We would have liked to have met up with other Jews and
Jew-lovers at the concert at the Bima in Tarnow that evening; we could have
shared both the ghosts and living presence.
But my husband wasn't inclined to drive in a strange country with a
schizo GPS in the dark. So instead, we
proceeded along the proscribed Jewish heritage path on the map given us at the
information centre on the rynek, to leave before nightfall. This led us to the remnant of the city walls,
which we could stand upon. And past that,
to a monument to the first Transport to Auschwitz.
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| This tells the story of the first transport to Auschwitz; it came from Tarnow and it was 738 political prisoners. |
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| Monument to first transport to Auschwitz, Tarnow |
There were posters to this fact plastered around Tarnow's
rynek; the first transport to Auschwitz was not a Jewish one. This transport
was of 708 non-Jewish Poles and 20 Jews; they were sent in June 1940 as
political prisoners, and the square from which they were taken was marked with
a modernistic, minimalist art work. The
wide marble panel represented outlines of people rounded up from everyday
worklives, holding briefcases, led by outlined soldiers in identifiably German
helmets, jodhpur pants, with rifles slung over their shoulders. A couple of
police were stationed there; a Polish flag waved on its pole.
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| The former mikveh of Tarnow. It must have been beautiful once. |
Opposite this monument was a building with perhaps
Persian-style keyhole windows and ornamentation; it had been the local
mikveh. Now it housed a restaurant, a
salon and some other offices. Air conditioning units poked through the keyhole
windows, indifferent to restoration.
Further along the route we came upon three posted sheets
with the timeline of the destruction of Tarnow's Jews -- half of the
population, or around 25,000 people.
Unlike something you'd read in America, this plaque showed the
difference made by local familiarity; it named the who, what, where and when of
each Aktion, day by day. It named names,
dates, times of day.
This "Chronology of Tragedy" noted that the
Germans first bombed Tarnow on Sept. 3, 1939 and took over the city five days
later. They immediately started capturing Jewish men on the streets,
confiscating their property and sending them off to forced labor camps. In
November of that year the synagogues were torched. The first 1940 transport of political
prisoners to Auschwitz were tatooed with the numbers 31 to 758.
The Tarnow ghetto was formally established in March 1941; it
was eventually stuffed with 40,000 Jews from the city and surrounding
towns. The first Aktion was in June,
ordered by Obergruppenfuhrer F.W. Kruger.
Paul Reiss, head of Tarnow's Judenrat, was shot and killed on the spot
when he refused to hand over lists of Jews marked for transport.
"Due to the enormous
task pose by the first Aktion, the security services sought assistance from the
local and district police, a company of Waffen SS, headed by SS
Hauptsturmfuhrer Klienow, stationed at Debica training Camp, the Sonderdienst
(Special Services), the Baudienst (Polish Pioneer Service), and several
employees of the Tarnow Labor Exchange."
My friend Pat's grandparents were from Debica, which we passed on our
way back to Rzeszow.
"On the morning of June 11, after a speech by Klee,
commander of the criminal police, the SS men were issued rations of alcohol and
they and the Baudienst, armed with axes, broke down the locked doors of the
Jewish houses." The description that
followed, of this and three or four more Aktions, were obviously eye-witness accounts of mass murder
and deportation to the Belzec death camp.
The final liquidation of the Ghetto was the work of Amnon Goth, who had
proven his capacity for brutality in the ghettos of Krakow, Przemysl, Rzeszow,
Lublin, and other towns. He was played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List.
This Chronology of Tragedy was posted on that wall only in
English; so for the benefit of Jewish tourists. Would the Polish version have
remained unmolested on that wall?
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| Krakowska Street, leading to Tarnow's Rynek |
On our way back to the car we walked down Krakowska, looking
for the address of my grandmother's cousin Chaim's tailor shop. 49 and 53 looked original, but 51 was obviously
a post-war building. We found another
historical plaque on 53, with pictures of the occupation 1939-45. We also had dinner in a very nice place
called Tatrzanska. And we passed a huge red brick church, rose petals strewn
all over the sidewalk in front. A banner
on one side of the door featured Jesus; on the other, Pope John Paul. Children stood
near a side entrance in First Communion robes, a costume I recognized from
Catholic Queens. We also passed a large
billboard, also featuring the Polish Pope, urging the congregation to take part
in an upcoming group trip to the Holy Land.  |
| Tarnow is named after this guy, I think. I used to know more about him. Nobility? |
We found a sign that said "Rzeszow" pointing out
of the city, so we took the long way home, on a lesser road, as the sun set. Found our way into the hotel basement parking, from behind the rynek.
