Ćwiklice (german: Cwiklitz) is a village in the administrative district of

Gmina Pszczyna __NOTOC__ Gmina Pszczyna is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Pszczyna County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. Its seat is the town of Pszczyna, which lies approximately south of the regional capital Katowice. The gmina ...

, within

Pszczyna County __NOTOC__ Pszczyna County ( pl, powiat pszczyński) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government re ...

, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately east of Pszczyna and south of the regional capital

Katowice Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most popul ...

. The village has a population of approximately 2,400.

History

In the Middle Ages, the area was part of the territory of the

Vistulans The Vistulans, or Vistulanians ( pl, Wiślanie), were an early medieval Lechitic tribe inhabiting the western part of modern Lesser Poland."The main tribe inhabiting the reaches of the Upper Vistula and its tributaries was the Vislane (Wislanie) ...

tribe, one of the Polish tribes. It became part of the emerging Polish state in the 10th century. The village was first mentioned in 1326 in the register of

Peter's Pence Peter's Pence (or ''Denarii Sancti Petri'' and "Alms of St Peter") are donations or payments made directly to the Holy See of the Catholic Church. The practice began under the Saxons in England and spread through Europe. Both before and after the ...

payment among Catholic parishes of Oświęcim

deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or residenc ...

of the

Diocese of Kraków In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associat ...

as ''Cviclicz''. In September 1939, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the village, with the Polish 16th Infantry Regiment suffering devastating losses against German panzers, when caught in the open. During the

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...

( World War II), in January 1945, the death march from the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

passed through Ćwiklice, and 42 prisoners (26 women and 16 men) were buried in the village.

Transport

The Voivodeship road 933 runs through the village and the National road 1 runs nearby, west of the village.

References

Villages in Pszczyna County {{Pszczyna-geo-stub