2006, 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 seasons and 3rd place in 2004–2005 and 2008–2009 seasons.
 * Joker Piła – men's volleyball team playing in the lower leagues, which also played in the top division in the past (most recently in season 2005–06)
 * Basket Piła – men's basketball team playing in the lower leagues
 * Gwda Piła – athletics club
 * Gwardia Piła – athletics club

Notable people

 * Wolfgang Altenburg (born 1928), former Chief of Staff, Bundeswehr
 * Dirk Galuba (born 1940), German actor
 * Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (1884–1945), German politician and anti-Nazi
 * Fritz Goerdeler (1886–1945), German jurist and resistance fighter
 * Andrzej Gronowicz (born 1951), Polish athlete
 * Jerzy Stanisław Janicki (born 1956), physicist
 * Maximilian Kaller (1880–1947), first Roman Catholic church administrator of the town
 * Hein Kötz (born 1935), German jurist
 * Erwin Kramer (1902–1979), German politician
 * Ben Mendelsohn (born 1969), Australian actor whose ancestors lived in Piła
 * Jo Mihaly (born Elfriede Alice Kuhr) (1902–1989), German dancer and writer
 * Daria Pająk (born 1993), Polish bowling player
 * Karl Retzlaw (1896–1979), German politician
 * Eberhard Schenk (born 1929), German athlete
 * Bernard Schultze (1915–2005), German painter
 * Kasia Smutniak (born 1979), Polish actress
 * Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826), philosopher, leading figure in Polish Enlightenment.
 * Wolfgang Thonke (1938–2019), East German general
 * Johanna Töpfer (1929–1990), German politician

Twin towns — Sister cities
Piła is twinned with:
 * 🇫🇷 Châtellerault, France
 * 🇩🇪 Schwerin, Germany
 * 🇮🇹 Imola, Italy

Former twin towns

 * 🇷🇺 Kronstadt, Russia

On 1 March 2022, Piła suspended its partnership with the Russian city of Kronsdadt as a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

title: Piła


text:
Chodzież

Chodzież (Kolmar in Posen) is a town in northwestern Poland with 17,976 inhabitants as of December 2021, seat of the Chodzież County in the Greater Poland Voivodeship.

Geography
Chodzież is located in the northern part of Greater Poland (western Poland), in the Chodzieskie lakelands. The most important characteristics of this lakeland area are its typical postglacial landforms, forests of pines and mixed woodlands, and lakes. For this reason, the city's surroundings are known as "the Switzerland of Chodzież".

Five kilometers west of Chodzież, at the edge of the Chodzieskie lakelands, Mt. Gontyniec rises 192 meters above sea level as the highest peak in a chain of moraine hills; at the same time it has the highest elevation in northern Poland. Deep valleys and ridges covered with a 100-year-old beech forest ensure diversified surroundings.

Within the five square miles (13 km2) of city area, there are three lakes: Miejskie, 1 km2 (English: Town lake, 0.4 mile²), Karczewnik, 0.25 km2, and Strzeleckie, 0.18 km2, which make up about 13% of the total town area.

Demographics
Detailed data as of 31 December 2021:

Number of inhabitants by year:

History
A burial mound, estimated to date from 2000 B.C., is located in the area of the town where today's Słoneczna street lies. From about 1500 BC, tribes belonging to the Lusatian culture dominated the area for ten centuries. In 1904–1914 two burial grounds were discovered in the area of old Rzeźnicka street, that date to those times. In the early Middle Ages (400–700 AD), a little settlement existed on the south part of Lake Miejskie. Chodzież's beginnings go back at least to the 15th century. First written mention is from 1403. The name Chodzies is mentioned with that of the priest of the local Catholic parish. Researchers believe however, that town roots go back to the 13th century, when it already had its first church.

On 3 March 1434, King Władysław II Jagiello issued a privilege that vested Chodzież with Magdeburg town rights for Trojan of Łękno. For many centuries it was a privately owned city, located within the Kalisz Voivodeship (from 1768 in the Gniezno Voivodeship) in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. The LÍkiscy–Granowski family were the first owners, then from the mid of the 15th century, Chodzież belonged to the Potulicki family. From 1648 to 1830 the Grudziński family were the owners of Chodzież. The family's Grzymała coat of arms has been the town's crest since that time.

