JEWS IN ROMANIA

The Beginning. Greek inscriptions have proven the existence of certain Jewish communities in the colonies on the Pontus Euxinus (En. Black Sea) shore starting with the 5th century BC. Then, after the Roman conquest, they spread all across the Dacia Felix. After the Roman legions left Dacia (273 AD), many of the former colonists remained here, as they had established families; among them we can also talk about Jews from Palestine. Their number did not raise very much however until the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD, when they started to be thrown away from Western Europe, Poland and Russia. During the 9th – 12th centuries, Jews were more and more involved in trading activities alongside the commercial route that made the junction between Prague, Cracow, Lwow or Kiev and the harbors on the Black Sea coast. The Jews in Wallachia came especially from South-Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire; we are talking about the Sephardic Jews that had been thrown out of Spain and Portugal in the 15th century. They became more and more involved in the intense trading relations between Wallachia and Constantinople. The 17th – early 20th centuries saw the development of both the Jews number and their role in the social – economic life of the three Romanian provinces.

The Boom. In 1803 there were 29,000 Jews on Romanian territory, in 1859 there were 205,000, while in 1899 there were approximately 443,000; most of these Jews existed in Moldavia (12,000 in 1803, 119,000 in 1859 and 197,000 in 1899). During the 19th and early 20th centuries the country saw the coming of other Ashkenazim Jews from Bohemia and Austria because they were persecuted in their home countries, as well as an increasing coming of the Sephardic Jews from South-Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. There were few countries in the late 19th century Europe where Jews lived in a large number and Romania was one with the highest ratio in this respect (there were 47 Jews / 1000 inhabitants in Austria, 44 in Hungary, 41 in Russia, 24 in the Netherlands, 10 in Bulgaria or Germany, while Romania in actual borders had 47, Moldavia had 107 and Iaşi had 519). After January 24, 1859 when Wallachia and Moldavia were united hence creating the Romanian Unitary National State, the Constitution of 1866 specified, under Article 7 that only Christians can be granted the Romanian citizenship. This way Jews were turned into expats. Only under the pressure of the Peace Congress in Berlin (1879), Romanian Jews were granted citizenship. After 1913, the Jewish population in the country fought together with the Romanians in a war that ended with the Unification of 1918. Through the new Constitution of 1923, Jews were granted the same rights and obligations as any other Romanian citizen. It would not last too long. The adherence of Romania to Nazi Germany during WW2 through the pact signed by Adolf Hitler and Marshall Ion Antonescu meant the severe decrease in the Jewish population number; on August 23, 1944 there would be alive only half of the Jews that had existed in spring 1940.

The Romanian Holocaust. In a desperate attempt to gain back the control over Bukovina (nowadays in Ukraine), Bassarabia (nowadays the Republic of Moldova) and Northern Transylvania it had lost during the summer and autumn of 1940, Romania joined the Axis. In August 1940 the new government proclaimed the Romanian Legionary State and issued the Statute of the Jews, inspired by the legislation adopted by Hitler’s Germany in 1935. The means used by the Nazis and their Romanian fellows, the extreme right Legionaries were various, starting with the denial of any citizen right. During the anti-Jewish pogrom in Bucharest in January 22-23, 1941, 98 Jews were killed, together with Romanian political personalities acting against the Nazi regime; in the same time, synagogues were set on fire and Jewish shops were devastated by the Legionary Police and activists. In June – July 1941, all Jews located between rivers Siret and Prut rivers were moved to the camp of Târgu Jiu. During the assault for gaining back the control over Bassarabia and Bukovina, many Jews were killed by the army and legionaries: on July 17 there were killed 10,000 Jews in Chişinău, then 2,300 Jews in Cernăuţi. In August 1941, the remaining Jewish population in the two above-mentioned provinces was gathered in 5 ghettos.

