Jewish Bukovina and Transylvania

The Karl Goldmark Philharmonic Orchestra of Interwar ClujThere...

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 16:15:04 +0300

The Karl Goldmark Philharmonic, circa 1937. Courtesy of Miriam Boskovich.

Stamp of the Goldmark Philharmonic orchestra, interwar Cluj.

Hungarian language stamp for the Goldmark orchestra.

Director Alex Boskovich arranged several of the pieces performed by the orchestra.

Many hand-copied pieces were signed and dated during the 1940s.

The orchestra was named after Hungarian-Jewish composer Karl Goldmark.

In addition to classics such as Beethoven and Mozart, the orchestra performed numerous Jewish-themed pieces.

This setting of Stutschewsky's work was done by Boskovich and presumably never recorded.

The orchestra performed many pieces by Mendelssohn and Beethoven.

The Karl Goldmark Philharmonic Orchestra of Interwar Cluj

There have been a lot of surprising discoveries in Cluj - you can read about the artwork and zincographs found in the synagogue attic here. Another unexpected collection of material found in the Neologue synagogue was extensive sheet music belonging to the library of the Karl Goldmark Philharmonic. The Goldmark orchestra, named after a popular 19^th century Hungarian-Jewish composer, existed in Cluj / Kolozsvár from 1934-1942. It was founded by conductor and composer Alexander Boskovich, as a response to Romanian legislation curbing Jewish participation in cultural organizations. Boskovich directed the orchestra from 1934-1938, when he was invited to attend the premiere of his composition “Chansons Populaires Juives” (later renamed “The Golden Chain“) in Tel-Aviv and decided to remain in Palestine. Boskovich went on to become a well-known Israeli composer; the decision to spontaneously remain in Palestine probably saved his life as the vast majority of Cluj Jews, including Boskovich’s parents, were deported in spring 1944 to Auschwitz.

Though an amateur group composed of members from the Jewish community, the orchestra performed at a very high level. Perhaps due to the fact that “in another life” I performed several of the pieces in the library, I have been particularly drawn to the story of the orchestra and its members. Unfortunately there is very little written about the orchestra and, other than the scant facts about Boskovich’s life in Cluj, no information available on its members at all. Probably most of the members perished in the Holocaust though it is also likely that at least a handful of those who were conscripted earlier on in the war for forced labor survived.

One question I consider constantly throughout my work is how archival material can be made relevant for the public today. The discovery of the sheet music of Cluj’s interwar Jewish orchestra presents an excellent opportunity to engage the public with its past : the current Cluj philharmonic could perform one or more “Goldmark” concerts, using the original sheet music, in conjunction with an exhibition on the orchestra and its members. A plaque could be erected on Boskovich’s house, surviving family of orchestral members could be invited to Cluj for the performances and exhibition. A website could be created devoted to the orchestra. As a small starting point, I created a playlist of all the pieces found in the library, though a few were not on youtube and indeed one, an arrangement by Boskovich of a piece by Stutschewsky, was probably never recorded.

Credit and Sources:

Many thanks to Miriam Boskovich for providing the photograph of the Goldmark Orchestra, circa 1937.

Gidó, Attila. Două Decenii: Evreii din Cluj în perioda interbelică. Cluj-Napoca, 1914.

Hirschberg, Jehoasch. “The Music of Alexander U. Boskovich (1907-1964) as Representation of Ideology of Israeli Music.” In Studia Judaica XIV, 2006.

Treasures in the Attic - Yerusha

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 15:14:44 +0300

Treasures in the Attic - Yerusha:

It’s been such a busy time here in Cluj, there is unfortunately little time to post on the blog - but read this post from the Yerusha site to learn of our recent discoveries

Diphtheria epidemics and traces of Yiddish: Finding the...

Fri, 25 Mar 2016 17:39:42 +0200

Seal for the Orthodox Jewish community of Dej.

Letterhead for rabbi in Dej (Deés), slipped into the back of a record book.

Marriage record book for Dej.

Death records, all of children who died of diphtheria in 1876 in Dej.

Jewish family register.

Family register with first names indexed using the Hebrew alphabet.

Index of first names in a Dej family registry.

Index of last names using the Latin alphabet in a Dej family registry (Jewish community).

