Blog

In January, 2020, the Gombin Society entered into an agreement with the Nissenbaum Foundation of Warsaw to repair and refurbish the metal fence around the Gombin Jewish Cemetery.   This fence was originally built in 1998 through a similar agreement with Nissenbaum, but had gradually rusted and deteriorated over the intervening 20 years. The first phase of a multiyear project is now completed with the reinstallation of 70 refurbished spans of the fence in the front… Read More »

Jewish settlement on Gąbin dates to the Middle Ages, and the Jewish Kehila (community) was already established in the 13th Century. That community was destroyed during World War II, but its history lives on. This Master’s Thesis represents the most comprehensive and scholarly historical overview of Jewish Gąbin, with a particular focus on the 20th Century, inter-war period. The original was written in Polish and translated into English by Leon Zamozc. Click here to view… Read More »

Ukraine and our Jewish experience Like the rest of you, we are fixated and horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine — the murder of civilians and the destruction of communities and institutions. One can’t avoid seeing the parallels to the eve of WWII, when Nazi armies invaded Poland, and our Gombiner landsleyt either fled or faced imprisonment and death in the ghetto. We are once again witnessing an era of tyranny and its consequences.… Read More »

Who Will Write Our History Airing on the Discovery Channel at 3 PM on Sunday Jan. 26. This is a moving film reenactment of the Emanuel Ringleblum group inside the Warsaw Ghetto who wrote and buried an archive that documented their experiences. “About the Film”, From the Who Will Write our History’s website: “In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars and community… Read More »

The Poland Jewish Cemeteries Restoration Project (Wirtualny Cmentarz) has researched hundreds of Jewish cemeteries through our Poland and created a database of the headstones, documenting all available information including a photo, the text in Hebrew and, in some cases, a translation to English. Click here to view the project’s website. Toggle between Polish and English translation using the Polish and English flag icons in the right side of the navigation bar. Go to Database and… Read More »

Gombin. The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Town in Poland. Published by the Gombin Society, Knight Printing Corp, 1969. We now have a link to buy your own Gombin Yizkor Book! A reproduction copy of the complete Yizkor Book can be purchased from the Yiddish Book Center, reprinted from the Yizkor Book collection in the New York Public Library. Click here to go to a form to buy the book. For additional information about… Read More »

Shane-Teifeld H: Memoir of My Survival; The Life of Hania Shane-Teifeld. As told to niece, Aida (Guyer) Cutler This memoir was written by Hania (neé Teifeld) Shane over a period of years and dictated to her niece, Aida (neé Guyer) Cutler, between 2000 and 2002, in Detroit. Hania died in 2002. Aida is the daughter of Hania’s sister, Zelda, who is mentioned in the memoir, but who had already emigrated to Argentina when the Second… Read More »

These set of documents that were handed down to us from our Grandmother Rose Lewis (wife of Harry Kutcher) as being her family documents. The family emigrated to the UK some time between 1886 and 1891 and changed their name to Lewis. There are discrepancies in the dates of birth even between UK documents which I assume are due to language problems/ mistranslations, but on the whole the data between the Szkareks and Lewis tie… Read More »

View photos from the Sanitt family