Place:Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz, Poland

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source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bydgoszcz (, ; ; formerly ) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021^[1] and an urban agglomeration with more than 470,000 inhabitants, Bydgoszcz is the eighth-largest city in Poland. It is the seat of Bydgoszcz County and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.

The city is part of the Bydgoszcz–Toruń metropolitan area, which totals over 850,000 inhabitants. Bydgoszcz is the seat of Casimir the Great University, University of Technology and Life Sciences and a conservatory, as well as the Medical College of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. It also hosts the Pomeranian Philharmonic concert hall, the Opera Nova opera house, and Bydgoszcz Airport. Being between the Vistula and Oder (Odra in Polish) rivers, and by the Bydgoszcz Canal, the city is connected via the Noteć, Warta, Elbe and German canals with the Rhine, a river linked to the Mediterranean and Black Seas by canals and flowing into the North Sea.

Bydgoszcz is an architecturally rich city, with gothic, neo-gothic, neo-baroque, neoclassicist, modernist and Art Nouveau styles present, for which it has earned the nickname of Little Berlin. The notable granaries on Mill Island and along the riverside belong to one of the most recognized timber-framed landmarks in Poland.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Early history and royal city

During the early Slavic period a fishing settlement called Bydgozcya ("Bydgostia" in Latin), became a stronghold on the Vistula trade routes. The gród of Bydgoszcz was built between 1037 and 1053 during the reign of Casimir I the Restorer. In the 13th century it was the site of a castellany, mentioned in 1238, probably founded in the early 12th century during the reign of Bolesław III Wrymouth. In the 13th century, the church of Saint Giles was built as the first church of Bydgoszcz. The Germans subsequently demolished it in the late 19th century.^[2]

During the Polish–Teutonic War (1326–1332), the city was captured and destroyed by the Teutonic Knights in 1330. Briefly regained by Poland, it was occupied by the Teutonic Knights from 1331 to 1337 and annexed to their monastic state as Bromberg. In 1337, it was recaptured by Poland and was relinquished by the Knights in 1343 at their signing of the Treaty of Kalisz along with Dobrzyń and the remainder of Kuyavia. King Casimir III of Poland, granted Bydgoszcz city rights (charter) on 19 April 1346. The king granted a number of privileges, regarding river trade on the Brda and Vistula and the right to mint coins, and ordered the construction of the castle, which became the seat of the castellan. Bydgoszcz was an important royal city of Poland located in the Inowrocław Voivodeship.

The city increasingly saw an influx of Jews after that date. In 1555, however, due to pressure from the clergy, the Jews were expelled and returned only with their annexation to Prussia in 1772. After 1370, Bydgoszcz castle was the favourite residence of the grandson of the king and his would-be successor Duke Casimir IV, who died there in 1377.^[3] In 1397 thanks to Queen Jadwiga of Poland, a Carmelite convent was established in the city, the third in Poland after Gdańsk and Kraków.^[3]

During the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War in 1409 the city was briefly captured by the Teutonic Knights.^[2] In the mid-15th century, during the Thirteen Years' War, King Casimir IV of Poland often stayed in Bydgoszcz. At that time, the defensive walls were built^[2] and the Gothic parish church (the present-day Bydgoszcz Cathedral). The city was developing dynamically thanks to river trade. Bydgoszcz pottery and beer were popular throughout Poland. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Bydgoszcz was a significant location for wheat trading, one of the largest in Poland.^[2] The first mention of a school in Bydgoszcz is from 1466.^[2]

In 1480, a Bernardine monastery was established in Bydgoszcz.^[3] The Bernardines erected a new Gothic church and founded a library, part of which has survived to this day.^[3] A Sejm of the Kingdom of Poland was held in Bydgoszcz in 1520. In 1522, after a decision taken by the Polish king, a salt depot was established in Bydgoszcz, the second in the region after Toruń.^[2] In 1594, Stanisław Cikowski founded a private mint, which in the early 17th century was transformed into a royal mint, one of the leading mints in Poland.^[3]

