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1 Killing site(s)
Florian S., born in 1933: “Before the war, Skopów was a village mainly inhabited by Ukrainians. There were also several Polish families, as well as two or three Jewish families. I remember a Jewish family called Labeczko who owned a small store in the village. They sold cigarettes and different pipe utensils because at time; elder men would smoke pipes. Mr. Labeczko and his wife were elderly people, and they had two adult sons, one of them was called Lipa. They were shot in their house during the German occupation. It was in the morning, before noon. After the shooting, when the German shooter left, I wanted to go there with my friends to see the bodies, but my parents didn’t let me. Now I think they were right to forbid me to go there. I would have been frightened and would most probably have had nightmares after seeing those dead people lying in blood. But what I saw and what I remember very well is the cart that transported the bodies of the Jews to the forest. The cart was shaking as the road was full of stones and holes. I saw the victims’ legs hanging out of the cart, shaking as well (…)” (Witness N°1181, interviewed in Skopów, on October 28, 2020)
Skopów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krzywcza, within Przemyśl County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship in south-eastern Poland. In 1939, it had 1,240 inhabitants: 900 Ukrainians, 325 Poles (including 50 colonists) and 15 Jews (three families). The Jewish cemetery was in Krzywcza, located about 7km from Skopów. At the beginning of the 20th century, Gmina Krzywcza was inhabited by around 930 Jews. By 1921, this number had dropped to 457 Jews.
Gmina Krzywcza was occupied by German troops in September 1939. During the German occupation, most of the Jews from Krzywcza were transported to the ghetto at Przemyśl, from where they were transferred to the Belzec extermination camp in July 1942. According to YIU’s witness, the killings of Jews from Skopów and neighboring villages took place in summer of that same year. Florian S., born in 1933, recalled that a German with an interpreter came to Skopów one morning and shot local Jews including the four members of the Labeczko family. Between four and six people were shot on the floor in the house owned by the family. According to Florian, after the shooting, the German and his interpreter left in the direction of the village of Helusz, where they most probably shot two Jewish women. The bodies of the Jewish victims from Skopów remained in the house for two or three days, after which the head of the village, the soltys, decided to requisition several local men to arrange the burial of the Jewish victims. Requisitioned men transported the bodies to the nearby forest and buried them in a mass grave where they remain to this day, which is extremely difficult to locate.
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