Łomża


Łomża, in English known as Lomza, is a city in north-eastern Poland, approximately 150 kilometers to the north-east of Warsaw and west of Białystok. It is situated alongside the Narew river as part of the Podlaskie Voivodeship since 1999. Previously, it was the capital of the Łomża Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998. It is the capital of Łomża County and has been the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Łomża since 1925.
Łomża is one of the principal economic, educational, and cultural centres of north-eastern Masovia as well as one of the three main cities of Podlaskie Voivodeship. It lends its name to the protected area of Łomża Landscape Park. The town is also the location of the Łomża Brewery.

History

Łomża was founded in the 10th century, on the site of the present day village called Stara Łomża. It was first mentioned in official records in the 14th century. Łomża received its municipal rights in 1416, and became an important political and economic center in the mid-16th century. Łomża was a royal city of Poland and the capital of the Łomża Land, an administrative unit of the Masovian Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland until it lost its independence in 1795.
Polish Duke Bolesław IV the Curly built a palace there in the 12th century. In 1444 the town was granted an exemption from the transit tax on Narew river contributing to its further development. In the 16th century King Sigismund II Augustus gave Łomża the right to hold great fairs three times a year, similar to Warsaw and Płock. In 1614 the Jesuits founded a Jesuit College, which as today's I Liceum Ogólnokształcące is among the oldest high schools in Poland. In 1618 a great fire destroyed most of the city, and six years later, an epidemic killed 5,021 persons decimating its population. A series of disasters resulted in its rapid decline.
As a result of the Partitions of Poland Łomża was annexed by Prussia in 1795. In 1807 it was included in the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw. In 1815 Łomża became part of Congress Poland, which was forcibly integrated into the Russian Empire over the course of the 19th century.
In 1892, several members of the Kinlikowsky family made a living of helping impoverished Russians without passports walk through the dense forest to Germany. The Kinlikowsky family would march the Russians to particularly dense areas and then murder them. Other guides found twelve bodies hidden in the overgrowth and reported it to the authorities. The Kinlikowsky family were convicted of murder.
During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, Łomża was directly in the path of the Russian army's catastrophic retreat following its defeat at the Battle of Warsaw. On August 15, 1920, the Soviet General August Kork of the 15th Army mounted an unsuccessful defence of the town against the Polish Fourth Army of General Leonard Skierski, before continuing its retreat eastward under pressure from the Polish forces.
In September 1939, during the joint Soviet and German invasion of Poland, Łomża was largely destroyed by the Wehrmacht during the Battle of Łomża, then held and turned over to the Red Army. Łomża remained under Soviet control until Operation Barbarossa. In June 1941, at the onset of the Russian campaign Łomża was captured by the Wehrmacht and used as a communications hub by the German forces. The Red Army fought back and successfully captured Łomża on September 13, 1944.
Between 1946 and 1975, the oldest part of the city was rebuilt. New housing estates came into existence along with several industrial plants, among them Łomża cotton and furniture factories and starch manufacturing PEPEES, as well as municipal thermal power station. The city transit system was also established during this time. By the beginning of the 1970s, the population had reached almost 30,000 inhabitants.

Jewish community

References to Jewish residents in Łomża date to 1494. The population numbers date back only to 1808, when 157 Jews were officially counted. A magnificent stone synagogue was built there in 1881 on the initiative of Rabbi Eliezer-Simcha Rabinowicz. The Great Synagogue designed by Enrico Marconi became a centre of the Zionist movement. In 1931, there were 8,912 Jews who lived in the city.
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World War I was especially hard on the Jewish community of Łomża, which was a major battle area against German military forces. In 1915, the Jewish Aid Society estimated that 22,000 Jewish residents of Łomża were made homeless from the war.
On October 29, 1941, German troops forced over 1,000 Jewish residents of Lomza to kneel in trenches, and they murdered them all with machine guns. They continued murdering entire families.
On 12 August 1941, a Łomża Ghetto was created in the vicinity of the Old Market Square. The Nazi Einsatzkommando under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper committed mass killings of alleged Soviet collaborators a few days later. The number of Jews herded into the Łomża Ghetto from surrounding villages and towns including Jedwabne, Stawiski, Piątnica, Rotki, Wizna, Łomża, and others, ranged from 10,000 to 18,000. Over two-thousand people were murdered in the Giełczyn Forest outside of town. Many Jews perished from malnutrition and diseases such as dysentery and typhus. The rest were shipped to Auschwitz. The Łomża synagogue was destroyed. The ghetto was liquidated in the final deportation action on 1 November 1942. Only a small number of the Jews of Łomża survived the Holocaust; some found refuge with Catholic Polish families. At the end of 1944, the Red Army recaptured the territory. Following the Yalta Conference, the Soviets ceded the city to Poland, with its total population reduced to 12,500 inhabitants, none of whom were Jewish.
One of the only visible remnants of the city's Jewish history is the Jewish cemetery. In 1999, the Lomza Jewish Cemetery Foundation was officially founded as a charity devoted to restoring the cemetery, showing respect to the deceased buried there, and to improve relations between Poles and Jews. Łomża declared the Jewish cemetery to be historical sites, and the city erected signed warning that any damage caused would be punishable under the Historical Site Preservation Law. The city also decided to install doors and replace the roof on one of the original cemetery's buildings.
In the 1997, a Torah was discovered that had been hidden in a home in Łomża since World War II. The Torah was discovered while the home was being razed to build new housing. The Torah was bought by Gerald C. Bender, a man living in Illinois in the United States whose father had been born and raised in Łomża. Bender bought the Torah in order to donate it to a synagogue.

