Brněnec

Brněnec (Brünnlitz) is a municipality and village in Svitavy District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,300 inhabitants.

Administrative parts
The villages of Chrastová Lhota, Moravská Chrastová and Podlesí are administrative parts of Brněnec.

Geography
Brněnec is located about 15 km south of Svitavy and 45 km north of Brno. It lies in the Svitavy Uplands. The highest point is at 555 m above sea level. The municipality is situated at the confluence of the Svitava River and the stream Chrastovský potok; the built-up area is located in the valleys of these two watercourses. The Svitava River forms here the historical border between Bohemia and Moravia.

History
Next to an old trade route, the settlement of Moravská Chrastová was founded after 1200 by monks from the monastery in Litomyšl. Moravská Chrastová was first mentioned in a document from 1323. The first written mention of Brněnec is in the act of partition of the Svojanov estate from 1557. Until the 18th century, it was a part of Bělá nad Svitavou. After the Löw-Beer family founded here a textile factory, the importance of Brněnec grew.

In 1938, the municipality was annexed by Nazi Germany and administered as part of Reichsgau Sudetenland. After World War II, the Germans were expelled.

Schindler factory
The Löw-Beer Jewish family founded a textile producing company in the 1810s, and in 1855 rebuilt an old paper mill in Brněnec into the textile factory. In 1938, it was taken over by Germans.

In 1944, Oskar Schindler relocated his German Enamelware Factory and the associated prison camp of 1,200 Jewish forced labourers from Kraków to a munitions factory acquired by him in Brněnec. The Jewish workforce thus escaped transport to the extermination camps and was liberated along with the rest of the municipality on 10 May 1945 by the Red Army, after the factory had been fully operational for seven months. As of 2016, the Endowment Fund for the Memorial of the Shoah and Oskar Schindler is engaged in turning the ruins of the factory into a museum.

Transport
The I/43 road (part of the European route E461) from Brno to Svitavy passes through the municipality.

Moravská Chrastová is located on the railway line heading from Brno to Česká Třebová.

Sights
The most important monument is the Evangelical church in Moravská Chrastová. It was built in the Arts and Crafts style in 1889. Other sights include the Chapel of Saint Isidore in Moravská Chrastová from 1855 and a belfry in Brněnec.

Notable people

 * Oskar Schindler (1908–1974), World War II-era industrialist who saved 1,200 Jewish lives