Further development of the community occurred in the early 19th century. In February 1808, the Prussian authorities abolished all feudal privileges of guilds and towns, including the abolition of “de non tolerandis Judaeis” privileges.

In March 1812, King Frederick William's famous Emancipation Edict was published. Taking advantage of this change in attitude, Benjamin Cohn settled permanently in Tarnowskie Góry in 1808. In 1812, one Jewish family living in Tarnowskie Góry, and in 1813, there were 24 Jews living in Tarnowskie Góry (1.2% of the total population).

In 1815, a Jewish community was established in the town as a branch of the Bytom community. In 1822, there were 45 Jews living in Tarnowskie Góry. In subsequent years, the number increased. In 1825, there were 103 of them (4.4% of the total population), while in 1831 – 141 (4.9% of the total population). In 1846, the Jewish population of the town was 267 (6.3% of the total population). In 1852, there were 306 Jews living in Tarnowskie Góry (6.8% of the total population). By 1861, there were already 415 (7.5% of the total population). In 1885, the Jewish community in Tarnowskie Góry reached its peak number: 627 people.

A free-standing synagogue was erected between 1863 and 1864.

Great changes were brought by the 20th century. First it was a wave of migration to major urban centres, and then - the incorporation of Tarnowskie Góry into Poland, undesirable to most Jews who take a pro-German stance. By 1900, the number of Jews in the town had fallen to 418, and by 1910 – to 329. In 1925, there were 193 Jews living in Tarnowskie Góry (0.5% of the total population). By 1939, their number had fallen to 113.

In June 1922, Tarnowskie Góry became a part of Poland, which further intensified the emigration process of German Jews. They were replaced by Polish Jews after 1922.

September 1, 1939. Germany attacked Poland, starting World War II. The Germans burned down the synagogue as late as September, the ruins of which were demolished in 1943. In 1940, the occupiers carried out an operation in Tarnowskie Góry to confiscate Jewish property. They then gathered all of Tarnowitz's Jews in Lasowice. County authorities reported as early as 1940 that the town was "free of Jews.". It is likely that in the following months the Jews of Tarnowskie Góry were gradually transported to ghettos in Będzin, Częstochowa, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Kraków, Sosnowiec and Zawiercie.

In May 1942, the Germans carried out a large-scale deportation of Silesian Jews to the Nazi German extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. At that time, the Jews of Tarnogórska were most likely to be included in the "death transports" that went to the gas chambers.

The Description

In August 1821, a cemetery was established in Tarnowskie Góry, which the local Jewish community – hitherto transporting their dead to Bytom – began officially requesting in mid-1820. Its creation was made possible by a special order issued on 11 July 1821 by the Bytom County governor Carl Traugott, Count Henckel von Donnersmarck.

The cemetery, originally on the plan of a strongly elongated rectangle with an area of approx. 0.18 ha, was located in the suburb of Lyszcze south of the town centre, on the road to Gliwice, later called Gleiwitzer-Landstrasse (today's Gliwicka Street). In 1874, a small house was built on the west side, at the entrance to the cemetery, and existed until 1894. It is possible that it replaced some earlier building.

Throughout its entire period of operation, the cemetery was a resting place not only for the Jewish inhabitants of Tarnowskie Góry but also of about 20 surrounding villages.

In the death register of the Jewish population of Tarnowskie Góry, kept from May 1813 to the end of August 1847, the first recorded woman from this town to be laid to rest in the newly established necropolis was the less than two-year-old Johanna Poppelauer who died on 30 July 1822. She was not, however, the first person buried there – a Hebrew-only tombstone crowning the grave of Chanoch Henich Rünkel who died on 17 March 1822 was preserved on the cemetery grounds. This means that the young man died in one of the surrounding villages whose deaths were recorded in a register kept for the entire Bytom County.

As the cemetery was almost full, in early 1878 the Jewish community purchased a plot of land to the south of the cemetery. Thus its size was almost tripled to its current area of 0.62 ha. In addition, a new funeral home – which exists to this today - was built in 1894 together with outbuildings, while the old building was demolished. It was probably also at this time that the wall on the other sides of the cemetery was erected.

One should assume that around 900 people of the Jewish faith were buried in the cemetery, and regular burials of this population group could take place there until May 1940, when the vast majority of local Jews were deported from the town. At the moment, the last person known to have found eternal rest there is Simon Böhm who died on 14 July 1938 at the age of 60.

The cemetery survived the period of World War II virtually unaffected, and this was not so much due to the bureaucracy of German officials, but also the lack of priority given to matters related to Jewish necropolises. On 19 January 1944, the mayor formally requested the closure for burial of the cemetery – managed by the Trustee Office (German: Treuhandstelle) in Katowice – and the possibility of converting it into a storage area for building materials and parking for a car fleet. However, these plans could not be implemented.

After the end of World War II, the free space of the cemetery began to be used to bury people of the Protestant faith. From the 1970s onwards,  when people were no longer buried there, the unattended cemetery began to fall into increasing disrepair. At the time, many tombstones made of precious ores were stolen from its grounds.

Since the early 1980s, the cemetery has been in the care of various community organisations which carried out regular cleaning work on its premises. In 1981-1984, ad hoc repair work was carried out on the pre-burial house, i.e. concrete floors were poured, the walls of the various interiors were plastered and whitewashed, windows were glazed, the roof structure was repaired and covered with tar paper. In 2007, due to poor technical condition, part of the roof over the main rooms was demolished. In 2021, the cemetery was entered in the register of monuments by decision No. A/742/2021 dated 07/01/2021.

Currently, there are 241 tombstones in the original layout. The aforementioned pre-burial house, the historic fence in the form of a brick wall and an old-growth forest, mainly chestnut trees, have been preserved.

Author of the note: Sławomir Pastuszka

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.