Kielce


Kielce is a city in south central Poland with 194,852 inhabitants. It has been the capital city of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship since 1999, and was previously the capital of the predecessor Kielce Voivodeship. The city is located in the middle of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, on the banks of the Silnica River, in the northern part of the historical Polish province of Lesser Poland.
The history of Kielce dates back over 900 years and the exact date when the town was founded remains unknown. Kielce was once an important centre of limestone mining and the vicinity is famous for its natural resources like copper, lead and iron, which, over the centuries, were exploited on a large scale. There are several fairs and exhibitions held in Kielce throughout the year; the city and its surroundings are also known for their historic architecture, green spaces and recreational areas such as the Świętokrzyski National Park.

Etymology

According to a local legend Mieszko II Lambert, son of Boleslaus I of Poland, dreamt he was attacked by a band of brigands in a forest. In the dream he saw a vision of Saint Adalbert who drew a winding line which turned into a stream. When Mieszko woke up, he found the Silnica River whose waters helped him regain strength. He also discovered huge white tusks of an unknown animal. Mieszko announced he would build a town and a church to St. Adalbert at that site. According to this legend, the town's name Kielce commemorates the mysterious tusks. Various other legends exist to explain the name's origin. One states that the town was named after its founder who belonged to the noble family of Kiełcz, while another claims that it stems from the Celts who may have lived in the area in previous centuries. Other theories connect the town's name to occupational names relating to mud huts, iron tips for arrows and spears, or the production of tar.
The most probable etymology traces the origins of the name to an Old Polish noun kielce and refers to plants sprouting in the wetlands where the settlement was located. The earliest extant document referring to the settlement by the name of Kielce dates to 1213.

History

The area of Kielce has been inhabited since at least the 5th century BC. Until the 6th or 7th century the banks of the Silnica were inhabited by Celts. They were driven out by a Lechitic tribe of Vistulans who started hunting in the nearby huge forests and had settled most of the area now known as Lesser Poland and present-day Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. The lands of Wiślanie were at first subdued by Bohemia, however they soon came under the control of the Piast dynasty and became a part of Poland.
The area of the Holy Cross Mountains was almost unpopulated until the 11th century when the first hunters established permanent settlements at the outskirts of the mountains. They needed a place to trade furs and meat for grain and other necessary products, and so the market of Kielce was formed. In the early 12th century the new settlement became a property of the Bishops of Kraków, who built a wooden church and a manor. In 1171 a stone church was erected by bishop Gedeon Gryf. During the times of Wincenty Kadłubek a parochial school in Kielce was opened in 1229. By 1295 the town was granted city rights. In the mid-13th century the town was destroyed by the Mongol invasion of Ögedei Khan, but it quickly recovered.
The area around Kielce was rich in minerals such as copper ore, lead ore, and iron, as well as limestone. In the 15th century Kielce became a significant centre of metallurgy. There were also several glass factories and armourer shops in the town. In 1527 bishop Piotr Tomicki founded a bell for the church and between 1637 and 1642 Manierist palace was erected near the market place by Bishop Jakub Zadzik. It is one of the very few examples of French Renaissance architecture in Poland and the only example of a magnate's manor from the times of Vasa dynasty to survive World War II.
During The Deluge the town was pillaged and burnt by the Swedes. Only the palace and the church survived, but the town managed to recover under the rule of bishop Andrzej Załuski. By 1761 Kielce had more than 4,000 inhabitants. In 1789 Kielce were nationalized and the burgers were granted the right to elect their own representatives in Sejm. Until the end of the century the city's economy entered a period of fast growth. A brewery was founded as well as several brick factories, a horse breeder, hospital.

Foreign partitions of Poland

As a result of the 3rd Partition the town was annexed by Austria. During the Polish-Austrian War of 1809 it was captured by prince Józef Poniatowski and joined with the Napoleon controlled Duchy of Warsaw, but after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815 it was joined with the Russian controlled Kingdom of Poland. For a brief period when Kraków was an independent city-state, Kielce became the capital of the Kraków Voivodeship. Thanks to the efforts by Stanisław Staszic Kielce became the centre of the newly established Old-Polish Industrial Zone. The town grew quickly as new mines, quarries and factories were constructed. In 1816 the first Polish technical university was founded in Kielce. However, after Staszic's death the Industrial Zone declined and in 1826 the school was moved to Warsaw and became the Warsaw University of Technology.
In 1830 many of the inhabitants of Kielce took part in the November Uprising against Russia. In 1844, priest began organising a local revolt to liberate Kielce from the Russian yoke, for which he was sent to Siberia. In 1863 Kielce took part in the January Uprising. As a reprisal for insubordination the tsarist authorities closed all Polish schools and turned Kielce into a military garrison city. The Polish language was banned. Because of these actions many gymnasium students took part in the 1905 Revolution and were joined by factory workers.