1855 census information for the Jews in the village of Urișor (Hung: Alör).

Diphtheria epidemics and traces of Yiddish: Finding the individual in communal records in Cluj

The blog took a long break while we were in Bucharest, due in no small part to the prohibitions and difficulties related to photographing at archival repositories located on military bases or for the former communist secret police (Securitate). But we were very busy collecting data and the JBAT catalogue will be updated with hundreds of entries describing collections and folders held in Bucharest with material about Transylvania and Bukovina by the end of 2016. In addition, in January the catalogue was updated with entries from our period in Targu Mures and hundreds of older entries underwent edits and corrections. Check back regularly as we continue to add descriptions of material held in Brasov, Mures and Bucharest over 2016.

For the next several months, I’ll be surveying material in Cluj/ Kolozsvár /Klausenburg/קלויזנבורג. I’ve posted about information – beyond genealogy - which can be gleaned from civil records in the past, here and here. Going through the civil records of a region remains my preferred method for getting quickly acquainted with the area – from these records you can gather what towns and villages had relatively significant Jewish populations (only after 1850 did it become easier for Transylvanian Jews to move to towns and the urbanization process was gradual), who the community leaders were, and from the handwriting or language used, inferences can even be made as to the education level of the scribe or the community in general. Here in Cluj, for example, there are records from various villages from about the same period. Some were poorly kept with almost illegible handwriting, some were neatly kept in German with a distinct Yiddish “accent” in the spelling, while others were kept in impeccable German by a meticulous scribe. The village with poorly kept books was isolated; that with entries written in neat, high-German handwriting was from a village that was home to a nobleman; the scribe and/or community leaders from that village may likely have been court Jews and, correspondingly, more educated.

Sifting through archival documents from the past two centuries can be isolating and sometimes tedious, especially when dealing with administrative papers – the passing of laws or regulations affecting Jewish life and so forth. I appreciate my days with the civil record books because they remind me of the individuals caught up in the region’s history; they allow me to catch glimpses of everyday life, both its celebrations as manifested in naming and marriage ceremonies, and its tragedies, recorded for posterity in the deaths books. This week I paused upon seeing pages and pages of deaths due to diphtheria: from May-December in 1876 at least 18 children died in the Dej community; the Feuerstein family lost four children in less than three weeks in August 1876.

I also enjoy finding notes in Yiddish in these books –these slips of paper were often affixed upside down by state archivists. The notes are hardly monumental but they remind one that there was once a different Transylvania, one with even more languages than today, when a scribble in Yiddish in the margin of a book was commonplace and certainly no one could have imagined it would someday draw any notice.

Morning sun lights up the twin spires of the Neologue synagogue...

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 17:06:19 +0200

Morning sun lights up the twin spires of the Neologue synagogue of Cluj/Kolosvar.

The past few months have been an intense period of work for the JBAT team but we’ll soon be returning to our weekly blog posts, now from Cluj/Kolosvar/Klausenburg, the site of research for the next 4 months.

Stay tuned for website update announcements and more!

The town hall of Alba Iulia created an impressive video...

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 17:53:26 +0200

The town hall of Alba Iulia created an impressive video describing the city’s Jewish heritage sites.

Documents on Transnistria Survivors and Other Missing PersonsThe...

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 17:12:12 +0200

Letter to the Association for the Support of Jews from Bukovina.

Statement from the a former high-ranked employee of the Czernowitz Jewish Community (Kultusgemeinde).

Photos are sometimes found mixed in with the documents.

Lists of Bukovina Jews returned from Transnistria who received assistance, with various biographical data.

Charts made by the Medias community of Bukovina refugees, most came from Czernowitz and Waschkoutz (Vascauti, Vashkivtsi).

Missing persons documents abound. This man is searching for his brother, but seems not to realize Czernowitz hasn't been part of Austria for over 25 years.

Postcard addressed to the Association of Jews Deported to Transnistria.

Thousands of border-crossing certificates are in the folders.

The border-crossing folders contain various statements as to previous residence and desired future residence.

Charts of those who received aid from the Joint, with birth date and place.

