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Tarnów (Polish pronunciation: [ˈtarnuf] ⓘ) is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east–west connection from Lviv to Kraków, and two additional lines, one of which links the city with the Slovak border.
Tarnów is known for its traditional Polish architecture, which was influenced by people that lived in the area, most notably Poles, Germans, and Austrians. The Old Town, featuring 16th century tenements, houses and defensive walls, has been preserved. Tarnów is also the warmest city of Poland, with the highest long-term mean annual temperature in the whole country.
Companies headquartered in the city include Poland's largest chemical industry company Grupa Azoty and defence industry company ZMT. The city is currently subdivided into 16 districts and is a member of the Association of Polish Cities (Związek Miast Polskich).
The first documented mention of the settlement dates back to 1105, spelled as Tharnow. The name later evolved to Tarnowo (1229), Tarnów (1327), and Tharnow (1473). The place name Tarnów is widely used in different forms across Slavic Europe, and lands which used to be inhabited by Slavs, such as eastern Germany, Hungary, and northern Greece. There is a German town, Tarnow, Greek Tyrnavos (also spelled as Tirnovo), Czech Trnov, Bulgarian Veliko Tarnovo and Malko Tarnovo, Slovak Trnava, as well as different Trnovos/Trnowos in Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, and North Macedonia. The name Tarnów comes from an early Slavic word trn/tarn, which means "thorn", or an area covered by thorny plants.
Already in the mid-9th century, on the Tarnów's St. Martin Mount (Góra sw. Marcina, 2.5 kilometers from the centre of today's city), a Slavic gord was established, probably by the Vistulans. Due to efforts of local archaeologists, we know that the size of the gord was almost 16 hectares, and it was surrounded by a rampart. The settlement was probably destroyed in the 1030s or the 1050s, during either a popular rebellion against Christianity (see Baptism of Poland), or Czech invasion of Lesser Poland. In the mid-11th century, a new gord was established on the Biała river. It was a royal property, which in the late 11th or early 12th century was handed over to the Tyniec Benedictine Abbey. The name Tarnów, with a different spelling, was for the first time mentioned in a document of Papal legate, Cardinal Gilles de Paris (1124).
The first documented mention of Tarnów occurs in the year 1309, when a list of miracles of Kinga of Poland specifies a woman named Marta, who was resident of the settlement. In 1327, a knight named Spicymir (Leliwa coat of arms) purchased a village of Tarnów Wielki, and three years later, founded his own private town. On 7 March 1330, King Władysław I the Elbow-high granted Magdeburg rights to Tarnów. One year later, construction of a castle on the St. Martin Hill was completed by Castellan of Kraków, Spycimir Leliwita of Leliwa coat of arms (its ruins can still be seen).
Tarnów remained in the hands of the Leliwa family, out of which in the 15th century the Tarnowski family emerged. In the 14th century, numerous German settlers immigrated from Kraków and Nowy Sącz (see Walddeutsche, Ostsiedlung). During the 17th century Scottish immigrants began to come in large numbers. In 1528 the exiled King of Hungary János Szapolyai lived in the town. The town prospered during the Polish Golden Age, when it belonged to Hetman Jan Tarnowski (1488–1561). In the mid-16th century, its population was app. 1,200, with 200 houses located within town's defensive wall (the wall itself had been built in the mid-15th century, and expanded in the early 16th century). In 1467, the waterworks and sewage systems were completed, with large cisterns filled with drinking water built in the main market square. In the 16th century, during the period known as the Polish Golden Age, Tarnów had a school, a synagogue, a Calvinist prayer house, Roman Catholic churches, and up to twelve guilds.
After the death of Jan Tarnowski (16 May 1561), Italian sculptor Jan Maria Padovano began creating one of the most beautiful examples of Renaissance headstones in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The monument of hetman Tarnowski is almost 14 meters tall, and stands in St. Anne Chapel, which is located in northern nave of the Tarnów Cathedral. Padovano completed his work in 1573; furthermore, he designed the Renaissance town hall, and oversaw its remodelling in the 1560s. At that time, in 28 niches of the town hall were portraits of members of the Tarnowski family – from Spicymir Leliwita to Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, who died in 1567. In 1570 Tarnów became property of the Ostrogski family, after Zofia Tarnowska, the daughter of the hetman, married prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski. In 1588, after Konstanty's death, the town changed hands several times, belonging to different families, which slowed its development. Until the Partitions of Poland, Tarnów belonged to the County of Pilzno, Sandomierz Voivodeship. The town, like almost all locations of Lesser Poland, was devastated in October 1655, during the Swedish invasion of Poland, and as a result, its population declined from 2,000 to 768. In 1723, the town became the property of the Sanguszko family, which purchased it from the Lubomirski family.
After the first partition of Poland (1772), Tarnów was annexed by the Habsburg Empire as part of the new Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and remained in "Austrian" Galicia until late 1918. Austrian subjugation brought changes, as the town ceased to be private property, became the seat of a county (German: kreis), and of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tarnów (1783). On 14 March 1794, Józef Bem was born in Tarnów. In the 1830s, under the influence of events in Congress Kingdom of Poland (see November Uprising), Tarnów emerged as a center of Polish conspiratorial organizations. Plans for a national uprising in Galicia failed in early 1846, when local peasants began murdering the nobility in the Galician slaughter. The massacre, led by Jakub Szela (born in Smarżowa), began on 18 February 1846. Szela's peasant units surrounded and attacked manor houses and settlements located in three counties – Sanok, Jasło, and Tarnów. According to Austrians, the revolt got out of hand and the Austrians had to put it down as they were subjugating a previously free people.
