Toszek

Crown of Bohemia. In 1536, the city received Magdeburg rights from King Ferdinand I of Bohemia

Upper Silesia plebiscite was held in which a majority of inhabitants voted to remain in Germany rather than rejoin Poland, which just regained independence following World War I (1348 or 86% vs. 217 or 13.8%, at 97.4% turnout). Local Polish activists were intensively persecuted since 1937.^[5] During Kristallnacht, the Jews of Toszek were sent by the Germans to concentration camps, where later they were all murdered.^[6]

P.G. Wodehouse was among the British internees: he is recorded as having commented on the region, "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like...".^[7] From November 1943 to November 1944, the Germans operated the Oflag 6 prisoner-of-war camp for French officers.^[8] The Germans also operated the E478 forced labour subcamp of the Stalag VIII-B/344 POW camp in the town.^[9] After the war, a Soviet NKVD camp was established in the town where between June–December 1945 about 3,000 incarcerated people died. About 1,000 prisoners were from Silesia including Wrocław, but from July 1945 the NKVD brought in thousands more prisoners from the Bautzen area of Saxony. Sybille Krägel^[10] from Saxony, whose father died in the Tost prison, and others, traced the prisoner lists and over 4,500 are identified by now with 800 more yet unidentified.^[11] A memorial to NKVD victims is placed in Toszek.^[12]