Documents on Transnistria Survivors and Other Missing Persons

The central branch of the National Archives holds thousands of documents related to the Bukovina Jews who survived deportation to Transnistria. The documents cover a vast range of topics: charts of welfare received by individuals from the Joint or other charitable organizations; hundreds of missing persons requests and correspondence; border-control paperwork (from those crossing from northern to southern Bukovina in 1946); requests to be resettled in various towns across the country; the odd photograph and personal correspondence. The documents represent a trove of valuable material, of interest both to descendants of survivors as well as to those seeking to understand daily life for Romanian Holocaust survivors in the immediate post-war period.

World War II Charts and Graphs of Romanian Jewish PopulationFor...

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 13:09:34 +0300

World War II Charts and Graphs of Romanian Jewish Population

For the next several months I’ll be reporting from a variety of repositories in Bucharest: the central branch of the National Archives, the Ilfov branch of the National Archives, the CNSAS (Securitate) archives, and the Jewish community archives. Though located in Bucharest, all these repositories hold documents concerning Transylvanian and Bukovina Jewish history and I’ll be doing my best to uncover as many as possible.

Today, from a collection at the National archives comes a small pamphlet, apparently intended to be part of a larger work (pages are number beginning with 65), created in 1942, breaking down the Jewish population in Romanian by sex, age, and geographic location. Most interesting to me are the charts detailing children from mixed marriages. These charts map the ethnicity of the non-Jewish partner and in doing so reveal how assimilation trends varied by geographic location. In Transylvania it comes as no surprise that the most children were produced from Hungarian-Jewish mixed marriages, though certain counties (Tarnave Mare, a region with a dense Saxon population) and larger cities (Sibiu) record more children from German-Jewish marriages. I was somewhat surprised to see that in the Banat the number of children from German-Jewish marriages was more than twice that of Hungarian-Jewish marriages and more than Romanian-Jewish and Hungarian-Jewish marriages combined.

Palace of Culture and Town Hall in Marosvásárhely We are packing...

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 17:27:22 +0300

Blueprints for the Targu Mures town hall

The town hall and Palace of Culture were designed by a pair of Jewish architects based in Budapest, Komor and Jakab.

The facade of the town hall.

"Doodles" for various ornamentations on the town hall.

Detail of the facade of the Palace of Culture.

Facade of the Palace of Culture.

Detail of the facade of the Palace of Culture.

Inside the Palace of Culture, bronze (?) relief of the coronation of Franz Josef I.

The foyer of the Palace of Culture is adorned with fantastic murals and Jugendstil patterns.

Detail of the stairway paintings inside the Palace of Culture.

Palace of Culture and Town Hall in Marosvásárhely

We are packing our bags and preparing to take leave of Targu Mures - next stop on the archival survey will be Bucharest where I will work with a range of repositories. But before we go, there is one last important post to make, a post I have been waiting these three months for – namely one illuminating the magnificent Palace of Culture and its sister, the Town Hall, indeed the most stunning buildings I have seen in my life (no hyperbole). Both buildings were constructed in the years immediately leading up to World War I by a pair of Jewish Jugendstil architects from Budapest, Komor Marcell and Jakab Dezső. The buildings are incredible, inside and out. The architectural plans can be found in the Targu Mures Town Hall collection at the National Archives. I will let the photographs speak for themselves.

L’shana tova from Transylvania! Wishing a sweet and happy New...

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 16:31:55 +0300

L’shana tova from Transylvania! Wishing a sweet and happy New Year!

Administrative Papers from the Jewish Ghetto in Târgu MureșOne...

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 17:29:19 +0300

Apparently lists of Jews who returned from deportations, no date, sometime late 1940s

The lists of Jews who returned from deportations was classified as confidential.

Town Hall folder with papers on the Jewish ghetto in Targu Mures, spring 1944.

Lists of Jews interned in the ghetto.

Chart of meals fed to those interned, until the last were deported.

Precise inventories were made of all Jewish belongings - this list includes jars of mustard.

Administrative Papers from the Jewish Ghetto in Târgu Mureș

One of the many series composing the formidable Târgu Mureș Town Hall collection is entitled “Various.” Buried in the middle of this series are several hundreds of pages from the late spring and early summer of 1944, when the Jews of Târgu Mureș and the surrounding region were first interned in a ghetto (a brick factory) and shortly thereafter deported to Auschwitz. These folders contain administrative papers on just about every aspect of the ghettoization, confinement, and deportation including lists of those interned, addresses, inventories of all the possessions of those interned (down to number of mustard jars, see photo), receipts for purchase of food for meals in the ghetto (see twitter post from 3 September), and what was served by day (ie. black coffee for breakfast).