In 1621, on the occasion of the Polish victory over the Ottoman Empire at Chocim, one of the most valuable and largest coins in the history of Europe was minted in Bydgoszcz – 100 ducats of Sigismund III Vasa.^[3] In 1617 the Jesuits came to the city, and subsequently established a Jesuit college.^[2]

During the year 1629, shortly before the end of the Polish-Swedish War of 1626–29, the town was conquered by Swedish troops led by king Gustav II Adolph of Sweden personally. During this war, the town suffered destruction. The town was conquered a second and third time by Sweden in 1656 and 1657 during the Second Northern War. On the latter occasion, the castle was destroyed completely and has since remained a ruin. After the war only 94 houses were inhabited, 103 stood empty and 35 had burned down. The suburbs had also been considerably damaged.

The Treaty of Bromberg, agreed in 1657 by King John II Casimir Vasa of Poland and Elector Frederick William II of Brandenburg-Prussia, created a military alliance between Poland and Prussia while marking the withdrawal of Prussia from its alliance with Sweden.

After the Convocation Sejm of 1764, Bydgoszcz became one of three seats of the Crown Tribunal for the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown alongside Poznań and Piotrków Trybunalski.^[2] In 1766 royal cartographer Franciszek Florian Czaki, during a meeting of the Committee of the Crown Treasury in Warsaw, proposed a plan of building a canal, which would connect the Vistula via the Brda with the Noteć river. Józef Wybicki, Polish jurist and political activist best known as the author of the lyrics of the national anthem of Poland, worked at the Crown Tribunal in Bydgoszcz.

Late modern period

In 1772, in the First Partition of Poland, the town was acquired by the Kingdom of Prussia as Bromberg and incorporated into the Netze District in the newly established province of West Prussia. At the time, the town was seriously depressed and semi-derelict. Under Frederick the Great the town revived, notably with the construction of a canal from Bromberg to Nakel (Nakło) which connected the north-flowing Vistula River via the Brda to the west-flowing Noteć, which in turn flowed to the Oder via the Warta. During the Kościuszko Uprising, in 1794 the city was briefly recaptured by Poles, commanded by General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski,^[3] and the local Polish administration was co-organized by Józef Wybicki.^[4]

In 1807, after the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon and the signing of the Treaty of Tilsit, Bydgoszcz became part of the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw. With Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Nations in 1815, the town was re-annexed by Prussia as part of the Grand Duchy of Posen (Poznań), becoming the capital of the Bromberg Region. In 1871 the Province of Posen, along with the rest of the Kingdom of Prussia, became part of the newly formed German Empire. During German rule, the oldest church of the city (church of Saint Giles), the remains of the castle,^[2][3] and the Carmelite church and monastery were demolished.

In the mid-19th century, the city saw the arrival of the Prussian Eastern Railway. The first stretch, from Schneidemühl (Piła), was opened in July 1851.

During World War I, Poles in Bydgoszcz formed secret organizations, preparing to regain control of the city in the event of Poland regaining its independence. After the war, Bydgoszcz was assigned to the recreated Polish state by the 1919 Versailles Treaty. Now officially Bydgoszcz again, the city belonged to the Poznań Voivodeship. The local populace was required to acquire Polish citizenship or leave the country. This led to a drastic decline in ethnically German residents (German minority in Poland), whose number within the town decreased to 11,016 in 1926. A Nazi German youth organization was subsequently founded, which distributed Nazi propaganda books from Germany among the German minority. In 1938, the city was made part of the Polish Greater Pomerania.

World War II

During the invasion of Poland, at the beginning of World War II, on September 1, 1939, Germany carried out air raids on the city. The Polish 15th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Bydgoszcz, fought off German attacks on September 2, but on September 3 was forced to retreat. During the withdrawal of Poles, as part of the diversion planned by Germany, local Germans opened fire on Polish soldiers and civilians. Polish soldiers and civilians were forced into a defensive battle in which several hundred people were killed on both sides. The event, referred to as the Bloody Sunday by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, which exaggerated the number of victims to 5,000 "defenceless" Germans, was used as an excuse to carry out dozens of mass executions of Polish residents in the Old Town Market Square and in the Valley of Death.^[2][3] Only on September 3–10, 1939, the Germans executed 192 Poles in the city.

