Kovel

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Kovel
Ковель
Coat of arms of Kovel
Kovel (Ukraine)
Kovel
Kovel
Basic data
Oblast : Volyn Oblast
Rajon : District-free city
Height : 170 m
Area : 47.3 km²
Residents : 69,294 (2017)
Population density : 1,465 inhabitants per km²
Postcodes : 45000-45014
Area code : +380 3352
Geographic location : 51 ° 13 '  N , 24 ° 43'  E Coordinates: 51 ° 13 '0 "  N , 24 ° 43' 0"  E
KOATUU : 710400000
Administrative structure : 1 city
Address: вул. Незалежності 73
45000 м. Ковель
Website : http://www.kowel.com.ua
Statistical information
Kovel (Volyn Oblast)
Kovel
Kovel
i1

Kovel ( Ukrainian and Russian Ковель , Polish Kovel ) is a Ukrainian city ​​with a little over 69,000 inhabitants. It is a transport hub in northwestern Ukraine and the capital of Kovel Raion in Volyn Oblast , but not part of it itself.

location

The city lies on the banks of the Turija and is 73 km northwest of the oblast capital Lutsk and 50 km west of the Jahodyn / Dorohusk border crossing on the border between Poland and Ukraine . The next larger city is Wolodymyr-Wolynskyj, 65 km to the southwest .

history

Kovel, Voksalnaja uliza (Bahnhofstrasse) 1918
King Ludwig III. von Bayern visited the Bavarian Field Aviator Division 4b in Kowel on the Eastern Front on November 3, 1916

The name of the city comes from the Ukrainian name for blacksmith (Ковка, Kowka ) (compare Polish: "Kowal"). Excavations show that there was iron processing on site as early as the 12th to 14th centuries. In 1858 an iron spearhead with runes ( lance blade from Kowel ) from the third century AD was found near Kowel .

The first time in 1310 in writing mentioned city received on 24 December 1518 a part of Halych-Volhynia the Magdeburg rights . After belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the meantime , it became part of the Corona Regni Poloniae (in the Ruthenia / Chełmer Land Voivodeship ) in Poland-Lithuania in 1569 . The first public schools were founded in the first half of the 16th century. After the third partition of Poland , it came to the Russian Empire in 1795 .

During the First World War , Russia opened the so-called Brusilov Offensive against the Eastern Front of the Central Powers in June 1916 . One of their goals was to conquer the important railway junction Kovel. However, this attack was repulsed with great losses.

In the interwar period , the city was in the Polish Volhynia Voivodeship . As in the German-Soviet non-aggression pact agreed, attacked Soviet Union Poland 1939 from the east and the city was in September 1939, initially under Soviet , then by the beginning of the German-Soviet War in 1941 for almost three years under German rule. Since 1944, after the renewed annexation of Eastern Poland by the Soviet Union, Kovel belonged to the Ukrainian SSR and thus to independent Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union .

Jewish community

In 1939 the Jewish population of Kovel was 17,000, about 50% of the population. Shortly after the transition of the areas east of the Bug, which had been known as eastern Poland since 1921, agreed with the German-Russian pact of August 1939, it occupied the Soviet Union and made it part of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine by June 1941. Only a small part of the Jewish population managed to flee further east when the city was occupied by the German Wehrmacht on June 28, 1941 as part of the Barbarossa operation . Around 1,000 Jews were killed in the first days of the occupation. In May 1942, two representatives of the Jewish underground from the Warsaw ghetto founded a resistance group in Kovel. According to a decision by German authorities, a Judenrat was set up on May 21, 1942 and two ghettos were opened - one for the non-disabled and their families (around 8,000 people) and a second for all other Jews, around 6,000 people. From July 2nd to 4th, 1942, all residents of the second ghetto were eliminated and on August 19, 1942, the extermination of the residents of the first ghetto began. The success of the action was registered on October 6, 1942, almost all ghetto inmates were killed, murdered or exterminated, depending on their interpretation.

Before they were murdered, the Jews were locked in the Great Synagogue . There many wrote and carved farewell greetings and calls for retribution on the walls. The nearly 100 texts could be saved for posterity.

