Ligota - Panewniki (german: Ellgoth-Panewnik; also "Idaweiche") is a district of Katowice in

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 an area of 12.59 km² and in 2007 had 31,879 inhabitants. Ligota-Panewniki is famous due to the magnificen
Franciscan Basilica
the headquarters of the Franciscan Assumption Province in Poland. During Christmas the church becomes a religious and tourist attraction due to its Christmas Nativity scene, which supposedly is the biggest in Europe. In September 1939, Panewniki was one of the sites of large massacres of Polish defenders of Katowice, carried out by the Germans following the

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 ...

(see ''

Nazi crimes against the Polish nation Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, consisted of the murder of ...

''). During the subsequent

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 an ...

, the occupiers operated two forced labour camps in Ligota: one for Poles ('' Polenlager''), and one for Jews.

Famous people

* Jerzy Kukuczka

Gallery

Basilica Panewniki facade.jpg, Facade of the Basilica of Saint Louis in Panewniki Katowice Franciszkańska25 Biblioteka.jpg, Library in Ligota KokociniecResidential.jpg, Modern housing in Kokociniec Pomnik Edmunda Bojanowskiego w Panewnikach.jpg, Edmund Bojanowski monument in Panewniki

References

Districts of Katowice Nazi war crimes in Poland {{Silesian-geo-stub