Trawniki 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 ...

Świdnik County __NOTOC__ Świdnik 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 Trawniki __NOTOC__ Gmina Trawniki is an upstate gmina (administrative district) in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Trawniki, which lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regional ...

. It lies approximately south-east of

Świdnik Świdnik () is a town in southeastern Poland with 40,186 inhabitants (2012), situated in the Lublin Voivodeship, southeast of the city of Lublin. It is the capital of Świdnik County. Świdnik belongs to the historic province of Lesser Poland, ...

and south-east 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 ...

, and the river

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 ...

flows by it.

History

The village was mentioned as ''Trawnik'' in a chronicle by

Jan Długosz Jan Długosz (; 1 December 1415 – 19 May 1480), also known in Latin as Johannes Longinus, was a Polish priest, chronicler, diplomat, soldier, and secretary to Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Kraków. He is considered Poland's first histo ...

. It was administratively located in the

in the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. During 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, Trawniki 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 ...

. After the Polish victory in 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 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 ...

. Following the duchy's dissolution in 1815, it was part of the Russian-controlled

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

, since 1837 administratively located in the

Lublin Governorate Lublin Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire. History The Lublin Governorate was created in 1837 from the Lublin Voivodeship, and had the same borders and capital (Lublin) a ...

. In 1827, it had a population of 240. The Russian government planned to use its train station to transport Russian troops to fight

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

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 ...

. After World War I, Poland regained independence and control of the village.

World War II

During

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 ...

and the

German occupation of Poland 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 ...

, Trawniki was the location of the Trawniki concentration camp. This camp provided Forced labour under German rule during World War II, slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS ''Ostindustrie''. They worked in appalling conditions with little food, and many died of disease, malnutrition and ill treatment. From September 1941 until July 1944, the camp was also used for training guards recruited from Soviet Union, Soviet Prisoner of war, POWs, who were known as "Hiwi (volunteer), Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. European non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II, "those willing to help"), for service with Nazi Germany, Auxiliary police in General Government, occupied Poland. In addition to serving as guards at concentration and death camps, the ''Trawniki men'' (German: ''Trawnikimänner'') took part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Polish Jews#The Holocaust: German-occupied Poland, Polish Jews. They conducted executions at extermination camps and in Jewish ghettos, including at Belzec extermination camp, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka II, Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw (three times, see Stroop Report), Częstochowa Ghetto, Częstochowa, Lublin Ghetto, Lublin, Lwów Ghetto, Lwów, Radom Ghetto, Radom, Kraków Ghetto, Kraków, Białystok Ghetto, Białystok (twice), Majdanek as well as Auschwitz, and Trawniki itself.

References

{{Authority control Populated riverside places in Poland Villages in Świdnik County Holocaust locations in Poland