Polonia Bydgoszcz

Polonia Bydgoszcz is a Polish sports club based in Bydgoszcz most known for its speedway team ŻKS Polonia Bydgoszcz which currently race in the Speedway Ekstraliga (the top division). The club has won the Polish Speedway League Championship seven times, the latest in 2002, and European Team Championship three times, the latest in 2001. The club also has a football team who play in the lower leagues but in the past had more success.

History

BKS Polonia Bydgoszcz was founded on May 14, 1920, by Edmund Szyc, a sports enthusiast and official of Warta Poznan. Szyc, who had come to Bydgoszcz from Poznan in the early spring of 1920, wanted to create a sports organization with a patriotic spirit, based on Polish Army soldiers garrisoned in the city. The hues of Polonia were white-red-green (to commemorate Polish flag, plus green, the traditional colour of Warta Poznan’s jerseys).

In the Second Polish Republic, Polonia Bydgoszcz was one of the largest sports organizations in the nation. It had several departments, such as football, track and field, boxing, ice hockey, cycling, basketball, handball and volleyball. Among most notable athletes of that time were: Stanislaw Zakrzewski (high jumper), Klemens Biniakowski (runner, who participated in the 1928 Summer Olympics), Feliks Wiecek (cyclist, winner of the 1928 Tour de Pologne). Polonia’s football team were four times champions of Polish Pomerania, but failed to win promotion to the Ekstraklasa.

Bydgoszcz

Bydgoszcz /ˈbɪdɡɒʃtʃ/ (Polish pronunciation: [ˈbɨdɡɔʂt͡ʂ], German: Bromberg [ˈbʁɔmbɛɐ̯k], Latin: Bydgostia) is a city located in northern Poland, on the Brda and Vistula rivers. With a city population of 358,614 (June 2014), and an urban agglomeration with more than 470,000 inhabitants, Bydgoszcz is the 8th-largest city in Poland. It has been the seat of Bydgoszcz County and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999. Prior to this, between 1947 and 1998, it was the capital of the Bydgoszcz Voivodeship, and before that, of the Pomeranian Voivodeship between 1945 and 1947.

Bydgoszcz is part of the metroplex Bydgoszcz-Toruń, which totals over 850,000 inhabitants. Bydgoszcz is the seat of Kazimierz Wielki University, University of Technology and Life Sciences and a conservatory, as well as a Collegium Medicum of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Bydgoszcz hosts the Filharmonia Pomorska concert hall, the Opera Nova opera house, and the Bydgoszcz Ignacy Jan Paderewski Airport. Due to its location between the Vistula and Odra rivers, and the water course of the Bydgoszcz Canal, the city forms part of a water system connected via the Noteć, Warta, Odra, and Elbe with the Rhine and Rotterdam.

Bydgoszcz (parliamentary constituency)

Bydgoszcz is a Polish parliamentary district in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, which elects twelve Members of Sejm and two Members of Senate. This district have a "4" number. The capital of the district is Bydgoszcz.

It includes the countys: Bydgoszcz City, Bydgoszcz, Inowrocław, Mogilno, Nakło nad Notecią, Sępólno Krajeńskie, Świecie, Tuchola and Żnin. It also includes part of Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.

List of members

Senate

Sejm

See also

Footnotes

Bromberg-Ost

Bromberg-Ost (German: Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was the female subcamp of the German Nazi concentration camp KL Stutthof between 1944-1945, set up in the city of Bydgoszcz during the later stages of World War II. The mostly Jewish women prisoners dispatched from the main camp in Sztutowo worked as slave-labour for the German railways; loading cargo, clearing and repairing tracks, and digging ditches. The commandant of the camp was SS-Scharführer Anton Kniffke. No warm clothing was provided before mid-December. Women who managed to survive were taken on a death march to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg.

History

The direct order to set up subcamp Bromberg-Ost was issued on 12 September 1944, by the superintendent of Stutthof concentration camp, Paul Werner Hoppe. The following day the first 300 women prisoners were sent there under the inspection of seven female overseers from Schutzstaffel (Defense Corps). From June 1944 until March 1945 the position of Oberaufseherin in Bromberg-Ost was held by Johanna Wisotzki, while among guards reassigned to Bromberg-Ost from Stutthof were the notoriously cruel aufseherinnen Ewa Paradies, Herta Bothe and Gerda Steinhoff who took part in selections of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers.