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Grabów nad Pilica commune (Poland)

Kozienice county, Mazowieckie Vojvodship

Last modified: 2009-08-22 by jarig bakker
Keywords: grabow nad pilica |
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[Grabów nad Pilicą commune flag] image by Chrystian Kretowicz, 10 Dec 2008
adopted 26 Jan 2008 See also:

Grabów nad Pilicą commune flag

Grabów nad Pilicą - rural commune, Kozienice County, Mazowieckie Voivodship.
Gmina Grabów nad Pilicą is a rural gmina (commune) in Kozienice County, Masovian Voivodship, in east-central Poland. Its seat is the village of Grabów nad Pilicą, which lies approximately 29 kilometres (18 mi) north-west of Kozienice and 57 km (35 mi) south of Warsaw.
Area: 125 sq.km (48.3 sq.mi); Population: 3,692 (2006).
The commune is an agricultural one with the services and industrial sectors of the economy growing.
Land under cultivation - 51%; Forests - 49%.

First mentioned in 1382.
After the third partition of Poland included in Austria-Hungary.
The Austrians maintained there a border and customs office.
The area was the site of fighting in 1863, 1914, 1939, 1944 and 1945.
There is a cemetery with 700 graves of German, Russian, Austrian and Hungarian soldiers of WW I.
There is a monument to the locals who died fighting the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920.
In July 1944 Marshal Rokossovsky's troops of the Ist Byelorussian Front of the Red Army managed to cross the Bug River nearby and, with the help of the local unit of AK (Home Army), established a strategically important outpost (Przyczółek warecko-magnuszewski). At first, the Germans, busy with the Warsaw Uprising, didn't offer much of the resistance, but, after realizing the importance of this outpost, attacked with full force of the 'Herman Göring' and 19th Panzer Divisions. The Soviets were barely holding off the Nazi assault until the Polish Tank Brigade of "The Heroes of Westerplatte" came to the rescue and  Polish tanks and Soviet infantry pushed the Germans all the way to Warsaw. In the tank battles Grabów and surrounding villages suffered the destruction of 95% of infrastructure. Although the Red Army and Polish troops reached the right bank of the Vistula River in that push, Stalin made the premeditated decision to halt the
offensive to give Hitler an opportunity to crash the Warsaw Uprising, hence eliminating the symbol of Polish nationhood and any significant resistance to the Soviet takeover of Poland. Even personal letters of Franklin D.Roosevelt begging Stalin to allow the American and Allied airplanes to land on the Soviet-held territory for re-fueling, combined with the promises of additional help from the U.S., didn't help to change Stalin's vicious mind.
In January 1945, from that area, the final Soviet offensive was launched, taking ruined Warsaw in few days time and going all the way to Berlin and Elbe River.
It is estimated that if the Rokossovsky's offensive wouldn't be halted in September 1944 for political reasons, the war in Europe could be shortened by at least four months and the carnage in Warsaw wouldn't be so horrible ( 250 000 dead, which combined with the annihilation of Warsaw's Jewry, casualties from the defense of the city in 1939 and victims of the mass executions during the Nazi occupation, bring the total to the staggering number of 800 000 and wiping out the major European city from the face of the Earth.

Arms and flag adopted on January 26, 2008 (resolution # XIV/71/08).
"Arms: on a green shield a silver, wavy ribbon at the base (symbolizing the Pilica River) and a golden hornbeam tree (in Polish, 'hornbeam' (Carpinus) means 'grab', hence the name of the village and the commune).

Flag: a rectangle in the ratio 5:8 composed of three vertical bands in proportions of 1:2:1 and in colors of: green-yellow-green where the yellow band is wide and bears the commune's Arms.
The color green corresponds to both, agricultural and forested character of the commune.
There is also a banner in use.
Chrystian Kretowicz, 10 Dec 2008


Grabów nad Pilicą banner

[Grabów nad Pilicą banner] image by Chrystian Kretowicz, 10 Dec 2008
adopted 26 Jan 2008

Grabów nad Pilicą Coat of Arms

[Grabów nad Pilicą Coat of Arms] image by Chrystian Kretowicz, 10 Dec 2008
adopted 26 Jan 2008