Poland’s Valentine City- Chelmno

A cover from my friend when he visited Chelmno ! 

Postcard of Chelmno inside the cover 

Chelmno is one of the most beautiful cities in Pomerania with a centuries-long history, well-preserved urban development system, city defensive walls and churches. It presents a vision of a big medieval city which for centuries was a model for over 220 other cities of Poland. It had a very helpful defensive location thanks to being situated on the edge of the Vistula valley.

The old town enclosed within the almost untouched city walls is a great example of the medieval urban system created on a so-called 'raw root. This means created in a new place according to a detailed design.
The street system was simple and based on the shape of a chess board - the streets crisscross at the right angle thus dividing the city into four quarters. 

Date of issue - 28/12/1990

The Chelmno Town Hall is one of the most beautiful Renaissance art objects in Poland. It was the focal point of the Medieval main square. Building took place between 1567-1572 in place of the earlier Gothic city hall built around 1298. The tower is from 1584 - 1596. Krzysztof Wagner from Gdansk made a Baroque cupola in 1721. The city hall is a detached building situated slightly to the south-west of the center of the main square. It is a rectangular building 13.20 m wide and 22.70 m long, and about 47 meters high.

Originally, a Gothic town hall stood here, discovered during the excavations performed during the preservation-repair works in 1956 – 1959. The original town hall from the 13th century was a one-story building 10 meters wide and 13 meters long and about 8 meters high. It has a tower, a tower clock and two bells: one council manic and one municipal.

Chelmno - city of Lovers 

Every year on 14 February thousands of tourists flood to Chelmo (Chełmno) to celebrate Valentine’s Day together with the city’s inhabitants. Why here? For hundreds of years a parish church in Chelmno has been home to an incredible relic. Small bits of skull belonging to St Valentine, the patron saint of love.

Chelmno wants to be a "city of lovers", and not only on Valentine’s Day. The New Planty Park with flowery carpets in the shape of hearts and the Park of Memory and Tolerance are both popular locations for open-air weddings and walks.

Behind not far from this beautiful and romantic picturesque town - is a village with the same name ,Chełmno nad Nerem  - with a very gory and horrible history , and which happened not long ago . Chelmno nad nerem was the site of one of the largest extermination camps of World War Two - set up by the Germans. 

Chełmno extermination camp built during World War II, was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps and was situated 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of the metropolitan city of Łódź (renamed to Litzmannstadt), near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr in German). Following the invasion of Poland in 1939 Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland, aiming at its complete "Germanization"; the camp was set up specifically to carry out ethnic cleansing through mass killings. It operated from December 8, 1941 parallel to Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, and again from June 23, 1944 to January 18, 1945 during the Soviet counter-offensive. Polish Jews of the Łódź Ghetto and the local inhabitants of Reichsgau Wartheland(Warthegau) were exterminated there. At a very minimum 152,000 people (Bohn) were killed in the camp, which would make it the fifth most deadly extermination camp, after Sobibór, Bełżec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. 

The stories about the modus operandi of the torture , gassing and massacres of scores of people in the camp brings tears in my eyes ! How could humans be so cruel !! 

The cover has been posted on 18-02-2019 ( close to the Valentine’s Day ;) 

Thanks Wojtek for this beautiful cover from romantic Chelmno ! I hope you had a wonderful trek holiday with your friend :) 

More postcards from Wojtek - I love snowy mountains 🏔 

Update : 

In Poland there are at least two Chełmno(s):
- Chełmno (town) ;
- Chełmno nad Nerem (village) where the extermination camp was located. 
They are both located about 170 kilometeres one from another.

Thanks Wojtek for the info ! I misunderstood that both Chelmno were the same :) 

The Eve of the World War Two

A cover with a cachet ! 

Covers and postcards from Poland to me seem very deceptive nowadays - they look simple by looks but carry such intense stories beneath them !! 

The cachet on the cover shows a place in Poland - Gliwice 

Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. The city is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Kłodnica river (a tributary of the Oder). It lies approximately 25 km West from Katowice, regional capital of the Silesian Voivodeship.

The City has a very important history behind it !

 

 The Radio tower in Gliwice - postcard 

The Gliwice Radio Tower is a transmission tower in the Szobiszowice district of Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland. The Gliwice Radio Tower is 118 m (387 ft) tall (including the 8 m (26 ft) long spire on its top), with a wooden framework of impregnated larch linked by brass connectors. It was nicknamed "the Silesian Eiffel Tower" by the local population. The tower is the tallest wooden structure in Europe.

On 31 August 1939, the German SS staged a 'Polish' attack on Gleiwitz radio station, which was later used as justification for the invasion of Poland.

The Gleiwitz incident was a covert Nazi German attack on the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz on the night of 31 August 1939. The attack is widely regarded as a false flag operation, staged with some two dozen similar German incidents on the eve of the invasion of Poland leading up to World War II in Europe. 

The attackers had  posed as Polish nationals -a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish .  The operation was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs. To make the attack seem more convincing, the Gestapo murdered Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer, known for sympathising with the Poles. Several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were drugged, shot dead on the site and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.

The Gleiwitz incident was a part of a larger operation carried out by Abwehr and SS forces. Other orchestrated incidents were conducted along the Polish-German border at the same time as the Gleiwitz attack, such as a house burning in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda.

Adolf Hitler invaded Poland the next morning after a lengthy period of preparations. During his declaration of war, Hitler did not mention the Gleiwitz incident but grouped all provocations staged by the SS as an alleged Polish assault on Germany. The Gleiwitz incident is the best-known action of Operation Himmler, the series of special operations undertaken by Nazis. 

The Gleiwitz incident served as the self made trigger for the World War Two - the war that ravaged Poland from both sides - just like how Belgium and France got ravaged in the First war ! 

I shudder to imagine the days of the war ! I pray the world is always at peace ! Amen !! 

Thanks Wojtek for this beautiful postcard and cover :) I am sure you had a very peaceful and happy New Year’s eve ! Stay blessed :)