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50-466: The first written document that mentions Odolanów dates back to 1301, when it was part of the fragmented Piast -ruled Kingdom of Poland and the location hosted a castle on the border between Greater Poland and Silesia . A settlement arose next to the castle, which acquired city rights in 1403 from King Władysław II Jagiełło . It was a royal town of the Polish Crown, administratively located in

100-427: A ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers . Repeated efforts were made to propagate Volkstum ('racial consciousness'), to prevent such relations. Pamphlets, for instance, instructed all German women to avoid physical contact with any foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood. Women who disobeyed were imprisoned although executions also took place. Even fraternization with

150-824: A chequered co-existence, with Piast rulers like Mieszko I, Casimir I the Restorer or Władysław I Herman trying to protect the Polish state by treaties, oath of allegiances and marriage alliances with the Imperial Ottonian and Salian dynasties. The Bohemian Přemyslid dynasty , the Hungarian Arpads and their Anjou successors, the Kievan Rus' , later also the State of the Teutonic Order and

200-573: A crescent, which became the coat of arms of the Duchy of Silesia . Piast kings and rulers of Poland appear in list form in the following table. For a list of all rulers, see List of Polish monarchs . Forced labour under German rule during World War II The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany ( German : Zwangsarbeit ) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It

250-746: A direct result of forced labour under the Nazis. After the invasion of Poland , Polish Jews over the age of 12 and Poles over the age of 12 living in the General Government territory were subject to forced labor. Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 percent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. In 1942, all non-Germans living in the General Government were subject to forced labor. The largest number of labour camps held civilians forcibly abducted in

300-403: A forced labour fund paid out more than €4.37   billion to close to 1.7   million of then-living victims around the world (one-off payments of between €2,500 and €7,500). German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated in 2007 that "Many former forced labourers have finally received the promised humanitarian aid"; she also conceded that before the fund was established nothing had gone directly to

350-689: A huge range of engineering projects both in pre- World War II Germany , and in occupied Europe from France to Russia. Todt became notorious for using forced labour . Most so-called "volunteer" Soviet POW workers were assigned to the Organisation Todt. The history of the organization falls into three main phases: Millions of Jews were forced labourers in ghettos , before they were shipped off to extermination camps . The Nazis also operated concentration camps , some of which provided free forced labour for industrial and other jobs while others existed solely to exterminate their inmates . To mislead

400-648: Is buried in Trzebnica Abbey . Nevertheless, numerous families, like the illegitimate descendants of the Silesian duke Adam Wenceslaus of Cieszyn (1574–1617), link their genealogy to the dynasty. About 1295, Przemysł II used a coat of arms with a white eagle – a symbol later referred to as the Piast coat of arms or as the Piast Eagle . The Silesian Piasts in the 14th century used an eagle modified by

450-483: The Reichskreditkassen shall be deferred until the final settlement of the problem of reparations. To this day, there are arguments that such settlement has never been fully carried out. German post-war development has been greatly aided, while the development of victim countries has stalled. A prominent example of a group which received almost no compensation is the Polish forced labourers. According to

500-671: The Civitas Schinesghe from about 960. The Piasts temporarily also ruled over Pomerania , Bohemia and the Lusatias , as well as part of Ruthenia , and the Hungarian Spiš region in present-day Slovakia . The ruler bore the title of a duke or a king , depending on their position of power. The Polish monarchy had to deal with the expansionist policies of the Holy Roman Empire in the west, resulting in

550-594: The German war economy inside Nazi Germany during the war. The German need for slave labour grew to the point that even children were kidnapped as labor, in an operation called the Heu-Aktion . More than 2,000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including Deutsche Bank and Siemens . A class system was created amongst Fremdarbeiter ('foreign workers') brought to Germany to work for

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600-607: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania were mighty neighbours. The Piast position was decisively enfeebled by an era of fragmentation following the 1138 Testament of Bolesław III Wrymouth . For nearly 150 years, the Polish state shattered into several duchies, with the Piast duke against the formally valid principle of agnatic seniority fighting for the throne at Kraków , the capital of the Lesser Polish Seniorate Province . Numerous dukes like Mieszko III

650-553: The Greater Poland Uprising . Insurgents from Odolanów fought a. o. in the battle of Granowiec during the night of 14–15 January 1918. In 1919 the town was confirmed to be reintegrated with the Second Polish Republic . 74 insurgents from the former Odolanów County were killed in the uprising, and a monument dedicated to them was unveiled in the park in 1923. On 1 September 1939, the first day of

