Talk:Oświęcim

Something I could not understand: it is stated in the article that the name in Yiddish is "Oshpitizin אָשפּצן".

First point, אָשפּצן is not Oshpitizin but Oshp(e)tz(e)n, which is even wrong as far as Yiddish morphology is concerned, as one would expect one of those two potential "e" at least to be written down (with the letter ע).

Second point, when you search Google for that name in Latin or Hebrew-Yiddish letters or even for the correct Hebrew-Yiddish form of the stated "Oshpitizin" (which would be אשפיטיזין or אשפיטיצין), you don't get any result at all or don't get any result besides... Wikipedia precisely!

(Anonymous, Paris, France)

Interestingly, the Yiddish-language article on the town (not the camp) is entitled: אשפעצין, i.e. none of the above. --Partnerfrance (talk) 14:14, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Uh-oh, I seem to have seriously messed things up here. I was trying to move this article to the properly-accented title, by copying and pasting the text from the article into the "move" field, and the title got seriously munged in the process. Not sure how to proceed with fixing this. Bryan

Whenever I try doing anything with the article in its current location, such as editing or moving it, Wikipedia instead sends me over to O. To be on the safe side, I'm copying and pasting the text of the article here so that it can be salvaged even if I've done something catastrophic and unrecoverable. Bryan

The current software can't handle characters outside of ISO Latin-1 in article titles in the English-language Wikipedia. This is a known limitation, which should be fixed when the UTF-8 convergence occurs. -- Anon.

I have painfully learned that now. :) Do you know of any way I might trick Wikipedia into letting me move the original article back here in the meantime? I can fix up the text of the current version to match the old one exactly, but the edit history's gone. Bryan

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I have uploaded some pictures of Aushwitz concentration camp taken by the winter of January 2004. After a thought i think the belong to Auschwitz concentration camp but i am not sure. Please wikipedia gurus let me know. There is more pictures of Auschwitz and Krakow on :

http://www.chmouel.com/geeklog/gallery/gallery_individual.php/poland/

Chmouel

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Oświęcim is a town in Poland with about 43,000 inhabitants (as of 2001), situated some 60 km southwest of Krakow in the Malopolskie voivodship. The German name of the town is Auschwitz, and it is mainly known for the Auschwitz concentration camp built there by Nazi Germany in World War II.

History

The city was first mentioned in 1117. In 1179 it was attached to one of the Silesian duchies. Oświęcim was organized under German law (more precisely, lwówieckie law, which is flavour of Magdeburg law) in 1270. Throughout history, Germans and Poles lived here together peacefully. Since 1315 Oświęcim was the capitol of an independent duchy. In 1327 Oświęcim became vassal of Bohemia. In the 14th century many people moved away. In 1457 the Polish king Casimir IV bought the rights to Oświęcim. Jews, invited by Polish kings to settle in the region, became the majority in the population already in the 15th century. Oświęcim became also one of centres of Protestant culture in Poland. The Polish poet Łukasz Górnicki was born here in 1527.

The town was destroyed by Swedish troops in 1655. When Poland was divided in the late 18th century, Oświęcim became part of Austria in 1772 and was soon close to the borders of Russia and Prussia. After World War I the town returned to Poland.

Poland was occupied by the Germany in World War II, and in 1940 the Germans built the Auschwitz concentration camp by converting Polish military barracks. After the war, the Polish government took possession of the Buna-Werke, a chemical factory owned by IG Farben which had previously used Auschwitz prisoners as slave laborers. The chemical industry became the main employer of Oświęcim; in later times service and trade were emphasized. The concentration camp became a museum.

Sports

The ice hockey team of Oświęcim was repeatedly Polish champion.

pronounciation

I don't really how did anyone get the pronounciation there'd been before I edited it. Listen to the recording. Is there any voiced labio-dental fricative? Nasal vowel? Not likely. The recording is how most people would pronounced it. Being from Poznań, I am supposed to voice the fricative but I don't really do and people in here don't really do it either. But still, it would be a rather dialectal (non-Oswiecimian!) idiosyncrasy - not necessarily a model for foreigners. Zbihniew 01:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The pronunciation audio clip is so quick that its impossible to hear clearly. Peter G Werner 06:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Anglicized spelling

How does one spell this town's name in English, without any diacritical marks? Would it be Oswiecim? Flibirigit 20:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Exactly.Zbihniew 22:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

