i Maria Samostrzelecki to King Frederick II The Great himself in 1773. In 1818 Wyrzysk became the seat of a county in the Grand Duchy of Posen, and from 1871 it was part of the German Empire. After years of Germanisation, when the area became increasingly populated by Germans, the Prussians abolished the law of corvée at the beginning of the 19th century. Polish resistance to Prussian rule accelerated the economic development and progress, especially in agriculture. Conflicts arose especially during the Kulturkampf period. The pressure of Germanisation and flood of German settlers encountered growing resistance from the discriminated Polish population of Krajna, who clung to their native language and the Roman Catholic religion. This found expression among decreasing Polish population in the establishment of patriotic Polish associations, choirs, sports clubs, banks and self-help organizations. Wyrzysk was incorporated into a newly reborn Poland in 1919 by Treaty of Versailles, but merely 20 years later, with the beginning of World War II, the town was yet again occupied by Germany and annexed into the new Third Reich province of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia as the seat of the county/district (kreis) of Wirsitz. In October and November 1939, as part of the Intelligenzaktion, the German gendarmerie and Selbstschutz carried out mass arrests of local Poles, who then were imprisoned in the local court prison. Many Poles from Wyrzysk, including teachers and priests, were among hundreds of Poles massacred by the Germans in the nearby village of Paterek in October and November 1939. In 1940–1942, the occupiers also carried out expulsions of Poles, whose houses were then handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. A forced labor subcamp of the Stalag XX-A prisoner-of-war camp was operated by the Germans in the town. One of its prisoners was British actor Sam Kydd, who, as he wrote in his memoir, even learned various Polish phrases through contact with the local Polish population. In 1944, the Germans deported 300 Polish forced laborers aged 15–50 from the county to a forced labour camp in Jajkowo. The town was taken by the Red Army in January 1945 and returned to Poland after the war. Transport Wyrzysk used to be cut through by national road No. 10 leading from Szczecin to Warsaw but a bypass has now been built. This bypass connects Wyrzysk with Piła (37 km) and Bydgoszcz (55 km). The railway station in nearby