St. Florian's church situated at the Market Square, is the oldest monument in Chodzież. Its probable founder was the first owner of the settlement, Trojan of Lekno.

During the 17th century, various parts of Poland were invaded by Swedish troops. The arrival of a group of German clothmakers from Leszno, which had suffered a fire, around 1656, influenced the development of Chodzież. A new town was erected in the mid 18th century, next to the old medieval site in the city, which contained the Market, as the home of weavers and clothmakers. Today, this part of the city (Kościuszki Street) is marked by the characteristic gables of houses situated on narrow, rectangular plots of land. Each lot formerly had wooden sheds in the rear to store wool and cloth.

As the result of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the town was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia and became a part of the newly established Netze River District.

In 1805, Chodzież's weavers imported a weaving machine from Berlin. Shortly after, Napoleon defeated Prussia (1807) and out of the Treaty of Tilsit, this part of Poland became part of the Duchy of Warsaw.

In 1815, Prussia and its allies defeated Napoleon, and this area became Prussian again as the Grand Duchy of Posen. It was supposed to be a Polish province within Prussian Kingdom. In reality, it was essentially a Prussian province.

The local weaving industry declined about 1812–1815, when a frontier customs post between the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Prussia was demarcated. The tariff priced the Posen weavers out of their major eastern markets, so they either migrated to other textile producing areas (e.g. Łódź) or turned to other types of work, like farming.

In 1818, Chodzież became the administrative center of a county-like district (German: Kreis) (see Kreis Kolmar in Posen) that was formed from parts of the following these Kreise: Wirsitz, Wongrowitz, Obornik and Czarnikau (Polish: Wyrzysk, Wągrowiec, Oborniki and Czarnków). Over the years, it gained the character of a local administrative center, which it remained until 1975, when the division of Poland was reorganized into larger units.

In 1849, the Duchy was formalized as the Prussian province of Posen.

Chodzież's important place in the ceramics industry began when two German businessmen, Ludwig Schnorr and Hermann Müller from Frankfurt an der Oder, purchased the ruins of the burned out manor house from Otto Königsmarck in 1855 and built the first faience factory. In 1897 the merchant Hein, a former faience factory owner, built a porcelain factory. Since then, Chodzież has always been an important and significant center of pottery industry.

The German Empire was created in 1871, and in October 1874 a system of civil registration offices were created. Chodziesen was chosen for its area. (See Standesamt Kolmar).

In 1879, the railroad line Poznań — Chodzież — Piła was opened and the name of Chodzież was changed from "Chodzeisen" to "Kolmar in Posen". This name was in honor of Axel von Colmar — Meyenburg, who was extremely influential in the building of the railway, which was beneficial to the town's economy.

Interbellum
After World War I, Poland regained independence and the Greater Poland Uprising, the aim of which was to reintegrate the region with Poland, spread to Chodzież. Polish insurgents captured the town on January 6, 1919, and then, despite prior agreements, the Germans recaptured it the next day. After bloody fighting the insurgents again captured the town on January 8, 1919. The Versailles Treaty in 1919 eventually confirmed the restoration of Chodzież to Poland. On 19 January 1920, Polish military and political authorities marched into the city and a Polish administration was established. Unemployment and living conditions deteriorated, leading to a wave of strikes, starting in 1921. In the 1930s, the years of the great world economic crisis, workers from Chodzież porcelain factory started a new series of protests. In the period between the two world wars, Chodzież was considered as an important administrative center in the border area between Poland and Germany. It had a working class character, which was related to the development of the faience factory. Since the town was located near the border, 16% of the population was German, while 83% was Polish, as of 1939.

In the 1920s, a tuberculosis sanatorium was established here because of the special climate. It was converted recently into a hospital for railroadmen. In 1921 Stanisław Mańczak bought the porcelain fabric from the Annaburger Steinguttfabrik firm.

