Knight of Gurn

It is located in the picturesque area of ​​the Живywieckie Beskydy mountain range in southern Poland, near the border with Slovakia , about 7 km south-west of the settlement of Rajcha , 28 km southwest of the town of Zywiec and 87 km south of the administrative center of the Silesian Voivodeship of the city of Katowice ^{[2] [1] [3]} .

The settlement was founded at the beginning of the XVII century as a place ( Polish. Radeczka ). First mentioned in 1628 as a Wallachian settlement. Residents were engaged in cattle breeding, deforestation and forest burning ( Polish. Cyrhlenie ) for mountain pastures ^[4] .

After the partition of the Commonwealth , the lands of the settlement became part of the Austrian Empire .

In 1808, the village was acquired by an ethnographer , a count ( Polish. Ludwik de Laveaux ). Fascinated by the beauties of the Polish Beskids and Knights, in 1851 he published an ethnographic book ^[5] , which describes the life and customs of the villagers, local landscapes .

In the forties of the XIX century, during the time of Karl Teshensky , a glass factory was built in the vicinity of Rytserka Gurnaya. By 1873, a significant part of the population consisted of Austrian immigrants engaged in logging and agriculture .

The school in the village was founded until 1868 (the exact date is not known). In 1908, a chapel was built in Ryzerka. In 1950, the chapel became a church ( Blessed Virgin Mary ).

Since 1918, as part of the independent Polish Republic . In the interwar period (1922-1939), the Ritserka becomes a country house, tourism is actively developing, the first hotels in the mountains are built and tourist routes are open ^[1] .

At the final stage of World War II , in April 1945, the village was on the front line ^[6] . There were fierce battles in these places. The fighters and commanders of the 1st Guards Army , having repelled the counteroffensive of the Wehrmacht units, during the Moravian-Ostrava offensive operation , launched an offensive on Ostrava by mid-April.

On April 7, 1945, in the vicinity of Rytserki near the farm ( Polish Czanieckich ), the reconnaissance and sabotage group of Captain Efremov Avangard, consisting of 16 fighters, took an unequal battle with superior enemy forces. Eight of the sixteen scouts remained on the battlefield, and the commander of the group "Captain Efremov", Velerian Burzi , was also killed. The punishers did not pursue the remnants of the detachment. They dealt with the inhabitants of the farm, accusing them of aiding the partisans. Houses and 10 civilians were burnt down ^{[7] [1] [8]} .

In 1955, a new elementary school building was built.

Currently, Ritserka Gurna is a tourist village with 10 equipped walking paths and 3 elevators.

• Monument at the site of the death of the Soviet intelligence officer Velerian Burzi (Captain Efremov) and members of his reconnaissance and sabotage group "Vanguard" ^[1] .

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