Piątek 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 o ...

Łęczyca County __NOTOC__ Łęczyca County ( pl, powiat łęczycki) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Łódź Voivodeship, central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government ref ...

Łódź Voivodeship Łódź Voivodeship (also known as Lodz Province, or by its Polish name ''Województwo łódzkie'' ) is a province- voivodeship in central Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 out of the former Łódź Voivodeship (1975–1999) and the Sier ...

, in central

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. It is the seat of the

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' , from German ''Gemeinde'' meaning ''commune'') is the principal unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,477 gminas throughout the country, encompassing over 4 ...

(administrative district) called Gmina Piątek. It lies approximately east of Łęczyca and north of the regional capital

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...

. The town has a population of 1,690. It is claimed to lie at the "geometrical centre" of Poland, although it is not the true

geographical centre In geography, the centroid of the two-dimensional shape of a region of the Earth's surface (projected radially to sea level or onto a geoid surface) is known as its geographic centre or geographical centre or (less commonly) gravitational centre. I ...

– it is the centre determined as the intersection of the

great circle In mathematics, a great circle or orthodrome is the circular intersection of a sphere and a plane passing through the sphere's center point. Any arc of a great circle is a geodesic of the sphere, so that great circles in spherical geome ...

diagonals of a rectangle formed by lines of

latitude and longitude The geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or ellipsoidal coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on the Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various ...

passing through the four

extreme points of Poland This is a list of the extreme points of Poland, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location. Latitude and longitude * Northernmost point: *: A beach in Jastrzębia Góra, near the town Władysławowo, P ...

History

The name Piątek, Polish for "

Friday Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries that adopt the traditional "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth day of the week. In countries adopting the ISO-defined "Monday-first" convention, it is the fifth d ...

", comes from the day on which the weekly market was held. Piątek was granted town rights before 1339. It was a private church town administratively located in the

Łęczyca Voivodeship Łęczyca Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo łęczyckie) was a unit of administrative division and local government in Poland from the 14th century until the partitions of Poland in 1772–1795. It was part of Province of Greater Poland, and its capit ...

in the

Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown Greater Poland Province ( pl, Prowincja Wielkopolska) was an administrative division of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from 1569 until 1795. The name of the province comes from the historic land of Greater Poland. The Greater Poland Province c ...

. One of two main routes connecting

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

and

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

ran through the town in the 18th century and Kings

Augustus II the Strong Augustus II; german: August der Starke; lt, Augustas II; in Saxony also known as Frederick Augustus I – Friedrich August I (12 May 16701 February 1733), most commonly known as Augustus the Strong, was Elector of Saxony from 1694 as well as K ...

and

Augustus III of Poland Augustus III ( pl, August III Sas, lt, Augustas III; 17 October 1696 5 October 1763) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1733 until 1763, as well as Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire where he was known as Frederick Aug ...

often traveled that route. During the German

Invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

, which started

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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

in 1939,

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

soldiers on 13 September took 50 males (43

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in ...

and 7

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

) out of homes and ordered them to repair a damaged bridge. After the work was completed the German soldiers shot all of them. Another massacre took place later in which 50 Jews were executed. Before the war around 1,300 Jews lived in Piątek. Under

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 ...

, already in September 1939, a few hundred fled. In late 1940, the remaining 840 Jews were confined to a

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished ...

and stripped of their possessions. Many Jews in the Piątek ghetto died of starvation and disease due to limited food and severe overcrowding. In 1941, hundreds were taken to

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

camps. In 1942, German police began randomly shooting Jews and in August 1942 rounded them up and shot those who were ill and elderly in the local cemetery. Others were sent to the Lodz ghetto. Most were sent to the

Chełmno extermination camp , known for = , location = Near Chełmno nad Nerem, ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (German-occupied Poland) , built by = , operated by = , commandant = Herbert Lange, Christian Wirth , original use = , construction = , in operatio ...

where they were immediately gassed. Only a few of Piątek's Jews survived the war.

Points of interest

The most precious cultural heritage monument is the Gothic-Baroque church of the Holy Trinity, which dates back to the 15th century. Other historic structures include the Mariavite Church and the ''Park Miejski'' ("Municipal Park").

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piatek, Lodz Voivodeship Łęczyca County Kalisz Governorate Łódź Voivodeship (1919–1939) Massacres in Poland Germany–Poland relations Nazi war crimes in Poland Holocaust locations in Poland Cities and towns in Łódź Voivodeship