World War II
In September 1939 the town was invaded by Nazi Germany. Early on, the SS-Totenkopf-Standarte Brandenburg entered the town to commit various atrocities against the Polish population. The German occupation, both in Chodzież and the whole country, was a period of terror directed against Polish citizens. In one notable example, on 7 November 1939, 44 Polish men, including the town's mayor Tadeusz Koppe and the gmina's wójt Marian Weyhan, were killed on the Morzewskie Hills near the village of Morzewo. Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles as part of the Intelligenzaktion, who were then imprisoned in the local prison. Local Poles were also subjected to expulsions and deportations to forced labour in Germany, and a transit camp for Poles expelled from the region was located in the town. Hundreds of Poles were expelled already in December 1939. Houses of expelled Poles were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy, and as a result, Germans formed 56% of the town's populace in 1943. Under Nazi German occupation, the town under the Germanized name Kolmar was made part of Reichsgau Wartheland, and the seat of the county (kreis) of Kolmar. The Rynek (Market Square) was renamed the Adolf Hitler Square.

Despite such circumstances, the Polish resistance movement was still formed and operated in the town and area. Among its local leaders were Marcel Krzycki and pre-war Polish mayor Bronisław Maron. In August 1944, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local members of the Home Army, the leading Polish underground resistance organization. Local Polish resistance leaders were imprisoned and tortured in the local prison and in the Gestapo station in Poznań. Bronisław Maron, his wife, daughter, and Marcel Krzycki were then imprisoned in the Nazi prison camp in Żabikowo (present-day district of Luboń). Bronisław Maron, tortured, died there in 1944, while his wife and daughter were deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where his wife was also murdered. Krzycki's fate is unknown, although he probably also died in Żabikowo. The population of Chodzież during the war years was reduced by almost half.

Liberation came on the night of 22/23 January 1945, when Soviet troops captured the town.

Recent period
The first years after World War II were a period of restoration and an intensive development of the pottery industry.

In 1946 Chodzież had a population of 7,694. From 1975 to 1998, it was administratively located in the Piła Voivodeship.

The city administration has received prizes and awards on several occasions to recognize the city's cleanliness and aesthetics. In 1974, the city was awarded the title of "the Polish Master of Economics." Later, in 1979, it was awarded the Labor Medal, 1st Class, by the Council of State for the city's achievements in production. The current construction of an urban purification plant will help transform Chodzież into an ecologically clean center for tourism and relaxation. In recent years, the rate of economic development in the city have decreased somewhat, with industry playing a smaller role and the economic development of Chodzież and the region becoming more associated with recreation. Chodzież's natural environment attracts tourists.

Sports
The local football club is Polonia Chodzież, and the athletics club is Gontyniec Chodzież.

The town's sports facilities include an indoor swimming pool, a football stadium and tennis courts. Sailing and motorboat contests take place each year on the municipal lakes. These lakes have European and world-class rank: in 1993, motorboat contests took place in the class 0..350. In addition, every May, the Grzmylita Run promotes sport for the masses.

Culture
A brass orchestra was founded right after the end of the German occupation. First it was connected to the ceramics factory, but currently it works with the Chodzież cultural institute. In the 1970s, the annual jazz workshops began, which allowed new talents to be discovered through encounters between young people and artists from Poland and abroad.

The annual National Children's Song Festivals began in 1991. In 1995, Chodzież was the co-organizer of the XIII National Voluntary Fire Department Brass Orchestra Festival.

Twin towns

 * 🇩🇪 Nottuln, Germany

People

 * Trojan of Łękno, chief judge for the province of Kalisz between 1434 and 1450.
 * Dagobert Friedländer (1826-1904), Jewish banker and member of the House of Lords of Prussia representing Bromberg.
 * Hugo Friedlander (1850-1928), mayor of Ashburton, New Zealand 1879-1881, 1890-1892, and 1898-1901.
 * Leo Maximilian Baginski (1891-1964), German entrepreneur, inventor and marketing specialist
 * Adam Harasiewicz (born 1932), Polish classical pianist
 * Zdzisław Szlapkin (born 1961), Polish former Olympic racewalker

title: Chodzież


text:
Wyszków, Wyszków County

Wyszków (ווישקאָוו Vishkov) is a town in eastern Poland with 26,500 inhabitants (2018). It is the capital of Wyszków County in Masovian Voivodeship.

