Giełczyn is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the administrative district of

Gmina Łomża __NOTOC__ Gmina Łomża is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Łomża County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Łomża, although the town is not part of the territory of the gmina. The gmina covers ...

, within

Łomża County __NOTOC__ Łomża County ( pl, powiat łomżyński) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Podlaskie Voivodeship, north-eastern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local governm ...

Podlaskie Voivodeship Podlaskie Voivodeship or Podlasie Province ( pl, Województwo podlaskie, ) is a voivodeship (province) in northeastern Poland. The name of the province and its territory correspond to the historic region of Podlachia. The capital and largest cit ...

, in north-eastern Poland. It lies approximately south of

Łomża Łomża (), in English known as Lomza, is a city in north-eastern Poland, approximately 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the north-east of Warsaw and west of Białystok. It is situated alongside the Narew river as part of the Podlaskie Voivodeship si ...

and west of the regional capital

Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok Up ...

. The village is located at the north-eastern edge of a large forest complex known as the Red Wood (Czerwony Bór), a place of Polish and Jewish

martyrology A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs and other saints and beati arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by na ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Modern history

Between 1941 and 1944, during Nazi German occupation of Poland, German commandos carried out mass killings of Poles and the

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lo ...

trucked in from the

Łomża Ghetto The Łomża Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto created by on 12 August 1941 in Łomża, Poland; for the purpose of persecution of Polish Jews. Two months after Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Jews were ordered to move there in a s ...

among other places, executed into pits on the outskirts of the Giełczyn forest.Marta Kurkowska - Budzan
"The Second World War In Past And Present Polish Landscape Of Memory."
Jagiellonian University, Institute of History

References

Villages in Łomża County Holocaust locations in Poland Nazi war crimes in Poland {{Łomża-geo-stub