Spring 1944: The Holocaust in Maramureș

In the spring of 1944, in just five weeks, the Jewish world of Maramureș vanished. In mid-April the Jews of its towns and of dozens of villages in the Iza, Vișeu and Mara valleys were concentrated in ghettos. In May they were sent in freight trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Under Hungarian Rule

Under the Second Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, northern Transylvania, including Maramureș, passed from Romania to Hungary. According to the Wiesel Commission report, 164,052 Jews lived in the ceded territories. In the Hungarian census of 1941, 151,125 people in the region declared themselves Jewish. Sighet, the county seat, had about 10,144 Jews in 1941, some 39% of its population. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, this was the highest proportion of Jews in any Hungarian town. Maramureș had more than 150 Jewish communities, most of them small and rural.

The Hungarian administration applied Hungary’s anti-Jewish laws and restricted Jewish livelihoods. In 1942 men of military age were conscripted into forced-labour companies, and many of them were sent to the Eastern Front.

1941: Kamenets-Podolsk

In the summer of 1941 Hungary expelled Jews it classed as “alien”, meaning anyone who could not prove Hungarian citizenship. They were taken by train to Kőrösmező (today Yasinia in Ukraine), handed over to the Germans and marched to Kamenets-Podolsk. According to the Wiesel Commission report, many communities in Maramureș and Satu Mare counties were hit hard. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), hundreds of Jews from Sighet were among the deportees. On 27–28 August 1941, SS and police units killed some 23,600 Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk, according to General Jeckeln’s report, about 16,000 of them deportees from Hungary. According to USHMM, as many as 2,000 deportees made their way back to Hungary Among them was Moshe the Beadle of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

April 1944: The Ghettos

After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, Maramureș and Carpatho-Ruthenia were designated “Operational Zone I”, the first area where Jews were concentrated. According to the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, the roundup began on 15–16 April 1944 in Sighet and Vișeu de Sus, two and a half weeks before the rest of northern Transylvania, where it began on 3 May.

• Sighet: according to USHMM, two ghettos were set up around 20 April. The large ghetto, a few blocks from the town centre, held about 10,000 Jews from the town and nearby villages. The small ghetto, in the Ober-Yarash quarter, held about 3,000. Fifteen to twenty people were packed into a single room, and typhus broke out. The ghetto was commanded by the local police chief, Lajos Tóth.
• Vișeu de Sus: according to the Virtual Museum, about 12,000 Jews were concentrated here from Vișeu de Sus, Vișeu de Jos, Borșa, Leordina, Moisei, Petrova, Poienile de Munte and other rural areas. Anyone caught escaping was shot.
• Dragomirești and the Iza valley: according to the Maramureș Yizkor book, on the last day of Passover 5704 (15 April 1944) the Jews of Rozavlea, Săcel, Săliștea, Strâmtura, Șieu, Ieud, Glod, Botiza and other villages were brought to Dragomirești. In 1941 Dragomirești itself had 684 Jews.
• Berbești: a temporary collection point for the villages of the Mara valley, dissolved before the deportations.

Sources disagree on where the detainees of Dragomirești and Berbești were taken before deportation. According to the Virtual Museum, they were moved to the small ghetto in Sighet. According to the Yizkor book, the Jews of Dragomirești were marched about 25 km to the railway at Vișeu de Jos. According to historian Attila Gidó, the Dragomirești detainees left from Vișeu de Sus.

May 1944: The Trains

Deportations from Zone I began in mid-May. Each train carried about 3,000 people, 70 to 100 to a wagon. Four trains left Sighet and were recorded at Košice station:

• 16 May: 3,007 people, from the small ghetto
• 18 May: 3,248 people
• 20 May: 3,104 people
• 22 May: 3,490 people

That makes 12,849 deportees from Sighet according to the Košice records. USHMM speaks of “nearly 13,000”, and the Elie Wiesel house gives 12,759. Four trains left Vișeu de Sus, on 19, 21, 23 and 25 May. According to the Yizkor book, the Jews of Dragomirești left on the night of 15 May and reached Auschwitz on 18 May, 26 Iyar 5704; gendarmes shot several of them along the way.

According to Gidó’s research, deportations from the northern Transylvanian part of Zone I were completed on 25 May. According to the Wiesel Commission report, about 132,000 Jews were deported from all of northern Transylvania to Auschwitz in May–June 1944. Most were murdered in the gas chambers on the day they arrived. Among the deportees from the Sighet ghetto was Elie Wiesel, then 15, who later wrote Night.

Those Who Returned

Few came back. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, a community of about 2,300 Jews formed in Sighet in 1947, made up of returning survivors and Jews from elsewhere; Yad Vashem gives 2,308. About 50 survivors returned to Dragomirești, and most of them emigrated to Israel. The communities steadily emptied: by 1970 about 250 Jews remained in Sighet. In the valleys, where Jews had lived in dozens of villages, no community survived.

Remembrance Today

• The deportation memorial in Sighet: at Strada Gheorghe Doja 75, on the site of a synagogue destroyed in the war. According to JGuide Europe, it was built by survivors; according to the European memorial museums portal, it was erected during the communist period. Commemorations are held here.
• The plaque at Sighet railway station: on Strada Gării, in memory of the trains that left for the camps.
• The Elie Wiesel house: the memorial house opened on 29 July 2002 and is devoted to Jewish life in Sighet and to the victims of the deportations.
• Sighet’s Jewish cemetery: a memorial to the deportees stands at its centre.

In September 2017 hundreds of Romanians, Jews and Hungarians marched from the Wiesel family home to the railway station, along the route the deportees took. In May 2026 about 250 descendants of survivors from Brooklyn came to Sighet, G4Media reported.

Visiting

The places of remembrance in Sighet can be seen in a single day: from the Wiesel house, past the memorial on Strada Gheorghe Doja, to the railway station and the cemetery. Vișeu de Sus and Dragomirești have no active community institutions. Before visiting village cemeteries, contact the Jewish community of Sighet at Strada Basarabiei 8 or the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania.