Bolesławiec 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 ...

Wieruszów County __NOTOC__ Wieruszów County ( pl, powiat wieruszowski) 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 ...

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 south-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Bolesławiec. It lies approximately south of

Wieruszów Wieruszów (; german: Weruschau) is a town in south-central Poland with 8,446 inhabitants (2020). Situated in the southwestern part of Łódź Voivodeship, it is the seat of the Gmina Wieruszów and Wieruszów County. The town is situated along ...

and south-west 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 cant ...

. The village has an approximate population of 900.

History

The town and castle were founded by Duke of Greater Poland Bolesław the Pious of the Piast dynasty. The town was named after him. The castle was captured by King John of Bohemia, but was regained by Polish King

Casimir III the Great 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 ...

in 1335. Casimir III then partially rebuilt and strengthened the castle. During the Swedish invasion of Poland of 1655–1660, it was captured by the Swedes, however, it was later renovated by local starost Jan Radziejowski. Following the joint German-Soviet

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 aft ...

, 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

in 1939, Bolesławiec was occupied by Germany. Before the war, more than 500 Jews lived in Bolesławiec. Until August 1941, the village's Jews were murdered by the occupiers in 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; ...

, and some were deported to larger Jewish concentrations in the area, and they too were eventually murdered.The story of the Bolesławiec community
/ref> The occupiers initially renamed the village to ''Klein Buntzlau'', and in 1943, to ''Bolkenburg''. After the end of German occupation in 1945, the original name was restored.

References

Villages in Wieruszów County Sieradz Voivodeship (1339–1793) Kalisz Governorate Łódź Voivodeship (1919–1939) Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust {{Wieruszów-geo-stub