700-731: The Potsdam Agreements of 1945, the Poles were to receive reparations not from Germany itself, but from the Soviet Union 's share of those reparations; under Soviet pressure on the Polish Communist government, the Poles agreed to a system of repayment that de facto meant that few Polish victims received adequate compensation in any way comparable to the victims in Western Europe or Soviet Union itself. Most of

750-573: The fall of communism in Poland in 1989/1990 did the Polish government try to renegotiate the issue of reparations, but found little support in this from the German side and none from the Soviet (later, Russian) side. The total number of forced labourers under Nazi rule who were still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3   million. The German Forced Labour Compensation Programme was established in 2000;

800-463: The French navy in the occupied zone, stated "We have a special interest in that the workers at our arsenals work, and that they work in the arsenals and not in Germany." From a practical point of view, French workers needed employment and could have been conscripted to work in Germany (as happened to 1   million of them). A small number objected to carrying out war work but the majority were found by

850-557: The German invasion of Poland , which started World War II , Odolanów was quickly captured by the Wehrmacht . The German administration was using terror, many Poles were expropriated, expelled , killed or sent to concentration camps . Local mayor Jan Krak was arrested and imprisoned in nearby Kalisz and then murdered in a large massacre of over 70 Poles from the region, carried out in Winiary on 14 December 1939. The Germans destroyed

900-654: The German government to compensate forced labourers from the war period. As stated in the London Debt Agreement of 1953 : Consideration of claims arising out of the Second World War by countries which were at war with or were occupied by Germany during that war, and by nationals of such countries, against the Reich and agencies of the Reich, including costs of German occupation, credits acquired during occupation on clearing accounts and claims against

950-538: The German subsidiaries of foreign firms, such as Fordwerke (a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company ) and Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of General Motors ) among others. Once the war had begun, the foreign subsidiaries were seized and nationalized by the Nazi-controlled German state, and work conditions deteriorated, as they did throughout German industry. About 12   million forced labourers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans , were employed in

1000-433: The German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food rations until totally exhausted. To benefit the economy after the war, certain categories of victims of Nazism were excluded from compensation by the German government; these groups had the least political influence they could have brought to bear, and many forced labourers from Eastern Europe fall into this category. There has been little effort by businesses or

1050-471: The Germans to be willing and efficient workers. In the late summer of 1944, German records listed 7.6   million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in the German territory, most of whom had been brought there by coercion. By 1944, slave labour made up one quarter of Germany's entire work force, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners. The Nazis also had plans for

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1100-581: The Great . Branches of the Piast dynasty continued to rule in the Duchy of Masovia (until 1526) and in the Duchies of Silesia until the last male Silesian Piast died in 1675. The Piasts intermarried with several noble lines of Europe, and possessed numerous titles, some within the Holy Roman Empire . The Jagiellonian kings ruling after the death of Casimir IV of Poland were also descended in

1150-676: The Kalisz County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province . In 1629 on the east side of the town king Sigismund III Vasa founded the New Town also called Konstancja (after the king's second wife). Nowadays it is a part of Odolanów named Górka . At the end of the 17th century there were 18 shoemakers, 8 tailors, 3 millers, 3 tradesmen and 9 other craftsmen in the town. The majority of

1200-738: The Old , Władysław III Spindleshanks or Leszek I the White were crowned, only to be overthrown shortly afterwards, and others restored and ousted, at times repeatedly. The senior branch of the Silesian Piasts, descendants of Bolesław III Wrymouth 's eldest son Duke Władysław II the Exile , went separate ways and since the 14th century were vassals of the Bohemian Crown . After the Polish royal line and Piast junior branch had died out in 1370,

1250-560: The Polish crown fell to the Anjou king Louis I of Hungary , son of late King Casimir's sister Elizabeth Piast . The Masovian branch of the Piasts became extinct with the death of Duke Janusz III in 1526. The last ruling duke of the Silesian Piasts was George William of Legnica who died in 1675. His uncle Count August of Legnica , the last male Piast, died in 1679. The last legitimate heir, Duchess Karolina of Legnica-Brieg died in 1707 and

