Between 1-5 July, I guided Veronica Singer (US) through Transylvania, the land of her grandparents, searching - and finding! - records and graves related to her familiy (Roth, Grün etc.) at the Jewish Community and at the local branches of the Romanian National Archives in the towns of Arad and Deva. Our journey also included a visit to the Hunyad Castle in the city of Hunedoara, the largest gothic construction of this type in Romania, and to the villages of Bârzava, Petris, Pui and Baru, where Veronica - in the photo, holding a chick at a family house in Pui - was warmly received by local people and was able to grasp the atmosphere in which her ancestrals once lived.
Jewish Cemeteries of the Bucovina, a new guidebook-brochure to Jewish cemeteries in the Bukovina region of Romania and Ukraine, has just been published by NOI Media Print and launched last week in Bucharest.
During this month I was twice in Cârlibaba in order to carry out a research about the families Jacob and Schapira. The small and picturesque town in today's Suceava county, also known as Kirlibaba under Austrian rule (1774-1918), when it stood at the border between Transylvania and Bukovina, was a prosperous shtetl thanks to its activities in the field of manganese and wood extraction. After the end of WWII, most of the surviving Jews emigrated. Not a single Jew lives today in Cârlibaba. The synagogue was demolished, the ritual butchery is in ruins and the old cemetery (picture) can be hardly kept by a Christian neighbor who takes care of it out of pity.
On November 1st I guided the couple Gerardo Frankel and Margarida Reik de Frankel (Uruguay), who came from Montevideo to Bucharest in order to take a ship cruise through the Danube, starting on November 2nd at the Romanian harbor of Oltenita and crossing the Bulgarian, Serbian, Hungarian, Austrian and German borders till Nürnberg. They visited Bucharest's old town, the Jewish neighborhood and the royal palace of Mogosoaia (in the picture) besides some shopping in the malls and antique shops of the city.
Unknown vandals have knocked over and, in some cases, destroyed the headstones in the cemetery where at least 35,000 Jews are buried, including victims of the Holocaust. It took place during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, on October 24th. The vandals also smashed windows in the administrative offices of the cemetery. No anti-Semitic slogans were discovered on the destroyed tombstones, according to police. Jewish leaders condemned the desecration and said the scale of the destruction suggested the activity was organized — rather than random acts by wayward youths. Paul Schwartz, spokesman for Romania's Jewish community, called the desecration "the worst act of vandalism in the nation in recent times."
Between June 5th and June 12th 2008, Hal and Charlotte Hegwer (US) were guided by us from Timisoara to Bucharest, visiting also Craiova. In Craiova they met the head of the local Jewish community and carefully visited the synagogue and cemetery, looking for records of their ancestors. In Bucharest, besides a traditional sightseeing with the main attractions, the Hegwers visited the Jewish museum and had dinner with all of us at the Caru' cu Bere beerhouse (in the picture, from the left to the right: our guide/driver Marinel Sburlea, Mr & Mrs Hegwer, Fernando & Elena Klabin).
Photography exhibition
Between June 27 and 29 we guided Louis Schonfeld (US) to Iasi and Northern Moldavia. He was able to visit old inns on the way and to research the Iasi Jewish cemetery, besides discovering Moldavian hospitality and gastronomy. Although his family roots come mainly from Salaj (Transylvania) and Zakarpattia (Ukraine), he is interested in any link to the Schonfeld family name. In the picture, a tombstone of the I World War Romanian soldier Moise Scheinfeld at Iasi Jewish cemetery.
In the period 6th-13th September 2001, we guided Albert Wirtzbaum (US) through several places in Romania, so that he could find information of his ancestrals, who used to live in different shtetls in the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and were called Wirtzbaum, Solomon, Blau, Friedman and Fried. The main places of his trip were Bucharest, Sighisoara, Cluj-Napoca (synagogue on the picture) and Oradea. In Transylvania he visited the shtetls Borod, Cornicel, Solduba and Saldabagiu de Munte, and was received as well by the Jewish genealogy specialist Peter Winter. Because of the 9/11 events, he got stuck in Bucharest and we've assisted him in his prolongated stay.
In the period October 3-8, 2004, we guided Martin and Rebecca Rosenblum (US), father and daughter, through Bucharest, Focsani, Iasi and Podu Iloaiei, back to their Moldavian roots. They were able to meet with the Jewish Community and visit all Jewish sites in Iasi and Focsani, as well as the Jewish cemetery in Podu Iloaiei. They were also allowed to research at the National Archives in Iasi about their relative families Cornblum and Alter (photo). In Focsani they located a family house and even talked to old neighbors who had known their relatives.
Read this interesting article on the Sephardic Jewish Community of Romania, published by the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture. According to it, documents demonstrate the presence of Spanish Jews in Wallachia as early as 1496; besides, most of the original Jewish population of Romania arrived from Turkey and the Balkans and was made up of Sephardim. However, by the 19th century, the majority of the Jewish population of Romania was made up of Ashkenazim, the result of waves of Yiddish speaking immigrants from Galicia and Russia.
On September 29th and October 6th 2007, Jill Kasen (US) and her trip colleague Arleen Glikbarg (US) were guided through the remains of Jewish Bucharest. They also had the occasion to visit the main touristic attractions of the Romanian capital, mix of Istambul and Paris.
The map shows the Jewish population per county in the territory of Greater Romania, according to the census of 1930.
ewish cemetery was devastated during WWII. From Ukmerge we took a taxi to Poselva - today's Zelva - the shtetl of my great-greatgrandfather Lev Klabin, Jewish scholar and tax collector, who had emigrated with the whole family to Brazil around 1890. Our taxi was the only car in the village. According to family accounts, the synagogue stood close to the well. I could recognize the building, in ruins. After having eaten an unforgettable borsh soup at the local tavern, we went to the school, looking for help. The teacher of History guided us to the Jewish cemetery. Snow, wind. Tiny wooden houses. We entered one of them, an ancient lady told us about the good relationship with the Jewish community before the War. I expected to meet Lev Klabin and his long beard at any corner, at any moment. The deep impressions of this personal genealogical trip made me understand what other people can feel in such circumstances. From that moment, I decided I wanted to enable more people to feel the same.
