The name of the town is of Polish/Slavic extraction, possibly derived from the owner of a Slavic gord which existed there in the Middle Ages.

From 1772 to 1918 Oświęcim belonged to the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (from 1804 a crownland of the Austrian Empire and 1867 Austria-Hungary), and both Polish and German names were in official use.

Oświęcim has a warm-summer humid continental climate characterised by four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

[2] Located in the Oświęcim Basin, the town experiences relatively high precipitation that averages slightly below 1000 mm per year.

Summers are warm and humid, but frequently cloudy due to the influence of polar maritime air masses; winters are cold and windy, with snow cover.

Around 1272 the newly rebuilt Oświęcim was granted a municipal charter modeled on those of Lwówek Śląski (a Polish variation of the Magdeburg Law).

On 25 February 1564, King Sigismund II Augustus issued a bill integrating the former Duchies of Oświęcim and Zator into the Kingdom of Poland.

Before 1564, Oświęcim was semi-independent in Poland and enjoyed an extensive degree of autonomy, similarly to Royal Prussia.

Oświęcim was burned and afterward, the town declined, and in 1772 (see Partitions of Poland), it was annexed by the Habsburg Empire, as part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, where it remained until late 1918.

In the 1866 war between Austria and the Prussian-led North German Confederation, a cavalry skirmish was fought at the town, in which an Austrian force defeated a Prussian incursion.

In 1940, Nazi Germany used forced labor to build a new subdivision to house Auschwitz guards and staff, and built a large chemical plant of IG Farben in 1941 on the eastern outskirts of the town.

Polish residents of several districts were forced to abandon their houses, as the Germans wanted to keep the area empty around Auschwitz concentration camp.

They planned a 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi) buffer zone around the camp, and they expelled Polish residents in two stages in 1940 and 1941.

Its prisoners were members of the NSDAP, Hitlerjugend, and BDM, as well as German civilians, the Volksdeutsche, and Upper Silesians who were disloyal to Poland.

After the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II, new housing complexes in the town were developed with large buildings of rectangular and concrete constructions.

In 1979, Oświęcim was visited by Pope John Paul II, and on 1 September 1980, a local Solidarity office was created at the chemical plant.

The ice hockey team, TH Unia Oświęcim, was crowned Polish champions 8 times,[21] and finished as runners-up in 2022.