Curiously, there is also a folder (marked “confidential”) with no date or any indication whatsoever regarding why or for whom the data was collected. The folder contains charts of Jews, it includes their name, parents’ names, “name at the time of deportation,” birth place, and current residence. The headings are in German and at first glance the archivist and I thought these were additional copies of deportation lists until we realized that all the place names were given in Romanian, indicating that the lists are from the immediate post-war period. Thus, in the late 1940s, at the same time as events were being held supposedly celebrating the cultural diversity of the region (see twitter post from 2 September), someone was still keeping tabs on the Jews.

Reghin Town Hall Town Hall collections generally contain a...

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:37:44 +0300

Letter from Reghin Jewish community regarding their ritual bath.

"Heroes" association ask Reghin's Zionist organization to help them sell lapels.

Plans for a new house, Reghin, 1930s.

Map of property, including that of tailor Hermann Izrael.

Request for nationality certificate from tailor Hermann Izrael.

Medical report for the injuries sustained by Moise Rozenberg in WWI.

Reghin Town Hall

Town Hall collections generally contain a variety of documents interesting to researchers of countless subjects. Here is a little sample of materials from just a few folders from the Reghin Town Hall collection. See photo captions for details.

Jewish schools in Marosvásárhely - Târgu Mureș

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 10:05:22 +0300

I’ve posted extensively about schools and school records in the past, so this post will skip the basics and go straight to the unique school records in Târgu Mureș.

For those new to this blog or the JBAT project or desiring of a refresher course in what school records can offer, see the following past posts: A school records introduction using documents from Radautz; Suceava Jewish elementary school; Suceava German school (with some fabulous doodles); Czernowitz records with photos; school statistics from Brașov and Mediaș; delightful but rare graduation portraits; Jewish school materials held by the Jewish community in Brașov today.

Here in Târgu Mureș there was a Jewish school run by the Status Quo community from the mid/late 1800s until 1948 when all confessional schools were shut down in the wake of the communist restructuring of the school system. The archives here hold a collection for that school but, being called the Israelite Elementary School Collection, it is a rather obvious point of research. As I proceeded through the school collections, I realized there was at least one other Jewish school - though not designated as such, it was attended only by Jewish students. It was called the Jakab Wiener elementary school, apparently named after its director. Later I looked at records for the Beregi elementary school, also named after its director, and concluded that these schools were most likely one and the same, but the official name changed with the director. According to the archival researcher forms, no one has viewed any of the material in these collections since they were catalogued in the 1960s. Together they span the dates 1893-1913 and offer a window into the educational life of the Jewish population at the turn of the century and waning days of the empire.

[Tumblr is not allowing this specific photo set to be posted-any ideas why?]

Adămuș - Ádámos: Village of Six ChurchesI had heard of...

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 16:44:38 +0300

Extract from a 19th century cadastral book for Adamus, listing the 5 "churches" in the village.

Extract from the marriage register catalogued as Tarnaveni's, but which clearly began as the register in Adamus.

Unitarian church and Reform church in Adamus.

Unitarian church in Adamus.

Greek-Catholic church in Adamus, across the street from the former synagogue (according to the priest).

Orthodox church in the village of Adamus.

Roman-Catholic church in Adamus.

The former shul or prayer house in Adamus, according to papers viewed by the Greek-Catholic priest.

Adămuș - Ádámos: Village of Six Churches

I had heard of the village of Adămuș/Ádámos for years now but never managed to get there, it lying in an out-of-the-way valley, some distance away from the nearest out-of-the-way small town. Originally my interest stemmed from the fact that one side of the largest and most influential families of the Medias community (the Czitrons) came from the village. But after working with the records in Targu Mures this summer, my interest was piqued further – it became clear from the civil records book that Adamus was *the* community in that section of the Tarnava Mica valley for most of the 19^th century. The civil records filed under “Tarnaveni” were clearly kept in Adamus. The book begins with births from the 1830s, all entries are for Adamus and the surrounding villages. There is not a birth recorded in Tarnaveni until two decades after the book was started. Such a community must have had its own synagogue, I figured, and other community spaces. Finding and identifying buildings formerly used as prayer houses or synagogues in towns, especially villages, is a side interest of mine. I believe it is important for a village or town to remember its historical diversity, even if, unfortunately, those days are long past.

