Abraham Kirschenbaum was born in Tarnobrzeg in 1875. His future wife Anne Fleischer, his brother Jacob Kirschenbaum, and Jacob’s future wife Pearl Breit  all lived in Tarnobrzeg. Abe and Annie, my maternal grandfather and grandmother, immigrated to the United States in 1897.

Abraham said that he was from Austria. When he lived there Tarnobrzeg was part of the Austria-Hungary empire. Poland had been divided in 1772, 1793, and 1795, partitioned between Russia, Prussia and the Austria-Hungary empire. In 1918 after World War I Poland was re-created, and it included Tarnobrzeg.

Tarnobrzeg, also called Tarnobrzeg-Dzikow, is located in the Rzeszow province, S.E. Poland. It’s location is latitude 50 degrees 54’, longitude 21 degrees 40’. It is 94 km SW of Lublin. (Where Once We Walked) It is SE of Krakow, about 100 miles. It is located on the eastern bank of the Vistula river. Four km. north is the village of Dzikow, where Count Tarnowske had a castle, later replaced by a chateau.

Tarnobrzeg is located in an area that was Galicia, which was an Imperial Province of the Austria-Hungary Empire, from 1778 to 1919. Tarnobrzeg is in southeastern Poland, which was in the  north part of Galicia. Galicia extended southward to Hungary,and eastward to what after World War II is the north western part of Ukraine. Suzan Wynne’s book has a map of Galicia (frontispiece) “Galicia was heavily populated by Jews (in the early twentieth century, they comprised over ten percent of the population), was a seat of Talmudic learning, it had several important yeshivas which produced prominent rabbis and scholars. The Jewish population of Galicia, unlike the Jews of Lithuania, the Litvaks, received scant secular education.”  (Rosten, 122) A Jew from Galicia was called a Galitzianer. Later, in the United States, there was a humorous rivalry between whether a Jew was descended from a Litvak or a Galitzianer, and both were different than a Russian Jew or a German Jew.

Galicia had poverty and lack of material resources, but it did have good soil for farming. Jews were merchants, craftsmen or artisans in various trades, traders of horses, cattle, and other goods, and professionals. Some Jews were tax collectors for the landowning nobles. Many Jews were engaged in the liquor trade: growing the grain, making barrels, distilling, refining, and running taverns. Jewish boys began studying in Cheder at age three of four. Most marriages were in the teens or twenties, arranged by the parents, until after World War I. Prior to 1789 most Jews had no hereditary surnames, except for well-known rabbinical families. (Wynne, 4-13)

The Encyclopedia Judaica states that in 1655 all the Jews of Tarnobrzeg were massacred. The city is called Dzikow in the 1765 census, when 569 Jews paid the poll tax in the city and the surrounding villages. In 1880 there were 2,768 Jews, which were 80 % of the total population. Hasidism had considerable influence in the community (814).

Gayle Schlissel Riley was the coordinator who moderated the Tarnobrzeg pages on the <Jewishgen.org> web site. She wrote that Tarnobrzeg – Dikow was a Magnate town owned by the Tarnowski family. “The Magnates were feudal lords who lived on large estates, owned castles, towns, and villages. They wielded great political influence. Their chief income came from taxes and the produce from lands the peasants (serfs) worked….Magnate families of Poland were composed of about 18 to 20 families who intermarried to keep the land in the families, if the family produced no male heir they could loose their land”.

In 1991 Gayle visited the Wawel building in Kracow, which contained the Tarnowski family archives, located in a small room in the basement, indexed in a 900 page book, containing many kinds of records, including the 1764 census.

There is a book titled Jews in a Polish Private Town by Gershon David Hundert. It is about “The Case of Opatow in the  Eighteenth Century.” “It might be well to add here that, in some private towns, the autonomous national or regional court system of the Jews was recognized. In at least two ‘daughter’ communities of Opatow – Tarlow and Tarnobrzeg – both private towns belonging to the competence ‘of the elders of the region of Opatow’”( 20). “Appeals of cases between Jews and Christians belonged to the competence of the Jewish Elders in Opatow, and Tarnobrzeg”, and it then referred to cases in 1675, 1752, and 1734, as examples (110).

