History of Bialystok

ndent Second Polish Republic, as the capital of the Białystok Voivodeship (1919–1939). During the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War, possession of the city by the Red Army and the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee occurred during the lead up to the Battle of Warsaw. During the resultant counteroffensive, the city returned to Polish control after the Battle of Białystok.

With the beginning of World War II, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and initially the city came under Soviet control, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR from 1939 to 1941 as the capital of the Belastok Voblast. After the Nazi attack on Soviet Union in 1941, Białystok was occupied by the German Army on 27 June 1941, during the Battle of Białystok–Minsk, and the city became the capital of Bezirk Białystok, a separate region in German occupied Poland, until 1944.

From the very beginning, the Nazis pursued a ruthless policy of pillage and removal of the non-German population. The 56,000 Jewish residents of the town were confined in a ghetto. On August 15, 1943, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising began, and several hundred Polish Jews and members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation (Polish: Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa) started an armed struggle against the German troops who were carrying out the planned liquidation of the ghetto with deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The city was liberated by the Red Army on 27 July 1944 and on 20 September 1944 transferred to Poland. After the war, the city became capital of the initial Białystok Voivodeship (1945–1975) of the People's Republic of Poland. After the 1975 administrative reorganization, the city was the capital of the smaller Białystok Voivodeship