When Soviet troops retook Kovel on June 7, 1944, around 40 Jews were still living in the city. In 1970 there were again 250 Jews (50 families) living in Kovel. According to a nationwide census in 2001, there were no longer any professing Jews living in Kovel.

Second World War

The last successful kettle battle of the Wehrmacht took place here from March 17 to April 7, 1944. The Gille combat group with 5000 men, 2000 wounded, survivors of the previous Cherkassy basin battle , was enclosed in the city by ten Soviet divisions . Among those trapped were 500 members of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , also because Kowel had been developed into a heavily frequented hub for front-end holiday trains from the south-east since the end of 1941. During the 21 days of the boiler, those trapped could only be supplied from the air. A relief attack by the 131st Infantry Division, the 4th and 5th Panzer Division and the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" created a connection to the German lines on April 4, 1944. Within two days all troops and tanks could be freed from the pocket.

economy

There are machine, food and wood industries in Kovel.

Infrastructure

railroad

Reception building
The through car Odessa-Berlin (discontinued in September 2011) is waiting for the train from Kiev to Berlin to continue its journey

In 1873 the railway line from Brest via Sdolbuniw to Kiev ( Kovel – Kosjatyn railway ) and in 1877 the line to Lublin and Warsaw was opened, in 1902 a more direct connection to Kiev was added ( Kovel – Kiev railway ), in 1908 a connection to Wolodymyr-Wolynskyj ( Jarosław – Kovel railway line ) and during the First World War in 1915 the connection to Kamin-Kaschyrskyj was added.

Kovel is still an important railway junction with a marshalling yard in Ukraine, especially for traffic to Poland and further west to the EU . The railway line between Kovel and the border has two tracks lying next to each other on a shared route: a northern one in standard gauge and one to the south in broad gauge . In general, the car of the cross-border traffic are indeed in the Ukrainian border station Jahodyn umgespurt . However, the standard-gauge track enables trains from the west to travel across borders without changing gauges to Kovel. This happens occasionally, but only in freight transport. This route handles 90% of rail freight traffic between Ukraine and Poland.

The lines leading from the east to Kovel are electrified , but the line leading to the west to the border is not yet. An agreement was signed between Poland and Ukraine in 2017 to electrify this section of the route as well. Diesel locomotives are currently still in use here .

The Kowel train station is also an important intersection for passenger traffic, for example for the connection Kiev - Warsaw - Berlin .

Street

Kovel-Jahodyn route. Left: standard gauge track, right: broad gauge
Removal of the standard gauge track in Kowel station, which leads to the right, from the broad gauge track, which leads to the left

Kovel lies at the intersection of the European route E 85 and the E 373 (Ukrainian classification M 19 and M 07 ).

Town twinning

Town twinning

sons and daughters of the town

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Population of cities and urban settlements in Ukraine on pop-stat.mashke.org ; accessed on December 13, 2017
  2. ^ Local history of Kovel in the history of the cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR ; accessed on December 13, 2017 (Ukrainian)
  3. ↑ Rizzi Zannoni, Woiewództwa Lubelskie y Rawskie. Mazowsze y Podlasie Południowe. Część Pułnocna Woiewództw Bełzkiego, Ruskiego y Sendomirskiego, część zachodnia Województwo (!) Wolyńskiego y Brzeskiego - Litewskiego .; 1772 ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mapywig.org
  4. ^ Wehrmacht report of April 8, 1944.
  5. ↑ The Deutsche Reichsbahn in the Eastern Campaign 1939-1944 by Hans Pottgiesser, Kurt-Vowinkel-Verlag Neckargemünd 1960
  6. ↑ Hinze: With the courage of desperation, The fate of the army groups Northern Ukraine, Southern Ukraine, Süd-Ostmark 1944/45.
  7. ↑ NN: PKP LHS LLC and "Ukrzaliznytsya" PJSC to Launch a Joint electrification Project of the railway line at the border . In: OSJD Bulletin 3/2017, pp. 48f (49).
  8. ↑ NN: PKP LHS LLC and "Ukrzaliznytsya" PJSC to Launch a Joint electrification Project of the railway line at the border . In: OSJD Bulletin 3/2017, p. 48f.

Web links

Commons : Kowel  - collection of images, videos and audio files