Reconstructing for the Future

Dzierżoniów (population in 2023: 30,614) is a county city in southwestern Poland in the Lower Silesian voivodeship. The city is located on the eastern edge of the Owl Mountains, on the Piława River. It is one of the oldest cities in Lower Silesia which obtained city rights around 1250. Until 1945 it was known under its German name Reichenbach which was initially polonized to Rychbach, while the current name was given in 1946 to commemorate the priest Jan Dzierżoniów, an outstanding Silesian bee researcher

Wrocław (German: Breslau) is one of the largest cities in Poland (population in 2022: 674,079). It is located in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in the southwest of the country.
Initially under Bohemian, Piast and at other times Hungarian rule, the Habsburgs took over the Silesian territories in 1526, including Wrocław. Another turning point in the city's history was the occupation of Wroclaw by Prussian troops in 1741 and the subsequent incorporation of a large part of Silesia into the Kingdom of Prussia.
The dramatic increase in population and the fast-growing industrialization led to the rapid urbanization of the suburbs and their incorporation, which was accompanied by the demolition of the city walls at the beginning of the 19th century. By 1840, Breslau had already grown into a large city with 100,000 inhabitants. At the end of the 19th century, the cityscape, which was often still influenced by the Middle Ages, changed into a large city in the Wilhelmine style. The highlight of the city's development before the First World War was the construction of the Exhibition Park as the new center of Wrocław's commercial future with the Centennial Hall from 1913, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006.
In the 1920s and 30s, 36 villages were incorporated and housing estates were built on the outskirts of the city. In order to meet the great housing shortage after the First World War, housing cooperatives were also commissioned to build housing estates.
Declared a fortress in 1944, Wrocław was almost completely destroyed during the subsequent fightings in the first half of 1945. Reconstruction of the now Polish city lasted until the 1960s.
Of the Jewish population of around 20,000, only 160 people found their way back to the city after the Second World War. Between 1945 and 1947, most of the city's remaining or returning - German - population was forced to emigrate and was replaced by people from the territory of the pre-war Polish state, including the territories lost to the Soviet Union.
After the political upheaval of 1989, Wrocław rose to new, impressive heights. The transformation process and its spatial consequences led to a rapid upswing in the city, supported by Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. Today, Wrocław is one of the most prosperous cities in Poland.

The current district town of Przysucha (population in 2022: 5,393) in Mazowieckie Voivodeship, however, is located in the historical territory of Lesser Poland. The place, known since the 15th century, received city rights in 1715 in the context of the establishment of industry. The new city attracted German, Polish and Jewish settlers, each of whom settled in a separate part of the town, which explains the unusual appearance of a small town with three markets. In the 19th century, the dominant metal industry lost its importance. Przysucha lost city rights in 1869, which were regained in 1958.

Warsaw is the capital of Poland and also the largest city in the country (population in 2024: 1,863,845). It is located in the Mazovian Voivodeship on Poland's longest river, the Vistula. Warsaw first became the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic at the end of the 16th century, replacing Krakow, which had previously been the Polish capital. During the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, Warsaw was occupied several times and finally became part of the Prussian province of South Prussia for eleven years. From 1807 to 1815 the city was the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, a short-lived Napoleonic satellite state; in the annexation of the Kingdom of Poland under Russian suzerainty (the so-called Congress Poland). It was not until the establishment of the Second Polish Republic after the end of World War I that Warsaw was again the capital of an independent Polish state.

At the beginning of World War II, Warsaw was conquered and occupied by the Wehrmacht only after intense fighting and a siege lasting several weeks. Even then, a five-digit number of inhabitants were killed and parts of the city, known not least for its numerous baroque palaces and parks, were already severely damaged. In the course of the subsequent oppression, persecution and murder of the Polish and Jewish population, by far the largest Jewish ghetto under German occupation was established in the form of the Warsaw Ghetto, which served as a collection camp for several hundred thousand people from the city, the surrounding area and even occupied foreign countries, and was also the starting point for deportation to labor and extermination camps.

As a result of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from April 18, 1943 and its suppression in early May 1943, the ghetto area was systematically destroyed and its last inhabitants deported and murdered. This was followed in the summer of 1944 by the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation, which lasted two months and resulted in the deaths of almost two hundred thousand Poles, and after its suppression the rest of Warsaw was also systematically destroyed by German units.

In the post-war period, many historic buildings and downtown areas, including the Warsaw Royal Castle and the Old Town, were rebuilt - a process that continues to this day.