1300-602: The Polish share of reparations was "given" to Poland by Soviet Union under the Comecon framework, which was not only highly inefficient, but benefited Soviet Union much more than Poland. Under further Soviet pressure (related to the London Agreement on German External Debts ), in 1953 the People's Republic of Poland renounced its right to further claims of reparations from the successor states of Nazi Germany. Only after

1350-464: The Reich. The system was based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers, starting with well-paid workers from German allies or neutral countries to forced labourers from conquered Untermenschen ('sub-humans') populations. In general, foreign labourers from Western Europe had similar gross earnings and were subject to similar taxation as German workers. In contrast, Central and Eastern European forced labourers received at most about one-half

1400-617: The Soviet Union, 1.6   million to Poland, 1.5   million to France, and 900,000 to Italy, along with 300,000 to 400,000 each to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium. Hitler 's policy of Lebensraum ('room for living') strongly emphasized conquest of lands in the East, known as Generalplan Ost , and the exploitation of these lands to provide cheap goods and labour for Germany. Even before

1450-577: The female line from Casimir III's daughter. The early dukes and kings of Poland are said to have regarded themselves as descendants of the semi-legendary Piast the Wheelwright ( Piast Kołodziej ), first mentioned in the Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum (Chronicles and deeds of the dukes or princes of the Poles), written c. 1113 by Gallus Anonymus . However, the term "Piast Dynasty"

1500-434: The gross earnings paid to German workers and had far fewer social benefits. Prisoners of labour or concentration camps received little if any wages or benefits. The deficiency in net earnings of Central and Eastern European forced labourers (versus forced labourers from Western countries) is illustrated by the wage savings forced labourers were able to transfer to their families at home or abroad (see table). The Nazis issued

1550-534: The internment and transportation to Europe of "the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five" in the event of a successful invasion of the United Kingdom . Organisation Todt was a Nazi era civil and military engineering group in Nazi Germany, eponymously named for its founder Fritz Todt , an engineer and senior Nazi figure. The organization was responsible for

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1600-440: The main causes of death. Many more became civilian casualties from enemy (Allied) bombing and shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At the peak of the program, the forced labourers constituted 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15   million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war. Besides Jews, the harshest deportation and forced labor policies were applied to

1650-763: The occupied countries (see Łapanka ) to provide labour in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads and bridges, or work on farms. Manual labour was in high demand, as much of the work that today would be done with machines was still done by hand in the 1930s and 1940s, such as digging, material handling , or machining . As the war progressed, the use of slave labour increased massively. Prisoners of war and civilian "undesirables" were brought in from occupied territories. Millions of Jews, Slavs and other conquered peoples were used as slave labourers by German corporations including Thyssen , Krupp , IG Farben , Bosch , Daimler-Benz , Demag , Henschel , Junkers , Messerschmitt , Siemens , and Volkswagen , not to mention

1700-494: The population were tilthing and breeding cattle. Until 1793, the town and surrounding villages belonged to princes, kings, or noblemen. Monarchs granted land to various rich feudals as fief or land tenancy. During this time, Odolanów was under the administrative influence of Kalisz . In 1793 Odolanów was annexed by Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland . After the successful Greater Poland uprising of 1806 , it

1750-472: The populations of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By the end of the war, half of Belarus' population had been either killed or deported. The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11   million foreigners (categorized as "displaced persons"), most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. During the war, German forces brought into the Reich 6.5   million civilians, in addition to Soviet POWs, for unfree labour in factories. Returning them home

1800-740: The ports of Brest , Lorient and Saint-Nazaire became available, there were insufficient Germans to man these repair and maintenance facilities, so huge reliance was made on the French workforce. At the end of 1940, the Kriegsmarine requested 2,700 skilled workers from Wilhelmshaven to work in bases on the Atlantic coast, but this was out of a total available workforce of only 3,300. This same request included 870 men skilled in machinery and engine building, but there were only 725 people with these skills in Wilhelmshaven. This massive deficit

1850-504: The potential effect of withdrawal of French dockyard workers (considered possible after 32 French fatalities in an air raid at Lorient Submarine Base ) stated that all repairs on the surface fleet would cease and U-boat repairs would be cut by 30 per cent. Admiral François Darlan stated on 30 September 1940 that it was useless to decline German requests for collaboration. In September 1942, Rear Admiral Germain Paul Jardel, commander of