History
The village of Wyszków was first documented in 1203. Wyszków was located on a trade route connecting Toruń with Brześć. It was granted town rights in 1502. It was administratively located in the Kamieniec County in the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. It was destroyed during the Swedish invasion of Poland (Second Northern War) in 1655–1660, and it lost its significance in the region.

It was annexed by Prussia in the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw, and in 1815 it passed to Russian-controlled Congress Poland. In 1870 it was deprived of its town rights, as one of many Polish town punished by the Russians for the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising. Industry developed after 1897, when the Pilawa-Tłuszcz-Ostrołęka railway was built. In 1918 Poland regained independence and control of Wyszków, and in 1919 town rights were restored.

During the Polish–Soviet War, on August 17, 1920, the Russian Cheka murdered seven Poles in the present-day district of Rybienko Leśne. Poles led by Mikołaj Bołtuć defeated the invading Russians in the Battle of Wyszków on August 18, 1920.

Fierce fights between the Poles and the invading Germans took place in the area on September 8–10, 1939 at the beginning of World War II. On September 9, 1939, the Germans committed a massacre of 65 Jews in Wyszków, and a massacre of a dozen or so Poles from Wyszków near the village of Pniewo (see Nazi crimes against the Polish nation). The town was then occupied by Germany, which made it part of the Warsaw District of the General Government. Before the war 45% of Wyszków's population of 12,000 were Jewish; after the war there were none. The Germans killed over 7,000 inhabitants of Wyszków, including 5,000 Jews, and operated a forced labour camp for Soviet prisoners of war. Nevertheless, the Polish resistance movement was active in the area. After the occupation, the town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. The communists destroyed pre-war memorials dedicated to Poles killed during the Polish–Soviet War in 1920.

In post-war Poland, the town was administratively part of the Warsaw Voivodeship until 1975, and the Ostrołęka Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998. In 1961, Rybienko Leśne was included within Wyszków's town limits as a new district.

On 14 September 1997 a memorial to Holocaust victims was unveiled in Wyszków. It is made of reclaimed Jewish gravestones that had been removed from the site in 1939 by German forces, who used them as paving stones and to build the local Gestapo headquarters. Scores of these desecrated tombstones were recovered and incorporated as part of the monument.

A monument of Polish mathematician and cryptologist Jerzy Różycki was unveiled in 2018.

Sports
The most notable local sport clubs are football team Bug Wyszków and volleyball team KS Camper Wyszków. Both compete in the lower leagues.

Wyszków in culture
Wyszków is the setting of the song Wyszków Tonie (lit. Wyszków is Sinking) by Polish rock band Elektryczne Gitary, released in the 1993 album A Ty Co. It uses sinking as an extended metaphor for succumbing to alcoholism.

Notable people

 * Mordechaj Anielewicz (1919–1943), leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
 * Jarosław Kalinowski (born 1962), Polish politician
 * Berek Lajcher (1893–1943), Polish-Jewish physician and activist
 * Lanberry (born 1987), Polish singer and songwriter
 * Jerzy Różycki (1909–1942), Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma machine ciphers before and during World War II; spent part of his childhood and graduated from high school in Wyszków.

Twin towns — sister cities
Wyszków is twinned with:
 * 🇪🇪 Kohtla-Järve, Estonia

title: Wyszków, Wyszków County


text:
Ostrów Mazowiecka

Ostrów Mazowiecka is a town in eastern Poland with 23,486 inhabitants (2004). It is the capital of Ostrów Mazowiecka County in Masovian Voivodeship.

History
Ostrów was granted town rights in 1434 by Duke Bolesław IV of Warsaw. Its name comes from the Old Polish word ostrowa. In 1461 a parish school was founded in the town. In 1514, Duchess Anna Radziwiłł, who is commemorated in the town with a monument, established four annual fairs and a weekly market, boosting the development of Ostrów. In the 16th century Polish King Sigismund II Augustus built a residence in Ostrów. Ostrów was a Polish royal town, administratively located in the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland.

