Firlej 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 ...

Lubartów County __NOTOC__ Lubartów County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its ...

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 Firlej __NOTOC__ Gmina Firlej is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Lubartów County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Firlej, which lies approximately north-west of Lubartów and north of the regional capital L ...

. It lies approximately north-west of

Lubartów Lubartów () is a town in eastern Poland, with 23,000 inhabitants (2004), situated in Lublin Voivodeship. It is the capital of Lubartów County and the Lubartów Commune. Historically it belongs to Lesser Poland. Lubartów was established in 154 ...

and north 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 ...

. It is situated close to Lake Firlej. In 2004 the village had a population of 1,001.

History

The town Firlej was founded by Mikołaj Firlej in 1557. From the beginning the town has typical agriculture and handicraft character. The other owners of Firlej were the families of

Zalewski Zalewski (feminine: Zalewska, plural: Zalewscy) is a Polish-language surname. The surname comes from a topographic name for someone who lived by a flood plain, bay, or any other small body of water. Two locations that this may be connected to ar ...

Lubomirski The House of Lubomirski is a Princely Houses of Poland, Polish princely family. The Lubomirski family's coat of arms is the Drużyna coat of arms, which is similar to the Szreniawa coat of arms but without a cross. Origin and the coat ...

and

Sanguszko The House of Sanguszko is a Polish and Lithuanian noble and aristocratic family of Lithuanian and Ruthenian origin, connected to the Gediminid dynasty. Like other princely houses of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, its origins are considered m ...

. In 1839 the town belonged to the president of

Bank Polski The Bank Polski (), sometimes referred to as the "First Bank of Poland" to distinguish it from its 20th-century namesake, was a public bank in Congress Poland. It was created in 1828, initially with a broad scope of activities that soon started s ...

- Mr

Henryk Łubieński Henryk Jan Nepomucen Łubieński, Pomian coat of arms, (11 July 1793, in Prague – 17 September 1883, in Wiskitki, Poland) – was the scion of a Polish magnate family, landowner, financier, lawyer, early industrialist, economic activist, and ...

, who grounded the first factory of tools and agriculture machines in

area. After 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, it 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 ...

. Following 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 ...

. After its dissolution in 1815, Firlej passed to the

Russian Partition The Russian Partition (), 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 Poland. The Russian ac ...

of Poland. Firlej took part in uprising fights in

1831 Events January–March * January 1 – William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing '' The Liberator'', an anti-slavery newspaper, in Boston, Massachusetts. * January 10 – Japanese department store, Takashimaya in Kyoto estab ...

and in

1863 Events January * January 1 – Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation during the third year of the American Civil War, making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate States of America an official war goal. The signing ...

. The town had lost his rights because of

patriotism Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to one's country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, politic ...

of its citizens in 1869. Battles 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 ...

brought heavy damage to the town. After the war, in 1918, Poland regained independence and control of Firlej. In the first half of August 1920 in Firlej, marshal

Józef Piłsudski Józef Klemens Piłsudski (; 5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (Poland), Chief of State (1918–1922) and first Marshal of Poland (from 1920). In the aftermath of World War I, he beca ...

inspected the Polish troops going to the east. During German Nazi occupation Firlej was an area of activity of A.K. division of captain T. Pośpiech. On 8 June 1944, the German gendarmerie, SS and Ukrainian auxiliaries murdered five local Poles, four men and one woman, suspected of resistance activities. The town was liberated on 22 July 1944 by the 27th Home Army Infantry Division.

Agrotourism

The lack of large cities and industry in the area makes development of agrotourism and ecological farm very attractive. The picturesque rivers

Wieprz The Wieprz (, ; ) is a river in central-eastern Poland, and a tributary of the Vistula. It is the country's ninth longest river, with a total length of 349 km and a catchment area of 10,497 km2, all within Poland. Its course near the to ...

and Tyśmienica, with numerous old basins, make this flat area attractive for recreation, especially water sports. For angling fans there are different sweet water fish like: perch, pike, eel, tench and others.

References

External links

Rootsweb.com
{{Authority control Populated lakeshore places in Poland Villages in Lubartów County Sites of Nazi war crimes in Poland Sites of World War II massacres of Poles