Pustków is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

in the administrative district of

Gmina Dębica __NOTOC__ Gmina Dębica is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Dębica County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Dębica, although the town is not part of the territory of the gmina. The gmina cover ...

, within

Dębica County __NOTOC__ Dębica County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, south-eastern Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998 ...

Subcarpathian Voivodeship Subcarpathian Voivodeship is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship, or province, in the southeastern corner of Poland. Its administrative capital and largest city is Rzeszów. Along with the Marshal, it is governed by the Subcarpathian Regional As ...

, in south-eastern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. It lies approximately north-east of

Dębica Dębica (; ''Dembitz'') is a town in southeastern Poland with 44,692 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the capital of Dębica County. Since 1999 it has been situated in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it had previously been in the Tarnów Voiv ...

and west of the regional capital

Rzeszów Rzeszów ( , ) is the largest city in southeastern Poland. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River in the heartland of the Sandomierz Basin. Rzeszów is the capital of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship and the county seat, seat of Rzeszów C ...

. The settlement is nearly synonymous with the adjacent

Pustków Osiedle Pustków Osiedle is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Dębica, within Dębica County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland (historic Lesser Poland). It lies approximately north-east of Dębica and west of the reg ...

housing estate A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex, housing development, subdivision (land), subdivision or community) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to count ...

built in the 1930s for employees of the mining explosives factory of the Central Industrial Region. The total area of Pustków – the largest village in

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 ...

Dębica – is with 2,925 residents (2003); while the area of Pustków Osiedle – the smallest one – is with comparable number of 2,727 residents in an urban setting.

World War II

Pustków, as well as

were the location of the Nazi German troop-training facility called ''HL-Heidelager'' for the Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS Division "Galician", as well as other collaborationists military formations including Estonian. Their training, included also killing operations inside the camps and Jewish ghettos in the vicinity of Pustków and in the town itself, most notably, at the Pustków and

Szebnie concentration camp Szebnie was a forced-labor camp established during World War II by Nazi Germany in the General Government in the south-eastern part of occupied Poland. It was located near the town of Szebnie approximately east of Jasło and south-west of Rzes ...

nearby.

Heidelager

Locals who lived in the vicinity were evicted already in mid-1940. The ''HL-Heidelager'' Military Training Base known in German as the ''

SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager ''SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager'' was a World War II SS military complex and Nazi concentration camp in Pustków and Pustków Osiedle, Occupied Poland. The Nazi facility was built to train collaborationist military units, including the ...

'' eventually, was set up of

not far from Blizna, using slave labor from the neighboring concentration camp located beneath Królowa Góra mountain, which held 7,000 Jews, 5,000 Soviet POWs, and 3,000 Poles (most of them annihilated before July 1944). The training range was in use since the fall of 1941 under the command of ''SS Oberführer'' Werner von Schele. The title ''Heidelager'' was adjusted from the original ''SS TruppenÜbungsPlatz "Ostpolen"'' on August 25, 1943. The last commandant of the training base was ''SS Oberführer'' Bernhardt Voss until the summer of 1944. The facility resembled a small city with its own narrow gauge railroad, some 3,600 men of different nationalities, cinemas, dining halls, dozens of villas, a newsletter, even a camp brothel staffed by female prisoners from the slave-labor camp nearby, and the hunting parties for the high-ranking officers. This is where the

Galizien Division The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) (; ), commonly referred to as the Galicia Division, was a World War II infantry division (military), division of the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the German Nazi Party, made up predom ...

came into existence. The range was visited by ''

Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest Uniforms and insignia of the Schut ...

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

on September 28, 1943, and abandoned in the summer of 1944 ahead of the Soviet advance.

References

{{Authority control Villages in Dębica County