Pruszków

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Pruszków

(Flag)	(Coat of arms)


Basic Information
Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Masovian
Population	54 968 (2004)
City rights	turn of the 1913
Latitude Longitude	52°10' N 20°48' E
Agglomeration	-
Density	2870,4/km²
Area code	+48 22
Car plates	WPR
Economy and Traffic
Administration
Municipal Website

Pruszków (['pruʂkuf] (help·info)) is a town in central Poland. According to the 2004 census the town had population of 54,893.

Pruszków is situated in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Warszawa Voivodeship (1975-1998). It is the capital of Pruszków County.

1 History
2 Tourism
3 Education
4 External link

[edit] History

A village has existed here since the 16th century and Pruszków became incorporated as a town in 1916. The development of the town was aided by the construction of the Warsaw-Vienna train line in the 19th Century and the construction of the Elektryczna Kolej Dojazdowa, Poland’s first electrified commuter train line, in 1928. A large psychiatric hospital opened in the outlying village of Tworki in 1891 and is still operating to this day.

The city had a large Jewish population before World War II, however on January 31st 1941 about 3000 Jewish deportees, mostly from the Polish town of Pruszków, arrived at the Warsaw Ghetto.

During World War II a large transit camp (Durchgangslager) was constructed in the Train Repair Shops (Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego) to house the evacuees expelled from Warsaw by the Nazis. In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city’s residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121), a transit camp in Pruszków set up especially for this purpose. The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,000 to Auschwitz. They included people from a variety of social classes and occupations (government officials, scholars, artists, physicians, merchants, and blue-collar workers), in varying physical condition (the injured, the sick, invalids, and pregnant women), and of various ages, from infants only a few weeks old to the elderly, aged 86 or more. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews living on “Aryan papers.” [1] On the 26th of March 1945 the 16 members of the Polish Underground Government were invited by the Soviets for discussions to a house on Armii Krajowej Street. They were arrested by the NKWD, imprisoned and sentenced in Moscow during so called Trial of the Sixteen.

After World War II Pruszków became one of Mazovia’s largest industrial centers. Pruszków is also famous as the base of the Polish Mafia, who came to prominence after the collapse of communism. A successful Police hunt has now eliminated bosses but the mafia is still present.

[1] Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940-1944]