On September 5, while the Wehrmacht entered the city, German-Polish skirmishes still took place in the Szwederowo district, and the German occupation of the city began. The German Einsatzgruppe IV, Einsatzkommando 16 and SS-Totenkopf-Standarte "Brandenburg" entered the city to commit atrocities against the Polish population, and afterwards some of its members co-formed the local German police. Many of the murders were carried out as part of the Intelligenzaktion, aimed at exterminating the Polish elites and preventing the establishment of a Polish resistance movement. On September 24, the local German Kreisleiter called local Polish city officials to a supposed formal meeting in the city hall, from where they were taken to a nearby forest and exterminated. The Kreisleiter also ordered the execution of their family members to "avoid creating martyrs".^[5] By decision from September 5, 1939, one of the first three German special courts in occupied Poland was established in Bydgoszcz.

The Germans established several camps and prisons for Poles.^[6] As of September 30, 1939, over 3,000 individuals were imprisoned there, and in October and November, the Germans carried out further mass arrests of over 7,200 people. Many of those people were then murdered. Poles from Bydgoszcz were massacred at various locations in the city, at the Valley of Death and in the nearby village of Tryszczyn.^[7] The victims were both men and women, including activists, school principals, teachers, priests, local officials, merchants, lawyers, and also boy and girl scouts, gymnasium students and children as young as 12. The executions were presented as punishment for supposedly "murdering Germans" and "destroying peace", and were used by Nazi propaganda to show the world that it was alleged "Polish terror" that forced Hitler to start the war.^[7] On the Polish National Independence Day, November 11, 1939, the Germans symbolically publicly executed Leon Barciszewski, the mayor of Bydgoszcz. On November 17, 1939, the commander of the local SD-EK unit declared there was no more Polish intelligentsia capable of resistance in the city.^[8]

The city was annexed to the newly formed province of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia as the seat of the district or county (kreis) of Bromberg. However, the annexation was not recognised in international law. Extermination of the inhabitants continued throughout the war, and in total, around 10,000 inhabitants, mostly Poles, but also Polish Jews, were killed.^[2] Some Polish inhtabitants were also murdered in the village of Jastrzębie in January 1940, and local teachers were also among Polish teachers murdered in both Mauthausen and Dachau concentration camps. The history of Jews in Bydgoszcz ended with the German invasion of Poland and the Holocaust. The city's Jewish citizens, who constituted a small community in the city (about two percent of the prewar population) and many of whom spoke German, were sent to extermination camps or murdered in the town itself. The city renamed Bromberg was the site of Bromberg-Ost, a women's subcamp of the Stutthof concentration camp. A deportation camp was situated in Smukała village, now part of Bydgoszcz. On February 4, 1941, the first mass transport of 524 Poles came to the Potulice concentration camp from Bydgoszcz. The local train station was one of the locations, where Polish children aged 12 and over were sent from the Potulice concentration camp to slave labor. The children reloaded freight trains.^[9]

During the occupation, the Germans destroyed some of the city's historic buildings to erect new structures in the Nazi style.^[3] The Germans built a huge secret dynamite factory (DAG Fabrik Bromberg) hidden in a forest in which they used the slave labor of several hundred forced laborers,^[3] including Allied prisoners of war from the Stalag XX-A POW camp in Toruń.

In 1943, local Poles managed to save some kidnapped Polish children from the Zamość region, by buying them from the Germans at the local train station.

In spring 1945, Bydgoszcz was occupied by the advancing Red Army. Those German residents who had survived were expelled and the city was returned to Poland.

Post-war period

In the same year 1945, the city was made the seat of the Pomeranian Voivodship, the northern part of which was soon separated to form Gdańsk Voivodship. The remaining part of the Pomeranian Voivodship was renamed Bydgoszcz Voivodeship in 1950. In 1973, the former town of Fordon, located on the left bank of the Vistula, was included in the city limits^[10] and became the easternmost district of Bydgoszcz. In March 1981, Solidarity's activists were violently suppressed in Bydgoszcz.

Currently, Bydgoszcz is the biggest center of NATO headquarters in Poland, the most known being the Joint Force Training Centre.

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