Sovereign Poland

After the outbreak of World War I, Kielce was the first Polish city to be liberated from Russian rule by the Polish Legions under Józef Piłsudski. After the war when Poland regained its independence after 123 years of Partitions, Kielce became the capital of Kielce Voivodeship. The plans to strengthen Polish heavy and war industries resulted in Kielce becoming one of the main nodes of the Central Industrial Area. The town housed several big factories, among them the munitions factory "Granat" and the food processing plant "Społem".

Second World War

During the Polish Defensive War of 1939, the main portion of the defenders of Westerplatte as well as the armoured brigade of General Stanisław Maczek were either from Kielce or from its close suburbs. During the occupation that lasted for most of the Second World War, the city was an important centre of resistance. There were several resistance groups active in the town, including Armia Krajowa and Gwardia Ludowa.
Notable acts of resistance included theft of 2 tons of TNT from the "Społem" factory run by the Nazis, which were then used by the partisans to make hand grenades. Also, the daring escape from jail in Kielce of a dozen or so AK members, organized in November 1942 by Stanisław Depczyński. Not to mention, a grenade attack by a unit of the GL on the Smoleński coffee shop, killing 6 Germans including a major in the SS, as well as the assassination of the noted Gestapo informant Franz Wittek on 15 June 1944, by a unit under Second Lt. Kazimierz Smolak on the corner of Solna and Paderewski Streets. One of the attackers died during the attack and a further four lost their lives not long afterwards. This was not the first assassination attempt against Wittek. In 1942, Henryk Pawelec fired at him in the market square, but his pistol misfired. In February 1943, a unit under the command of Stanisław Fąfar shot at Wittek by the Seminarium building. Wittek, though wounded by 14 bullets, survived. Successful assassinations of local collaborators, including the shooting of Jan Bocian took place in broad daylight at a shop in Bodzentyńska Street. Similar was the attack on the factory of C. Wawrzyniak in March 1943, terrorizing and disarming the volksdeutscher workers and destroying the machinery, as well as the attack on the HASAG factory in May 1943 and the takeover of the Kielce Herbskie railway station.
Moreover, the hills and forests of Holy Cross Mountains became a scene of heavy partisan activity. A small town of Pińczów located some from Kielce became the capital of the so-called Pinczów Republic, a piece of Polish land controlled by the partisans. The "Jodla" Świętokrzyskie Mountains Home Army fought against the Germans long before Operation Tempest inflicted heavy casualties on the occupying forces and later took part in the final liberation of their towns and cities in January 1945. During the war, many of inhabitants of Kielce lost their lives. Today, Kielce is a rapidly developing city of growing regional importance.

Jewish history

Prior to the 1939 Invasion of Poland, like many other cities across the Second Polish Republic, Kielce had a significant Jewish population. According to the Russian census of 1897, among the total population of 23,200 inhabitants, there were 6,400 Jews in Kielce. On the eve of the Second World War there were about 18,000 Jews in the city. Between the onset of war and March 1940, the Jewish population of Kielce expanded to 25,400, with trains of dispossessed Jews arriving under the escort of German Order Police battalions from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany.
Immediately after the German occupation of Poland in September 1939, all Jews were ordered to wear a Star of David on their outer garments. Jewish–owned factories in Kielce were confiscated by the Gestapo, stores and shops along the main thoroughfares liquidated, and ransom fines introduced. The forced labour and deportations to concentration camps culminated in mass extermination of Jews of Kielce during the Holocaust in occupied Poland.