The visit to the village revealed that 19^th century Adamus, and to an extent, 21^st century Adamus, was/is far more diverse that even I expected. Today there are five functioning churches there – Unitarian, Reform, Greek-Catholic, Orthodox, and Roman-Catholic (this last may not be functioning, it looked rather abandoned). The pastor/priest of the Greek-Catholic church told me that he had seen a 19^th century map and according to that map, the synagogue was right across the street from where the Greek-Catholic church stands today (the current church was built in the 1920s). He pointed out the house, a long, red one, which, according to the map he saw, had functioned as the prayer house or other community building. He thought that behind it had stood a more proper synagogue, which had been torn down long ago.

This part of Transylvania is remarkably religiously diverse (if you count different Christian denominations as diverse), but I had never encountered a small village with six (if you include the former Jewish prayer house) places of worship. In 1850 the population of the village was just under 1500 and a few years later cadastral records record five churches – Greek-Catholic, Greek-Orthodox, Israelite, Reform, Unitarian (the Catholic one must not have been constructed yet). It is refreshing to imagine the diversity of such a small village and encouraging to know that the one-time presence of the Jewish villagers is not entirely forgotten.

The Archives of Jewish Bukovina & Transylvania

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 12:28:25 +0300

The Archives of Jewish Bukovina & Transylvania:

We are thrilled to announce that the JBAT website is now bilingual - in Romanian and English! Full translations of the hundreds of catalogue entries will be available in 2016. Thanks to everyone who worked on the translation project!

Adventures in Cadastral Land Anyone who has spent time with the...

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 15:45:11 +0300

Adventures in Cadastral Land

Anyone who has spent time with the archives in Romania will know that the cadastral records collections pose enormous challenges to a researcher. There is a series of strict laws regulating documents that contain any references to property and it seems that a statute of limitations theoretically in effect is, in practice, ignored, by citing an ambiguously worded clause that can be interpreted as allowing the archival staff to deny researchers access to any document whatsoever, should the mood be upon them.

I first encountered this issue a few years ago in Bukovina, when I requested a folder mentioning something about a Jewish farmer in a tiny village. The next day, when I came to collect the folder, the archivist informed me, sternly and suspiciously, that I was not permitted to view those documents since they contained property information. Did I mention they were dated about 1850? On that occasion, flummoxed and in disbelief, I tried to have a rational conversation with the archivist – I tried to explain why such documents might be of historical interest to researchers (Jewish occupations, interethnic relations, etc) and also gently noted that more than 150 years had passed, numerous regime changes and upheavals, who cares who owned what land in a tiny backwater village almost 200 years ago? What I got in response was a sound browbeating and the assurance that I would never be privy to the few sheets of paper in that slim folder. Looking up the rule with the statute of limitations during my lunch break and quoting it back to the archivist didn’t particularly help the situation. In light of the fact that I still had a few months of work at that particular archive and with that particular staff and in the interest of ever receiving a requested file again, I decided to move on. Though I’ve never forgotten that folder or quite gotten over that lost tussle. Or even understood the point of the vehemence, to be frank.

Fast forward a few years to today and my sojourn in Târgu Mureș. While waiting for some requested files, I randomly picked up the nearest collection inventory and began flipping through it – it happened to be the collection of cadastral records and in the first pages I saw records from the village of Adamus, a little darling of mine (post on that diverse enclave coming later). I quickly decided I would investigate this collection next and submitted requests for files for the next day.

Before I proceed, I should say a word to the delights of working at the National Archives in Târgu Mureș. One’s overall experience at an archive has everything to do with the archival staff, in particular the man or woman staffing the reading room. Is the person friendly (all I’ve come to hope for), that adds considerably to an overall positive experience. Is the person knowledgeable about the contents of the archives or regional history (especially if the knowledge spans beyond a nationalist and superficial interpretation), this is an extra bonus (rarely encountered). Should the person actually go out of their way to ponder collections and files of potential interest – well I wasn’t aware this option existed before I arrived in Târgu Mureș. The reading room attendant is friendly, informed, helpful, smart, in short everything a researcher might hope for.

