Włodawa

Włodawa is a town in eastern Poland, in Lublin Voivodeship, on the Bug River where Poland meets the borders of Belarus and Ukraine, and the seat of Włodawa County. It lies about 51 kilometres from Chełm and 86 kilometres from Lublin. First recorded in 1242, it passed in the fifteenth century to the Sanguszko family, received town rights in 1534 and prospered from border trade, fairs and the salt staple, later under the Leszczyński family, when it became a notable centre of Protestantism. The Cossack and Tatar army destroyed it in 1648. The town was annexed by Austria in 1795, joined Congress Poland in 1815 and was occupied by Germany in the First World War. Its large Jewish community, over seventy percent of the population before 1939, was confined in a ghetto in 1941 and deported to the Sobibór extermination camp. The Baroque synagogue is now a major tourist attraction.