Kostrzyn (PL)
Kostrzyn nad Odrą (German: Kustrin; Custrin; Poland officially: Kostrzyn nad Odrą) is a town in western Poland at the confluence of the Oder and Warta rivers, on the border with Germany. Located in Lubusz Voivodeship in Gorzów County. Captured by the French in 1806, Küstrin was occupied by a French military garrison for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars. During the French retreat from the east in 1814, the town was set on fire and burnt to the ground. The town recovered and became one of the most important railway hubs in the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire. In 1857 it was linked to Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder) and in 1875 with Stettin (Szczecin) on the Pomeranian coast At the outbreak of World War II Küstrin had 24,000 inhabitants. However, due to Allied air raids on the railway hub and local factories and its position as a German bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder during the Battle of the Oder-Neisse and the Battle of the Seelow Heights, almost 95% of its buildings were destroyed (including all 32 of the city's factories) and the town was generally deserted. The town was captured by the Red Army on 11 March 1945. The suburb Alt-Drewitz (modern Drzewice, one of Kostrzyn's boroughs) contained a Nazi POW camp, Stalag III-C Alt-Drewitz, used mostly for American, French, Soviet, and Italian prisoners of war. From 1943-45 the town also housed a number of German forced labour camps and a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war the ruined town was placed under Polish administration by decision of the Potsdam Conference; Germans remaining in the town were subsequently expelled westward and replaced partly with Polish refugees from regions east of the Curzon line, the Kresy, where they had been an ethnic minority and refused to accept a new national membership. Historically in the Prussian Brandenburg province.
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Postmark Examples
Postmarks in Poland
Postmarks in Empire of Germany
Postmarks in North German Confederation
Postmarks in Prussia Brandenburg province
CÜSTRIN used the code 291, in Kreis Königsberg, District of Frankfurt am Oder.