is a village in Gmina Hażlach

Gmina Hazlach

Gmina Hażlach is a rural gmina in Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland, in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia...

, Cieszyn County

Cieszyn County

Cieszyn County is a unit of territorial administration and local government in Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland, on the Czech and Slovak border. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998...

 in Silesian Voivodeship

Silesian Voivodeship

Silesian Voivodeship, or Silesia Province , is a voivodeship, or province, in southern Poland, centering on the historic region known as Upper Silesia...

, southern Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, near the border with the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. It has a population of 1,857 (2008). It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia

Cieszyn Silesia

Cieszyn Silesia or Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered around the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic...

.

It was first mentioned in a written document in 1305 as Kończyce Książęce. There is a wooden Saint Michael the Archangel church built in 1777 in the village and a palace built by Jerzy Fryderyk Wilczek at the end of the 17th century. Last owner of the palace was countess Gabriela von Thun-Hohenstein. She was known in the region for her philanthropic activities, she helped poor children, worked in the Red Cross and in 1910 funded construction of a pavilion of Silesian Hospital in Cieszyn

Cieszyn

Cieszyn is a border-town and the seat of Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It has 36,109 inhabitants . Cieszyn lies on the Olza River, a tributary of the Oder river, opposite Český Těšín....

. She was then awarded an honorary citizen of that town. In 1945 Soviet troops

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 entered the palace and devastated it. Aristocratic family was expropriated of their property and orphanage

Orphanage

An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...

 was set there. After the fall of communism in Poland, there were problems with the property laws for the palace. It has been finally sold in 2007 to businessmen who declared they would like to set up a hotel there.

In the years 2004 and 2005 in the village the oldest traces of Homo erectus

Homo erectus

Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about . The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H...

in Poland were found, dated 800 000 years old.