Lodz

Lodz pronounced "wootch" is Poland's second largest city (population 767,628 in 2006). It is located in the centre of the country and serves as the capital of the Lodz Voivodeship.

History

Lodz first appears in the written record in a 1332 document giving the village of lodzia to the bishops of Wloclawek. In 1423 King Wladyslaw Jagiello granted city rights to the village of Lodz. From then until the 18th century the town remained a small settlement on a trade route between Masovia and Silesia. In the 16th century the town had fewer than 800 inhabitants, mostly working on the nearby grain farms.
With the second partition of Poland in 1793, Lodz became part of the Kingdom of Prussia's province of South Prussia, and was known in German as Lodsch. In 1798 the Prussians nationalized the town, and it lost its status as a town of the bishops of Kuyavia. In 1806 Lodz joined the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and in 1815 became part of Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire.
In 1820 Stanis?aw Staszic began a movement to turn the small town into a modern industrial centre. A constant influx of workers, businessmen and craftsmen from all over Europe transformed Lodz into the main textile production centre of the Russian Empire. The first cotton mill opened in 1825, and 14 years later the first steam-powered factory in both Poland and Russia commenced operations. The immigrants came to the Promised Land from all over Europe. Mostly they arrived from Southern Germany and Bohemia, but also from countries as far as Portugal, England, France and Ireland. However, three groups dominated the city's population and contributed the most to the city's development: Poles, Germans and Jews.
In 1850, Russia abolished the customs barrier between Congress Poland and Russia proper; industry in Lodz could now develop freely with a huge Russian market not far away. Soon the city became the second-largest city of Congress Poland. In 1865 the first railroad line opened opened, and soon the city had rail links with Warsaw and Bialystok.
In the 1823–1873 period, the city's population doubled every ten years. The years 1870–1890 marked the period of most intense industrial development in the city's history. Lodz soon became a major centre of the socialist movement. In 1892 a huge strike paralyzed most of the factories. During the 1905 Revolution, inwhat became known as the June Days or Lodz insurrection, Tsarist police killed more than 300 workers. Despite the air of impending crisis preceding World War I, the city grew constantly until 1914. By that year it had become one of the most densely-populated industrial cities in the world —13,280 inhabitants per square kilometer (34,395/sq mi). A major battle was fought near the city in late 1914, and as a result the city came under German occupation, but with Polish independence restored in November 1918 the local population liberated the city and disarmed the German troops. In the aftermath of World War I, Lodz lost approximately 40% of its inhabitants, mostly owing to draft, diseases and because a huge part of the German population moved to Germany.
In 1922, Lodz became the capital of the Lodz Voivodeship, but the period of rapid growth had ceased. The Great Depression of the 1930s and the Custom War  with Germany closed western markets to Polish textiles while the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and the Civil War in Russia (1918–1922) put an end to the most profitable trade with the East. The city became a scene of a series of huge workers' protests and riots in the interbellum. On 13 September 1925 a new airport, Lublinek Airport, started operations near the city of Lodz. In the interwar years Lodz continued to be a diverse city, with the 1931 census showing that the total population of 604,470 included 315,622 (52.21%) Poles, 202,497 (33.49%) Jews and 86,351 (14.28%) Germans (determination based on the declaration of language used).

World War II

During the Invasion of Poland the Polish forces of the Lodz Army of General Juliusz Rommel defended Lodz against initial German attacks. However, the Wehrmacht captured the city on September 8. Despite plans for the city to become a Polish enclave, attached to the General Government, the Nazi hierarchy respected the wishes of the local governor of Reichsgau Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, and of many of the ethnic Germans living in the city, and annexed it to the Reich in November 1939. The city received the new name of Litzmannstadt after the German general Karl Litzmann, who captured the city during World War I. Nevertheless, many LodzGermans refused to sign Volksliste and become Volksdeutsche, instead being deported to the General Government.
Soon the Nazi authorities set up the Lodz Ghetto in the city and populated it with more than 200,000 Jews from the Lodz area. Only about 900 people survived the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944. Several concentration camps and death camps arose in the city's vicinity for the non-Jewish inhabitants of the regions, among them the infamous Radogoszcz prison and several minor camps for the Roma people and for Polish children.
By the end of World War II, Lodz had lost approximately 420,000 of its pre-war inhabitants: 300,000 Polish Jews and approximately 120,000 other Poles. In January 1945 most of the German population fled the city for fear of the Red Army. The city also suffered tremendous losses due to the German policy of requisition of all factories and machines and transporting them to Germany. Thus despite relatively small losses due to aerial bombardment and the fighting, Lodz had lost most of its infrastructure.
The Soviet Red Army entered the city on January 18,  1945. According to Marshal Katukov, whose forces participated in the operation, the Germans retreated so suddenly that they had no time to evacuate or destroy the Lodz factories, as they did in other cities. In time, Lodz became part of the People's Republic of Poland.
Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Lodz numbered about 233,000, accounting for one-third of the city’s population. The community was wiped out in the Holocaust.

After 1945

In early 1945, Lodz had fewer than 300,000 inhabitants. However the number began to grow as refugees from Warsaw and territories annexed by the Soviet Union immigrated. Until 1948 the city served as a de facto capital of Poland, since events during and after the Warsaw uprising had thoroughly destroyed Warsaw, and most of the government and country administration resided in Lodz. Some planned moving the capital there permanently, however this idea did not gain popular support and in 1948 the reconstruction of Warsaw began. Under the Polish Communist regime many of the industrialist families lost their wealth when the authorities nationalised private companies. Once again the city became a major centre of industry. After the period of economic transition during the 1990s most enterprises were again privatised.
Before 1990, Lodz's economy focused on the textile industry, which in the nineteenth century had developed in the city owing to the favourable chemical composition of its water. As a result, Lodz grew from a population of 13,000 in 1840 to over 500,000 in 1913. By just before World War I Lodz had become one of the most densely populated industrial cities in the world, with 13,280 inhabitants per square kilometer (34,395/sq mi). The textile industry declined dramatically in 1990 and 1991, and no major textile company survives in Lodz today. However, countless small companies still provide a significant output of textiles, mostly for export to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
The city benefits from its central location in Poland. A number of firms have located their logistics centers in the vicinity. Two planned motorways, A1 spanning from the north to the south of Poland, and A2 going from the east to the west will intersect northeast of the city. When these motorways are completed around 2010, the advantages due to the city's central location should increase even further. Work has also began on upgrading the railway connection with Warsaw, which at present is completely inadequate as it takes almost 2 hours to make the 137 km (85 mi) journey by train. In the next few years much of the track will be modified to handle trains moving at 160 km/h (99 mph), cutting the travel time to about 75 minutes.