Польшаның Сирадз қаласының тарихы

Town in Łódź, Poland

Sieradz (Siradia, , 1941 45 Schieratz) is a city on the Warta river in central Poland with 40,891 inhabitants (2021). During the January Uprising, on 18 September 1863, Polish insurgents attacked Russian troops stationed in the town. Further clashes between Polish insurgents and Russian troops took place on 24 January and 18 June 1864. After World War I, in 1918, Poland regained independence and control of the town.

With the joint German Soviet invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Sieradz was attacked on September 9 and occupied by the Wehrmacht. Annexed by Nazi Germany, it was renamed Schieratz and administered as part of the county or district (kreis) of the same name within Reichsgau Wartheland. Estimates are that at least 40% of the population of Sieradz was Jewish prior to the German occupation. Today, Sieradz commemorates a Day of Judaism each year in January. In mid September 1939, the Germans organized a temporary prisoner of war camp in the local prison, in which they held nearly 3,000 Polish soldiers, despite the prison capacity being 1,100. During the German occupation, the population was subjected to various atrocities. Already on 15 September 1939, the Germans carried out the first public execution of seven Poles in Sieradz. In early November 1939, the Germans arrested 62 members of the local elite in order to terrorize the population before the Polish Independence Day (11 November), and then on 14 November they forced local Jews to dig pits for the victims, and afterwards murdered 20 hostages. Among the victims were activists, teachers, school principals, craftsmen, policemen, pre war mayor Ignacy Mąkowski, local officials, judges, and a boy scout. The town was subjected to severe Germanisation, and the Nazis destroyed traces of Polish culture, destroying historical records, monuments, and buildings. Street names were changed in an effort to wipe out any connection with a Polish identity. The local prison was one of the most important German prisons in the Reichsgau Wartheland. Its prisoners, predominantly Poles and Jews, were subjected to insults, beatings, forced labour, tortures and executions. Prisoners were given very low food rations, and meals were even prepared from rotten vegetables, spoiled fish and dead dogs. Many prisoners died of exhaustion, starvation or torture. Despite such circumstances, the Polish resistance movement still operated in the area. The last executed prisoner was Antonina Chrystkowa, a female member of the Home Army resistance organization, who was beheaded with an axe on 18 January 1945. Another German prison was operated in the present day district of Chabie; it was subordinate to the main prison in Sieradz. Bombed by the Soviets, more than 100 residents were killed. After an assault lasting three days, the Red Army arrived on 23 January 1945. The day before the retreat of the Germans, the historic Danielewicz Palace was burned down. The town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.

In 1947, local Polish youth established a secret anti communist resistance organization, initially called the Union of Patriotic Youth (Związek Młodzieży Patriotycznej), and in 1949 renamed to Katyń to commemorate the Katyn massacre in which the Soviets murdered nearly 22,000 Poles in 1940. Its activity extended to the nearby cities of Zduńska Wola, Warta, Łódź and even Włocławek, and included collecting weapons, secret training, intelligence, and publishing and distribution of independent Polish press and leaflets. Its leader was Zbigniew Tur, a native of pre war eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, who as a teenager was arrested and deported to forced labour by both the Germans (twice) and the Soviets, before returning to Poland in 1946. During the court hearings, the townspeople gathered near the courthouse and demonstrated their sympathy and support for the arrested youth.