destroyed city centre. Settlers from Central Poland made up about 70% of Szczecin's new population. In addition to Poles, Ukrainians from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union settled there. Also Poles repatriated from Harbin, China and Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, settled in Szczecin in the following years. In 1945 and 1946, the city was the starting point of the northern route used by the Jewish underground organisation Brichah to channel Jewish displaced persons from Central and Eastern Europe to the American occupation zone. Szczecin was rebuilt, and the city's industry was expanded. At the same time, Szczecin became a major Polish industrial centre and an important seaport (particularly for Silesian coal) for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Cultural expansion was accompanied by a campaign resulting in the "removal of all German traces". In 1946, Winston Churchill prominently mentioned the city in his Iron Curtain speech: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent". The city witnessed anti-communist revolts in 1970 and 1980. On August 30, 1980, first of the four August Agreements, which led to the first legalisation of the trade union Solidarity, was signed in Szczecin. The introduction of martial law in December 1981 met with a strike by the dockworkers of Szczecin shipyard, joined by other factories and workplaces in a general strike. All these were suppressed by the authorities. Pope John Paul II visited the city on 11June 1987. Another wave of strikes in Szczecin broke out in 1988 and 1989, which eventually led to the Round Table Agreement and first semi-free elections in post-war Poland. Szczecin has been the capital of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999. Geography Climate Szczecin has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) with some humid continental (Dfb) characteristics in normal not updated, typical of Western Pomerania. The winters are colder than on the immediate coast and the summers are warm, but still with some moderation, especially due to the Baltic Sea. The average air temperature in Szczecin ranges from 8 to 8.4 °C. The hottest month is July with a temperature of 15.8 °C to 20.3 °C, the coldest January from -4.1 °C to 2.6 °C. Air temperature below 0 °C occurs on average over 86 days a year, most frequently in January and February. The average annual rainfall is 537 mm, the average rainfall in the cool