By C.R.
The President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Silviu Vexler, declared on Thursday, September 23, 2019, in Târgu Mureş, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the inauguration of the Great Synagogue in the city, that before the Holocaust in Romania there were over 2,000 synagogues. Less than 100 survived the Holocaust and the communist regime, and about 80 are still alive.
The decrease of the places of worship was done in a symmetrical proportion with the reduction of the number of Jews remaining on the Romanian territory.
We must rectify what Silviu Vexler said. The communist regime contributed to the decline of the Jewish population and the places of worship. But not only the communist regime. In Transylvania, in particular, the inhuman mastery of the Hungarian horthyst regime was devastating. Following the Vienna Dictate, Hungary benefited from the agreements between Hitler and Stalin. It so happened that a part of Northern Transylvania, Crisana and Maramures came under the rule of Miklos Horty’s regime. Between 1940 and 1944, hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well as other nationalities, primarily Romanians, were held in ghettos, deprived of their liberty, sent to Nazi camps or massacred in places well established by the Hungarian regime. .
The final solution was particularly harsh in the first half of 1944. According to https://www.yadvashem.org/ “the number of Jews deported two days after the start of the operation was 23,363. As of May 18, that number had reached 51,000. The number of deportees continued to increase dramatically every day: May 19 – 62,644; May 23 – 110,556; May 25 – 138,870; May 28 – 204,312; May 31 – 217,236; June 1 – 236,414; June 2 – 247,856; June 3 –253. 389; June 8 – 289,357. ”
On the same occasion, Vasile Dub, the president of the Jewish community in Targu Mures, shows “… The road of this community after the Second World War is also interesting. The figures are eloquent, in 1940 there were 5,400 Jews in Târgu Mureş, in 1961 there were 800 more, and today the community has 170 people (…) Unfortunately, we don’t have many young people. This community is aging, we don’t have young people, if we don’t have young people we don’t have weddings and so on…. ”
Vasile Dab speaks of a bitter truth. Almost all Jews who were physically and intellectually fit left Romania. Not only during communism. Many, many left after 1990. I had many colleagues in the press who after the events of 1989 left Romania without “longing for the country”.
Today, about 300,000 Jews still live in Romania. Very few. What a shame!
Maybe the Jewish Community in Romania should do more for some of those who left (or their descendants) to return to Romania. Here they have the best living conditions of all the former communist countries. Romania returned almost all Jewish property.
We would be happy if groups of Jews came to Bucharest not only for the distribution of dividends by Fondul Proprietatea, but also on other occasions. To come to know at the place where their parents and ancestors lived.
I would be happy if in the beautiful summers we would see many more Jews on the streets of Romanian cities and villages.
It would be necessary for such actions and events to be organized by the Federation or by the local Jewish and Romanian communities.
