JACOB JR, MY JEWSIH WORLD. THE JEWISH TARNÓW. TARNÓW/POLAND

Sunday, Adar  10, 5778. February 25, 2018.

Shalom! World.

The first mention of Jews in Tarnow dates back to 1445, while the first written record of a Synagogue can be traced to the 16th century. In 1667, Stanislaw Konoecpolski, who then owned whaat was still a private city, officially granted Tarnów's Jewish population the rights to a place of worship and their own cemetery. Tarnów's vibrant Jewish community included large numbers of both Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, and the city remains a pilgrimage site for many modern Hasidic Jews. Tarnów's Jews formed a large part of the city's intelectual and cultural elite, among them several of the most prominent lawyers,  doctors, musicians, teachers and entrepreneurs, although the vast majority were generally poor.

On the day WWII broke out in Europe  there were about 25,000 Jews living in Tarnów, making up about 45% of the city's population. The Nazis formed a ghetto for their internment in the área directly east of the Rynek, where the majority of the  Jewish population already lived. Between June 1942 and September 1944 virtually the entire Jewish population of Tarnów was either shot or deported - almost certainly to their deaths, ending almost exactly 500 years of Jewish cultural life  in the city. A sinistre footnote in the history of the Holocaust relates to Tarnów; as early as October 20, 1939, Tarnów's Jews were forced to wear Magen David armbands, making this the first town in Poland to  do  so.

The Nazi occupatiion of Tarnów during WWII ensured that not only were the Jewish people obliterated, but that their cultural monuments were also destroyed possible. Thanks in part to uncharacteristic sloppiness onn the part of the Germans, and the  fact that the city's architecture came out of  the war relatively unscathed, a few traces  of  Tarnów's Jewish past are  still visible, particullarly around ulica Zydowska and ulica Piekarska in the northeast corner of  the  Old  Town. Midway down ulica Zydowska (Jewish Street) on the left side is Old Synagogue Square, where the city's 17th Synagogue onde stood. Burnt to  the ground by the Germans on the night of Novemmber 8, 1939, all that remains are the four large columns and pulpit that made up its bimah.

Nearby, just to the northeast at Plac Wiezniew KL Auschwitz 1 is the former Jewish Bath House or mikvah -  where those Tarnovians (some Jews, but mostly Poles) who would become the first prisioners of  Auschwiz were  kept before beeing deported to the Nazi  concentration camp in June 1940. Built in fanciful Moorish style between 1900 and 1904, the  building still shows evidence  of its former beauty, but has been sadly ruined by the vulgar signage of various danceclubs, restaurants and others business that occupy it now, or have in the past.

The largest surviving relic of Tarnów's Jewish past lies inside the four walls that surrounded the city's Jewish Cemetery. A 10 minute walk north of the Old Town, just east of the junction of ulica Sloneczna and ulica Matki Bozej Fatimskiej, the cemetry was  established in the  early 1580s and is one of the  oldest and largest in Poland. With several Thousand gravestones, almost of  them untouched by the hands of the Nazis, the Jewish Cemetery is a hauting but necessary part of  any visit to Tarnów. Seriously overgrown in places, some áreas  near the main entrance can be easily reached, and the addition of several signs in English marking a few of  the graveyard's more eminente souls is  a welcome addition. Near the entrance is a large memorial to  the Jews of Tarnów, built from one of the columns of the  city's destroyed New Synagogue. The cemetery's original gates are now in Washington's Holocaust Museum, and their replacementes are kept firmly locked, however it is possible to borrow the key by leaving a 20zl, deposit at the Tourist Information Office at Rynek 7.

Shalom! Aleichem.

Suporte cultural:  Jacob Jr. B.A.C.E., avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Cz.