The town's inhabitants took part in the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794; however, the following year it was annexed by Prussia in the Third Partition of Poland. In 1807 it was included in the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw, and in 1815 it became part of so-called Congress Poland within the Russian Partition of Poland. Many inhabitants took part in several battles of the Polish January Uprising of 1863–1864 against Russia, and an insurgent hospital was located in Ostrów. Ostrów was subjected to anti-Polish repressions, was one of the sites of Russian executions of Polish insurgents, and there are memorials at the execution sites. Despite such circumstances, in the following decades, various Polish organizations were founded in Ostrów. In the 19th century, the town saw a significant influx of Jewish settlers as a result of Russian discriminatory policies, and according to the 1897 census, 5,660 inhabitants out of 10,471 were Jews. During World War I, it was occupied by Germany, and after the war, in 1918, it became part of restored independent Poland. In 1919 a reserve battalion of the Polish 15th Wolves Infantry Regiment was stationed in Ostrów Mazowiecka. It trained Polish soldiers to reinforce the 15th Wolves Infantry Regiment during the Polish–Soviet War. In 1920 a battle was fought on the town's outskirts during the Polish–Soviet War. After the war, the battalion with the entire regiment was relocated to Dęblin in 1921.

World War II
During the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, Ostrów Mazowiecka was captured by Germany on September 8, 1939, and in mid-September the Einsatzgruppe V entered the town to commit various atrocities against the population. Already on 19 September the Germans arrested nine Poles, including chairmen of local veterans' organizations Włodzimierz Gadomski and Jan Radbalski. On 9 November 1939, one of the German soldiers set fire to the buildings on 3-ego Maja Street. The German authorities accused the Jews of starting the fire. On 11 November (though according to other sources, on 10 November) 500–800 Jews were killed by the German police in the Ostrów Mazowiecka massacre.

The Polish underground resistance movement was organized already in autumn of 1939. The first resistance organizations in the area were Service for Poland's Victory, Organizacja Wojskowa, Organizacja Wojskowa „Wilki”, National Military Organization, Secret Polish Army, Polska Organizacja Zbrojna, Komenda Obrońców Polski, Polska Niepodległa. Major Eugeniusz Mieszkowski nom de guerre Ostry unified the resistance organizations into a district of the Home Army under the cryptonym "Opocznik" ("wheatear"). It covered the Ostrów County, and was divided into five centers, one of which was located in the town. In addition to typical military, sabotage, and intelligence activities, the resistance movement also organized secret Polish education and issued and distributed underground Polish press. On May 1, 1943, the Home Army blew up the headquarters of the German Arbeitsamt in retaliation for round-ups and deportations of the local population for forced labour. On May 25, 1943, the Polish resistance successfully assassinated the chief of the local German administration, in retaliation for which the Germans massacred about 140 Poles. The German occupation ended in 1944, and Ostrów was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. The NKVD and UB repressed members of the Polish resistance movement and began arresting and deporting them to the Soviet Union in September 1944. Many members of the Home Army soon returned to the underground and continued their resistance against the communists.

Transport
Ostrów Mazowiecka is located at the intersection of Polish S8 and S61 highways.

Twin towns – Sister cities
Ostrów Mazowiecka is twinned with:
 * 🇮🇹 Brembate di Sopra, Italy
 * 🇷🇺 Ryazan, Russia
 * 🇺🇦 Iziaslav, Ukraine

Notable people

 * Asher Zebi of Ostrowo (19th century), rabbi
 * Jadwiga Długoborska (1899–1944), teacher, social and charity worker
 * Jan Dołęga-Zakrzewski (1866–1936), politician, surveyor, publicist, mayor of Ostrów Mazowiecka (1930–1933)
 * Beata Mazurek (born 1967), politician
 * Krystyna Sienkiewicz (1934–2017), actress and singer

title: Ostrów Mazowiecka


text:
User talk:CajunLuke

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

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Angela 02:07, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:CajunLuke


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Na-Dene languages

Na-Dene (also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now considered doubtful. By far the most widely spoken Na-Dene language today is Navajo, also the most spoken indigenous language north of Mexico.

