Nowa SÅ‚upia is a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
in
Kielce County
__NOTOC__
Kielce County ( pl, powiat kielecki) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local gove ...
,
Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship
The Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, also known as the Świętokrzyskie Province, and the Holy Cross Voivodeship ( pl, województwo świętokrzyskie ) is a voivodeship (province) of Poland situated in southeastern part of the country, in the histo ...
, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the
gmina (administrative district) called
Gmina Nowa SÅ‚upia. It lies approximately east of the regional capital
Kielce.
The town has an approximate population of 1,600.
History
Nowa SÅ‚upia, which in the past was known as SÅ‚up and SÅ‚upia Nowa, has a long and rich history, and used to be a town from 1351 to 1869. The village is located in the
Swietokrzyskie Mountains, at the foothills of
Lysa Gora, the second highest peak of the mountains. Nowa SÅ‚upia borders
Swietokrzyski National Park. The village, which is a junction of three regional roads (751th, 753rd and 756th), is a starting point of several tourist trails.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, Nowa SÅ‚upia belonged to the
Święty Krzyż Benedictine
, image = Medalla San Benito.PNG
, caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal
, abbreviation = OSB
, formation =
, motto = (English: 'Pray and Work')
, foun ...
Abbey, and at that time the village was called SÅ‚up. In 1351, due to efforts of Benedictine
abbot
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The ...
s, King
Kazimierz Wielki
Casimir III the Great ( pl, Kazimierz III Wielki; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, and fought to retain the title in the Galicia-Volhynia Wars. He ...
granted town charter to Slup. The new town’s name was changed into Słupia Nowa, to distinguish it from the nearby village of Słupia, which now is called
Stara SÅ‚upia. SÅ‚upia Nowa developed as a center of services for pilgrims, who headed to Swiety Krzyz. Among the pilgrims, was King
Wladyslaw Jagiello. In 1405, SÅ‚upia received a privilege for weekly
fairs. The town prospered in the period known as
Polish Golden Age
The Polish Golden Age was the Renaissance period in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, roughly corresponding to the period of rule of the King Sigismund I the Old and his son, Sigismund II Augustus, the last of the Jagiellonian Dynasty monar ...
, and in 1578 it had 21 workshops with a mill.
Until the
Partitions of Poland, Nowa SÅ‚upia remained within
Sandomierz Voivodeship
Sandomierz Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo Sandomierskie, la, Palatinatus Sandomirensis) was a unit of administration and local government in Poland from the 14th century to the partitions of Poland in 1772–1795. It was part of the Lesser Polan ...
. The town then briefly belonged to the
Habsburg Empire
The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...
, and in 1815 – 1915, it was part of Russian-controlled
Congress Poland. In 1819, the Swiety Krzyz Abbey was closed, which resulted in decline of the town. In 1869, following the
January Uprising, Nowa SÅ‚upia was reduced to the status of a village, together with several other locations in northern Lesser Poland. Before
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 opposing ...
, the village had the population of 3,350, and was part of
Kielce Voivodeship
Kielce Voivodeship ( pl, województwo kieleckie) is a former unit of administrative division and the local government in Poland. It was originally formed during Poland's return to independence in the aftermath of World War One, and recreated within ...
. In 1929, almost whole village burned in a fire. During the war, Nowa SÅ‚upia was an important center of the
Home Army
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier ZwiÄ…zek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...
and other anti-German organizations. In July 1943, Germans pacified the village, murdering 200 residents.
Currently, Nowa SÅ‚upia is a tourist center, with Mieczyslaw Radwan Museum of Old-Polish
Steel Mills, opened in 1960. Every year, a festival called Dymarki Swietokrzyskie (Holy Cross
Bloomeries) is organized here in mid-August, at an
open-air museum
An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum.
Definition
Open air is “the unconfined atmosphereâ ...
, Archeological – and Cultural Center. One of major local points of interest is the so-called Stone Pilgrim (Kamienny pielgrzym), a stone figure of a kneeling man, located near main entrance to the National Park. According to a legend, the figure once was a vain knight, who went on a pilgrimage to the abbey. Upon hearing the sound of the bells, he stated that they tolled in his honor,
for which he was punished and turned into stone. The figure moves towards the summit at a pace of one grain of sand a year, and it will reach the top at the end of the world. Nowa SÅ‚upia also has the St. Lawrence parish church (1678).
Jewish community
Jews first came to Nowa SÅ‚upia at the end of the 18th century. A wooden synagogue was built in the town in 1858 and soon after Rabbi Efroim Hercyk served as the town's first rabbi. He was the first cousin of
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter (founder of
Ger Hasidism) and brought Ger Hasidism to Nowa SÅ‚upia. In the 1920s, Rabbi Wolf Dawid Dychwald became the town's rabbi and introduced the
Mizrachi movement to the town. In 1929 the town's synagogue burnt down and a new one was built in 1931. The Nowa SÅ‚upia Jewish community served as a hub for Jews in
Dębno
Dębno (german: Neudamm) is a town in Myślibórz County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship in western Poland. As of December 2021, the town has a population of 13,443.
After the Migration Period, the area was populated by West Slavic peoples sinc ...
,
Jeziorko,
Hucisko,
Sosnówka,
Wólka and
Mirocice. Most of the Jews in the town made their living through craft, trade and agriculture and Jews were allowed to participate in Polish guilds. The community had an organized management committee.
During
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, the entirety of the town's Jewish population was murdered.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nowa Slupia
Villages in Kielce County
Kielce Governorate
Kielce Voivodeship (1919–1939)