The town was annexed by Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and in 1815 it became part of so-called Congress Poland in the Russian Partition of Poland. After the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising, the Russians closed down the monastery and church in 1864.[2] Skępe was reintegrated with Poland in 1918, when the country regained independence after World War I. During the Polish–Soviet War, the Soviets captured the town on 13–14 August 1920, and then briefly occupied it.[2] The Soviets looted the monastery and tortured the local Polish parish priest Albin Żmijewski.[3]
During World War II, Skępe was occupied by Germany from 1939 to 1945. During the Intelligenzaktion in 1939, many inhabitants were murdered in large massacres carried out by the Germans in the Barbarka forest and in nearby Karnkowo.[4] Arrested Polish teachers were imprisoned in Włocławek.[5] The occupiers also carried out expulsions of Poles, whose houses were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. In 1942, the Germans renamed the town to Schemmensee to erase traces of Polish origin, however the original Polish name was restored in 1945 after the occupation ended.
^ abcBożena Ciesielska. "Lokacja Skępego". Miasto i Gmina Skępe (in Polish). Retrieved 11 February 2020.
^ abKrajewski, Mirosław (2010). Ziemia dobrzyńska w cieniu Czerwonej Gwiazdy. Rok 1920 (in Polish). Rypin: Wszechnica Edukacyjna i Wydawnicza Verbum. p. 27. ISBN978-83-88701-41-2.
^Wardzyńska, Maria (2009). Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion (in Polish). Warszawa: IPN. pp. 162–163, 175.
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