In February 2008, a proposal connecting Na-Dene (excluding Haida) to the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia into a Dené–Yeniseian family was published and well received by a number of linguists. It was proposed in a 2014 paper that the Na-Dene languages of North America and the Yeniseian languages of Siberia had a common origin in a language spoken in Beringia, between the two continents.

Etymology
Edward Sapir originally constructed the term Na-Dene to refer to a combined family of Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida (the existence of the Eyak language was not known to him at the time). In his “The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report”, he describes how he arrived at the term (Sapir 1915, p. 558):

"The name that I have chosen for the stock, Na-dene, may be justified by reference to no. 51 of the comparative vocabulary. Dene, in various dialectic forms, is a wide-spread Athabaskan term for “person, people”; the element *-ne (*-n, *-η) which forms part of it is an old stem for “person, people” which, as suffix or prefix, is frequently used in Athabaskan in that sense. It is cognate with H. [= Haida] na "to dwell; house" and Tl. [= Tlingit] na “people”. The compound term Na-dene thus designates by means of native stems the speakers of the three languages concerned, besides continuing the use of the old term Dene for the Athabaskan branch of the stock."

Family division
In its uncontroversial core, Na-Dene consists of two branches, Tlingit and Athabaskan–Eyak:

 * Na-Dene
 * Tlingit: 1,360 speakers
 * Athabaskan–Eyak
 * Eyak: the last native speaker died in 2008, revitalization efforts are underway.
 * Athabaskan
 * Northern
 * Pacific Coast
 * Southern

For linguists who follow Edward Sapir in connecting Haida to the above languages, Haida represents an additional branch, with Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit together forming the other. Dene or Dine (the Athabaskan languages) is a widely distributed group of Native languages spoken by associated peoples in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Alaska, parts of Oregon, northern California, and the American Southwest as far as northern Mexico.

The southwestern division of Athabaskan is also called Southern Athabaskan or Apachean, and includes Navajo and all the Apache languages. Eyak was spoken in south-central Alaska; the last first language speaker died in 2008. Navajo is by far the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dene family, spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest.

Typological profile of Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit
All of these languages share a highly complex prefixing verb structure in which tense and mood markers are interdigitated between subject and object agreement markers. The morphological hallmark of the family is a series of prefixes found directly before the verb root that raise or lower the transitivity of the verb word. These prefixes, traditionally known as "classifiers", derive historically from a combination of three distinct classes of morphemes and are not found in any other Native American language family.

The phoneme system contains a large number of dorsal (velar or uvular) consonants (fronting in many modern Athabaskan languages to palatals and velars, correspondingly) as well as a general absence of labial obstruents (except where /b/ has arisen from *w). In the historical phonology there is a widespread tendency, observable across many Athabaskan languages, for phonemic tonal distinctions to arise from glottal features originally found at the end of the syllable. The glottal features in question are often evident in Eyak or Tlingit. These languages are typologically unusual in containing extensive prefixation yet being SOV and postpositional, features normally associated with suffixing languages.

Proposals of deeper genealogical relations involving Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit
A genealogical connection between the Tlingit, Eyak and Athabaskan languages was suggested early in the 19th century, but not universally accepted until much later. Haida, with 15 fluent speakers (M. Krauss, 1995), was originally linked to Tlingit by Franz Boas in 1894. Both Haida and Tlingit were then connected to Athabaskan by Edward Sapir in 1915. Linguists such as Lyle Campbell (1997) today consider the evidence inconclusive. They have classified Haida as a language isolate. In order to emphasise the exclusion of Haida, Campbell refers to the language family as Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit rather than Na-Dene. In 2010 Jeff Leer published extensive primary materials on what he calls PAET (Proto-Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit).

Dené–Yeniseian
In 2008, Edward Vajda of Western Washington University presented evidence suggesting that the Na-Dene languages (Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit) might be related to the Yeniseian (or Yeniseic) languages of Siberia, the only living representative of which is the Ket language.