One of the bloodiest episodes of the time was the pogrom in Iaşi of June 28-29, 1941, which resulted with 12,000 dead in the city; but this was not enough, as the infamous death trains were to follow. Two trains made of merchandise wagons were filled with the surviving Jews, the ventilation traps closed, so that many of them died during the transportation. The first death train, loaded with 2500 people, went to Târgu Frumos, while the second one, loaded with 1902 people, went to Podu Iloaiei. Because of the extreme heat and of the lack of air, many died during the transportation process. As Târgu Frumos was not far enough, the first train was rerouted towards Călăraşi, where only 1776 people were still alive, being imprisoned. The second train reached its destination with 1194 dead. If cities like Bucharest or Iaşi provided the killing grounds, the stripe of land between rivers Dnister and Bug (also known as Transdniestria) was nothing but the huge cemetery needed to bury the dead, a variant of the concentration camps in Poland. Jews were sent there for the lightest contravention or for some pretext. Everything started with some score thousand Jews from Bukovina, then there were brought people from Northern Moldavia and then from Wallachia. Summing up, between October 1941 and December 1943 there were about 140,000 Jews deported to Transdniestria, in walking convoys on hundreds of kilometers. Poor cottages, stables or ad-hoc camps were turned into accommodation units for thousands of people. Those that did not die because of the heat, frost, draught, starvation, intense labor or various diseases, were killed by gendarmes, Hitlerist soldiers or the Ukrainean police affiliated to the Germans. Slowly, starting with October 1943, the remaining Jews started to be brought back to their homes, so that everything could end together with the fall of Antonescu’s regime on August 23, 1944. Another death campaign was underdone in Transylvania, but neither by Romanians, nor by Germans this time. On January 31st, 1941 there were 191,000 Jews living in the section of Transylvania that was given to Hungary through the Arbitrage in Vienna.

When the war was over there were only 58,000 Jews left alive. The Jews survived the war relatively well in Hungarian Transylvania actually, but their misfortune arrived ironically in the end of the war. After slicing some piece of land here and there (from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania), Hungary was quite pleased with the situation and wanted no dramatic change. But on March 15, 1944, Admiral Horthy was given by Hitler the alternative: a German invasion over Hungary or an extremist pro-German government in Budapest. Four days later the invasion occurred and another 3 days later there was a new government. Two weeks later the Germans established the ghettos, where there was often no water and some other times there was no roof. In certain cases the very synagogues were used as ghettos (e.g. in Târgu Mureş), in other situations the oppressors used the Jewish-owned buildings (e.g. Satu Mare, Oradea), while in Dej they simply gathered all Jews in a forest and kept them there. About 8,000 Jews had the time to run away to Romania. In May and June 1944 the deportation of the 131,633 Jews was done with 45 death trains towards the extermination camps in Košice – Csap and Auschwitz. From the ones left, 20,000 Jews were sent on the Eastern Front, where they were called “strantzi” and killed in Kamyanetz Podilski (Ro. Camenița, nowadays Ukraine). Of those sent to camps, only about 20,000 returned after the war. One of the bloodiest episodes of the Transylvanian holocaust was Sărmaş. The war was coming to an end and everything should have cooled down, but a detachment of Horthyst gendarmes took advantage of an opening of the Romanian Front, locked 126 Jews from the village, mocked at them in the wildest way possible and killed them on Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year), during the night of September 15/16, 1944; medical expertise proved that one third of them were shot, one third were beaten to death, while the children were buried alive.

Post-war evolution. During the war, between 1939 and 1944 there were 47 ships filled with Jews going from Romanian harbors such as Galaţi, Brăila or Constanţa to Palestine; out of the 26,697 persons that left the country on these ships, 1,200 died in shipwrecks caused by German submarines. During and after WW2 the number of the Jews fell dramatically and the situation did not improve in the communist regime. Immediately after WW2, the Romanian society perceived a similarity between Jew and Communist. Soon came the nationalization, which meant the confiscation of most property belonging to private citizens, and that included the Jews: in 1948 alone the new regime confiscated 122 Jewish schools and libraries. Once the future was more or less clear for Romania and the Israeli State was founded in 1948, the Jews started to leave the country towards the latter. At first, they were free to do so, but then, when the situation in the country worsened and it was almost impossible for a Romanian to be granted a passport, the Romanian government saw an opportunity in this. Therefore the Romanian and Israeli governments made a mutual agreement according to which Romania virtually sold its Jews for USD 10,000 per person. In 1956 there were 146,000 Jews, in 1977 there were 25,000 and today there are about 8,000 left in the country, about 70% of them being over 60 years old. There are 450,000 Jews originating from Romania living in Israel nowadays.

