page_title: Hajnówka
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hajnówka / History
caption_attribution_description: This photo from Podlaskie Voievodeship was taken during Polish Wikiexpedition 2009 set up by Wikimedia Polska Association. English&#160;| français&#160;| македонски&#160;| polski&#160;| +/− The making of this document was supported by Wikimedia Polska. Deutsch&#160;| English&#160;| Français&#160;| Magyar&#160;| Македонски&#160;| Nederlands&#160;| Polski&#160;| +/− Pomnik żubra w Hajnówce. Camera location52°&#160;44′&#160;16″&#160;N, 23°&#160;35′&#160;23″&#160;E&#160;View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth
context_page_description: Hajnówka is a town and a powiat seat in north-eastern Poland with 21,442 inhabitants. It is the capital of Hajnówka County. The town is also notable for its proximity to the Białowieża Forest, the biggest primaeval forest in Europe. Through Hajnówka flows the river Leśna Prawa. It is one of the centres of Orthodox faith and a notable centre of Belarusian culture in Poland.
  Belarusians comprised 26.4% of the town's population in 2002.
  It is one of five Polish/Belarusian bilingual Gmina in Podlaskie Voivodeship regulated by the Act of 6 January 2005 on National and Ethnic Minorities and on the Regional Languages, which permits certain gminas with significant linguistic minorities to introduce a second, auxiliary language to be used in official contexts alongside Polish.
context_section_description: As a village, it was founded some time in the 16th century as a single house of a forest ward, by a certain Hajno, who was one of the royal officers protecting the Białowieża Forest. In 1589 whole forest became a private property of the royal court and the number of forest workers settled in the area started to grow. However, the forest protection (it was most probably the first forest reserve in the world) prevented the area from economical growth and so the village was limited to a number of wooden huts at the western end of the forest. It mostly shared the history of other similar settlements in the area, including Białowieża itself.
  After the Partitions of Poland of late 18th century the area was annexed by Kingdom of Prussia in 1795. After the fall of the Duchy of Warsaw and the end of Napoleonic Wars it was annexed to Imperial Russia. The tsarist authorities abolished the forest protection, but the development of the area did not start. As most of the foresters, who worked in the forest, took part in the November Uprising of 1831 against Russia (500 out of 502 in total), their positions were abolished and the people were exiled to Siberia. The protection of the forest was affected. The village, as a matter of fact, ceased its existence. Protection was reintroduced in 1860 and the village was repopulated with Russian officials. In 1888 it became property of the tsarist family.
  Between 1894 and 1906 the village was connected with the world by a railroad linking Bielsk Podlaski and Siedlce with Wołkowysk. Hajnówka became a minor transport junction and in 1900 a road was built between Białowieża and Bielsk Podlaski. During World War I, in 1915, the area was captured by the German Empire. Protection of the forest was ceased. The new authorities started large-scale industrial exploitation of the area's nature resources. Because of its nodal position, Hajnówka became a seat of two lumber-mills, wood spirit distillery and a major train station for 90 km (56 mi) of narrow gauge railways were built across the forest.
  In 1919, during the early stages of the Polish-Bolshevik War, the area was handed over to Poland by the local Ober-Ost commander. The predatory exploitation of the forest was put to an end and all German-built factories in the area became nationalised. After the war, some of them were rented by the Polish government under a contract to the British company The Century European Timber Corporation. However, in the late 1920s the contract was canceled and the wood processing plants came back under state control, while the Terbenthen factory was sold to a private owner. Since then, the economic growth started and the village started to grow too. Hard work, but also decent salaries in wood processing plants attracted many settlers from various parts of Poland. The initial conglomerate of wooden huts, barracks, tents and narrow, wood-paved streets turned into a town.
  A Catholic church was built for the local population and soon the factories and the state financed three schools, a boarding school of timber industry, a post office, two cinemas and a bank appeared here. Jewish inhabitants built a synagogue and in 1925 the Orthodox Christians organised a chapel in a private flat. Out of approximately 4,000 inhabitants approximately 70% were Poles who had come from all parts of the country, while the rest made up Jews, Germans and Belarusians. Also, the soldiers of the Belarusian division of general Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz were interned there after the war and finally were allowed to settle in the area, which added Belarusians and Russians to the ethnic mixture.
  By the end of the 1930s the four factories of Hajnówka had 1947 workers altogether and were significantly expanded. The state financed construction of several hundred small houses for the workers and the town grew up rapidly. Also, the town attracted many notable Polish architects of the epoch to build new buildings in modernist style. However, the progress was stopped by the Polish Defensive War of 1939 and the outbreak of World War II. In the effect of the Na
caption: Bison monument
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D60", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:07:21 12:02:58", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "958", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10220", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:07:12 11:11:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:07:12 11:11:50", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "80", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2424", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3032", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "832", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Portrait", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}