Śrem

Sister cities

• Fougères

History

Śrem was founded in the second half of the 10th century in the cradle of the emerging Polish state, when a fortified settlement, which protected the ford across the Warta on an important trade route from Silesia to Poznań, was erected on the right bank of the Warta river, and soon a trade settlement developed on the left bank. It is numbered among the oldest Lechitic settlements. Śrem received municipal rights from dukes Bolesław the Pious and Przemysł I of Greater Poland in 1253, the Einsatzgruppe VI carried out mass arrests of Poles, many of whom were immediately murdered. The Einsatzgruppe VI carried out public executions of Poles from Śrem and nearby villages on 20 September and 20 October 1939, killing 20 and 19 people respectively, including former Polish insurgents of 1918–1919, local administration and court officials, merchants, and landowners. The Polish resistance movement was quickly organized in the town, incl. the Dla Ciebie Polsko ("For You, Poland") organization founded by a local teacher in October 1939, and later also the Home Army. 12 Poles arrested in Śrem were executed in the nearby village of Zbrudzewo on 8 November 1939. Further mass arrests of 45 Poles, mostly teachers, were carried out in May 1940, and most were then deported to the Mauthausen and Dachau concentration camps, and murdered there. In 1939 and 1940, the Germans expelled hundreds of Poles, who were deported to the General Government in the more-eastern part of German-occupied Poland, and their houses were then handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. After the end of German occupation, the town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. From 1975 to 1998 it was…

Geography

Śrem is to the south of Poznań. The Śrem County has a population of 60,939, of which about 27,488 live in the town of Śrem.