Zwierzyniec (; uk, Звежинець, Zvezhynetsʹ) is a town on the

Wieprz The Wieprz (, ; ua, Вепр, Vepr) is a river in central-eastern Poland, a tributary of the Vistula. It is the country's ninth longest river, with a total length of 349 km and a catchment area of 10,497 km2, all within Poland. Its cour ...

river in the

Zamość County __NOTOC__ Zamość County ( pl, powiat zamojski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms ...

Lublin Voivodeship The Lublin Voivodeship, also known as the Lublin Province ( Polish: ''województwo lubelskie'' ), is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in southeastern part of the country. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Lublin, C ...

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 has 3,324 inhabitants (2004). Zwierzyniec is the northernmost town of the

Roztocze National Park __NOTOC__ Roztocze National Park ( pl, Roztoczański Park Narodowy) is a national park in Lublin Voivodeship of southeastern Poland. It protects the most valuable natural areas of the middle part of the Roztocze range. Its current size is , of whic ...

. The park comprises some of the last remaining sections of the primordial forest of

Central Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...

, especially spectacular stand of ancient beech trees (Bukowa Gora). It also is a rail junction, located along the Rejowiec Fabryczny - Hrebenne -

Munina Munina ( uk, Мунина, Munyna) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Jarosław, within Jarosław County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, east of Jarosław. It is a railroad junction, situated on the main Kr ...

connection, with a branch line going westwards, to

Stalowa Wola Stalowa Wola () is the largest city and capital of Stalowa Wola County with a population of 58,545 inhabitants, as of 31 December 2021. It is located in southeastern Poland in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. The city lies in historic Lesser Polan ...

, via

Biłgoraj Biłgoraj ( yi, בילגאריי, ''Bilgoray'', ua, Білґорай) is a town in south-eastern Poland with 25,838 inhabitants as of December 2021. Since 1999 it has been situated in Lublin Voivodeship; it was previously located in Zamość V ...

History

The Zwierzyniec settlement was established in the 16th century by the

Zamoyski The House of Zamoyski (plural: Zamoyscy) is the name of an important Polish noble (szlachta) family, which used the Jelita coat of arms. It is the Polish term for "de Zamość" (Polish "z Zamościa"), the name they originally held as lords of Z ...

family. One of the features here is an artificial lake with a number of small islands - one of them contains monuments of the hounds belonging to the Polish Queen Marysieńka Sobieska ('' primo voto'' Zamoyska). On another island the Zamoyskis built a baroque chapel, which became later the main church of the local Catholic parish. It is now known as the St John Nepomucene's parish church - renovated and expanded in the early 1960s by father Dutkowski. The access to the chapel island is now via a bridge.

World War II

During the

occupation of Poland Occupation commonly refers to: * Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, t ...

in World War Two, Nazi Germans set up a transit camp in Zwierzyniec for the province-wide Action Zamość. The camp processed 20,000-24,000 Poles, with many victims sent to death camps at Auschwitz and

Majdanek Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...

. Race selections based on forcible abduction of children were conducted at Zwierzyniec. The term "

Children of Zamojszczyzna The ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany (german: Aktion Zamosc, also: ''Operation Himmlerstadt'') during World War II was carried out as part of a greater plan of forcible removal of the entire Polish populations from targeted reg ...

" originates from this programme. The town also had a Jewish population of between 1,000 and 1,500 Jews. The first transport of Jews 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; ...

, numbering approximately 52 Jews from Zwierzyniec, Rudka and other surrounding villages, was sent to a death camp in Bełżec in September 1942. A mass extermination of the Jewish population from Zwierzyniec started on October 21, 1942. Some of the Jews were shot dead on the spot; the remaining residents were sent to the railway station at Szczebrzeszyn, from where, together with the Szczebrzeszyn Jews, were sent to a death camp in Bełżec.

Gallery

File:Zwierzyniec browar02.jpg, The Zwierzyniec Brewery building in Zwierzyniec Zwierzyniec1.jpg, The House of the Plenipotentiary (now the head office of

Management) File:PL Stawy Echo.jpg, Echo lake File:Zwierzyniec_-_budynek_Zarządu_Ordynacji_Zamojskich_(02).jpg, Zamoyski Ordinance, location of Nazi German resettlement office for mass deportations

References

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Lublin Voivodeship Zamość County Kholm Governorate Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939)

History

World War II

Gallery

See also

References