On 9th February 1944, Tarnów was announced a ”Jew-free city” by the Germans. A city once inhabited by 25,000 citizens (1939), became non-existent. The German army invaded Tarnów on 7th September 1939. Soon after that, in November 1939, all synagogues and prayer homes were either burnt down or blasted. A cordoned off ghetto for 40,000 Jews was set up on 19th June 1942. The ghetto liquidation was a 5-step process:   Approximately 8,000 Jews were transported from Tarnów to the Bełżec camp between 11th-18th June 1942. All people unfit to travel (the elderly, the ill, the handicapped and mothers with small children), a total of  between 8,000 – 10,000, were murdered in the Buczyna forest near Zbylitowska Góra and in the forests of Skrzyszow. This operation cost lives of between…

Stella Müller-Madej, the daughter of Zygmunt and Berta, neé Bleiweis, was born on 5th February 1930 in Cracow, in a well-off, assymilated family. One of Oscar Schindler’s survivors, the author of a harrowing memoir „Oczami dziecka” (Cracow, 1991) / („A girl from the Schindler’s list”)  translated into nine languages. In 1941, Müller-Madej got to Cracow’s ghetto,  followed by a camp in Płaszów afterwards. She was transported to KL Auschwitz in 1944, where, as a Jewish woman, was sentenced to death. However, thanks to her uncle’s intercession,  Müller-Madej was added to the so-called ”Schindler’s list”. Together with other prisoners from the list, she was transported to the  Brunnlitz factory in Morawy where she lived to see the liberation day in 1945.  In the USA, Müller-Madej’s memoir describing the occupation times is…

On January 31st 1946, Jakub Künstlich, a Tarnów resident, was killed on a road between Jadowniki Mokre and Radłów (Cracow voivoidship). The most probable cause of his death was a property dispute about a homestead/a farm (3 morgens) in Jadowniki Mokre which was the victim’s property. According to the findings of the Security Office, the culprits were Józef Urban and Karol Boksa, the members of  Roman Horodyński’s („Jastrząb”)  division. These findigs, however, sparked doubts. Less than two months later, on 26th March, Dora Künstlich, Jakub’s wife passed away in a hospital in Cracow. She had been shot on 6th February in her own flat by an unidentified person. Julian Kwiek, Nie chcemy Żydów u siebie. Przejawy wrogości wobec Żydów w latach 1944-1947, Warszawa 2021, s. 446, 466.