1900-579: The pre-war monument to the fallen insurgents of the Greater Poland uprising, and established and operated a Nazi prison and a forced labour camp for Jews in the town. The German occupation in Odolanów was over on 22 January 1945, when Soviet tanks entered the town. Some soldiers of the Polish underground continued their resistance, now against the Soviet dominance and the puppet Stalinist government (so-called cursed soldiers ). On 22 October 1945

1950-468: The troop of Jan Kempiński, nom de guerre Błysk , operating in the Odolanów area was smashed by the Department of Security forces. Piast dynasty The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland . The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I ( c.  960 –992). The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of King Casimir III

2000-517: The victims, at the entrances to a number of camps the lie 'work brings freedom' ( arbeit macht frei ) was placed, to encourage the false impression that cooperation would earn release. A notable example of a labour-concentration camp is Mittelbau-Dora , a labour camp complex that produced V-2 rockets . Extermination through labour was a Nazi German principle that regulated most of their labour and concentration camps. The rule demanded that inmates of German World War II camps be forced to work for

2050-659: The war, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labour . This practice started in the early days of labour camps for "unreliable elements" ( German : unzuverlässige Elemente ), such as homosexuals , criminals, political dissidents , communists , Jews , the homeless and anyone the regime wanted out of the way. During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager (labour camps) for different categories of inmates. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked to death on short rations in lethal conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Many died as

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2100-710: The workers was regarded as dangerous, and targeted by pamphlet campaigns in 1940–1942. Soldiers in the Wehrmacht and SS officers were exempt from any such restrictions. It is estimated that at least 34,140 Eastern European women apprehended in Łapankas (military kidnapping raids), were forced to serve them as sex slaves in German military brothels and camp brothels during the Third Reich. In Warsaw alone, five such establishments were set up under military guard in September 1942, with over 20 rooms each. Alcohol

2150-515: Was a high priority for the Allies. However returning citizens of the USSR were often meant suspicion of collaboration or reincarceration in a Gulag prison camp. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Red Cross , and military operations provided food, clothing, shelter, and assistance in returning home. In all, 5.2   million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to

2200-460: Was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. The Germans abducted approximately 12   million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds came from Central Europe and Eastern Europe . Many workers died as a result of their living conditions – extreme mistreatment, severe malnutrition and abuse were

2250-584: Was made up of French naval dockyard workers. In February 1941, the naval dockyard at Brest had only 470 German workers, compared with 6,349 French workers. In April 1941, French workers replaced defective superheater tubes on the Scharnhorst , carrying out the work slowly but, in the opinion of Scharnhorst's captain, to a better standard than could be obtained in the yards in Germany. An assessment commissioned by Vizeadmiral Walter Matthiae in October 1942 of

2300-566: Was not allowed, unlike on the Western front, and the victims underwent genital checkups once a week. French workers at naval bases provided the Kriegsmarine with an essential workforce, thereby supporting Nazi Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic . By 1939, the Kriegsmarine 's planning had presumed that they had time to build up resources before the war started. When France fell and

2350-436: Was not applied until the 17th century. In a historical work, the expression Piast dynasty was introduced by the Polish historian Adam Naruszewicz ; it is not documented in contemporary sources. The first "Piasts", probably of Polan descent, appeared around 940 in the territory of Greater Poland at the stronghold of Giecz . Shortly afterwards they relocated their residence to Gniezno , where Prince Mieszko I ruled over

2400-616: Was opened. The events shortly after World War I ( Republic of Ostrów and the Greater Poland Uprising ) are an important part of the town’s history. On 12 November 1918, a day after Poland declared independence, a Worker’s and Soldier’s Council was established in the town. Some days later the citizens elected deputies to the Polish Parliament in the Prussian Partition (Polski Sejm Dzielnicowy). On 31 December 1918 Poles took power in Odolanów from Germans as part of

2450-561: Was part of Germany, however, despite the Germanisation led by the German Empire , Odolanów preserved its Polish character – in 1910 at least 72.5% of inhabitants were speaking Polish. In addition to Poles , Jews and Germans also lived there. The Protestant church built in 1780 and the 1835 synagogue are monuments of Odolanów’s once multicultural society. In 1909 the rail connection between Odolanów and Ostrów Wielkopolski

2500-618: Was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw , and then in 1815 it was reannexed by Prussia. The citizens took part in the Greater Poland uprising (1848) during the Spring of Nations , fighting against better armed Prussians in the battle of Odolanów on 21 April 1848. They also supported the Polish January Uprising of 1863, delivering weapons and clothes to the insurgents. From 1871 it

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