A TOUCH OF FRANCE

Part of the family from the village of Dudynce immigrated to France. This was my great aunt, Catherine Kotlarz and her mother Maria Wdowiak Warcholyk Kotlarz. The family story is that Catherine married a Jewish jewelry merchant (surname unknown) in Dudynce and all of them moved to France. As a child, I remember my grandmother getting letters from her sister. This was probably just prior to WWII. One of my uncles remembers that his grandmother (Maria Wdowiak Warcholyk Kotlarz) died in France. Recently found were two photographs which I have posted here, one showing the French landlady, Contes de Sampigny and the other showing a young girl named Helen, who may have been my great aunt’s child. There is a town called Sampigny in the Lorraine district of France. This is all I know about the French Connection. Here is a Web site that shows some current photos of the town Le voyage à Sampigny At present there are less than 1000 residents in the town.

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This note, on the back of one of the photographs, says something like “here is my landlady, Madame la Contes de Sampigni and my darling Helena.”