The next day, said attendant brought me the requested cadastral files and lingered as he placed them down. “What is your interest in the cadastral records?”, he asked cautiously. I explained that I wasn’t entirely sure what I would find, but I wanted to see what sorts of documents were there, if there were any references to synagogues or Jewish communal buildings. Before 1850 the Jewish population in Transylvania lived almost exclusively in villages, today there is hardly any trace of their presence. He nodded and returned to his desk. Later that afternoon he came back and brought up the cadastral records again – this time explaining that technically only “scientific” research in the archives is allowed, any requests related to property had to be submitted to the archival staff, who would then consult the original documents. He then told me a series of post-communist property-horror stories — family graves being sold to land developers, a woman doing “genealogy” but who in fact recorded property information in order to then acquire property that wasn’t hers (the details of all this, I don’t understand – but I also don’t disbelieve that an awful lot of property abuse took place in the wild years following Ceausescu’s downfall). I submitted that I understood, but really, documents from the mid-19^th century? Who is using those in order to illegally “repossess” property? I showed him maps posted by Gesher Galicia (a fabulous project) and asked whether the archives here had anything similar (assuring him thereby that our project isn’t a digitization project). Yes, he said, but he questioned whether it was ethical or lawful to put such maps on the internet, someone could take advantage of it, cheat the system, [and get property that isn’t and wasn’t ever theirs]. How, exactly, that would happen from an 1844 map with house numbers on it, I am not sure.

Do I underestimate the craftiness and cunning of people intent on exploiting a system? Or does the system overestimate the shrewdness of people? I find it hard to believe that, if the cadastral collections, at least those dating from the 19^th century, were more publicly accessible, the archives would be flooded with shifty land grabbers, pouring over indecipherable Austro-Hungarian land appraisals. And I wonder if the system isn’t in fact more concerned about legitimate petitions for restitution, from the hundreds of thousands of German, Jews, Hungarians, and Romanians who managed to leave under communism. I wonder whether this blanket denial of property-related material, without thought to date and with no room to take into account genuinely “innocent” motives, is simply the most effective means of stymieing such requests.

A spate of baptisms, in the shadow of AuschwitzDue to the...

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 13:24:38 +0300

A spate of baptisms, in the shadow of Auschwitz

Due to the unusual story of the Szekely Sabbatarians (read our earlier post for some background), I wondered whether I should request to see civil record books from religious communities other than the Jewish communities, in particular for the village of Bezidu Nou, the center of the Szekely Sabbatarians up until their official conversion to Judaism near the end of the 19^th century. I had read that prior to the mass conversion, they were generally members of the Unitarian or Reform (Calvinist) churches, practicing their Jewish customs in secret. So I requested a few books from the Unitarian and Reform churches for Bezidu Nou and neighboring Bezid, with dates from the mid-19^th century. I wondered whether there would be any way to identify Sabbatarians and whether the conversions from Unitarianism to Judaism had been recorded in any way.

From a cursory perusal of the 19^th century books, I found nothing obviously indicating that individuals were Sabbatarians or not. Apparently many of them took the name of Moses and other Biblical names, and such names doubtlessly filled the books, but with no additional information on the individuals, no conclusions could be drawn purely on the basis of the names. I began to wonder whether the book should be included at all in our catalogue.

And then, unexpectedly, I found something entered at a much later time and in more somber circumstances. One of the books was dated until 1950 and as I casually turned the pages into the 20^th century, I slowed to scan the names during the 1940s – and there, in spring of 1944, the year that the deportations of northern Transylvanian Jews to Auschwitz took place, was an entire page of names with unusual “baptisms.” Rather than the baptism date being a few days after the date of birth, here were people born in the 1860s-1880s – and there, under religion of parents, instead of “Unitarian” was written “Mosaic Sabbatarian” and also “Israelite.” The first baptism was on May 18^th, 1944, about two weeks after the ghettoization of the Jews in Northern Transylvanian had begun and ten days before the first train to Auschwitz left from Târgu Mureș. (For an overview of the Holocaust in Romania see the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s report, scroll down for PDFs of the full report. The chapter on Northern Transylvania is here in English and here in Romanian.) The last baptism was in August, more than two months after the final transport to Auschwitz had left.