The district-free city of Łódź (population 2022: 652,015) is located in the voivodeship of the same name in the center of Poland. The small town, which was insignificant until the 1820s, experienced an enormous boom after becoming the leading industrial center in the Autonomous Kingdom of Poland and one of the most important industrial centers in the entire Tsarist Empire. Because of the dominant textile industry, the town was nicknamed the "Manchester of Poland". However, housing construction and the expansion of infrastructure did not keep pace with the expansion of industry, so that in addition to magnificent palaces, large sections of the city's population lived in precarious conditions, often without sewers and without access to education.

After the end of the First World War, Łódź became part of the restored Polish state. In addition to rebuilding the war-damaged industry, there was also increased investment in improving the living conditions of the city's population. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the city was incorporated into the German Reich and its official name was first changed to Lodz and then to Litzmannstadt. Between 1940 and 1944, the city was home to one of the largest ghettos in the Reich, in which, in addition to almost the entire local Jewish population (around 220,000, around a third of the city's population), Jews from other parts of Poland and abroad as well as Sinti and Roma were interned in a very small space. Only a few people survived the ghetto or the place where they were subsequently deported.
After the end of the Second World War in 1945, Łódź was an intact city. As the largest city in Poland at the time and due to its proximity to the formal but almost completely destroyed capital Warsaw, it functioned as the seat of government for three years.
The crisis in the textile industry began in the 1980s, only to collapse shortly after the political transformation began in the early 1990s. The city plunged into a deep crisis, as a result of which its population fell by 200,000 between 1989 and 2022. Łódź fell from second place in the ranking of the country's largest cities to fourth place after Krakow and Wrocław. In the 21st century, investment in redevelopment, the expansion of transport infrastructure and the cultural sector contributed to a significantly improved image of the city, which is now considered one of the most important locations for education, culture, the design industry and the film industry in Poland.

Ashmyany (population 2023: 16,870) is a city in Grodno region, Belarus. It was first mentioned in 1341. In 1384 it was destroyed by the troops of the Teutonic Order, and later became involved in conflicts with the Teutonic Order as well as in internal disputes in Lithuania. Ashmyany was granted the Magdeburg town charter in 1566. In the 16th century, the town was one of the most important centers of Calvinism in Poland-Lithuania. After the Third Partition of Poland-Lithuania, the town belonged to Russia. During the November Uprising, the Russians were 1830 expelled from the city, which was only recaptured in April 1831. Towards the end of the 19th century, Ashmyany was predominantly inhabited by Jews. After the end of the Second World War, Ashmyany became a district town in Poland. From 1939 to 1941, the town was occupied by the Soviet Union. After the German occupation in 1941, a ghetto was set up in Ashmyany, which was dissolved in 1943 and its population was mainly deported to ghettos in present-day Lithuania or killed on site. In 1945, the town was incorporated into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The city of Elbląg (historically Elbing; population in 2023: 112,923) is located in the northern Polish Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, just a few kilometers south of the Vistula Lagoon and around 50 kilometers southeast of Gdansk. In the Middle Ages, Elbląg was one of the leading Hanseatic cities and one of the headquarters of the Teutonic Order. Its importance as one of the leading ports on Baltic Sea was lost in the 15th century, partly due to silting.
In the early modern period, Elbing was predominantly under Polish sovereignty as part of the so-called "Royal Prussia" oder "Polish Prussia". As a result of the First Partition of Poland in 1772 the city came to the newly founded Prussian province of West Prussia, in 1945 to the then People's Republic of Poland.

The district town of Szczytno (formerly Ortelsburg, population 2022: 22,081) is located in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in north-eastern Poland. The recognition of Ortelsburg as a fully legal town was prevented for a long time by the nearby town of Passenheim (now Pasym). A Prussian garrison was stationed in Ortelsburg shortly after the final granting of the town charter in 1723. Although the town remained in East Prussia after the referendum of 1920, it remained an important center of Polish culture in the German Reich.
Ortelsburg suffered heavy destruction in both the First and Second World Wars. The town has belonged to Poland since 1945. The only police academy in the country, which is located in the town, continues the tradition of the garrison town.

The village of Dąbrówno (population 2021: 970) is the seat of the municipality of the same name in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland. The former town gained nationwide fame during the First World War due to the victory of German troops over the 2nd Russian Army (August 30, 1914), which was propagandistically referred to in the Third Reich as the "Battle of Tannenberg" - alluding to the battle fought in the same area in 1410, in which the Teutonic Order suffered a defeat against Polish-Lithuanian forces. After the First World War, however, the decline of the small town, which was now on the border with Poland, became apparent. When it became Polish itself in 1945, Dąbrówno lost its town charter.