[3] During the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the town was invaded and then occupied by Germany.

[4] The Germans carried out mass arrests of local Poles under the pretext of "gathering, plotting, mistreating the Volksdeutsche and anti-German activity".

[5] Arrested Poles from the town and county were imprisoned in a newly established Nazi prison, and then hundreds were massacred in the nearby Bytyń, Kobylniki and Mędzisko forests between October 1939 and January 1940.

[11] In 1945 the German occupation ended and the town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.

In June 1945, the Home Army carried out a successful attack on a communist prison and liberated captured resistance members.