A lady from Skierniewice
Nearly a hundred years ago, in 1913, a photographer from Skierniewice, Lipman Karp took a photograph of a beautiful woman. The photo taken in a shape of a postcard had a dry mark in the right bottom corner with the photographer and town’s name.
Many years have passed... In one of Jerusalem’s antique shop that photograph, taken by Lipman Karp, was bought by a student named Yael Ben. Yael named the woman from the old photo “ A Lady From Skierniewice” and decided to seek the photographer’s family in Israel. Unfortunately, without any success so far.
That history inspired me to continue the searchings of Lipman Karp’s relatives. When I am looking at the photo of the woman with a string of black pearls around her neck I am more and more enchanted by her beauty. A big question presses to my mouth: “ Who was that beautiful woman from the photograph?”. Was it the photographer’s wife? Or the person from his close neighbourhood? There is still no univocal answer to it.
A hundred years have passed – a lot of time – and still the old photo keeps its secret hidden. One is however sure; the woman came from Skierniewice in Poland and she was a Jew. How was the photo brought to Israel – nobody knows. Who took it to Israel and why it found itself in a antique shop – there in no answer.
Following the Yael Ben’s trail I have made up my mind to search any data of Lipman Karp and his family in Yad Vashem Institute. These searchings occurred to be the hit a bull’s eye. Step by step, I was revealing some unknown facts from Lipman Karp’s life. Due to The Institute data, Lipman Karp had a wife named Brakh and four daughters. The oldest of them , Sheva Karp, was born in Skierniewice in 1906 and was like har father a photographer, too. On completing her school she divided her time between Skierniewice and Lodz, where she founded her own family.
Lipman Karp used to have his own photo atelier in Senatorska Street, in Mr.Binder’s house, just opposite the church. There was probably the second photo atelier under the name “Artistic Photography S.Karpstein”,placed in 33 SenatorskaStreet, owned by his daughter Sheva Karp. Strangely to say, the second Karp’s daughter, Khana, born in Skierniewice in 1910, was a photographer too, and tied her later vocational life with Skierniewice .She might have helped her father and her sister in a photo atelier gaining her vocational experience in the art of photography.
And this is not the end of an exciting history. The third of Karp’s daughters, Betsheva, born in 1912 in Skierniewice, as it is not difficult to guess, followed her father and sisters’ path, too. Her later vocational life she divided between Skierniewice and Warsaw, where she was studying.
However, the most important figure in this history is the fourth Karp’s daughter, Varda Karp, later Varda Gilboa. She is the person who gave in 1999 her sisters’ data to the Yad Vashem Insitute. Unfortunately, all her sisters perished in Holocaust during WW2. She handed over her sisters photographes and left her present ,in that time, address and phone number. But in that moment the trail breaks off. Today we don’t know if Gilboa is still alive, if she has any family, what she did later or what happened to her parents.
If she is still alive she would be nearly 90 now. Just a little less that the lady from the old photograph. Having been studied the data from Yad Vashem Institute about Lipman Karp’s family, one can submit a proposition that the oldest sister Sheva ,together with her family , was murdered in Lodz Ghetto. The two remaining sisters after liquidation of Skierniewice Ghetto were brought to Warsaw Ghetto and later to one of those concentration camps. We still know nothing about Lipman Karp and his wife Brakh. We don’t know if they were holocaust victims or not. The lack of the knowledge on this theme does not mean that they survived, however everything is possible. One thing however is certain: Varda Karp, later Gilboa survived and lived in Israel, in Tel Aviv. I wonder if she maintained any relations with her acquaintances in Skierniewice or with other people in Poland. Does anybody- in spite of the flowing of the time -remember her in Skierniewice?
How often the world we are living in brings us more and more surprises. In the era of the Internet searching of missing people becomes quicker and more and more effective. Let it be so this time,too. The world of “A Lady From Skierniewice” has been waiting for a long time to be discovered and to disclose its mystery. And in spite of the fact that this world remains only in old photographs it does still intrigue and make people think.
It is like a fairy tale told children for a good night, whereas old photographs mean histories from various cities and towns beginning from Warsaw,Cracow or Skierniewice and ending in distant Tel Aviv, New York or Jerusalem…
WALDEMAR BRONICZ
Fotografia „ Lady ze Skierniewic" Lipman Karp 1913 rok / ze zbiorów Yael Ben
Fotografia Khana Karp / ze zbiorów Yad Vashem
Fotografia Batsheva Karp / ze zbiorów Yad Vashem
