Skępe, Poland

Other Names:  Skepe, Skempe (Russian, German) Schemmensee (German, 1942-45)

Location:  52º52 N 19º21' E             131 km WNW of Warszawa                 26 miles NNW of Płock            Nearby cities:  Lipno, Sierpc
                                                    
                              



Documents






As immigration split families, mail helped them keep in touch....


HudesIda

[Postcard]
Actually, this evening as I was mailing this letter, we received this photograph of Lipne  from a photographer, so we are sending you this
    as an eternal memento
    for my dear, not forgotten sister, Molleh,
[from her] sister Hodes Zamoyskevitsh



Rywka's letter
Rywka's letter p.2
With the help of G-d  Tuesday, September 9, [750?]

Dear and faithful Nachum. It was only 10 minutes ago that I received your dear letter together with the card of best wishes. I am writing this letter because while writing a few words I read through a far longer letter.  You can just imagine how happy I am whenever I hear a few words from my dear brother’s children. Unfortunately I usually don’t have the fortune for getting a letter from anyone of the children.  It is entirely possible that they don’t know how to write Yiddish, and they know that I don’t know English. So they just don’t write at all. And this is how a person becomes alienated from one’s own flesh and blood. My sister-in-law, may she be well and strong, has never written to us. At that time there was still someone to write to, but now….. dear Nachum,  it’s nice that you still think about me and my children, and Chava’s children. I think that there were never any better friends than me.  And what comes out of one’s heart can never be uprooted. I just regret that so much time has gone by, and we have still not seen each other. That is really unbelievable. I have already been in America 4 times. Should I have gone looking for you? Maybe I actually should have, but I just never had the possibility to do so. Especially regarding material needs. Even my own children were not in a situation to give me money to travel.

I couldn’t even ask my own sister, and with everything I have heard about your own  material situation perhaps you also were unable to come. It couldn’t happen even with our very best intentions. I suffered from it so much but remained silent. Did I not want to see Sarah? Until the children left for America they were always together. I loved the children like my own life!! Over all the years when they were in America they forgot everything. And time does its thing.  People get busy with their own things and end up forgetting other people. That’s the way the world is, and every individual is his own world. Dear Nahum, I can tell you just one thing: that after Hitler I kept up my life as far as was possible. But one thing that I didn’t [sic] encounter with my second marriage-  that G-d I was freed, and now I am that G-d happy. Also, my own children, Fella and Sarah are in Canada making a livelihood, thank G-d. They have, thank G-d very fine family and bright children, and they write to me. Fella comes to visit me from time to time, she has the time to do it. Her daughter visited me for [illegible words]. Chava’s children are very fine people in the full sense of the word. They got married well, and thank G-d they too have very fine children. I don’t live too far from Chava’s daughter, and she is a faithful daughter to me.  Now, dear Nachum, please come for a visit with Sarah in Israel. It was always your eternal aspiration.  You will be our dear guests. Please give my warmest regards and best wishes to my sister-in-law and everyone in the family for the new year. May we all be able to be together again. Regards to your brother Moritz and his wife. Please write back. From your  neighbor and her father, Rivka.

Translation by David Goldman
       

Sometimes news came from the local Jewish newspaper:

At Skempe (near Lipno, Poland)
the authorities averted a pogrom attempt
by peasants against the Jews,
but the soldiers subsequently attacked
those in the synagogue and broke up
its furniture and belongings. They
wished to set fire to the synagogue, but
the Christian neighbors objected to
such a course, fearing that the conflagration
might spread. Many Jews
were, however, beaten, and a number
of houses and shops were plundered.
At the request of the Rabbi, the district
authorities were summoned to
Skempe from Lipno.

  Jewish Criterion Vol. 51 no.  27  Date: 8/29/1919
To read the page click here.



                 

Holocaust Records:


SzlamaKL 1
SzlamaKL 2
SzlamaKL 3
SzlamaKL 4
SzlamaKL 5
SzlamaKL 6
SzlamaKL 7



Records courtesy of US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Szlama KL
                          Records



Reichenbach Goldman announcement

This is the wedding invitation/announcement for Dora Goldman (born in 1925 in Skepe) and Avraham Reichenbach (born in 1923 in Lodz). It is quite interesting because the wedding was held at the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp in 1949. My grandparents and mother attended the wedding there. My mother, uncle and grandparents left their town (Klodzko) in what had just become part of Western Poland in 1946 and the American military settled them in Starnberg outside of Munich. Dora was a niece of my grandfather, Henry Goldman.

by Julian Preisler




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