Błonie

History

The settlement dates back to the 8th century. Błonie was a royal town of Poland and a county seat in the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province. In the 16th century Błonie was a prosperous town, especially known for shoemaking and brewing. In 1794, during the Kościuszko Uprising, Poles led by Stanisław Mokronowski won the Battle of Błonie against Prussia. In the 1921 census, 91.3% of the population declared Polish nationality and 8.6% declared Jewish nationality. During the Nazi German invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, the unit of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler murdered 50 civilians (mostly Jews) on the outskirts of Błonie in a single mass execution, on (pl) of 18 September 1939. In 1939, the Germans established a transit camp for Polish prisoners of war in the town, and later also a forced labour camp. in order to confine the Jewish population of the town for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. The ghetto was liquidated in February 1941, when all its remaining 2,100 Jewish inhabitants were transported aboard the Holocaust train to the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of (meaning that every person had less than an area 9 feet by 10 feet in which to sleep, eat and walk around the ghetto), or 7.2 persons per room. By the time Poland was liberated from German occupation, not a single Jewish ghetto remained.

Most-observed species

• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  882
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  681
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  661
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  628
• Eurasian Jay

  Garrulus glandarius (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  540
• Western Jackdaw

  Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  529
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  522
• Eurasian Collared-Dove

  Streptopelia decaocto (Frivaldszky, 1838) · Aves
  493