Gorlice (pronounced [ɡɔrˈlʲit͡sɛ]; Ukrainian: Горлиці, romanized: Horlytsi) is a city and an urban municipality ("gmina") in south eastern Poland with around 29,500 inhabitants (2008).

In that year, the Stolnik of Sandomierz, Derslaw Karwacjan, received royal permission to found a town in a densely forested area of the Carpathian foothills.

[2] As a result of the first Partition of Poland (Treaty of St-Petersburg dated 5 July 1772), the town area was attributed to the Habsburg Empire[3] (for more details, read the article Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria).

In 1806, the Austrian government sold the town to a local nobleman, Jan Nepomucen Stadnicki of Roznow.

[4] Until 1918, the town remained part of Austria-Hungary (Cisleithania) after the compromise of 1867, head (since 1865) of the county with the same name, one of the 78 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Austrian Galicia province (Crown land).

Extremely heavy and prolonged fighting took place here, Gorlice frequently changed hands, and as a result, the town was completely destroyed.

On May 1, 1915, the combined forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany initiated artillery barrages against Russian soldiers stationed on the battle line stretching from Gorlice to Tarnow.

An attempt by General Radko-Dmitriev to counterattack on May 7 and 8 resulted in disaster for the Russians, as German reinforcements outnumbered the defenders.

This resulted in widespread unemployment, street demonstrations and increased popularity of Communist ideology among local workers.

During the war, the town's Jewish community was first herded by Nazi Germans into the newly formed Gorlice Ghetto and then murdered at Belzec.

One was the Magdeburg Rights, by living outside of Gorlice in villages or on estates, the Jewish communities did not have to follow the city's laws.

[11] The first Jewish families also had a sawmill to process wood as well as trading items like wine, corn, and tobacco.

[10] In the 19th century, when more Jews started settling inside of Gorlice, the current non-Jewish residents worked mostly in crafts and agriculture.

[10] Even though the war affected the Jewish population, they were able to get back on their feet and restore their economic status to what it was pre-war.

[12] When World War II started in 1939, the population of the Jews in Gorlice was back up to around 5000 which was once again above half of the residents of the city.

When that was liquidated in September 1942 the remaining Jews were sent to Belzec, the first mass extermination camp, where the Nazis perfected their use of the gas chamber.