Łaszczów is a town in

Tomaszów Lubelski County Tomaszów may refer to the following places in Poland: * Tomaszów Bolesławiecki, village in Lower Silesian Voivodeship * Tomaszów, Lublin Voivodeship, village in Puławy County * Tomaszów Lubelski County, county in Lublin Voivodeship ** Tom ...

Lublin Voivodeship Lublin Voivodeship ( ) is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in the southeastern part of the country, with its capital being the city of Lublin. The region is named after its largest city and regional capital, Lu ...

, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the

Gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

(administrative district) called

Gmina Łaszczów __NOTOC__ Gmina Łaszczów is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Tomaszów Lubelski County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Łaszczów, which lies approximately east of Tomaszów Lubelski and south-ea ...

. It lies approximately east of

Tomaszów Lubelski Tomaszów Lubelski is a town in south-eastern Poland with 19,365 inhabitants (2017). Situated in the Lublin Voivodeship, near Roztocze National Park, it is the capital of Tomaszów Lubelski County. History The town was founded at the end of the ...

and south-east of the regional capital

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

. The town has a population of 2,341.

History

The history of Łaszczów dates back to 1549, when King

Sigismund II Augustus Sigismund II Augustus (, ; 1 August 1520 – 7 July 1572) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the son of Sigismund I the Old, whom Sigismund II succeeded in 1548. He was the first ruler of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and t ...

allowed Podkomorzy of

Bełz Belz (, ; ; ) is a small city in Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine, located near the Poland–Ukraine border, border with Poland between the Solokiya River (a tributary of the Bug River) and the Richytsia stream. Belz hosts the administration of Belz ...

and

Castellan A castellan, or constable, was the governor of a castle in medieval Europe. Its surrounding territory was referred to as the castellany. The word stems from . A castellan was almost always male, but could occasionally be female, as when, in 1 ...

Horodło Horodło () is a village in Hrubieszów County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Horodło. It lies approximately north-east of Hrubieszów and ...

Aleksander Łaszcz to change his own village of Domaniz into a town of Prawda (named after Prawdzic coat of arms). The royal bill was signed on December 22, 1549, at

Piotrków Trybunalski Piotrków Trybunalski (; also known by #Etymology, alternative names), often simplified to Piotrków, is a city in central Poland with 71,252 inhabitants (2021). It is the capital of Piotrków County and the second-largest city in the Łódź Voi ...

. The town of Prawda was founded next to the village. By the 1570s, its name was changed into Łaszczów (after the Łaszcz family). Łaszczów had

Magdeburg rights Magdeburg rights (, , ; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within cities and villages gr ...

, and during the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...

, became important center of the Polish Brethren. It had a prayer house and a printing shop, which operated until 1603. Łaszczów was a regional trade and business center, but its prosperity ended after

Swedish invasion of Poland The Deluge was a series of mid-17th-century military campaigns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a wider sense, it applies to the period between the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 and the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, comprising the Pol ...

(1655–1660). In 1702, the town was burnt by Swedes, during the

Great Northern War In the Great Northern War (1700–1721) a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern Europe, Northern, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the ant ...

, and in 1745, Józef Łaszcz, owner of Łaszczów, initiated construction of a church and Jesuit collegium. In 1754, Łaszczów burnt in a great fire, after which its owners ordered residents to build brick houses. Following 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, Trawniki was annexed by

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. After the Polish victory in the

Austro-Polish War The Austro-Polish War or Polish-Austrian War was a part of the War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 (a coalition of the Austrian Empire and the United Kingdom against Napoleon's French Empire and allied states). In this war, Polish forces of ...

of 1809 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived

Duchy of Warsaw The Duchy of Warsaw (; ; ), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a First French Empire, French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars. It initially comprised the ethnical ...

. Following the duchy's dissolution in 1815, Łaszczów became part of Russian-controlled

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

. Town rights were revoked by the Tsarist administration in 1870 as part of anti-Polish repressions following the unsuccessful Polish

January Uprising The January Uprising was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at putting an end to Russian occupation of part of Poland and regaining independence. It began on 22 January 1863 and continued until the last i ...

. By 1902, its population grew to 2,600, with Jews in the majority. In 1914, during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, heavy Russian – Austrian fighting took place in the area, and in 1915, Austrians built narrow gauge railroad from

Uhnów Uhniv ( ) is a city in Sheptytskyi Raion, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine. It has a population of 939 as of 2022. Uhniv is the smallest city of Ukraine. It is located from Belz and from Rava-Ruska. It is located next to the Poland–Ukraine ...

Włodzimierz Wołyński Volodymyr (, ), previously known as Volodymyr-Volynskyi () from 1944 to 2021, is a small city in Volyn Oblast, northwestern Ukraine. It serves as the administrative centre of Volodymyr Raion and the center of Volodymyr urban hromada. It is one ...

, via Łaszczów. During the

Invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

by the Germans in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Łaszczów saw Polish–German fighting. Afterwards it was occupied by Germany until 1944. It was the site of two massacres of

Poles Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...

, the first committed by Ukrainian nationalists on June 21, 1941, with 30 victims, and the second committed by the German

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, 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 F ...

and an ethnic Ukrainian SS unit on December 25, 1942 with 75 victims. The 1,500–2,500 Jews from the town were transported to the

Belzec extermination camp Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major p ...

on May 17, 1942. In June 1944, Łaszczów was burnt by the

Ukrainian Insurgent Army The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist partisan formation founded by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) on 14 October 1942. The UPA launched guerrilla warfare against Nazi Germany, the S ...

. Municipal rights were restored on 1 January 2010.

References

;Notes {{Massacres of Poles Cities and towns in Lublin Voivodeship Tomaszów Lubelski County Holocaust locations in Poland Sites of World War II massacres of Poles