Rumia

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Rumia

(Flag)	(Coat of arms)


Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Pomeranian
Mayor	Elżbieta Jolanta Rogala-Kończak
Area	32,86 km²
Population - city - urban - density	44,156 (2004) 1343,8/km²
Founded	before 1224
City rights	1954
Municipal Website

Rumia (pronounced: ['rumȋa], Kashubian/Pomeranian: Rëmiô, German: Rahmel) is a town in the Eastern Pomerania region of north-western Poland, with some 43,000 inhabitants. It is a part of the Kashubian Tricity (Rumia, Reda, Wejherowo) and a suburb part of the metropolitan area of the Tricity. Situated in the Wejherowo County in Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999, previously in Gdańsk Voivodeship (1975-1998). Traditionally, Rumia is related to Kashubia. It is connected by well-developed railway and highway connections to the Tricity, an urban agglomeration of over 1 million inhabitants on the coast of Gdańsk Bay.

1 History
2 Transportation
3 Population
4 Famous people
5 External links

[edit] History

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The village of Rumia was first mentioned in 1224 when it was awarded by Świetopełk II, later duke of Eastern Pomerania to the Cistercian convent in Oliwa (today part of Gdańsk). At the time it was populated by Kashubians.^{[citation needed]} The name of Rumia was applied also to the neighbourhoods of Janowo (=John's Place) and Biała Rzeka (=White River). In 1285 Mestwin II, duke of Pomerania stopped here to issue official documents. Rumia was owned by the Roman Catholic Church until the first partition of Poland in 1772, when it was annexed by the Prussian government. It belonged to West Prussia until 1871 when it became part of Imperial Germany.

At the end of World War I, it became a part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the newly re-established Polish state. In the late 1920s, the nearby village of Gdynia was turned into a city and one of the biggest seaports in the region. The city grew very fast and so did the price of land. Because of that, many people settled in the village of Rumia and its vicinity. Zagórze, Kazimierz and Łężyce, which are today parts of Rumia, were originally separate villages, and were joined with Rumia in 1934 to form Rumia Rural Commune. By 1934, Rumia had become an important suburb of Gdynia (population of 12,000 in 1939), located approximately 10 km from the city centre and well-connected with it through a railway link. A small military airfield, home of two squadrons of the Coast Defence Escadrille (based in Puck) was opened to civilian planes on 1 May 1936. The airport serviced international route Gdynia-Copenhagen and domestic route Gdynia-Warszawa and by 1 January 1939, the number of passengers using it rose to over 3000 a year. The airfield was also the main base of the Gdynia-based glider club.

During the Invasion of Poland, Rumia was a site of heavy fighting. It was a flanking position of the main Polish defence line at Kępa Oksywska. Two military cemeteries are located in the area. During World War II, the town was occupied by Nazi Germany, which annexed it to its province of Danzig-West Prussia and renamed to its German name (Rahmel). Soon after taking the town, in September and October 1939, SS and SD units started a terror campaign.^{[citation needed]} The first of a series of war crimes happened on 9 September, 1939 when the Wehrmacht shot 21 Polish POWs from the local self-defence units.^{[citation needed]} Total number of victims of the following crimes is unknown, although various historians place the death toll at approximately 3000.^{[citation needed]} Most of the victims were either executed at a nearby mass execution site in Piaśnica or sent to Stutthof concentration camp. Approximately half of the pre-war inhabitants of the town were expelled in 1940 and 1941, mostly to the General Government. The town was also a place of internment for several thousand POWs, mostly from the United Kingdom, France and Italy. A forced labour camp and an aircraft assembly plant were located in the town's vicinity. In 1945, shortly before liberation by the Red Army, the local airfield was destroyed by an RAF bombing raid.

In 1945, the town was transferred back to the Pomeranian Voivodeship. It became a city in 1954 when a few other villages (Zagórze, Biała Rzeka, Szmelta and Janowo) were joined with Rumia. In 2001, the village of Kazimierz was also included.

[edit] Transportation

Rumia is well connected through a 4-lane highway that leads from Wejherowo to Gdynia and from there by Circular Highway to Gdańsk. There is a plan to extend the Circular from Gdynia to beyond Wejherowo.

The Szybka Kolej Miejska (Urban Fast Train) makes two stops in the city, connecting connect it to Wejherowo, Gdynia, and beyond. The stops are Rumia and Rumia Janowo. There is also network of city buses that also offers connections to Wejherowo and Gdynia.