In which case, shouldn't this article be moved to Oswiecim? This has come up recently in discussion of the naming of the Duchy of Oświęcim article, the argument being that the Duchy and town should be similarly named. Andrewa (talk) 17:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Oświęcim does not have an English name. The only reason you sometimes see it written as 'Oswiecim', without the diacritics, is because of the limitations of the English keyboard (or, in some cases, laziness). This article should not be renamed, nor should the hundreds, possibly thousands, of other articles on places that have diacritics in their titles. Signalhead (talk) 19:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The title of this article should be written in English. It is the English page. Tokyo is not spelled 東京 on the English page. Follow protocol. 204.210.111.72 (talk) 21:27, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

In English, foreign words with diacritics are sometimes written with the diacritics, sometimes without. The form without them can be trivially deduced from the form with them; but the form with them cannot be deduced from the form without them. Therefore, for maximum information, we use the form with diacritics. (Tokyo is a totally different case.)--Kotniski (talk) 21:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Tōkyō is a totally different case, really? ;) Just kidding. My actual view is that cities and other places which have earned exonyms in the English language (e.g., Warsaw, Turin, Moscow, Japan, etc.) should be referred to by these exonyms in an English-language encyclopedia. Those less well-known places which have no English exonym should have their local names, retaining any diacritics, as typically rendered in a Roman alphabet. —RVJ (talk) 16:58, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

In a somewhat related move, i have removed the Russian and several other names that are not true exonyms, but only transcriptions. (A real Slavic Russian name would look like Освятимь or something). _{(Know nothing specifically about Slovak, but there should be a t for the č and certainly no n for it to be something more than a bad phonetical transcription.)} � (talk) 06:29, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

hmmm

IMHO more than 1mln people were killed in auschwitz... but maybe in UK's books You can learn that... sorry for my bad English, i'm form Poland...

Germany link in the lead section

I have replaced the Germany link in the lead section in the sentence about the concentration camp with a link to Nazi Germany, as this is the country that built the camp and this is what it was called at the time. If anyone objects, please undo it. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 13:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Twins?

In "Twin towns — Sister cities" Breisach is listed, but on the Breisach page Oświęcim is not listed. One of these needs to be fixed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.155.80 (talk) 15:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move 20 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: N Not done and not likely to be done DrStrauss talk 22:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

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Oświęcim → Auschwitz, Poland – Auschwitz is the common name in English. Oświęcim is virtually unknown in English. 2605:6000:EC16:C000:F06C:ADB6:9333:C12C (talk) 03:58, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I understand that there will be sensitivities on this proposal but ... I do believe that "Auschwitz" should still redirect to the concentration camp. But trying to name this article to the Polish name, which is virtually unknown in English, is a violation of WP:COMMONNAME. -- MC

• Oppose the town is known as Oświęcim, it hasn't been called Auschwitz in English for 60 years. The camp isn't even inside the town. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:10, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Oświęcim Is virtually unknown in English, because the town itself is virtually unknown. Referring to the town as Auschwitz would just confuse everybody. Gravuritas (talk) 10:56, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons cited above. Also, I was not able to find any evidence supporting nom's assertion that Auschwitz is the common name for the town. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 14:38, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:Gravuritas. —  AjaxSmack  03:31, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• I have visited both places, and by now the two words have separated and are no longer synonyms :: "Auschwitz" is the (ex camp, now museum), and "Oświęcim" is the town. "Auschwitz" was a name of the town, way long ago back before Hitler arose. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:13, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Post-war history of the chemical plant

Just an incentive to expand the post-war history of the chemical plant, since – after the end of genocide and war – it has been a facility of great importance all along. Polish Wikipedia dedicates a whole article to the plant. – Javítgató (talk) 15:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Here is a chronology of the chemical plant's institutional names, assembled from the Polish article linked above. Maybe a fellow editor can use it. Impressive in itself and a witness to era changes.

• 1941–1945 Buna-Werke w Dworach Koło Oświęcimia, under IG Farben
• 1945–1946 Fabryka Paliw Syntetycznych w Dworach
• 1946–1948 Państwowe Zakłady Syntezy Chemicznej w Dworach
• 1948–1949 Zakłady Syntezy Chemicznej w Dworach
• 1949–1951 Zakłady Chemiczne – Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe Wyodrębnione w Oświęcimiu
• ?–? Zakłady Chemiczne „Oświęcim” w Oświęcimiu
• 1994–1995 "~ sole proprietorship company of the State Treasury"
• 1995–1997 National Investment Funds and State Treasury being joint shareholders
• 1997–2007 Firma Chemiczna Dwory SA
• 2007–present: Synthos SA

– Javítgató (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)