Post-Holocaust

Approximately 700 people returned to Tarnow after the war, probably to search for any surviving family and to try to pick up the pieces of their former lives. My father was one of them.  He returned to find out if any of his family had survived (they hadn’t) and to sell up the family business (a clothing factory).  He then went to Sweden, where a lot of Jewish survivors from Bergen-Belsen had been sent to recover, my mother and two aunts amongst them. 

Most of the remaining Jews in Tarnow left when the Polish government offered to fund their transfer by ship to Israel.

In 1965 there were 35 Jews in Tarnow.  The last known Jew died in 1993.  Tarnow is now “judenrein”.

Above facts thanks to Sylvie Klapholz’s website.

As a postscript, in August 1999 Susanna Leistner Bloch found out that a Abraham Leistner had been interviewed for someone for the Yiddish paper "The Forward".   Since she was traveling to Krakow on October 1999 she made inquiries and was hoping to contact this person, obviously related to her Leistners since they all came from shtetlach around Tarnów and she knew a branch lived in Tarnów.   As soon as she arrived she spoke to the Rabbi of the only functioning synagogue in Krakow.  He sadly let her know that only a few weeks before they had travelled to Tarnów to bury him in the Jewish cemetery.  She travelled to Tarnów and attempted to visit the grave.  Unfortunately the person with the key to the gate was not available.