Now I’m left with more questions than I started with – who helped these people to be “baptized” and thus escape? The local Unitarian priest, neighbors, relatives? Many of the dates of baptism are more than a month after the last transport, yet June 9^th, a day after the final transport, is notated in the comments, something to do with an official decree. What happened in those 24 hours? Was there any shame in leaving behind other community members or only relief? In particular I wonder about Aranka Teichman, born to Jakob and Eszter Teichman, nee Czitron. I remembered Eszter and Jakob from the Jewish civil record books; Aranka’s parents were not Szekely Sabbatarian (or Mosaic Sabbatarians, as they are called in this book), though perhaps she had been married to one (she is recorded as a widow). She was an old woman, 82 years old in 1944. In fact, she died the very day after her “baptism.” Who cared for her, I wondered, and managed to get her out? The answers to these questions, I venture to assume, will not be found in any archives.

Seals and Stamps of Jewish Communities in 19th Century Rural...

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 20:32:41 +0300

Stamp for the Jewish community of Sângeorgiu de Pădure/Erdőszt.Győrgy

Stamp for the Jewish community of Bezidu Nou/Bözödújfalu

Stamp for the Jewish community of Acățari/Ákosfalva

Stamp for Rabbi Pollak of Reghin/Szászrégen

Registrar Dimandstein had his own personal stamp (I think from Sâncraiu)

Seal for the community of Sângeorgiu de Pădure/Erdőszt.Győrgy

Stamp for the community and rabbi of Șilea Nirajului and Valea (Selye and Jobbágyfalva in Hungarian)

Seal for the Orthodox community in Târgu Mureș, from the late 1880s.

Seals and Stamps of Jewish Communities in 19^th Century Rural Transylvania

One discovery that caught me somewhat off guard since beginning work at the archives in Târgu Mureș is the fact that there are countless civil records books for small communities in the region. When I say small, I mean village small. These books are, for the most part, older than any record books I have seen for towns elsewhere in Transylvania and Bukovina. They record families from the village where the respective book was maintained and its neighboring villages; one book lists 92 different villages where births took place! Today these registers are found in the inventory under Târgu Mures – and then a district is listed. This is somewhat misleading, since they really had little to nothing to do with Târgu Mureș at the time of their inception and, in the case of the oldest books, throughout the period they were maintained. Most likely they were collected around the turn of the century by the (then) large community of Mureș, and later, when collected from them by the National Archives in the 1950s, they were mistakenly filed under Târgu Mureș. The same holds true for books filed under the names of smaller towns. For example, the oldest books that exist for Târnăveni, are in fact records from the neighboring village of Adămuș. These books begin with records from 1830 and the first mention of anyone in Târnăveni isn’t until 1850, when Jews received official permission to settle in towns, and 20 years after the register was begun.

My favorite aesthetic detail about these books is probably their unique stamps and seals. Many, though not all, are stamped and/or sealed with the name of the community or sometimes the rabbi. In the weeks to come I hope to take a few trips out to some of these places, most of which are still villages today, or at the most, small towns of a few thousand inhabitants.

Sunken Synagogues in Szekely LandThe archives of Targu Mures are...

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 16:11:57 +0300

Stamp for the Bözödujfalu - Bezidu Nou Israelite Community (Szekely Sabbatarians).

Seal and title of register book for the Bözödujfalu community.

Letter from the Bözödujfalu community to the Udvarhely (Odorheiu) community.

Page from the death register, with place of birth listed - everyone is born in Bözödujfalu, even those born prior to the mass conversion.

Close up of the names (Hungarian) and birth place of individuals in the death register.

Marriage register for the Israelite community of Bözödujfalu, demonstrating marriages between Jews and Sz.Sabbatarians.

