History of Zgorzelec

The town of Gorlice in southern Poland was founded during the reign of Casimir the Great in 1354 by ethnic German colonists from Görlitz, in the last phases of eastward settlement by Germans (in this case by Walddeutsche).

After suffering for years in the Thirty Years' War, the region of Upper Lusatia (including Görlitz) passed to Saxony (1635). In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna awarded Görlitz to Prussia. Thus the city was a part of the Prussian province of Silesia from 1815 until 1945.

After World War II

The Treaty of Zgorzelec, between Poland and East Germany, was signed in the city's community center in 1950.

Following World War II, with the establishment of the Oder-Neisse line as the Polish-East German border, Görlitz (lying on the Neisse) was divided between the two countries. The German part retained the name Görlitz, while the Polish part became Zgorzelec. The German and Sorbian population was expelled from Zgorzelec and replaced with Poles and Greeks.

Starting in 1948, some 10,000 Greek Refugees of the Greek Civil War, mainly communist partisans, were allowed into Poland and settled mainly in Zgorzelec. There were Greek schools, a Greek retirement home and even a factory reserved for Greek employees. The majority of those refugees later returned to Greece, but a part remains to this day (see Greeks in Poland). The Greek community of Zgorzelec was instrumental in the building of Ss. Constantine and Helen Orthodox Church in 2002. Since 1999, an annual international Greek Song Festival has been held in Zgorzelec.

Since the fall of communism in 1989, Zgorzelec and Görlitz have developed a close political relationship. Two of the numerous bridges over the Neisse