The topic of our today’s article is visiting Oświęcim. The town is located less than 70 km from Krakow, in Oświęcim Basin. As we all know, the World War II has left a very painful mark on its history. Today many newcomers from all over the world associate Oświęcim mainly with the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Our text has an aim to bring out the history of the city of Oświęcim. When You decide to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum take also a trip to the city itself. It is a way to learn something about its heritage – including Jewish – and realize how did the world look like before Holocaust.
Short history of Oświęcim
You should know that you are going to visit one of the oldest settlements in Poland. Its history lasts for over 800 years! In the Middle Ages the city was under the rule of the Piast Dynasty and was the seat of castellan, which means that it was a center of local authorities. In the 14th century Oświęcim became a capital of a Duchy and in this moment, the turbulent history of the city began. For a 100 years it remained a part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, until the last Piast Prince Jan V made a homage to king Kazimierz Jagiellończyk and considered himself as a vassal of the Kingdom of Poland (in fact he sold the rights to the Duchy for 50000 Prague cents). Therefore these lands remained within the borders of Poland until its First Partition in 1772, when the Duchy became a part of Austria and the title of the Duke enriched the titular of Austrian emperors. After 1918 the town was in the independent Second Polish Republic. Unfortunately during World War II Oświęcim and the city surroundings was incorporated to the Third Reich and became the scene of the greatest human drama of our times. It is worth reminding that before the war Jews were more than 40% of the city population. Some of them survived the Holocaust. Oświęcim authorities wants to preserve the memory about Jewish past of the city (this is why discussing town monuments, we will pay particular attention to Jewish heritage).
Visiting Oświęcim monuments
Visiting Oświęcim begins traditionally from the Market Square. It has has been delineated in the 13th century, during the city foundation on the Magdeburg Law. Unfortunately, nothing survived from that time – only few remains of the seventeenth-century Town Hall are exposed under the glass at the Market Square. The current headquarters of the city authorities was built in the 2nd half of the 19th century and is not particularly impressive – among other townhouses it distinguishes by Neo-Gothic clock tower. It is worth noting that Oświęcim Town Hall is connected with the history of Kraków’s Nowa Huta in a quite specific way. Do you remember our post about the struggle for the construction of the Ark of Lord church? Well, to suppress Nowa Huta inhabitants protests in defense of the cross, police units were summoned even from Oświęcim Town Hall, where local Security Office had its headquarters.
With no doubts, the building that dominates view of the Market Square is Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (attention! at this point our tour of Oświęcim moves towards memorabilia from a really distant past). The current look of the church exterior is a result of numerous changes. Especially important are these from the 17th and 19th century. The last ones gave back the building its appearance from the 14th century! You should go inside and pay attention to 16th-century Gothic-Renaissance portals. What is more, the interior of the temple is decorated with a lot of Baroque equipment (eg. the 17th-century crucifix and epitaphs in the chancel, rococo altar and speech pulpit from the same time!).
Visiting Oświęcim will not be completed without seeing a former Dominican monastery complex (situated less than 100 meters from the Market Square). This time we definitely go back to the medieval times, because the monastery were set up in the 14th century. Its buildings suffered city fire caused by Swedish troops in 1655 and after the dissolution of the monasteries by Austrian Emperor Joseph II, all complex simply became a ruin. At the end of the 19th century Salesians were established in Oświęcim and took care on former Dominican monastery. There are two interesting buildings in the entire complex – Chapel of St. Jack (the monastery chapter house in the past) and the Church of Our Lady to Help Christians. The chapel kept its original Gothic character with a crypt where are probably buried founders of the convent – Piast Prince Ladislaus I and his wife of a fine name Eufrozyne. The biggest temple nearby was originally dedicated to the Holy Cross. As I mentioned before, it was built in a Gothic style, then rebuilt in the Renaissance period and finally its present interior is Neo-Gothic, arranged by Salesians. At a time when monastery buildings became empty, church for some time functioned as a warehouse, but according to the legend Blessed Virgin revealed on the temple ruins during the feast of Corpus Christi in 1895. It was considered as a sign to persuade Salesians and local community to restore the church to its former glory.
There is one more obligatory point in Oświęcim – castle upon the Sola river. We have already written about the fact that the city was the capital of castellany and its castellan needed of course a reliable and representative place to live and work. So the dominant element of the fortress is the castellan house – a tower built in the 13th century. One castle wing built in the 16th century has survived to our times, the rest is combined with the mentioned tower and the building set up in the 20’s. It is worth mentioning that there are two tunnels under the fortress – one from the Austrian times (1914) and the other from the World War II (Nazis forced Auschwitz prisoners to work on excavations). Picturesque castle and tunnels are now one of many tourist attractions in the city (Oświęcim inhabitants are willing to tell the legend that there was one more tunnel connecting the castle with Dominican monastery!)
Jewish heritage in Oświęcim
As I said at the beginning, visiting Oświęcim should also include seeing memorabilia of the Jewish community. You necessarily need to take a look on Synagogue Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot. In Hebrew its name means synagogue belonging to the Brotherhood Studying the Mishnah (ancient rabbinic text, part of the Talmud). The synagogue was founded in the 19th century and devastated during the World War II. Then it returned into the hands of a tiny (over a hundred people) Jewish community that came back to the city after the war. Unfortunately all of its members moved from Communist Poland and the synagogue were remaining empty for years. Finally it was taken by the Jewish community from Bielsko-Biała and the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation which took care on the temple and regained its former appearance and function).
Jewish Museum was opened in the adjacent building where you can see an exhibition dedicated to former residents of Oświęcim (a very interesting issue is their connections with Hasidism – unfortunately the Hasidic synagogue in Bobowa not survived to our times, because Oświęcim authorities were forced to demolish it in 2005 because of its dramatic state). Also the city greatest synagogue – the 19th-century Great Synagogue was buried down by Nazis. During excavations on its territory archeologists encountered a real treasure – temple equipment (presented at the exhibition in the Jewish Museum). Visiting the 18th-century Jewish cemetery with over 1000 preserved tombstones closes our tour (there are tombstones from the 18th century among them). In 2000, the last Jewish resident of the city was buried here. So in Oświęcim, a bit like in Kazimierz, we can see how Jewish life looked like before the World War II.