Sunken Synagogues in Szekely Land

The archives of Targu Mures are already providing intriguing stories and it’s only been one week. Granted, I am favorably disposed to this city in general and knew it better upon arrival than the other cities that have been surveyed thus far (Suceava, Sibiu, Brasov). I used to live just over the hills in the exquisite medieval hamlet of Sighisoara. For us, Targu Mures was the “metropolis” to which we would hitchhike for a taste of big city life – diverse restaurants, large stores, men with beards, students with tattoos. Sighisoara is serene and stunning, but sometimes a bit of worldliness does one good. Sighisoara was all otherworldliness; there legends seem to rise with the mist from the hills. Several times when I spoke with people there about my work in Jewish cultural heritage I was told a colorful tale. It was 2007, near the beginning of my stay in Romania, and my Romanian wasn’t too good. I understood something about Szekely peasants, a count – or was it a prince?, Jews, a sunken synagogue, a flooded village, a lake with a steeple peaking out, away beyond the hills. Sounds like a pretty legend, I thought, nodding vaguely, not at all understanding what the speaker was talking about.

Later I came to realize it wasn’t at all a legend, it was the story of the Szekely Sabbatarians, a group of Szekely peasants who, led by their local nobleman, in the 16^th century, began observing Jewish law and ritual (this is a gross summary of the situation). Even in relatively tolerant Transylvania (one of the earliest regions in Europe to issue a patent of religious tolerance in 1568) their teachings, which denied the deity of Christ and the teachings of the New Testament, went too far. The leaders and their followers were persecuted and eventually most returned to one of the accepted religions (especially Unitarianism or Calvinism). A small group, however, continued to practice in secret all the way up until the 19^th century, when, after Jewish emancipation in Austro-Hungary, they officially converted in mass to Judaism. This group lived in the village of Bözöd-Újfalu or Bezidu Nou. The story goes that part of the community was deported to Auschwitz, whereas other members were saved by local priests who convinced the Germans that they were not “real” Jews.

What about the lake, the sunken synagogue, the flooded village? In the 1980s, Ceaușescu decided to building a dam near Bezidu Nou and the village was subsequently flooded, thus finally erasing all material and architectural traces of the Szekely Sabbatarians.

Little has been written about the Sabbatarians and even less exists in English. Do the archives have anything about them, I have wondered for years. How are they catalogued in the collection of civil records? Under Jews or do they have their own category? I had so many questions about this group - Who were their leaders? How did the local Jewish communities (there was a large one in Sângeorgiu de Pădure/Erdőszentgyörgy, just a few kilometers away) interact with them? Was there intermarriage? Is there really no one left? Has anyone done oral histories?

This week a few of my questions were answered – there is one birth, marriage, and death book for the Israelite community of Bözödújfalu from the 1880s – this would have been after the mass conversion and thus I presume it is in fact the register for the Sabbatarians. I also found entries in the Unitarian book during the war – but that story will wait for next week. Until then, good Shabbes!

Târgu Mureș - Marosvásárhely - Neumarkt am Mieresch After about...

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 15:47:53 +0300

Str. Aurel Filimon, with the Status Quo Ante Synagogue in the background, on the left.

Blooming Bicycles on the streets in Marosvásárhely. This bike is next to the former orthodox synagogue (now converted into office space).

The porch of the Jewish community is overflowing with flowers this warm July.

Exterior of the Status Quo Ante synagogue, still in use and a historic monument.

Târgu Mureș - Marosvásárhely - Neumarkt am Mieresch

After about a year away, we are back in the field and thrilled to be digging into the archives of Transylvania once more. For the next three months I’ll be posting from the city of Târgu Mures or Marosvásárhely, as it is called in Hungarian, which is still heard everywhere on the streets of this beautiful, blooming city, nestled in the heartland of Transylvania. In addition to documents relating to the Jewish history of Târgu Mures, I will share items dealing with the Jewish history of the county in general, including the towns of Sighișoara - Segesvár -Schässburg, Reghin - Szászrégen - Sächsisch Regen, and Târnăveni - Dicsőszentmárton - Sankt Martin. I’ll also report on the curious tale of the Szekely Sabbatarians from the area around Sângheorgiu de Pădure and neighboring villages and see whether the archives can turn up anything about their fascinating story. I hope you join me in the search!

The blog goes on maternity leave… That’s it for...

Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:55:54 +0300

The blog goes on maternity leave…

That’s it for this year from Brasov! In December we’ll be back with updates to the JBAT website, including entries from material collected in Brasov and the Romanian language version of the site. Next year look for us in Targu Mures, Timisoara, Cluj, Alba Iulia, and Bucharest!