Wacław Mączka’s Reconstruction of Tarnobrzeg’s Jewish Residents

How the List Was Described When Published

The introductory page to the published list explains both its origin and its commemorative purpose. The following is an English translation:

Wacław Mączka’s List. We present for the first time an extraordinary document — a list of Tarnobrzeg Jews as of August 1939. Its author is the well-known Tarnobrzeg civic activist Wacław Mączka, mayor of the city in the years 1945–47. The list was prepared in February 1965 at the request of Janina Pawlasowa, the wife of the prewar well-known doctor Eugeniusz Pawlas, esteemed in Tarnobrzeg by both Poles and Jews. Since the list was created several decades ago, it contains only occasional information concerning the later fate of some individuals. The document is a kind of list of remembrance, restoring names, and thereby the people themselves, who otherwise might have fallen victim to eternal oblivion.

This introduction makes clear that the list was intended not simply as a reconstruction of the town’s Jewish population, but also as an act of remembrance: an effort to restore individual names to people who might otherwise have been forgotten.