As part of the region of Greater Poland, i.e. the cradle of the Polish state, the area formed part of Poland since its establishment in the 10th century. Obora was a private church village, administratively located in the Gniezno County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland.[2]
On September 11, 1939, during the German invasion of Poland which started World War II, German troops carried out a massacre of 22 Poles from the region, incl. from Obora itself, in the village (see Nazi crimes against the Polish nation).[3] During the subsequent German occupation, in 1939, the occupiers carried out expulsions of Poles, who were then placed in a transit camp in nearby Gniezno, and afterwards deported to the General Government in the more eastern part of German-occupied Poland, while their houses and farms were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy.[4]
^Atlas historyczny Polski. Wielkopolska w drugiej połowie XVI wieku. Część I. Mapy, plany (in Polish). Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polish Academy of Sciences. 2017. p. 1b.
^Wardzyńska, Maria (2009). Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion (in Polish). Warsaw: IPN. p. 95.
^Wardzyńska, Maria (2017). Wysiedlenia ludności polskiej z okupowanych ziem polskich włączonych do III Rzeszy w latach 1939-1945 (in Polish). Warsaw: IPN. p. 172. ISBN978-83-8098-174-4.