Demographics



Łomża is the third largest city in Podlaskie Voivodeship with 63,036 inhabitants. At the end of 2006, the population growth was positive and amounted to 1.3% per 1000 inhabitants whereas the balance of migration was negative. The unemployment rate in May 2008 amounted to 10,2%. According to data from 2006, an average income per inhabitant amounted to 2,942.31 zł.

Historical population of Łomża, 1808 – 1931

General population in blue. Number of Poles of Jewish faith in green. Source: Qiryat Tiv'on, Israel.

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Religion

The inhabitants of Łomża are predominantly Roman Catholic, although over the centuries in addition to the Catholics, followers of other religions have settled there. There is evidence of many Jewish and Protestant gravestones at the Łomża cemeteries, particularly the two abandoned Jewish cemeteries.

Education

The history of education in Łomża dates back to the early 15th century, when the first parish was founded. In 1614, Jesuits residing in Łomża created a Collegium. One of its rectors was Andrew Bobola. The educational level has not decreased after the KEN school pijarom in 1774. Łomża has educated a number of dignitaries, among others: Szymon Konarski, Rafał Krajewski, Jakub Ignacy Weight, Wojciech Szweykowski, and Adam Chętnik.
Currently in Łomża there is a well-developed network of public and private schools at all levels. There are seven primary schools, eight schools, ten secondary schools, six universities and two schools of art. The educational level in Łomża is high, based on the results of the exams and countrywide lists. For example, I Liceum Ogólnokształcące rates as a top national and central Poland school.

Economy

The economy of Łomża is closely connected to its natural environment, with agricultural and forestry industries at the forefront of the region's economic development. The economy is ecologically friendly, including the food industries, brewing, electronics, the manufacture of building materials and furniture, the production and processing of agricultural crops, as well as tourism and agro-tourism.
Even the largest companies employ less than 1,000 workers, even though a number of firms are listed on the Podlasie Top One Hundred Entrepreneurs. Among them, the Łomża Brewery, DOMEL, FARGOTEX, Konrad, Łomża furniture factory, PEPEES, Purzeczko. On top of that, the city is a registered office of the Podlasie Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture.
By the end of 2007, the number of people steadily employed in Łomża was 13,408, including 7,170 women, however, the unemployment rate remained considerably high at 14.1 percent. The number of businesses registered by the end of 2008 was 6,421 of which 6,280 belonged to the private sector.

Sports

The history of sport in Łomża dates back to the end of the 19th century, when the first amateur races were held in 1897. Two years later, Łomża Rowing Society was established, and initiated its activities on January 26, 1902.
The first football club was founded on April 16, 1926, currently known as ŁKS Łomża. It is the city's most successful football club, having played on the Polish second tier in the 1930s, 1940s, and 2000s.
There are several sports clubs in town including volleyball, basketball, athletics, and martial arts. The most successful Łomżanie would be Athletics, Sports Fighting and Kulturystyce. In June 2009, the Nationwide Finale Gimnazjady football for boys was held in Łomża. The local football team from Public High School No. 8 took third place. the Society for Promoting Physical Culture and the Łomża School Sports Association support sports in Łomża. In 1998, an indoor sports arena opened for national and international sporting events, including indoor football matches and martial arts tournaments.
In 2009, a contract was signed for the construction of a municipal swimming pool to open in 2011, which will be the second such facility in the city. Construction of the swimming pool was co-financed by the EU's regional operational programme for the Voivodship for the years 2007–2013, and its total cost will be 35,200,000 PLN.

Landmarks

Notable residents