Łomazy is a village in

Biała Podlaska County Biała (the feminine form of Polish ''biały'' 'white') may refer to: Cities and towns in Poland Greater Poland Voivodeship (west-central Poland) *Biała, Gmina Trzcianka *Biała, Gmina Wieleń *Biała, Kalisz County *Biała, Konin County Łódź ...

Lublin Voivodeship The Lublin Voivodeship, also known as the Lublin Province ( Polish: ''województwo lubelskie'' ), is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in southeastern part of the country. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Lublin, C ...

, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Łomazy. It lies approximately south of

Biała Podlaska Biała Podlaska ( la, Alba Ducalis) is a city in eastern Poland with 56,498 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is situated in the Lublin Voivodeship (since 1999), having previously been the capital of Biała Podlaska Voivodeship (1975–1998). ...

and north-east of the regional capital

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...

. The village has a population of 1,700.

History

Łomazy was first mentioned in a document written in 1447. It was conveniently located on the trade route from

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 159 ...

Wilno Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urba ...

. The settlement received city rights in 1568 from the Polish king Zygmunt August. After the foreign partitions of Poland in 1795 Łomazy was incorporated into the

Austrian Partition The Austrian Partition ( pl, zabór austriacki) comprise the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth acquired by the Habsburg monarchy during the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. The three partitions were cond ...

first, than to the

Russian Partition The Russian Partition ( pl, zabór rosyjski), sometimes called Russian Poland, constituted the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were annexed by the Russian Empire in the course of late-18th-century Partitions of P ...

after the period of Polish insurrections against the foreign powers. The Russian

tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the te ...

stripped Łomazy of its city rights in 1870 in retaliation for the successful Polish attack on the local Russian garrison during the

January Uprising The January Uprising ( pl, powstanie styczniowe; lt, 1863 metų sukilimas; ua, Січневе повстання; russian: Польское восстание; ) was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at ...

of 1863.

20th century

Following the First World War Łomazy became part of the Lublin Voivodeship (1919–39) in the reborn sovereign

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

. The economic situation was very difficult resulting to sizable migration. Poverty and hunger contributed to the growing tensions between Christians and Jews split in half evenly by population numbers, which in turn led to a disturbance in May 1934 requiring police intervention. Jews settled in Łomazy already in mid-16th century. During the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the onset of World War II, Łomazy was taken over by the Red Army and passed on to the Germans in the Nazi-Soviet boundary treaty. A Jewish exploitation ghetto was created in Łomazy in early 1940. Two years later, the village was the site of a mass murder of all ghettoized Jews by the paramilitary Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the Nazi German ''

Ordnungspolizei The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (), abbreviated ''Orpo'', meaning "Order Police", were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo organisation was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdictio ...

'' (Order Police) aided by the specially trained Ukrainian ''Hilfswillige'' known as Trawnikis. The killings took place on August 17 or 19, 1942 in the nearby Hały forest, but also in the homes during roundups. According to different sources some 1,000–2,000 Jews (1,700 according to German documents) were massacred in Łomazy in one day of killings which lasted until the late evening. After the war a memorial was erected at the site commemorating the perished Jewish citizens of the town.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lomazy Villages in Biała Podlaska County Brest Litovsk Voivodeship category:Siedlce Governorate Kholm Governorate Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939) Holocaust locations in Poland