History of Zamość

Renaissance town

Zamość was founded in 1580 by the Chancellor and Hetman (head of the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) Jan Zamoyski, on the trade route linking western and northern Europe with the Black Sea. Modelled on Italian trading cities, and built during the Baroque period by the architect Bernardo Morando, a native of Padua, Zamość remains a perfect example of a Renaissance town of the late 16th century, which retains its original layout and fortifications (Zamość Fortress), and a large number of buildings blending Italian and central European architectural traditions.

At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Zamość was one of the most impressive fortresses in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The city was belted with powerful bastion fortifications, curtains and moats. The defensive qualities of the fortress were determined by the natural conditions, since the city was founded at the Łabuńka river and its tributary Topornica river, surrounded by the extensive marshy valley.

As a result of the merger of the fortress and the main city and thanks to the terrain, the fortress had a shape of irregular heptagon, consisting of 7 curtains and 7 bastions placed in the bends. Jan Zamoyski, the founder and owner of the city, paid a lot of attention to the defense functions of the city. In the founding document, he pledged to consolidate the city with ramparts and a moat. The city was founded in the areas that used to be threatened or attacked by the Tatars. In the case of emergency, the powerful fortress could give shelter to people fleeing from threatened areas.

In the 17th century the city was thriving during the most extensive and fastest development period. It attracted not only the Poles but also many other nationalities. The city, however, faced numerous invasions, including the siege by the Cossacks led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648, the leader of the uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1648–1654) which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state, and during the Swedish Deluge in 1656. The Swedish army, like the Cossacks, failed to capture the city. Only during the Great Northern War Zamość was occupied by the Swedish and Saxon troops.

Between 1772 and 1809, the city was incorporated into the Austrian Empire's Crown Province of Galicia.

In 1809 the city was incorporated to the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw whereas after the fall of Napoleon, following the decisions taken during the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Zamość became a part of the Kingdom of Poland, also called Congress Poland, which was controlled by the Russian Empire.

In 1821 the government of the kingdom bought off the city and modernized the Zamość fortress. As a result, many buildings were restructured losing their original form and style. The modernized fortress played a big role during the November Uprising in 1830-1831 and surrendered as the last Polish resistance point. The fortress was finally destroyed in 1866, giving rise to the robust spatial development of the city.

In 1916 the city was provided with the railway line. After Poland regained its independence in 1918, Zamość witnessed the outbreak of a communist revolt, suppressed by the Polish troops under the command of Major Leopold Lis-Kula. Two years later, during the Polish-Soviet War, the Soviet army surrounded the city but failed to capture it.

The interwar period was a period of fast city development when its boundaries were widened as well as many new institutions and centers, especially those relating to cultural and educational life, were created.

History of Jews in Zamość

The city was a large center of Chasidic Judaism. The Qahal of Zamość was founded in 1588 when Jan Zamoyski agreed to settle the Jews in the city. The first Jewish settlers were mainly the Sephardi Jews coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. In the 17th century, the newcomers were recruited among the Ashkenazi Jews that soon constituted the majority of the Jewish population. The settlement rights given by Jan Zamoyski were re-confirmed in 1684 by Marcin Zamoyski, the fourth Ordynat of Zamość estate.

Synagogue in Zamość

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Jewish inhabitants were influenced by the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah. The late nineteenth century saw the spread of Hasidic Judaism. In Zamość there was a Jewish synagogue, two houses of worship and a hospital. The best preserved remnant of the Jewish community is the Zamość Synagogue.

In 1827, 2,874 Jews lived in the city. In 1900, the Jewish population was 7,034 and the Jewish population grew to 9383 (49.3% of the total population) in 1921.

Zamość was the hometown of many prominent Jews, including poet Solomon Ettinger (1799–1855), writer Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915), and political activist Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919).

Before the outbreak of World War II, more than 12,500 Jews lived in Zamosc, accounting for 43 percent of its population. In October 1939, the German occupants set up the Judenrat and in the spring of 1942 they set up a ghetto. From April to September 1942, around 4,000 Jews were deported to the Bełżec extermination camp.

In October 1942, the Nazis shot 500 Jews, and the remaining 4,000 Jews were deported, via the transfer point in the Izbica concentration camp, to the extermination camp in Bełżec. These Jews were transported in unheated, closed freight train compartments, without any food or water. Although the distance was relatively short, the journey frequently lasted days, and many died en route. Today only 3 Jews live in Zamość.

World War II

Following the German invasion and outbreak of World War II, in September 1939 Zamość was seized by the German army. Shortly, the Nazis created an extermination camp in the Zamość Rotunda where more than 8,000 people were killed, including displaced residents of the Zamość region and Soviet prisoners of war.

7th Bastion of the Fortress - The only fully preserved bastion

In 1942, Zamość County, due to its fertile black soil, was chosen for further German colonization in the General Government as part of Generalplan Ost. The city itself was initially to be renamed "Himmlerstadt" (Himmler City), later changed to "Pflugstadt" (Plough City). Reichsfuhrer Himmler visited Zamość in August 1942 and ordered that the buildings of the old city be demolished immediately and replaced by a "German town". The local German administrator, more sympathetic towards the town's Renaissance architecture, played for time by requesting what sort of German architecture was required. Teams of planners and architects had not reached a decision when the Germans were evicted by the Red Army.

The German occupiers had planned the relocation of at least 60,000 ethnic Germans in the area before the end of 1943. Before that, a "test trial" expulsion was performed in November 1941, and the whole operation ended in a pacification operation, combined with expulsions in June/July 1943 which was code named Wehrwolf Action I and II. Around 110,000 people from 297 villages were expelled. Around 30,000 victims were children who, if racially "clean" (i.e. had physical characteristics deemed "Germanic") were planned for germanisation in German families in the Third Reich. Most of the people expelled were sent as slave labour in Germany or to concentration camps.

Cathedral in Zamość

Local people resisted the action with great determination; they escaped into forests, organised self-defence, helped people who were expelled, and bribed kidnapped children out of German hands. Until the middle of 1943, the Germans managed to settle 80,000 colonists, the number increased by a couple of thousand more in 1944. This settlement was met with fierce armed resistance by Polish Underground forces (see Zamość Uprising). The Nazis found it difficult to find many families suitable for Germanization and so settlement, and that those settlers they did find often fled in fear, because those evicted would burn down houses or kill their inhabitants.

The former President of Germany Horst Köhler was born to a family of German colonists in Skierbieszów.

After the war

After World War II, Zamość started a period of development. In the 1970s and 1980s the population grew rapidly (from 39,100 in 1975 to 68,800 in 2003), as the city started to gain significant profits from the old trade routes linking Germany with Ukraine and the ports on the Black Sea.

During the years 1975–1998 Zamość was the capital of Zamość Voivodeship.

Noted conservator and artist Professor Wiktor Zin was responsible for