Key evidence by current comparative methodologies includes homologies in verb prefixes and also a systematic correspondence between the distribution of Ket tones and consonant articulations found in Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit. Vajda's paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages, including Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, and Eric Hamp. The conclusion of this seminar was that the comparison with Yeniseic data shows that Haida cannot be classified in a genealogical unit with Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit.

Sino-Tibetan
A link between the Na–Dené languages and Sino-Tibetan languages, known as Sino–Dené was proposed by Edward Sapir. Around 1920 Sapir became convinced that Na-Dené was more closely related to Sino-Tibetan than to other American families. He wrote a series of letters to Alfred Kroeber where he enthusiastically spoke of a connection between Na-Dene and "Indo-Chinese". In 1925, a supporting article summarizing his thoughts, albeit not written by him, entitled "The Similarities of Chinese and Indian Languages", was published in Science Supplements.

Edward Vadja's Dené–Yeniseian proposal renewed interest among linguists such as Geoffrey Caveney (2014) to look into support for the Sino–Dené hypothesis. Caveney considered a link between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian to be plausible but did not support the hypothesis that Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dené were related to the Caucasian languages (Sino–Caucasian and Dené–Caucasian).

A 2023 analysis by David Bradley using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics supports a distant genetic link between the Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian language families. Bradley argues that any similarities Sino-Tibetan shares with other language families of the East Asia area such as Hmong-Mien, Altaic (which is actually a sprachbund), Austroasiatic, Kra-Dai, Austronesian came through contact; but as there has been no recent contact between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian language families then any similarities these groups share must be residual.

Other proposals
According to Joseph Greenberg's controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Na-Dené (including Haida) is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas. Contemporary supporters of Greenberg's theory, such as Merritt Ruhlen, have suggested that the Na-Dené language family represents a distinct migration of people from Asia into the New World that occurred six to eight thousand years ago, placing it around four thousand years later than the previous migration into the Americas by Amerind speakers; this remains an unproven hypothesis. Ruhlen speculates that the Na-Dené speakers may have arrived in boats, initially settling near the Haida Gwaii, now in British Columbia, Canada.

Bouda, in various publications in the 1930s through the 1950s, described a linguistic network that (besides Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan) also included Caucasian, and Burushaski, some forms of which have gone by the name of Sino-Caucasian. The works of R. Bleichsteiner and O.G. Tailleur, the late Sergei A. Starostin and Sergei L. Nikolayev have sought to confirm these connections. Others who have developed the hypothesis, often expanded to Dené–Caucasian, include J.D. Bengtson, V. Blažek, J.H. Greenberg (with M. Ruhlen), and M. Ruhlen. George Starostin continues his father's work in Yeniseian, Sino-Caucasian and other fields. This theory is very controversial or viewed as obsolete by other linguists.

Genetics and dispersal
Speakers of the Na-Dene languages, while mostly closely related to other North American indigenous peoples, derive around 10% of their ancestry from a Siberian source closely related to Koryaks not found in other Native American groups. The contact between the ancestors of Na-Dene speakers and this Siberian group is suggested to have occurred around 9,000-5,500 years ago. The urheimat (origin point of the family) has been suggested to have been in Alaska. A large southward migration of Athabaskan peoples is thought to have occurred around 1,000 years ago, resulting in the settlement of southern North America.

Obstruent correspondences
This phonological chart shows where the listed varieties have sounds which are the same, similar, and sometimes different. The sounds shown, obstruents, are a particular class of consonants. Where similarities are found between one or more varieties, this presents at least some evidence of genetic relatedness among those varieties.

Table notes:

 * 1) To prevent cluttering the table, phonemes in the PAET, PAE and PA columns are not asterisked.
 * 2) Leer (2008, 2010) does not reconstruct the PAET affricates,  and . Judging from their rarity, he assumes they may be attributable to the resolution of former consonant clusters.
 * 3) In Athabaskan and Eyak, sibilants can be diminutive variants of shibilants. In Tlingit, on the other hand, shibilants might sometimes be diminutive variants of sibilants. These correspondences are in parentheses.

title: Na-Dene languages


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