BUCHAREST JEWS

Bucharest started to develop in the 17th century and the Jews South of the Danube, especially in Nikopole (Bulgarian town on the Danube), which belonged mainly to the Sephardic confession, crossed the river, settling intense trading activities in this city. The same period saw the coming of the Ashkenazim Jews from Ukraine and Poland. In the end of the 17th century, Jews had their own praying settlements and they also established their own guild during the rule of Voyevode Constantin Brâncoveanu. The 19th century saw a major increase in the Jews number, as, to make a single comparison, there were 6,000 people in 1860, four times more than in 1803. The Orthodox Jews Society was established in 1848, bearing the name of Rabbi Meir Malbim. Among others that had come from Poland, Rabbi Meir Leibish Malbim (1809-1879) was one of the outstanding Jewish figures of his time, being Chief Rabbi of Bucharest and Romania (1858-1864), preaching for in Bucharest in the synagogue that would bear his name until the communists decided otherwise (see underneath). The end of the century was a real demographic boom, with an approximate value of 40,000 Jews in the capital of the Romanian Kingdom. The local population increase was generated both by the newly born, but also (and mainly) by those that had come from Moldavia and Transylvania, as well as from the Ottoman (most of them being of Sephardic confession), Austro – Hungarian and Russian empires (most of them being of Ashkenazim confession). After the Nazi - Legionary oppression during WW2, other events would end with a dramatic fall in the Jews’ number. Migration started during the 1940s, especially towards Palestine and the United States. Once the Israeli State was founded in 1948, more and more people left Bucharest and Romania. In 1912 there were 44,000 Jews in Bucharest, in 1921 their number rose to 70,000, it got to 98,000 in 1941, reached the peak of 150,000 in 1948, just to fall afterwards to 15,000 in 1966, respectively 4,000 nowadays.

The first synagogue in the city, built during the 17th century, was demolished in 1715 at Voyevode Ştefan Cantacuzino’s order, to be replaced with two new synagogues belonging to the Ashkenazim Jews in 1760. The increase of the population arose the need for more prayer places. Between nowadays Ferdinand Avenue and Calea Moşilor, there was the Jewish Inn (1817) which also contained the Old Bet Hamidrash Synagogue raised by Jeweler Haim Ioines, which was to burn down during the fire that desolated Bucharest on the Easter Sunday of 1874. In 1832 there were 10 houses of pray belonging to the Ashkenazim Jews and one belonging to the Sephardic Jews; in 1860 there were 30 synagogues. Most of the synagogues we can still see today date from the 19th century. In the beginning of the 20th century there were 70 synagogues and temples in the city, in 1940 their number dropped to 32, in 1975 to 15 and today there still exist 7, of which only 3 are still in use for services, and other 2 for museums. As communists did not like any religious or art monument because it asked for too big a brain stress, they demolished synagogues together with churches and all other material values of past centuries; among the demolished Jewish settlements, we can list here Cahal Grande Great Spanish Temple (built in 1814, plundered by Legionaries in 1941, demolished by Reds in 1955), Malbim Synagogue (built by Orthodox Jews in 1848, rebuilt in 1928, repaired after the 1977 earthquake, demolished in 1986 together with the whole neighborhood around it), Baron Moritz de Hirsch Temple (built in 1887, demolished at its centenary, in 1987 together with the early 19th century Orthodox churches of Bradu Staicu and St. Trinity-Dudeşti nearby). Bringing to our days the Sephardic and Ashkenazim architectural and decoration features and also bearing a local touch, the synagogues we can still see today are just another history lesson Bucharest is teaching its visitors, a brief reminder of a glorious but nevertheless typically Romanian too short period of time.

Among the still standing synagogues in the city there are the Holy Union Temple (Ro. Unirea Sfântă), the Great Synagogue (Ro. Sinagoga Mare), the Choral Temple (Ro. Templul Coral), Podu Mogoșoaiei Synagogue (Ro. Sinagoga Podu Mogoșoaiei), Credința Temple (48 Vasile Toneanu between Dudeşti and Vitan avenues, raised in 1926 in a mainly Modernist style and still in use for religious service), Bet Hamirdaș Synagogue (78 Calea Moşilor, raised in 1812 and nowadays no longer serving the Jews), respectively Ajutorul Synagogue (6 Andrei Bârseanu, behind the phone company building at the crossing of Calea Dudeşti and Calea Vitan avenues, raised in 1906 and hosting a warehouse since 1986). In the former Jewish Quarter (near Unirea Square) one can attend a performance at the Jewish Theatre. The Jewish Cemetery lies on Calea Şerban Vodă, including many monuments for those that died during the Romanian Holocaust. For details on the Jewish legacy in Bucharest and a suggested walk across the once thriving Jewish district, refer to this section of the website.