Media Essay
Tarnow - ID Cards/Oral Histories
Germany occupied the Polish city of Tarnow in 1939. Deportations from Tarnow began in June 1942, first to the Belzec killing center. The Germans then forced the surviving Jews in Tarnow, as well as Jews from nearby towns, into a ghetto. Deportations continued and, in late 1943, Tarnow was declared "free of Jews." By the end of World War II, the Germans had murdered the majority of Tarnow's Jews.
Martin Spett
Known as Monek, Martin was the elder of two children raised by Jewish parents in the large town of Tarnow. His mother was an American citizen who had been raised in Poland. His father worked at the city's tax office. As a child, Martin liked to collect stamps and catch lizards. His parents wanted him to be a pharmacist, but he wanted to be an artist when he grew up.
1933-39: When the Germans occupied Tarnow in September 1939 after war began, Martin was 10 years old. The soldiers, in beautiful uniforms, were polite. But then they started forcing Jews to clean the streets of horse manure with their bare hands. Going to see his rabbi for a Sabbath lesson, Martin found Germans kicking him around in his prayer shawl. In Hebrew, he yelled to Martin, "Run!" Turning to escape, he heard a shot fired. Rabbi Wrubel was dead.
1940-44: In 1940 Martin and his family were forced out of their apartment. After the Germans began rounding up Jews for deportation, his father and uncle dug two ditches underneath the floorboards at his uncle's lumberyard. The day before the next deportation they hid beneath the floorboards. Lying on their backs in the dark for four days, they heard shouting, shooting and dogs barking. During the roundup they heard two Poles above them trying to catch Jews. One peed on them without knowing they were there. When it was finally quiet, they emerged.
Martin was deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp and was freed from an evacuation train by American troops on April 13, 1945. He immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Item ViewKalman Goldberg
Kalman was one of seven children born to religious Jewish parents in the town of Tarnow. He attended public school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon. Kalman's father owned a factory that manufactured kosher soap, sabbath candles and candles for church altars. The Goldbergs lived above their factory, which was located in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
1933-39: The Germans occupied Tarnow on September 8, 1939. The next day, they burned the synagogues. One synagogue, built of stone from Palestine, was blown up with dynamite. The Goldberg family's factory remained open; at that point, the raw materials they needed were still available. They were ordered to make soap for the German army, and they supplied the orphanage and hospitals. Once a month the Goldbergs distributed soap to the public. They came right to the factory for their ration.
1940-45: In 1942 Kalman was deported to the Plaszow labor camp where he worked as a mechanic. When the electrical system on a truck they'd repaired broke down, the mechanics, including Kalman, were accused of sabotage and sentenced to death by firing squad. They were taken to the camp prison, where they prayed and waited to die. Our foreman, Mr. Warenhaupt, appealed to the camp authorities, arguing that their skills were needed for the camp to function. Their death sentence was repealed. Instead, they were each whipped 100 times on their backs and buttocks.
Kalman was deported to two other camps before the end of the war, and survived. The foreman who saved his life joined the partisans and was killed. Kalman immigrated to the United States in 1946.
Item ViewMartin Spett describes a massacre of Tarnow Jews
The Germans occupied Tarnow in 1939. In 1940 Martin and his family were forced out of their apartment. During the first massacre of Jews, Martin hid in an attic. The family hid during two more roundups. In May 1943 they were registered, allegedly to be exchanged for German prisoners of war, because Martin's mother was born in the United States. They were taken by train to Krakow and then to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Martin was liberated in 1945 and he moved to the United States in 1947.
Item ViewLeah Hammerstein Silverstein describes the Tarnow ghetto after a roundup
Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier for the underground, using false Polish papers and traveling between the Krakow ghetto and the nearby Plaszow camp. As conditions worsened, she escaped to Tarnow, but soon decided to return to Krakow. Leah also posed as a non-Jewish Pole in Czestochowa and Warsaw, and was a courier for the Jewish National Committee and the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). She fought with a Jewish unit in the Armia Ludowa (People's Army) during the Warsaw Polish uprising in 1944. Leah was liberated by Soviet forces. After the war she helped people emigrate from Poland, then moved to Israel herself before settling in the United States.
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