At the beginning of World War II, the Nazi Germans established the Stutthof concentration camp in the town, which soon developed into a huge complex of 40 subcamps across numerous locations, with as many as 100,000 people incarcerated there from all of German-occupied Europe, and more than 85,000 victims.

In 1454, Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon signed the act of reincorporation of the region to the Kingdom of Poland, and as a result the Thirteen Years' War broke out.

A later lessee of the manor was the father of the German pessimist philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who spent the first five years of his life there (born 1788 in Gdańsk).

After the defeat of Imperial Germany in World War I, the village became part of the territory of the Free City of Danzig in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, the Nazis built the Stutthof concentration camp nearby, which received its first prisoners on 2 September that year.