Send Gift Baskets to Lomza, Poland

A village called Old Lomza (Stara Lomza) was founded in the 10th century on the site of the current Lomza. The first mention in official records dates back to the 14th century. By the mid-16th century, Lomza had earned its municipal rights and became an important political and economic center. From 1795 until Poland lost its independence, Lomza was a royal city and capital of the Lomza Land, an administrative unit (ziemia) of the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

A palace there was built by Polish Duke Bolesaw IV the Curly (Polish: Bolesaw Kdzierzawy) in the 12th century. A transit tax exemption on the Narew River was granted to the town in 1444, contributing to its further development. According to legend, Sigismund II Augustus gave Lomza the right to hold big fairs three times a year, like Warsaw and Pocock. In 1614, the Jesuits founded a Jesuit college, which today is the I Liceum Ogólnoksztacce, one of Poland’s oldest high schools. Six years later, an epidemic decimated the city’s population after a great fire destroyed most of the town in 1618. Rapid decline was caused by several disasters (including the Swedish invasion and the Cossack raids).

As a result of the Partitions of Poland, Omża was annexed by Prussia in 1795. During the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, it was the seat of the Lomza Department. Congress Poland, which was forcibly integrated into the Russian Empire over the 19th century, took over Lomza in 1815. Polish demonstrations took place in Lomza after the Russian massacres of Polish protesters in Warsaw in 1861, at which even Wadysaw Syrokomla gave a speech in public. Still, they ended in October 1861 when the Russians imposed martial law. As a result, the Polish resistance started preparing for an uprising. The January Uprising broke out in 1863, and many local Poles participated. During the rebellion in Wygoda in July 1863, the Russians massacred 50 unarmed Poles, primary students from local schools. Some victims had their eyes gouged, bones broken, or their insides torn out before dying. Their torture and murder were gruesome. In November 1863, the Russians conducted mass arrests and confiscated Polish property, and many insurgents fled the country. The Russians executed several Polish insurgents in Lomza, one of the sites where hundreds of Poles were deported to Siberia from Katorga. The Poles erected crosses several times at the site of the executions, and the Russians removed them.