Rydułtowy

Rydułtowy is a town in the Wodzisław County of Poland's Silesian Voivodeship, in the southwestern Silesian Highland on the Rybnik Plateau, first mentioned in 1228 as Rudolphi Willa. Its modern history has centered on coal mining, tied to the roughly two hundred year old Rydułtowy Anna mine, and the neighboring settlement of Pietrzkowice was incorporated into the town in 1951, the same year Rydułtowy received town rights. During the Second World War the town held five forced labor camps, including an Auschwitz subcamp where more than a thousand mostly Jewish prisoners were held. Rydułtowy had 21,616 inhabitants as of 30 June 2019.