Kraśnik

Kraśnik Lubelski is the original part of the town where all historic buildings are located. It is made of several districts, such as Old Town, Bojanówka, Koszary, Góry, Zarzecze, Kwiatkowice, and Osiedle Kolejowe. Kraśnik Lubelski has old churches and the oldest cemetery of the town, as well as a rail station, a bus station and main administrative offices of the county. It is also a major road junction, where future Expressway S19 (current National Road No. 19) meets National Road No. 74. Until 2010, the Road 74 went through the center of Kraśnik, but now there is a by-pass.

Kraśnik Fabryczny was founded in the late 1930s, as a settlement for State Ammunition Factory No. 2 (Panstwowe Fabryka Amunicji nr. 2), one of the enterprises built as part of the Central Industrial Region. Previously, in the location of Kraśnik Fabryczny there was the village of Dąbrowa Bór, placed a few kilometers northwest of Kraśnik, in a forest between Kraśnik and Urzędów. The government of the Second Polish Republic planned a new settlement, built from scratch, for 6,000 people around the new Ammunition Factory No. 2, FLT-Kraśnik. After the war, the settlement of Dąbrowa Bór was expanded, and in 1954 its name was changed to Kraśnik Fabryczny. In the 1960s, a number of single-family houses was built, later on, several blocks of flats were constructed. On October 1, 1975, Kraśnik Fabryczny merged with Kraśnik Lubelski, and the villages of Budzyń and Piaski, creating the town of Kraśnik. Currently, Kraśnik Fabryczny has some 20,000 inhabitants.

As with much of the Lublin district, Kraśnik was a major center of Judaism, with 5,000 Jews (almost 50% of the population) prior to World War II. Historical accounts place Jews in the area in 1531, but the official right to settle there was granted to Jews in 1584. In 1654, Jewish residence was officially limited to the area near the synagogue, but in practice this was not rigidly enforced.

Great Synagogue (1654) in Kraśnik

Following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II, Kraśnik was taken over by the Soviets in 1939 and later by the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa. It was the site of the Budzyń concentration camp, where the prisoners worked for the Heinkel Flugzeugwerke factory on aircraft production. This camp, with around 3,000 Jews, became a subcamp of Majdanek.

There was another labor camp in Kraśnik called the WIFO Labor Camp, or the Kraśnik Labor Camp (also called ZwangsArbeitslager Skret), located in the ghetto at Szkolna and Bóżnicza streets. It had a similar number of people in it (around 3,000), most of whom were murdered.[1] From a population of more than 5,000 Kraśnik Jews, only an estimated 350 survived the Holocaust; most or all of these survivors left Poland.[2]

Kraśnik is twinned with:

• Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary
• Ruiselede, Belgium
• Šilalė, Lithuania
• Korosten, Ukraine
• Turiisk, Ukraine
• Trogir, Croatia

Former twin towns:

• Nogent-sur-Oise, France (In February 2020, the French commune suspended its partnership with Kraśnik as a reaction to the passing of an anti-LGBT resolution by the Kraśnik local authorities.)[5]

One of the Bartosz Staszewski art instillations portraying the municipality as what he calls an "LGBT-free zone"

In 2019, Kraśnik's city council has adopted an LGBT-free zone resolution, which led to the city's budget losing 10 million euros from EEA and Norway Grants, getting expelled from a European Union twin town cooperation program and losing twin town status with Nogent-sur-Oise.[5][6] In 2021, an appeal to repeal the vote by the mayor was rejected by the town council.[7] The resolution was finally overturned on April 29, 2021. [8]

On 24 September 2020, Kraśnik councilors voted to consider the ban on 5G mobile telephony in the city. Support was given to the petition of the "Poland Free from 5G Coalition Association" (pl: Stowarzyszenie Koalicja Polska Wolna od 5G), which also provides for an order to dismantle Wi-Fi networks in schools.[9][10][11][12]