Travel Guide Olkusz

A small medieval town that prospered thanks to the exploitation of surface silver threads and then thanks to the installation of a fortress, fragments of which can still be seen today, Olkusz is a town of character that makes a welcome stop in the region. The bucolic and somewhat sleepy life of the region was abruptly interrupted during the Second World War. The Nazis created a ghetto and liquidated 3,000 Jews (in a town with a population of no more than 10,000), and then the Soviet regime built a new town and heavy industries that increased the population from 10,000 to 40,000 and devastated the landscape