Wyszków (; yi, ווישקאָוו ''Vishkov'') is a town in eastern

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 ...

with 26,500 inhabitants (2018). It is the capital of

Wyszków County __NOTOC__ Wyszków County ( pl, powiat wyszkowski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Masovian Voivodeship, east-central Poland. It originally existed from 1956 until the abolition of the powiats in 1975, but w ...

Masovian Voivodeship The Masovian Voivodeship, also known as the Mazovia Province ( pl, województwo mazowieckie ) is a voivodeship (province) in east-central Poland, with its capital located in the city of Warsaw, which also serves as the capital of the country. Th ...

History

The village of Wyszków was first documented in 1203. It was granted

town rights Town privileges or borough rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium. The city law customary in Central Europe probably dates back to Italian models, which in turn were oriented towards the tradition ...

in 1502. It was administratively located in the Kamieniec County in the

in the Greater Poland Province of the

Kingdom of Poland The Kingdom of Poland ( pl, Królestwo Polskie; Latin: ''Regnum Poloniae'') was a state in Central Europe. It may refer to: Historical political entities * Kingdom of Poland, a kingdom existing from 1025 to 1031 * Kingdom of Poland, a kingdom exi ...

. It was destroyed during the Swedish invasion of Poland ( Second Northern War) in 1655–1660, and it lost its significance in the region. It was annexed by

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

in the

Third Partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polis ...

in 1795. In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Polish

Duchy of Warsaw The Duchy of Warsaw ( pl, Księstwo Warszawskie, french: Duché de Varsovie, german: Herzogtum Warschau), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during ...

, and in 1815 it passed to Russian-controlled Congress Poland. In 1870 it was deprived of its town rights, as one of many Polish town punished by the Russians for the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising. Industry developed after 1897, when the Pilawa- Tłuszcz-

Ostrołęka , image_flag = POL Ostrołęka flag.svg , image_shield = POL Ostrołęka COA.svg , pushpin_map = Poland Masovian Voivodeship#Poland , pushpin_label_position = bottom , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = ...

railway was built. In 1918 Poland regained independence and control of Wyszków, and in 1919 town rights were restored. Uroczystosci 1921

During the

Polish–Soviet War The Polish–Soviet War (Polish–Bolshevik War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Russian War 1919–1921) * russian: Советско-польская война (''Sovetsko-polskaya voyna'', Soviet-Polish War), Польский фронт (' ...

, on August 17, 1920, the Russian Cheka murdered seven

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 C ...

in the present-day district of . Poles led by Mikołaj Bołtuć defeated the invading Russians in the on August 18, 1920. Fierce fights between the Poles and the invading Germans took place in the area on September 8-10, 1939 at the beginning of

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 ...

. On September 9, 1939, the Germans committed a massacre of 65

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 ...

in Wyszków, and a massacre of a dozen or so

from Wyszków near the village of Pniewo (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 ...

''). The town was then occupied by Germany, which made it part of the Warsaw District of the General Government. Before the war 45% of Wyszków's population of 12,000 were Jewish; after the war there were none. The Germans killed over 7,000 inhabitants of Wyszków, including 5,000 Jews, and operated a forced labour camp for

Soviet prisoners of war The following articles deal with Soviet prisoners of war. * Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–24) * Soviet prisoners of war in Finland during World War II (1939–45) * Nazi crimes against Soviet prisoners of war during Wor ...

. Nevertheless, the Polish resistance movement was active in the area. After the occupation, the town was restored to Poland, although with a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the

Fall of Communism The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nat ...

in the 1980s. The communists destroyed pre-war memorials dedicated to Poles killed during the Polish–Soviet War in 1920.Kowalski, pp. 155, 170–171 In post-war Poland, the town was administratively part of the Warsaw Voivodeship until 1975, and the

Ostrołęka Voivodeship Ostrołęka Voivodeship () was a unit of administrative division and local government in Poland in the period 1975–1998. It was superseded by Masovian Voivodeship. Ostrołęka. Major cities and towns ''Population on 31 December 1998.'' * ...

from 1975 to 1998. In 1961, Rybienko Leśne was included within Wyszków's town limits as a new district. On 14 September 1997 a memorial to

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; ...

victims was unveiled in Wyszków. It is made of reclaimed Jewish gravestones that had been removed from the site in 1939 by German forces, who used them as paving stones and to build the local

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

headquarters. Scores of these desecrated tombstones were recovered and incorporated as part of the monument. A monument of Polish mathematician and cryptologist

Jerzy Różycki Jerzy Witold Różycki (; Vilshana, Ukraine, 24 July 1909 – 9 January 1942, Mediterranean Sea, near the Balearic Islands) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World ...

was unveiled in 2018.

Sports

The most notable local sport clubs are football team and

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

team . Both compete in the lower leagues.

Wyszków in culture

Wyszków is the setting of the song ''Wyszków Tonie'' (lit. ''Wyszków is Sinking'') by Polish rock band ''Elektryczne Gitary'', released in the 1993 album ''A Ty Co''. It uses sinking as an extended metaphor for succumbing to alcoholism.

Notable people

Mordechaj Anielewicz Mordechai Anielewicz ( he, מרדכי אנילביץ'; 1919 – 8 May 1943) was the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization ( pl, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), which led the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; the largest Jewish insurrection duri ...

(1919–1943), leader of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany' ...

* Jarosław Kalinowski (born 1962), Polish politician * Berek Lajcher (1893–1943), Polish-Jewish physician and activist * Lanberry (born 1987), Polish singer and songwriter *

(1909–1942), Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma machine ciphers before and during World War II; spent part of his childhood and graduated from high school in Wyszków.

International relations

Twin towns — sister cities

Wyszków is twinned with: *

Kohtla-Järve Kohtla-Järve is a city and municipality in northeastern Estonia, founded in 1924 and incorporated as a town in 1946. The city is highly industrial, and is both a processor of oil shales and is a large producer of various petrochemical products ...

, Estonia

References

External links

Jewish Community in Wyszków
on Virtual Shtetl {{DEFAULTSORT:Wyszkow Cities and towns in Masovian Voivodeship Masovian Voivodeship (1526–1795) Łomża Governorate Warsaw Voivodeship (1919–1939) Wyszków County Holocaust locations in Poland