Kirkut - Jewish Cemetery

According to the sources, Jews came to Tarnów at the end of the XVI century and it was then, when the cemetery was created. Its one of the oldest cemeteries in Southern Poland. On 3.2 hectares, there is around three thousand still-existing gravestones, the oldest of which is from 1667. During World War II many gravestones and cemetery wall were destroyed by Nazis. After the war, the survivors and those Jews, who came here from other countries, begun setting the gravestones back to their original places. 

 

Behind the gate, on the right, there’s a mass grave of around 25 thousand murdered Jews from Tarnów’s ghetto. In 1946 David Beckert set a monument there, resembling a broken column from the New Synagog, which was burnt and exploded by the Germans in 1939.

 

Since 1988 the gravestones and cemetery walls are under reconstruction. The cemetery is available to tourists only five days per week. With visiting the cemetery helps a special app. 

 

Kirkut along with Bimah are the main symbols of Jewish community in Tarnów.