History
Settlement around Tuchola dates to 980, while the town was first mentioned in 1287. It received German town law (Culm law) in 1346 from Heinrich Dusemer, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights. After the Order's defeat in the Battle of Grunwald, a Polish-Lithuanian army conquered the town on November 5, 1410. The Order retained the town in the First Peace of Thorn. At the end of the Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), however, Tuchel was ceded to Poland in the Second Peace of Thorn and became part of Polish Royal Prussia.
During the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Royal Prussia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. On May 17, 1781 the Church of St. Bartholomäus and vast parts of the town burned down. Tuchel became part of the Prussian-led German Empire in 1871.
A prisoner-of-war camp was established near the town by Germany during World War I. After the town was transferred to the Second Polish Republic in 1920 following the Treaty of Versailles, the camp became known as Camp No. 7 and existed until 1923. At this time it housed mainly soldiers and cossacks of the Imperial Russian Army.
Beginning in the autumn of 1920 during Polish-Soviet war thousands of captured Red Army men were placed in the camp of Тuchola. These prisoners of war (POWs) lived in trenches, while famine, cold, and infectious diseases killed tens of prisoners daily. In the winter 1920/1921 POWs had a death rate of about 25%, which was attributed to malnutrition, poor sanitary conditions, lack of fuel and medicines, and physical maltreatment by the Polish supervisors.
"From the moment of opening an infirmary in February, 1921 till May 11, 1921 there was registered epidemic diseases 6491, not epidemic 12294, 2561 deaths."
Lieutenant Colonel I. Matuszewski, the head of the II department of the Polish Joint Staff, informed the military minister of Poland in the letter on February 1, 1922, that 22 thousand of POWs were lost in the camp of Tuchol in all time of its existence.
Tuchola was annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The town's ethnic German population was subsequently expelled after the war and replaced with Poles.
Read more about this topic: Tuchola
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)