Łomazy

Łomazy
Village
Distant view of the Saints Peter and Paul Church
Łomazy
Coordinates: 51°54′N 23°10′E / 51.900°N 23.167°E / 51.900; 23.167
Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Lublin
County	Biała Podlaska County
Gmina	Łomazy
Population	1,700

Łomazy [wɔˈmazɨ] is a village in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Łomazy. It lies approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) south of Biała Podlaska and 84 km (52 mi) north-east of the regional capital Lublin.

The village has a population of 1,700.

Łomazy was first mentioned in a document written in 1447. It was conveniently located on the trade route from Kraków to Wilno. The settlement received city rights in 1568 from the Polish king Zygmunt August. After the foreign partitions of Poland in 1795 Łomazy fell into the Austrian Partition first, than to the Russian Partition after the period of insurrections. The Russian tsar stripped Łomazy of its city rights in 1870.

Following First World War Łomazy became part of the Lublin Voivodeship (1919–39) in the Second Polish Republic. The economic situation was very difficult resulting to sizable migration. At the onset of World War II after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a Jewish exploitation ghetto was created in Łomazy in early 1940. Two years later, the village was the site of a mass murder of all ghettoized Jews by the paramilitary Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the Nazi German Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) aided by the specially trained Ukrainian Hilfswillige known as Trawnikis. The killings took place on August 17 or 19, 1942 in the nearby Hały forest, but also in the homes during roundups. According to different sources some 1,000–2,000 Jews (1,700 according to German documents) were massacred in Łomazy in one day of killings which lasted until the late evening. After the war a memorial was erected at the site commemorating the perished Jewish citizens of the town.