Raszków is a town in

Ostrów Wielkopolski County Ostrów (Polish for "river island") may refer to: Places Poland ; Greater Poland Voivodeship * Ostrów Wielkopolski, a town in Greater Poland Voivodeship (west-central Poland) * Ostrów, Greater Poland Voivodeship in Greater Poland Voivodeship ...

Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( ) is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. The province is named after the region called Greater Poland (''Wielkopolska'' ). The modern province includes most of this historic re ...

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 ...

, with 2,080 inhabitants (2010).

History

Raszków 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 1444. It was a

private town Private towns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were privately owned towns within the lands owned by magnates, bishops, knights and princes, among others. Amongst the most well-known former private magnate towns are Białystok, Zamość, R ...

, administratively located in the Kalisz County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. After the

Second Partition of Poland The 1793 Second Partition of Poland was the second of partitions of Poland, three partitions (or partial annexations) that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The second partition (politics), partition occurred i ...

in 1793, the town was annexed by the

Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (, ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. It played a signif ...

, within which it became part of the newly formed province of

South Prussia South Prussia (; ) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1793 to 1807 created out of territory annexed in the Second Partition of Poland. History South Prussia was created out of territory annexed in the Second Partition of Poland and i ...

. Regained by Poles after the successful

Greater Poland uprising of 1806 Greater Poland uprising of 1806 was a Polish military insurrection which occurred in the region of Wielkopolska, also known as Greater Poland, against the occupying Prussian forces after the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1 ...

, it was included in the short-lived Polish

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 ...

, and in 1815 it was re-annexed by Prussia, within which it was part of the initially semi-autonomous

Grand Duchy of Poznań The Grand Duchy of Posen (; ) was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, created from territories annexed by Prussia after the Partitions of Poland, and formally established following the Congress of Vienna in 1815. On 9 February 1849, the Prussian a ...

and later of the

Province of Posen The Province of Posen (; ) was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920, occupying most of the historical Greater Poland. The province was established following the Greater Poland Uprising (1848), Poznań Uprisi ...

. The Jewish population of the town was 214 people in 1839, but by 1905 it had dropped to 84 people, comprising 5% of the total population of 1,658. After the end of the First World War, Raszków became part of

Poznań Voivodeship Poznań Voivodeship was the name of several former administrative regions (''województwo'', rendered as ''voivodeship'' and usually translated as "province") in Poland, centered on the city of Poznań, although the exact boundaries changed over t ...

, in reborn Poland. Following the joint German-Soviet

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 ...

, which started

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 ...

in September 1939, the town was occupied by Germany until 1945. In October and December 1939, the occupiers carried out the first expulsions of Poles, families of officials and owners of larger houses and workshops, which were then handed over to

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

colonists as part of the ''

Lebensraum (, ) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch movement, ''Völkisch'' nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' beca ...

'' policy. Expelled Poles were deported to transit camps in Nowe Skalmierzyce and Mikstat, and then to the

General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...

in the more-eastern part of German-occupied Poland. The Polish resistance was active in Raszków. In November 1944, the commander of the Przygodzice unit of the

Home Army The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...

, was arrested by the

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 ...

in Raszków. From 1975 to 1998, Raszków belonged to the Kalisz Voivodeship.

Demographics

Notable residents

Berthold Kempinski Berthold Kempinski (10 October 1843 – 14 March 1910) was a Prussian wine merchant, restaurateur and hotelier. Biography Kempinski was born in Raschkow, Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (Raszków, Poland), he became a travelling sales ...

(1843-1910), German hotelier * Anna Jasińska (1867-1957), Polish activist * (1888-1940), Polish gynaecologist, military officer, victim of the

Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...

during

* (1921-2009), Polish artist, scenic designer, prisoner of

Nazi German concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hit ...

during World War II * Tobiasz Pawlak (born 1995), Polish cyclist

References

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Greater Poland Voivodeship Ostrów Wielkopolski County