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57-517: Gąbin was first mentioned in 1215, but a gord -type settlement existed here long before that date, as in 1920, a coin minted by first Polish King Boleslaus I the Brave was found in the market square. Gąbin probably received town charter in 1322, or perhaps earlier; in 1437 the charter was confirmed and expanded. Until the mid-15th century, it was part of the Duchy of Mazovia , and in 1462, it became seat of

114-427: 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

171-504: A garden in certain languages. Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for a city or town : The names of many Central and Eastern European cities harken back to their pasts as gords. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples. Examples include: The words in Polish and Slovak for suburbium , podgrodzie and podhradie correspondingly, literally mean

228-419: A decree prohibiting Jews from buying leather from the local peasants, allowing them to purchase leather only at the town market after completion of the morning mass at the town’s Catholic church. In 1582, a decree from king Stephen Báthory further prevented Jews from buying hides and tallow in the town or its vicinity. During subsequent years, Jews were harassed at times, and forced to live in designated parts of

285-746: 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

342-403: 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

399-540: A garden, and its English descendant horticulture . In Hungarian , kert , the word for a garden, literally means encircled . Because Hungarian is a Uralic rather than an Indo-European language, this is likely a loanword . Further afield, in ancient Iran , a fortified wooden settlement was called a gerd , or certa , which also means garden (as in the suffix -certa in the names of various ancient Iranian cities; e.g., Hunoracerta ). The Persian word evolved into jerd under later Arab influence. Burugerd or Borujerd

456-480: A hollow. Others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a natural defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped. Most gords were built in densely populated areas on sites that offered particular natural advantages. As Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded. Near

513-689: 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

570-516: A settlement beneath a gord: the gród / hrad was frequently built at the top of a hill, and the podgrodzie / podhradie at its foot. (The Slavic prefix pod- , meaning "under/below" and descending from the Proto-Indo-European root pṓds , meaning foot, being equivalent to Latin sub- ). The word survives in the names of several villages ( Podgrodzie, Subcarpathian Voivodeship ) and town districts (e.g., that of Olsztyn ), as well as in

627-779: A wall made of earth and wood, and a palisade running along the top of the bulwark. The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós 'enclosure'. The Proto-Slavic word *gordъ later differentiated into grad ( Cyrillic : град), gorod (Cyrillic: город), gród in Polish , gard in Kashubian , etc. It is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusian гарадз іць, Ukrainian horod yty, Slovak o hrad iť, Czech o hrad it, Russian o grad it, Serbo-Croatian o grad iti, and Polish o grad zać, grod zić, to fence off). It also has evolved into words for

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684-453: Is a city in the west of Iran. The Indian suffix -garh , meaning a fort in Hindi , Urdu , Sanskrit , and other Indo-Iranian languages , appears in many Indian place names. Given that both Slavic and Indo-Iranian are sub-branches of Indo-European and that there are numerous similarities between Slavic and Sanskrit vocabulary, it is plausible that garh and gord are related. However, this

741-527: Is strongly contradicted by the phoneme /g/ in Indo-Iranian, which cannot be a reflex of the Indo-European palatovelar /*ǵ/. A typical gord was a group of wooden houses built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood, a palisade , and/or moats . Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval, or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding

798-483: 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

855-594: 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

912-523: The Gostynin Land , in what was then Rawa Voivodeship . It was a royal town of the Polish Crown. In the period known as Polish Golden Age , Gąbin was renowned for its cloth makers, it also was the seat of a starosta . Local merchants traded with the main Polish port city of Gdańsk , to which they sold grain, and from which they bought salt, fish, and foreign liquor. In the late 15th century

969-999: The High Middle Ages , the gord usually evolved into a castle , citadel or kremlin , and the suburbium into a town . Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, gradually turning into more or less discernible mounds or rings of earth ( Russian gorodishche, Polish gród or grodzisko, Ukrainian horodyshche, Slovak hradisko, Czech hradiště, German Hradisch , Hungarian hradis and Serbian gradiška / градишка ). Notable archeological sites include Groß Raden in Germany and Biskupin in Poland. 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

1026-731: 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

1083-520: 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;

1140-463: 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

1197-654: 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

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1254-538: 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

1311-433: 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

1368-642: The Germans placed the Jewish population in a ghetto , and in 1942 about 500 were sent to forced labour camps. Later that year, the Germans rounded up the remaining hundreds of Jews and sent them to the Chełmno extermination camp where they were immediately gassed. At war’s end, of the approximately 2,300 Jews that had resided in Gąbin (including about 250 sent there during the war, only about 212 survived, 180 having escaped to

1425-416: 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

1482-578: The Gąbin forest in November 1939, a public execution of 10 Poles near the local church on June 15, 1941. Expulsions of Poles and deportations of mostly young Poles to forced labour to Germany were carried out throughout the war. The Germans also burned down the local synagogue, dismantled the Gothic Revival church, which was erected shortly before the war, and destroyed the Polish Tomb of

1539-602: 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

1596-464: 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

1653-600: The Russian army plundered farms and brought the cholera epidemic to the town. Poles also took part in the January Uprising (1863–1864), which resulted in harsh Anti-Polish repressions from the Imperial Russian authorities. Further economic development was halted in the late 19th century, due to proximity of quickly developing industrial town of Żyrardów . During World War I , from 1915 to 1918, Gąbin

