Fanny Scheer (1910-2008) was born Feiga Moszkowicz on July 15, 1910 in Reniv, Poland (now Ukraine) to Josef Moszkowicz and Shprinza Lausker Moszkowicz. She was the the youngest of eleven children. In 1933 she married Froim Scheer (b. October 16, 1904), son of Leib Scheer and Slava Moszkowicz Scheer. The couple settled in Załoźce (now Zaliztsi, Ukraine). Their only child, Cyla Scheer (later Celia Dymant), was born on March 13, 1934. The Scheers lived in the same building as Froim’s bakery, where Fanny and other family members also worked. When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in 1939, the family bakery was confiscated and the Scheers were evicted from their home and had to move in with relatives. They continued to work at the bakery. Germany occupied eastern Poland in June 1941 and persecuted or killed the Jewish residents of Załoźce. In the summer of 1942, Gestapo agents arrived from Tarnopol, and more Jewish residents were killed, but the Scheer family and their relatives were kept in town because of the need for bakers. In October 1942, most of the remaining Jews were sent to the ghetto in Zborow. Froim, Fanny, Celia, and some other relatives hid with the help of a former maid, Tachka Barkito, and her family and then by a rapid series of Ukrainian peasants. Most of their helpers lived near Reniv and included Mikolo Barkito, Samko Kokorozu, and Roman Zacharow. Around the spring of 1943, the Scheer, Lausker, and Moszkowicz families prepared dugouts in the forest near Reniv to hide. On March 7, 1944, the region was liberated by Soviet partisans. The area was soon retaken by the Germans, and the surviving Jews escaped to the east. After the city was liberated once again by the Red Army on March 23, the Scheers returned to town and discovered other people living in their home. In spring 1945, the family moved to Zborow and later to Opole. The family relocated to Paris, France in April 1946, to Canada in September 1949, and immigrated to the United States in 1950, arriving in New York on August 18. Fanny Scheer died in New Jersey on December 3, 2008.
Copyright Holder: Ms. Celia Dymant
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The collection is arranged in two files: 1) Writings, and 2) Passport and photographs.
The Fanny Scheer papers consist of writings, a passport, and photographs documenting the Scheer family’s experiences in prewar Załoźce, Poland (Zaliztsi, Ukraine), wartime Załoźce and Reniv, and postwar Opole. Writings include pages of Scheer’s 1943 description of her family’s experiences in Załośce and Reniv, Poland (now Ukraine) under Soviet and German occupation and a notebook including Scheer’s 1965 description of the fate of her family members. The passport was issued on March 13, 1946 in Warsaw, Poland to Fanny Scheer and her daughter, Cyla (Celia) and includes 1949 and 1950 immigration visas to Canada and the United States. Six photographs and one copy print depict the Scheer family before the war in Załoźce, Poland (Zaliztsi, Ukraine) and after the war in Opole, Poland.
Feiga Scheer collection