Wojkowice

Wojkowice [vɔi̯kɔˈvʲit͡sɛ] (German: Weickendorf) is a small town in województwo śląskie, located in so-called Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in southern Poland, near Katowice.

Wojkowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Brynica river (tributary of the Vistula), and historically belongs to Lesser Poland.

In the late Middle Ages, the area belonged to the Silesian Dukes of Bytom and Cieszyn, who after Mongol raids initiated a program of settlement, founding several new villages.

In the 1470s Jan Długosz wrote in his Liber beneficiorum that Wojkowice Komorne was a village in the parish of Siewierz.

The Duchy of Siewierz existed until 1790, when it was merged with the Kraków Voivodeship of the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

After the Third Partition of Poland, the territory of former Duchy of Siewierz was seized by the Kingdom of Prussia, as part of the newly established province of New Silesia (October 1795).

In 1815, the Duchy of Warsaw was turned into Russian-controlled Congress Poland, remaining under Russian control until World War I.

[3] In 1914, Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was captured by the Central Powers, and remained under joint German–Austrian occupation until November 1918, when Poland regained independence.

After the invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the Będzin County was directly annexed into Nazi Germany, and then made part of Gau Upper Silesia.

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

Jowisz coal mine in the interbellum
Park Miejski ("Municipal Park")