District of Leslau
Leslau district was the name of a German administrative unit in occupied Poland (1939–45) during the Second World War .
Prehistory (1793 to 1807)
The area around the western Polish cities of Włocławek and Kowal belonged temporarily to the Brzesc and Kowal districts in the Prussian province of South Prussia after the Second Partition of Poland from 1793 to 1807 .
Administrative history
At the beginning of the Second World War , German troops occupied the western Polish powiat Włocławek , and the district town of Włocławek was captured on September 14, 1939.
On October 26, 1939, the powiat was annexed to the German Reich under the name Leslau district , which as a unilateral act of violence was ineffective under international law. The district became part of the administrative district Hohensalza in the Reichsgau Wartheland .
The seat of the German district office was the renamed Leslau city Włocławek , which was not part of the district as a separate urban district.
On November 1, 1943, small parts of the districts of Brześć Kujawski and Choceń were given to the Włocławek district .
The German occupation ended with the invasion of the Red Army on January 20, 1945.
politics
Land Commissioner
- 1939 : Lehmann
District administrators
- 1939–1940: Lehmann ( representative )
- 1940–1945: Knost
Municipal structure
The localities in the district of Leslau were grouped into 8 administrative districts .
expansion
The district of Leslau had an area of 1328 km².
population
The district of Leslau had in 1941: 89,341 mostly Polish inhabitants (the district of the same name had 51,556 inhabitants).
The German occupation authorities expelled over 16,000 Poles from the area between December 1, 1939 and December 31, 1943.
For the Jewish citizens of the city of Włocławek , on the orders of the German city commandant Hans Cramer (1937–1939: Mayor of Dachau ), the Jewish star in the form of a yellow triangle was introduced from October 24, 1939 , the first time in the German sphere of influence. The Jewish population was initially concentrated in ghettos in Włocławek and Brześć Kujawski and murdered in the Chełmno and Auschwitz extermination camps between 1942 and 1944 . After the end of the occupation in 1946 there were only 783 Jewish citizens in town and powiat Włocławek .
The temporarily resettled Germans fled again towards the end of the occupation.
Place names
At first there were arbitrary Germanizations by local occupation authorities, except for Leslau and Brest it was mostly a matter of phonetic adjustments, translations or free inventions. On May 18, 1943, all places with a post or train station in the Wartheland were officially given German names, although there were deviations.
List of cities and administrative districts in the district of Leslau:
| Polish name | German name (1939-1945) | Polish name | German name (1939-1945) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brześć Kujawski | 1939–1943 Kujawisch-Brest 1943–1945 Brest (Wartheland) |
Lubraniec |
1939–1943 Lubraneck / Lubranitz 1943–1945 Lutbrandau |
| Choceń | 1939–1943 Chocen 1943–1945 Ehrstätten |
Lubień Kujawski |
1939–1943 Liebstadt 1943–1945 Lubenstadt |
| Chodecz | 1939–1945 Godetz | Przedecz | Moosburg |
| Dobiegniewo | Rennental | Włocławek | Leslau |
| Kowal | 1939–1943 Freistadt 1943–1945 Kowall |
Web links
- District of Leslau administrative history and the district administrators on the website territorial.de (Rolf Jehke), as of August 19, 2013.