There was a court case that took place in Tarnobrzeg in 1811 and 1814,  when the defendants were two Jews, who were from other towns, who were there to collect grain to make alcohol. Alcohol was one of the largest taxed items in the Magnate records. “These Jews were required to bring Torah scrolls to court so they could swear on them”. (G S R)

In 1741 the Jews of Tarnobrzeg built a synagogue. There was a fire in 1862 that destroyed all the homes that were not made of brick. The synagogue survived the fire.

There is an article about the Development of Jewish Family Names in Poland. A list of the Jews’ names in 1779 shows the names were Russian names. A list of 1814, and 1822, shows the names are German names, but I did not find any Kirschenbaums or Fleischers on that list of 64 names.

<Jewishgen.org> said “during the 19th century Hasidism played a large role in the town with R. Meir Horowitz it’s key figure. The Baron Hirsch fund established a school in the town before World War I. There is a list of Students of Jewish Ancestry at the Supplemental Industrial School of Tarnobrzeg in the years 1899 –1910.  There are about 81 names: no Kirschenbaums, “Izrael Dawid Fleischer (b. 1892) and Samson Fleischer (b. 1890) apprenticed with the merchant Jakob Hersch”

I corresponded with Aaron Kirschenbaum, of Tel Aviv, Israel. His father, Shraga Feivel Kirschenbaum was born in Tarnobrzeg. When he left he changed his last name from Honigwachs to Kirschenbaum, which was his wife’s name. He doesn’t know if his mother was born in Tarnobrzeg. He saw a record that his mother’s brother, Reb Shabae Karshenbaim, lived in Dzikow in 1900.

In the Historical Files of Tarnobrzeg  published in 1991 Kazimierz Reczek discussed the Jews of Tarnobrzeg before World War II. He wrote that Jewish stores were abundant. Every corner had a store or stall. Some of the prosperous stores were the grocery store of Cytryn and the clothing shop of Bejnisch. Most of the tradesman in Tarnobrzeg, shoe makers, tailors, and blacksmiths were Jews. In Bartosz Glowacki Square there were wooden huts all around.   Ferstenstock had the largest fabric store, Engleberg sold old and new text books, Weiman owned a stationary store. There were two pubs, Lilki’s and Yellow’s. Other Jews were harness maker Weinagiel, hairdresser Spinadel, and many traveling merchants. There was Dr. Lewi and many professors and teachers.

The Jewish population of Tarnobrzeg before the Holocaust was 2,146. (Where Once We Walked)

In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland. Sept. 17, 1939 the Nazis occupied Tarnobrzeg. They took the belongings of the Jews of Tarnobrzeg, expelled them and deported most of them to Russia. Some Jews returned, and in 1942 the remaining Jews in Tarnobrzeg were killed by the Nazis. The Jewish cemetery, located near the center of town, was completely demolished. The Nazis used the grave stones to build roads.

In the Historical Files of Tarnobrzeg  published by the city: “Even after World War II the surviving Jews were not permitted to live in peace on Polish soil. There was the pogrom of Kielce in 1946, and the anti-Jewish chase of 1968. Today, a people who for generations have coexisted with us and enriched our traditions and culture survive only in our memories and our conscience (or maybe our absence of conscience).”

There is a memorial book titled Kehilat Tarnobrzeg-Dzikow.  Memorial Books were compiled in memory of the Holocaust. It was printed in 1973, 379 pages. The editor is Yakov Yehoshu Fleischer, Tel Aviv, Israel.

On one list of Jews in Tarnobrzeg, there is the a name of Jakob Fleischer. The translation is, “Merchant, traveling salesman, 1932-1933 immigrated to France with wife and 3 children, arrested in La Bastitde, (Aude). On 6.3.1943 deported to Majdanek, killed there 11.3.1943.” That was only 5 days later.

