The World Wars
The city again suffered damage during World War I. In 1918 it again became part of independent Poland. In the 1930s, due to the massive public works project known as Central Industrial Area, Sandomierz began to grow quickly. It was projected to become capital of the Sandomierz Voivodeship, and local authorities planned fast development of the city. The Greater Sandomierz was to turn in the 1940s into a city of 120 000.
In September 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, the city was occupied by Germany and made part of the General Government. The Jewish population of the city, consisting of about 2,500 people, perished during the Holocaust, mostly in the death camps of Bełżec and Treblinka. The city was captured and occupied by the Soviet army in August, 1944.
No major industrial development took place in Sandomierz during the communist era, thus preserving its look of a charming, small city full of historical monuments among unspoiled landscape.
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Famous quotes containing the words world and/or wars:
“La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint. Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children’s homes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)