Tarnów went through the period of quick development in the second half of the 19th century, due to the program of construction of the railway system. In 1852, the town received rail connection with Kraków, due to the Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis, and in 1870, its population was 21,779. In 1878, gas lighting was introduced, and three years later, the first daily newspaper appeared. In 1888, the Diocese Museum was founded by Rev. Jozef Baba, and in 1910, Tarnów received modern waterworks, a power plant and a new complex of the main rail station. The city remained a hotspot of Polish conspirational activities, with up to 20% of all members of the Polish Legions in World War I coming from Tarnów and its area. On 10 November 1914, units of the Russian Imperial Army captured Tarnów, and remained in the city until 6 May 1915 (see Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive). In the early stages of the offensive, Tarnów was shelled by German-Austrian heavy artillery, which brought destruction to some of its districts.
Tarnów was one of the first Polish cities to be freed during the rebirth of Poland following World War I. The Polish Legions liberated the city on the night of 30–31 October 1918. In the Second Polish Republic, Tarnów belonged to Kraków Voivodeship, and gave the newly established country many outstanding figures, such as Franciszek Latinik and Wincenty Witos. In early 1927, construction of a large chemical plant was initiated in the suburban village of Świerczków, which is now a part of the industrial borough of Mościce, a district of the city. Before the outbreak of World War II, the population of Tarnów was 40,000, of which almost half were Jewish. On 28 August 1939, a German Nazi saboteur conducted the Tarnów rail station bomb attack killing 20 civilians and wounding 35, four days before the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
During the German invasion of Poland, the city was overrun by the German forces on 7 September 1939. Under German occupation, Tarnów was incorporated into the General Government territory as the seat of the Kreishauptmanschaft Tarnow administrative unit in the Kraków District on 26 October 1939.
In September 1939, the Einsatzgruppe I entered the city to commit atrocities against Poles, and the Einsatzgruppe zbV entered to take over the Polish industry. Poles expelled in December 1939 from various places in German-annexed western Poland were deported in freight trains to Tarnów. On 14 June 1940, the first mass transport left the Tarnów station to Auschwitz concentration camp, with 728 Polish political prisoners, including at least 67 underage boys. All throughout the German occupation of Poland Tarnów was an important center of the Armia Krajowa (AK) and other resistance organizations. In mid-1944 AK's 16th Infantry Regiment "Barbara" took part in Operation Tempest. After the Warsaw Uprising, in October 1944, the Germans deported 3,000 Varsovians from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned, to Tarnów. Those Poles were mainly old people, ill people and women with children. The Wehrmacht retreated from Tarnów on 18 January 1945, and the city was captured by the Red Army, and then restored to Poland.
Before World War II, about 25,000 Jews lived in Tarnów. Jews, whose recorded presence in the town went back to the mid-15th century, comprised about half of the town's total population. A large portion of Jewish business in Tarnów was devoted to garment and hat manufacturing. The Jewish community was ideologically diverse and included religious Hasidim, secular Zionists, and many more.
Immediately following the German occupation of the city on 8 September 1939, the persecution of the Jews began. German units burned down most of the city's synagogues on 9 September and drafted Jews for forced-labor projects. Tarnów was incorporated into the Generalgouvernement. Many Tarnów Jews fled to the east, while a large influx of refugees from elsewhere in occupied Poland continued to increase the town's Jewish population. In early November, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish council (Judenrat) to transmit orders and regulations to the Jewish community. Among the duties of the Jewish council were enforcement of special taxation on the community and providing workers for forced labor.
During 1941, life for the Jews of Tarnów became increasingly precarious. The Germans imposed a large collective fine on the community. Jews were required to hand in their valuables. Roundups for labor became more frequent and killings became more commonplace and arbitrary. Deportations from Tarnów began in June 1942, when about 13,500 Jews were sent to the Belzec extermination camp. The first major act in the extermination of the Jews of Tarnów was the so-called "first operation" from 11–19 June 1942. The Germans gathered thousands of Jews in the Rynek (market place), and then they were tortured and killed. During this time period, on the streets of the town and in the Jewish cemetery, about 3,000 Jews were shot; in the woods of Zbylitowska Góra a few kilometers away from Tarnów a further 7,000 were murdered. According to a document from Michal Borawski born in 1926, featured at the entry of the Bimah as part of the panel offered by the Batory Foundation, the street stairs ("małe schody" or little stairs) from the town-center to the Bernardynski street (where the Bernardine Monastery is located), had to be cleaned of the blood by the local fire brigade for three days.
Poles gave shelter to several Jewish escapees from the ghetto, however, several Poles were eventually captured and murdered by the Germans for rescuing Jews. Many Poles were imprisoned by the Germans in the local prison for rescuing and helping Jews and then often deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, in which some died, while some fortunately survived until the end of the war.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Tarnów”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.