Skierbieszów s is a village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 in Zamość County

Zamosc County

Zamość County is a unit of territorial administration and local government in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its administrative seat is the city of Zamość, although the city is not part...

, Lublin Voivodeship

Lublin Voivodeship

- Administrative division :Lublin Voivodeship is divided into 24 counties : 4 city counties and 20 land counties. These are further divided into 213 gminas....

, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina

Gmina

The gmina is the principal unit of administrative division of Poland at its lowest uniform level. It is often translated as "commune" or "municipality." As of 2010 there were 2,479 gminas throughout the country...

 (administrative district) called Gmina Skierbieszów

Gmina Skierbieszów

Gmina Skierbieszów is a rural gmina in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Skierbieszów, which lies approximately north-east of Zamość and south-east of the regional capital Lublin....

. It lies on the river Wolica

Wolica

Wolica may refer to the following places in Poland:*Wolica, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship *Wolica, Hrubieszów County in Lublin Voivodeship *Wolica, Krasnystaw County in Lublin Voivodeship...

, approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) north-east of Zamość

Zamosc

Zamość ukr. Замостя is a town in southeastern Poland with 66,633 inhabitants , situated in the south-western part of Lublin Voivodeship , about from Lublin, from Warsaw and from the border with Ukraine...

 and 71 km (44 mi) south-east of the regional capital Lublin

Lublin

Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...

. The village has a population of 1,317. There is a castle

Castle

A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...

 in the village.

In 1428 the village was given to the bishop Jan Zborowski of Clan of Ostoja

Clan of Ostoja

The Clan of Ostoja was a powerful group of Knights and Lords in late medieval Europe. The clan encompassed several families in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Upper Hungary , Hungary, Transylvania, Belorus, Ukraine and Prussia....

 and 1453 the village was given rights by the King as a Town. Skierbieszow was a town until 1822 and the coat of arms of the town/village is of Ostoja.

In November 1942 during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the Polish inhabitants of Skierbieszów were expelled from Skierbieszów to make room for German settlers. Former German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 President

President of Germany

The President of the Federal Republic of Germany is the country's head of state. His official title in German is Bundespräsident . Germany has a parliamentary system of government and so the position of President is largely ceremonial...

 Horst Köhler

Horst Köhler

Horst Köhler is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union. He was President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on...

was born in the village during the occupation. The village was briefly renamed Heidenstein until the arrival of Soviet forces in 1944. In 1945-46 the Polish residents began returning to their homes.