The development of Tarnów was associated with its location at the junction of trade routes from Wrocław to Hungary and from Krakow to Ruthenia. It was a large trade and crafts center. Unfortunately, in the second half  of the 17th century, economic decline began, related to fires and outbreaks that plagued the city, as well as the war damage, including during the Swedish Deluge (1655–1660). It was only during this period that Jewish merchants were allowed to settle in greater numbers within the city, which was intended to stimulate economic growth. When Tarnów came under the Austrian partition in 1772, 1,200 Jews lived there.

In the 1780s, a Jewish school was founded, with Naftali Herz Homberg as its first rector. In the 19th century, there was a Jewish hospital and a second school was built. At that time, when Tarnów was transforming into a significant industrial and cultural center, Jews occupied the entire eastern part of the city, called Grabówka, as well as the Market Square and several adjacent streets.

In the 1890's Tarnów became the center of the Zionist movement. Large amounts of wine and cognac were then imported from Palestine to local stores, and the profits were allocated to the purposes of colonization societies. In 1897, Abraham Salz established the Ahavat Sion association ('Love of Zion' in Hebrew), which was supposed to lead to the establishment of a new settlement in Palestine. In 1908, the construction of the New Synagogue, called the Jubilee Synagogue, was completed. In 1910, the Safa Berura association was founded and established a library in the city with approximately 20,000 books in Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish and German.

In the interwar period, there was further development of industry in Tarnów, including machinery, electrical engineering, and chemicals. In the 1920s, there were approximately 15,000 Jews. Although there was a large emigration to Palestine in the interwar period, just before the start of World War II, the number of Jews in Tarnów was approximately 25,000. A significant proportion of them belonged to the urban intellectual and cultural elite.

In 1939, Tarnów fell under German occupation. The Germans burned and demolished synagogues and prayer houses. In 1941, they established a large ghetto in which they imprisoned approximately 40,000 Jews from Tarnów, the surrounding area, and abroad. In 1942, some of them were murdered on the city streets, in the Jewish cemetery and in the forest in Zbylitowska Góra. The rest were taken to the German Nazi extermination camps in Bełżec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. During the final liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, the German occupation authorities further exterminated the Jewish population; some of the Jews were killed on the spot, and the rest were deported to the German Nazi concentration camp in Płaszów and the forced labor camp in Szebnie.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Tarnów occupies the area between Szpitalna, Starodąbrowska, and Słoneczna streets (plot no. 54, district 0105) - with the entrance from Szpitalna street. It is one of the most valuable Jewish cemeteries in Poland, and on September 28, 1976 it has been entered into the register of monuments under the number A-22. It is an active necropolis, open to the public.

It is also one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland. The exact date of its foundation is unknown. Based on the preserved source materials, it can be assumed that it already existed in 1581. It was founded outside the city, in the village of Pogwizdów. Over the centuries, its area was gradually expanded. During World War I, the bodies of soldiers killed during battles near Tarnów were buried at the cemetery.

During the occupation during World War II, on German orders, some of the matzevas were torn out and used to pave the road and sidewalks; despite this, the majority remained intact. During the Holocaust, the cemetery became a place of mass executions. The Germans shot thousands of Jews here. It is estimated that approximately 3,000 bodies of those murdered in the cemetery and those who died and were killed in the ghetto are buried in mass graves. There are also individual graves of the victims in the cemetery.

The original entrance gate through which hundreds of Jews passed as they were led to their death has been displayed in the Holocaust Museum in Washington since 1991. The original has been replaced by a copy. At the entrance there is a pre-burial home built in the early 20th century. Inside, a stone table has been preserved, used for the ritual ablution of corpses.

To this day, about 3,000 tombstones have been preserved on an area of 3.2 hectares (GPR research shows that the number of burials is 11,000). The oldest one commemorates the preacher and Kabbalah expert Chaim son of Icchak, who died on Shevat 5, 5437 (January 8, 1677). The cemetery also has an interesting set of tombstones from the 18th century. In the necropolis, in addition to traditional tombstones, you can also find tombstones in the form of sarcophagus-like tombs, truncated triangles topped with pinnacles resembling inverted pine cones, obelisks, columns, and elaborate architectural tombstones. They constitute a stone record of the diversity of the Tarnów Jewish community and the process of cultural interpenetration.

In 1946, Dawid Beckert placed a monument in the cemetery, to build it using a broken column from the ruins of the New Synagogue in Tarnów. Under the column, an inscription in Hebrew and Polish is engraved on a granite plaque: 'Here lie 25,000 Jews brutally murdered by German thugs from June 11, 1942 to November 5, 1943.' At the top of the plaque there is a Hebrew inscription - a quote from a poem by Nachman Bialik: 'And the sun shone and was not ashamed.'

In August 1987, the Nissenbaum Family Foundation showed interest in the cemetery. In February 1989, an agreement was concluded to rebuild the wall, and in August of the same year, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum asked the Foundation to take care of the cemetery. In February 1988, the Committee for the Protection of Monuments of Jewish Culture in Poland was established in Tarnów, on whose initiative cleanup and renovation works are carried out at the cemetery. The fence was renovated and the cemetery has been systematically cleaned since 2000. Extensive maintenance work was carried out especially in 2017–2019. These included, among others, the reconstruction of the alleys by making a paved surface, the restoration and maintenance of the fence, the maintenance and restoration of the funeral home and adapting it for exhibition purposes. For the convenience of visitors, there are plaques describing various parts of the cemetery. New discoveries are being made all the time - in 2023, another 100 matzevas from the 19th century were found; they are located in the part of the necropolis furthest from the entrance.

Author of the note: Magda Lucima

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