Tarnow
City in southern Poland. On the eve of World War II, 25,000 Jews were living in Tarnow (55 percent of the total population).
The Start of the German Occupation
After World War II broke out, thousands of Jewish refugees from western Poland converged on Tarnow, but as the Germans advanced eastward, the Jews of Tarnow itself fled to the East. The Germans occupied the city on September 8, and Wehrmacht troops began harassing the Jews. On September 9, most of the city's synagogues were set on fire. In early November, a Judenrat (Jewish Council) was established. At first its members, while carrying out the German orders, sought also to provide relief to the community. On Passover of 1940, several Judenrat members were arrested for their service to the community. They were replaced by persons of lesser standing, whose behavior came to be sharply criticized by the Jews.
Increasingly Harsh Measures against the Jews
In the spring of 1940, the Jews of Tarnow were subjected to increasingly harsher decrees: a collective fine of half a million zlotys was imposed; Jews were apprehended on the street for forced labor; valuables in Jewish possession had to be handed in; and apartments in designated streets had to be evacuated. During the first half of 1941, the Gestapo seized Jewish refugees whose presence in the city was "illegal" and killed them. That December, more than one hundred Jews were arrested and many of them were put to death.
The First Wave of Deportations
On June 11, 1942, thirty-five hundred Jews were deported to Belzec, and several hundred others were murdered in the streets of the city or in the Jewish cemetery. On June 15, the Germans resumed the Aktion, and within three days another 10,000 persons were deported to Belzec. Many others were murdered in the cemetery or in huge pits that had been prepared near the city.
The Establishment of the Ghetto and Continuing Deportations
On June 19, a ghetto was established, with sporadic killings taking place within its walls. On September 10, all the ghetto inhabitants were subjected to a Selektion. Persons possessing a document that showed them to be working at jobs of importance to the Germans were separated out, while the rest, some 8,000, were taken to Belzec. In October, Jews from neighboring localities were imprisoned in the Tarnow Ghetto, whose population increased to 15,000. The wave of deportations to the extermination camps continued, and in mid-November another train left for Belzec, carrying 2,500 Jews.
The Underground
Against the background of this liquidation process, a Jewish underground was organized in the fall of 1942. Among those who took the lead were members of Ha-Shomer ha-Tza'ir, later joined by members of other political movements. Some members of the Juedischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish ghetto police) also took part. One group of underground members left the ghetto for the forests in order to take part in armed struggle against the Germans, but most of them fell in battle against SS units. Others remained active in the ghetto and concentrated on trying to arrange border crossings into Hungary, where they hoped to find refuge; only a few, however, managed to escape in that way.
The Liquidation of the Ghetto
During the course of 1943, more killings took place in the ghetto, and the final liquidation was launched on September 2. Approximately 7,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and 3,000 to Plaszow; three hundred were left behind in Tarnow to sort out the belongings of the deported Jews. They, too, were deported to Plaszow in late 1943, when Tarnow was declared judenrein ("cleansed of Jews").
