Oświęcim

Oświęcim is one of the oldest castellan seats in Poland, recorded as a fortified settlement from the 12th century. It was destroyed in the Mongol invasion of 1241, rebuilt, and given a town charter around 1272. From 1315 it was the capital of the Duchy of Oświęcim under a local branch of the Piast dynasty, which came under Bohemian overlordship in the 14th century; in 1457 King Casimir IV Jagiellon bought the rights to the town, and in 1564 the duchy was formally joined to the Kingdom of Poland. On the trade route towards Silesia and Moravia, the town traded in salt from Wieliczka; German-speaking merchants called it Auschwitz.

The Swedish invasion of 1655 burned the town and began a long decline. In 1772 it passed to Austria as part of Galicia, and in the 19th century it became an important railway junction; fires in 1863 and 1881 destroyed much of the centre. On the eve of the Second World War about 8,000 Jews lived here, less than half the population.

In 1939 Germany annexed the town directly into the Reich, and from 1940 the Polish army barracks on its edge became the Auschwitz concentration camp, later expanded into the extermination camp at Birkenau and the labour camp at Monowitz beside a new IG Farben chemical plant. Some 17,000 local people were expelled. About 1.1 million people were killed in the camps, most of them Jews deported from across Europe. The Red Army reached the town on 27 January 1945. After the war the chemical works became the main employer, and in 1947 the camp sites were preserved as a state museum.

Before the war Oświęcim was a Jewish as well as a Polish town — in Yiddish it was Oshpitzin — and the Auschwitz Jewish Center keeps that history alive through its museum, the restored synagogue, begun around 1913, and the house of Shimson Kleuger, the last Jewish resident, who died in 2000. The square outside is named after Jan Skarbek, the parish priest honoured for cultivating good relations between the town's faiths. Pope John Paul II visited in 1979 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2006.

Culturally the town sits on a borderland. It is often regarded as part of Upper Silesia, and its local speech is counted as the eastern edge of the Silesian dialect, coloured by the Lesser Poland dialect. Since 2010 the town has commissioned the murals of its Mural Trail, painted for the Life Festival Oświęcim, which was held from 2010 to 2018 to promote peace and tolerance.

Sport is a source of pride. KS Unia, founded in 1946, built a strong ice hockey tradition, and TH Unia Oświęcim has been Polish champion nine times, most recently in 2024; the town has also produced figure skaters, swimmers and an Olympic pentathlon champion. Beyond the memorial, it remains an ordinary town whose residents go about everyday lives under the weight of its wartime name.

About 35,600 people lived in Oświęcim at the start of 2024, making it the fourth- largest town in Lesser Poland. The town has large housing estates, such as Chemików, as well as an old centre east of the Soła and districts on both banks; the Main Market Square, the castle hill and the riverside paths are the centre of town life.

The chemical works on the eastern edge of town, run by Synthos since 2007, are still a major employer, although jobs there fell from about 10,000 under communism to around 1,500 by the mid-1990s; electrical machinery and building materials are made here too. The memorial, visited by more than two million people in 2019, has become a large source of income for local businesses, from guides and drivers to cafés and guesthouses.

Many visitors come on organised tours from Kraków or Katowice and see only the memorial, so the Old Town keeps a local feel. Trains link the town with Kraków, Katowice and Czechowice-Dziedzice.

Oświęcim eats in the style of southern Poland, between the cooking of Lesser Poland and Silesia. Kotlet schabowy, a thinly pounded pork loin cutlet coated in breadcrumbs, is popular across Poland, alongside pierogi, bigos and soups such as żurek, a sour soup made from fermented flour, served with potatoes, egg, bacon and white sausage. From the Silesian side come rolada, beef roulade with Silesian dumplings and red cabbage, and at Christmas makówki, a poppy-seed dessert.

Simple meals dominate. Zapiekanka, an open-faced sandwich of a halved roll topped with tomato sauce, mushrooms and cheese, is a common Polish street food, and pizza places and cafés are spread around the market square, alongside a pub that brews its own beer and restaurants serving traditional Polish food. The café in the Kleuger house at the Auschwitz Jewish Center offers a place to sit and reflect after a visit to the memorial.

Bakeries follow the national calendar: the favourite sweets on Fat Thursday, before Lent, are pączki, Polish doughnuts, and faworki, thin fried pastries.