Why My Town had Two Names
Long before people settled there and it became a village, this area was most probably only known as the place between Zamoscz and Bilgoraj. It was simply too small to have a name.
It was the fate of Poland to be invaded and divided up by many nations. Sometimes it was the Russians, or the Germans, or the Austrians. Even far away Sweden at one point in time managed to penetrate all the way to Krakow.
When a group of invaders, many hundreds of years ago, came to this place that ultimately became our shtetel, they could not identify it on any map. They didn’t know what this area was called.
They wanted to ask the local inhabitants, but they couldn’t find them. Everyone was in hiding, but somehow they found an old Jew and brought him before the military commander.
"What is the name of this place" he thundered?
The Jew couldn’t understand him, and besides, he was petrified before this military figure. The old man started to mumble.
The commander screamed: "Speak up! Speak up!"
And when the old man still didn’t stop mumbling, he was struck in the face, and a tooth was knocked out.
The old Jew bent down to pick up the tooth and sadly said in Hebrew, "sheber – shiin." Broken tooth - Sheber-Shiin.
"Oh, that’s better," said the commander, as he dutifully marked his primitive map.
And so the name Shebreshiin officially became the name of this tiny shtetel; at least to Jews all over the world.
But the Poles couldn’t pronounce the Hebrew name, and they started to call it Szczebreozyn (Sczebrzeszyn) (Shchebjasin). Only the Poles could pronounce their interpretation of the name, and therefore the Jews retained their own pronunciation and spelling.
So I lived in the two named town. All this went on until 1939 when Germany again invaded poor Poland.
Now there is no more Shebreshiin.
All the Jews, and half the Poles, were killed.
The broken tooth did not grow back in, there are no more mouths or faces, no more shtetel, just fading memories and a few stories told by old men who once lived there.