1710-617: 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

1767-651: The Soviet occupied zone of Poland in September 1939, and 32 fleeing into the Polish countryside. The Jewish history of Gąbin was memorialized in Minna Packer's acclaimed documentary film Back To Gombin (2002) as seen on United States and Israeli television, and in numerous international film festivals. Gombin is the name for the town in both Yiddish and German. The film is distributed by the National Center for Jewish Film . The anti-communist resistance

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1824-562: The Unknown Soldier . Despite such circumstances, the Polish underground resistance movement was active in the town. Many Poles from Gąbin were also among the victims of the Katyń massacre . From its earliest days, Gąbin was a town of craftsmen of various trades, and its population contained a sizeable number of Jews. Competition and conflict between Jewish and the non-Jewish tradesmen is noted as early as 1576 when Sigismund III issued

1881-407: The gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as a suburbium (literally "undercity") ( Polish : podgrodzie ). Its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium acquired its own fence or wall. In

1938-434: 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

1995-534: 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

2052-488: The local Catholic population include: The local football team is Błękitni Gąbin. It competes in the lower leagues. Gord (archaeology) A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, usually built on strategic sites such as hilltops, riverbanks, lake islets or peninsulas between the 6th and 12th centuries in Central and Eastern Europe . A typical gord consisted of a group of wooden houses surrounded by

2109-477: The local parish priest was Maciej Drzewicki , the future archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland. The period of prosperity ended during the Swedish invasion of Poland (1655–1660), when Gąbin was ransacked and burned to the ground, and Great Northern War (1700–1721). The revival of the local economy took place in the second half of the 18th century during the reign of King Stanislaus Augustus . In 1793

2166-440: 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

2223-538: The names of the German municipalities Puttgarden , Wagria and Putgarten , Rügen . From this same Proto-Indo-European root come the Germanic word elements * gard and * gart (as in Stuttgart ), and likely also the names of Graz , Austria and Gartz , Germany . Cognate to these are English words such as garden , yard , garth , girdle and court. Also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus ,

2280-763: 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

2337-472: 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

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2394-740: 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

2451-504: 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

2508-532: The tower were migrated to a block-style apartment building in the center of Gąbin, where many still reside today. The town has experienced a remarkable renaissance since the fall of Communism . Gąbin is home to a large high school of over 1,000 students with specialties in modern farming techniques, technical skills, and preparation for higher education. The school has been home to Peace Corps volunteers and has promoted foreign exchange visits with peers from Germany, Russia, and other countries. Churches that support

2565-615: The town on September 17, 1939, and the German occupation began. The Polish population was subjected to various atrocities . Germans immediately carried out mass arrests of local Polish intelligentsia , activists and officials, who were deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp and murdered there. Germans also carried out massacres of Poles in Gąbin itself, notable examples include an execution of 20 Polish refugees from Pomerania on September 19–21, 1939, an execution of six farmers from nearby villages of Czermno and Strzemeszno in

2622-601: The town was annexed by Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland . In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included in the short-lived French Duchy of Warsaw , and in 1815 it became part of so-called Congress Poland , soon forcibly integrated into Russia . On the initiative of Stanisław Staszic , a weaver settlement was founded in Gąbin in the 1820s, and a number of German artisans settled here. The Polish November Uprising against Russia (1830–1831), in which many local Poles took part, caused an economic collapse, as

2679-410: The town, called the “quarter.” Jews generally represented approximately half the population of the town. For example, in 1808, the town’s population consisted of 577 Jews out of a total population of 1,183. The census of 1827 counted 1,472 Jews out of a total population of 2,926. After World War I the 1921 census showed that of the total population of the town, at 5,777, there were 2,564 Jews living in

2736-533: The town. Before the onset of World War II , Gąbin was home to a large Jewish population, around 2,000 residents, and hosted an ornate wooden synagogue from the early 1700s. On September 7, 1939, Gąbin was occupied by the invading German Army, which burned down the wooden synagogue and rounded up the town’s Jewish population to dig trenches for protection against the Polish Army. In 1940, German police and SS murdered many Jews and tortured many others. In 1941,

2793-517: 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

2850-659: 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

2907-653: 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

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2964-515: 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

3021-460: 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

3078-543: Was active in the town. Between 1974 and 1991 the Warsaw radio mast in Konstantynów , a village belonging to Gąbin commune ( gmina ) was the tallest structure on earth. The tower was used to broadcast the programs of Polish Radio throughout Europe. Because of fears that the tower's incredibly powerful radio waves might cause health problems, a large number of villagers who had once farmed the land directly under and around

3135-584: 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

3192-566: 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

3249-414: Was occupied by Germany , and afterwards, in 1918, Poland regained independence and the town was reintegrated with Polish territory. During the invasion of Poland , which started World War II , in September 1939, Gąbin was raided by Germany. Eugenia Sikorska-Dąbrowska, sister of Polish wartime leader Władysław Sikorski , was fatally shot by the Germans, while she was saving children. German troops entered

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