Poprad

Sister cities

• Szarvas
• Omiš
• Ústí nad Orlicí
• Zakopane

History

The territory was inhabited by Slavic settlers since the Migration Period. The first written record dates from 16 March 1256 in the deed of donation of the Hungarian King Bela IV. After the Mongol invasions in the 13th century it was colonized by German settlers and became the largely German town Deutschendorf meaning 'Germans' village'. From 1412 to 1770, as one of the Spis towns, Poprad was pawned by the Kingdom of Hungary to the Kingdom of Poland, resulting in a strong Polish influence on the city's further development. In the 17th century, the number of Germans began to decline. Since 1918, this territory has been placed under the control of Czechoslovakia. Poprad itself was for 690 years (up until 1946) just one of several neighbouring settlements, which currently make up the modern city. The other parts of the current municipality are Matejovce (German: Matzdorf; Hungarian: Mateóc, first reference 1251), Spišská Sobota (German: Georgenberg; Hungarian: Szepesszombat, 1256), Veľká (German/Hungarian: Felka, 1268), and Stráže pod Tatrami (German: Michelsdorf; Hungarian: Strázsa, 1276). The most significant of these original towns was Georgenberg, now Spišská Sobota, which preserved its dominant position in the area until the late 19th century. Poprad gained importance at the expense of Spišská Sobota after the construction of the Košice–Bohumín Railway in 1871. In the following years, further railway lines were built: Poprad - Kežmarok in 1892 and Tatra Electric Railway in 1908. In 1942, during World War II, most of the transports of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in German-occupied Poland were sent from the Poprad railway station. The first transport of about 1,000 Jewish girls and young women left Poprad on 25 March 1942 for Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the…