Kielce Ghetto

In April 1941, the Kielce Ghetto was formed, surrounded by high fences, barbed wire, and guards. The gentile Poles were ordered to vacate the area and the Jews were given one week to relocate. The ghetto was split in two, along Warszawska Street with the Silnica River :pl:Silnica | running through it. The so-called large ghetto was set up between the streets of Orla, Piotrkowska, Pocieszka, and Warszawska to the east, and the smaller ghetto between Warszawska on the west, and the streets of Bodzentyńska, St. Wojciech, and the St. Wojciech square. The ghetto gates were closed on 5 April 1941; the Jewish Ghetto Police was formed with 85 members and ordered to guard it. Meanwhile, expulsions elsewhere and deportations to Kielce continued until August 1942 at which time there were 27,000 prisoners crammed in the ghetto. Trains with Jewish families arrived from the entire Kielce Voivodeship, and also from Vienna, Poznań, and Łódź.
The severe overcrowding, rampant hunger, and outbreaks of epidemic typhus took the lives of 4,000 people before mid-1942. During this time, many of them were forced to work at a nearby German munition plant run by Hasag. In August 1942, the Kielce Ghetto was liquidated in the course of only five days. During roundups, all Jews unable to move were shot on the spot including the sick, the elderly, and the disabled; 20,000–21,000 Jews were led into waiting Holocaust trains, and murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka. After the extermination action only 2,000 Jews were left in Kielce, lodged in the labour camp at Stolarska and Jasna Streets :pl:Obóz pracy Jasna-Stolarska w Kielcach| within the small ghetto. Those who survived were sent to other forced labour camps. On May 23, 1943, the Kielce cemetery massacre was perpetrated by the German police; 45 Jewish children who had survived the Kielce Ghetto liquidation, were murdered by Order Police battalions.

Kielce pogrom

On July 4, 1946, the local Jewish gathering of some 200 Holocaust survivors from the Planty 7 Street refugee centre of the Zionist Union became the target of the Kielce pogrom in which 37 Jews and 2 ethnic Poles were killed, including 11 fatally shot with military rifles and 11 more stabbed with bayonets, indicating direct involvement of Polish troops.
During the Cold War, many Jewish historians theorized that the pogrom became the cause of outward Jewish emigration from Poland immediately following the opening of the borders in 1947. Nevertheless, the true reasons behind the dramatic increase of Jewish emigration from Poland were far more complex. The new government of the Communist Poland signed a repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union helping over 150,000 Holocaust survivors leave the Gulag camps legally. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free and unrestricted Jewish Aliyah to the nascent State of Israel, upon the conclusion of World War II. After the Kielce pogrom Gen. Spychalski of PWP signed a legislative decree allowing the remaining survivors to leave Poland without visas or exit permits. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to do so, at war's end. Britain demanded from Poland to halt the Jewish exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful.

Geography

Climate

Kielce is one of the relatively cooler cities in Poland. It experiences four distinct seasons and has a warm summer subtype humid continental climate, typical of this part of Europe. It has cool, cloudy winters with almost daily light snowfall and generally moderate temperatures within a few degrees of the freezing point, and moderately warm and sunny summers, with frequent but brief hot spells and abundant rainfall falling mostly during numerous and occasionally severe thunderstorms. Surrounded by the Holy Cross Mountains, however, the summer night time temperatures are somewhat cooler and the thunderstorms somewhat more frequent and severe than in surrounding areas of Poland.
Both continental and maritime air masses can enter the area undergoing little modification, resulting in striking differences in the seasons from year to year, particularly in winter when the contrast between maritime and continental air is at its greatest. Maritime influences from the Atlantic typically bring cool, cloudy, damp and often foggy weather both in summer and in winter, whereas continental air masses often result in long periods of sunny and dry weather, hot in summer and on occasion, extremely cold in winter.
The highest temperature recorded in Kielce since 1971 is and the lowest is, giving the city a temperature range of 70.3 °C, the second highest in Poland. The city receives 1720 to 1829 hours of sunshine annually, depending on the source, with a notably sunny spring and summer, and a cloudy late autumn and winter. Winds are generally very light throughout the year, with an abundance of calm days, and as a result, cool temperatures often feel much milder than expected due to a relative lack of windchill, especially during sunny spells in early spring, as well as during severe winter cold snaps, which are typically dominated by calm, anticyclonic weather. Föhn winds from the Carpathian mountains do occasionally reach the city, resulting in unusually mild temperatures for a semi-continental location at this latitude, on rare occasions reaching approximately in the winter months.
Winter conditions are highly dependent on the source region of the air mass that dominates during a particular month, resulting in tremendous variability from one year to the next. For example, in January 2006, the city experienced typically continental winter weather, resulting in an average daytime high of, recording a nighttime low of on the 24th. The very next year, in January 2007, the weather was predominantly of the Atlantic type, resulting in an average high of and occasional days above, more typical of coastal locations in Western Europe. As a result of this variability, severe cold with temperatures below can be completely absent during some winters, and in others, it can occur with regularity, even as late as March. Heavy snowfall is rare, and significant snow accumulations typically occur gradually, a few centimeters at a time over a protracted cold spell.
Summer is warm and lasts from June to early September, and is characterized by abundant sunshine, but also severe weather, particularly early in the season. Though temperatures average in the low-to-mid 20s, they are rather variable with frequent hot spells reaching approximately interrupted by cold fronts, which frequently bring violent thunderstorms and several days of cool and sometimes chilly weather. Although hot weather is frequent and many summers experience a few oppressively hot days of around, summer temperatures in the city are never extreme and have not exceeded in recent decades.
The transitional seasons of spring and autumn are highly unpredictable and experience large temperature swings with periods of fine weather and temperatures around as early as March and late into October, alternating with much colder periods. Sharp nighttime frosts can occur as early as September and as late as May, though on calm, clear days, it often warms up rapidly to approximately, especially in April. Occasionally, significant, accumulating snow can occur in October and April, though mild weather rapidly returns. The springtime month of May is notably the sunniest month of the year.
Sources:
http://www.kzgw.gov.pl/
ClimateBase.ru, Tutiempo