There is  a list of Tarnobrzeg Kirschenbaums killed in the Holocaust: Israel Meir, Pinchas and Raizel, Feivel and Raiza, Moshe, Chana, Yakov and Sari, and their children (Michael Honey, London).

“In 1967 the Synagogue was renovated and is now used as the town’s central library. On 6 th June, 1993, as part of the town celebrations of the 4 th centenary of the founding of the town, a plaque was unveiled by Miron Gordon, the Israel Ambassador, “commemorating the Tarnobrzeg lost Jews.”

There is a 1995 English translation, by Michael Honey of London, from the Memorial book published in 1973. It is about an accusation of a “blood libel” that was used by anti-Semites in other cities in Europe. The writer of the article tells a story told to him by his grandfather. He said that, there was a gentile boy, who was the Jews’ Shabat Goy, who did the tasks on Shabbos that the Jews couldn’t do themselves. One Shabat he disappeared. The Jews were accused of murdering the boy, to use his blood for the Matzot (unleavened bread) of Passover. The countess Tanavska gave the order to arrest ten Jews. They would be burned alive, unless they converted to Christianity. The ten Jews were killed. A short time later the gentile boy returned to his parents. He told that while he was waiting in front of the synagogue until the Jews finished their prayers, a wagon of Gypsies passed by. He jumped on the wagon and the Gypsies took him with them. Thus the innocence of the unfortunate Jews was established..

The Historical Files of Tarnobrzeg  published by the town in 1991, contains a different version of this incident:  “19th April 1757, a court investigation revealed that two men, Berek and Pinches, had murdered a fifteen year old boy, named Bartlomiej Kubaki. They were sentenced to be burned at the stake, converted before their death”. They  were buried at a Church. “Several other partners to this despicable crime were sentenced to be beheaded.”

<Jewishgen.com> states: “In 1757 there was a blood libel, when several Jews were murdered, as they were accused of killing a boy. Later the boy returned to the town and Countess Tanowski paid restitution to the town’s Jewish population”.

In 1997 I met Dan Leeson, of Los Altos, CA, who was trying to get the city’s record changed, in Tarnobrzeg, to correct the record, and say the boy was found and the Jews were innocent. In 2001 Dan Leeson told me he was unsuccessful in changing the city’s record of this event.

This blood libel about Jews in 1757  was an absurd lie. What about 245 years later? In Spring of 2002, during the Palestinian terrorism in Israel and Israel’s response, a version of the blood libel was printed in a Saudi Arabian newspaper, and another version appeared in posters at San Francisco State University placed by students who supported the Palestinians and hated Jews. This reminds me of the Peter, Paul, and Mary song: “Where Have All The Flowers Gone”, which concludes each stanza, “When will they ever learn?”.

The web site <Jewishgen.com>  has current photographs of Tarnobrzeg. There are photos: looking in four directions from the  Rynck (square), which shows picturesque multi colored historic looking  buildings, the train station, and the USC. I have seen other published photos of  the  library, museum, church, statue, a  freeway and some mid-rise modern buildings.

The web site <Jewishgen.com> has 4 pre 1200 photos. They show part of the large central square,  which is  about two large blocks in size. The Church, with the high steeple, located  west of the  Square, in the area which was  called Dzikow, where the gentiles lived. The old Synagogue,  replaced by the new Synagogue building is  located east of the square, in the area which was called Tarnobrzeg,  where the Jews lived. The Church and Synagogue building have been  there for hundreds of years. After the Holocaust the Synagogue  building which was remodeled is used as the City Library.

A 1999 Insight Guide of Poland, states about north of Rzesow, “economically, the northern portion of this region, …is the most interesting. The center of this area is the village of Tarnobrzeg. Once poverty-stricken and neglected, its sulphur deposits have recently brought employment and prosperity. The seams of sulphur are exploited in open-cast mines at Machow, and the foul-smelling mineral is then exported in granular form via the harbor in Gdansk. (177) In 2002 there were about 50,000 people living in Tarnobrzeg., and no Jews living there.