The historic Jewish cemetery in Tarnów, southern Poland, has been ceremoniously rededicated and reopened after a two-year, fullscale renovation that saw the restoration and indexing of gravestones, repair and rebuilding of its wall, and the opening of a permanent exhibition in the former pre-burial hall.
The rededication took place June 26 at a ceremony attended by VIPs, local people, and visiting rabbis and descendants of Tarnow Jews within the context of the two-day Tarnow Jewish Reunion that brought together descendants from a number of countries. It was held during the annual Galizianer Shtetl Jewish culture festival. Other events included a walking tour of Jewish Tarnow, a photography exhibit, a tour of the Jewish cemetery and visit to family graves, and a concert.
The cemetery dates back to the 16th or 17th century, with its oldest legible gravestone from 1688. In includes around 3,000 gravestones and was registered as a national landmark in 1976. Efforts to restore, clear, and maintain the cemetery began in the late 1980s.
The NGO Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland described the current roughly €700,000 restoration project as “the largest cooperative public-private single Jewish cemetery restoration effort conducted in Poland.” Funding came from the EU, and state, regional and local authorities, as well as private donors.
Restoration work (done under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate of Poland) has included rebuilding the walls of the cemetery, installing sidewalks, cleaning away decades of brush and vegetation, restoring many toppled and eroded tombstones and a Shoah (Holocaust) monument, converting the former Bet Taharah (funeral preparation room) into a mini-museum, and indexing thousands of tombstones in the cemetery to preserve those records on-line for access in posterity. The indexing project has already led to many descendants finding physical connections to their ancestors in the cemetery.
There is also a new, free Smartphone and Tablet App Guide to the cemetery, for both IOS and Android platforms.
The Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland notes that in 2017 , the Committee
received a substantial 3:1 matching grant from the European Union to support major restoration work at the Tarnów Jewish cemetery. That grant is providing 2.4 million Polish złoty (over $600,000) to match the committee’s raising 800,000 Polish złoty (about $200,000). The seed funds were provided by individual and organizational donors including the Małopolska Polish regional government, the Polish Ministry of Culture, and the Tarnów mayor’s office.
Spearheading the project has been Adam Bartosz, a Polish Catholic and retired director of the Regional Museum in Tarnów, who has been a driving force in in Jewish heritage preservation for decades. Among other things he established in 1988 the all-volunteer Committee for Protection of Jewish Heritage in Tarnów, which has fostered maintenance and restoration initiatives since then.
At a ceremony in Krakow on June 26, Bartosz was awarded a 2019 Irena Sendler Memorial award in recognition of his work.
Jewish presence in Tarnów dates back to the mid-15th century, and the old Jewish section grew up off the Rynek, along winding Zydowska — Jewish — street.
Around 25,000 Jews, or 45 percent of the population, lived in Tarnów in 1939; during the Holocaust virtually all were killed on the streets or in nearby forests, or deported to death camps. The Nazis torched the 17th century Old Synagogue building in 1939 and blew up the ruins a few years later; in all, they destroyed as many as 40 synagogues and prayerhouses in the town.
All that’s left of the Old Synagogue are the four pillars of the central bimah, now covered by a protective canopy and marked with a memorial plaque. The mikveh building also survives.
Tarnow Jewish cemetery web site
Read a detailed history of the cemetery
See a photo gallery of the rededication ceremony