Tourist attractions

The arts

Cinemas

Kielce is an important transport hub, and is on international and domestic routes:
Provincial roads:
In addition, Kielce has a network of district roads, covering 109 streets with a total length of and a network of roads covering 446 streets with a total length of. 57.5% of roads in the city has an improved hard surface, 8.4% of hard surface is not improved, while 34.1% are dirt.

Railways

Rail transport came to Kielce in 1885, when the construction of the line linking Iwanogród and Dąbrowa Górnicza was completed. Currently, Kielce is an important intersection of railway lines, running to Częstochowa and Lubliniec, Warsaw, Kraków and Sandomierz. Within the administrative boundaries of the city there are the following railway stations: Kielce, Kielce Piaski, Kielce Białogon, Kielce Herbskie, Kielce Ślichowice.

Air travel

At present, air services are only available to the residents of Kielce at Kielce-Masłów Airport, a civilian airport located in nearby Masłów. It is not able to accommodate large passenger planes, because its runway is only 1,200 m. Its reconstruction is seen as not viable and in June 2006 the decision was made about the location of a new airport near the village of the Obice Morawica, able to handle regular airlines. At present, land has been purchased for the investment. The nearest international airports are located in Kraków-Balice, Warsaw-Okecie and Rzeszów-Jasionka.

Local transport

Official transport services were first established on 22 July 1951, when the local transport department was created.
After many changes today, the city operates 49 regular bus lines, 13 new low-decked bus lines with text&audio passenger-information system, 5 hybrid bus lines with text&audio passenger-information system four lines of special constants and two night lines. The lines are operated by the Municipal Transport Company and Kielce Bus Company Workers under an agreement signed with the Management of Urban Transport. In Kielce, there are two depots. The rolling stock is composed of about 165 buses.
In 2009/10 the Transport Authority in Kielce released the Polish Operational Programme Development of Eastern 2007 - 2013 project "Development of public transport system in Kielce Metropolitan Area." They bought 20 new buses - MAZ-203s and Solaris Urbino 12s, and another 20 were bought in 2010. These buses will support new lines. Part of the project, envisages installation of 24 electronic boards for bus departure times and 20 stationary ticket vending machines.

Long-distance travel

The history of communication dates back to coaches from Kielce in 1945, when the District was set up. Already in 1946, there were regular routes to Kraków, Warsaw, Jelenia Góra, Teplice and neighbouring towns.
After 1990, the Kielce Bus Station was renamed the PKS Station in Kielce, and has maintained regular passenger long-distance routes.

Kielce constituency

The current Members of Parliament elected from Kielce constituency in 2019 Polish parliamentary election are:
The current senator elected from Kielce constituency is Krzysztof Słoń.

Notable people

Kielce is twinned with:

  • Sandviken in Sweden
  • Gävle in Sweden
  • Orange in France
  • Nitra in Slovakia
  • Kamianske in Ukraine
  • Gorizia in Italy
  • Herning in Denmark
  • Ramla in Israel

    • Gallery