Wyszkow

Wyszków is a town in northeastern Poland with 26,500 inhabitants (2003). It is the capital of Wyszkow County (in Polish powiat wyszkowski).

Situated in the Masovian Voivodship (since 1999), previously in Warsaw Voivodship (to 1975) and Ostroleka Voivodship (1975–1998).

The village of Wyszkowo was first documented in 1203. The town was founded in 1502. It was destroyed during the Polish-Sweden war in 1655–1660 when it lost its significance in the region. Industry developed from 1897 when the Pilawa-Tluszcz-Ostroleka railway was built.

Before World War II half of Wyszkow's population of 9,000 were Jewish. On 14 September 1997 a memorial to Holocaust victims was unveiled in Wyszkow. It is made of reclaimed Jewish gravestones that had been removed from the site in 1939 by German occupiers, who had used them as paving stones and in the construction of the local Gestapo headquarters. Scores of these desecrated tombstones were recovered and incorporated as part of the monument.

Wyszkow was the place of birth of Mordechaj Anielewicz in 1919.