The “Memorial Temple of the Deportees”: Cluj’s Neolog Synagogue

A Moorish-style brick building with small domes over its façade stands on Horea Street, the street that leads from Cluj railway station to the city centre. It was built as the temple of the assimilated Neolog congregation and was damaged twice — in the riots of 1927 and in the Second World War. After the Holocaust it was named the “Memorial Temple of the Deportees” (Templul Memorial al Deportaților), and today it is the only active synagogue in the city.

A Third Congregation in the City

After the General Jewish Congress in Hungary in 1868–1869, most Jews of Cluj (Kolozsvár in Hungarian) remained in the Orthodox community. According to ANU – Museum of the Jewish People, non-Orthodox Jews organised a “Status Quo” congregation in 1881, which was recognised as Neolog in 1884. Its members were mostly from the educated middle class — lawyers, doctors, merchants and officials who spoke Hungarian and sought a place in the city’s Hungarian society.

The new congregation wanted a representative temple. The synagogue was built in 1886–1887 on what was then Ferenc József Street and is now Horea Street, to plans by engineer Izidor Hegner (Hegner Izidor). The Encyclopaedia Judaica records that it opened in 1887. The building is designed in the “Moorish” style — the oriental idiom many Neolog congregations in Central Europe adopted in the 19th century to express a distinct and confident Jewish identity. According to ANU it was renovated in 1912. The Neolog rabbinate was held by Mátyás Eisler (1891–1930) and then by Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, later Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger (1934–1944).

1927: The Riots

In December 1927, nationalist students from all over Romania gathered in Oradea, and the congress turned into anti-Jewish riots. According to a dispatch of 10 December 1927 from the United States minister in Bucharest, published in the FRUS diplomatic series, on 5–6 December “six Jewish synagogues were broken into and completely wrecked” in Cluj, and homes of rabbis and other Jews were devastated. Jewish Heritage Europe notes that the Horea Street synagogue was severely damaged at that time and rebuilt. Some sources date the attack on it to 13 September 1927; that the building was damaged that year is not in doubt, but the exact date is disputed.

War, Deportation and Ruin

In September 1940 Northern Transylvania, including Cluj, passed to Hungary. In May–June 1944 the Jews of the city and its surroundings were concentrated in a ghetto at the Iris brickyard and deported to Auschwitz in six transports (see our story on the Holocaust in Cluj). The building suffered too: according to ANU, the synagogue was partly destroyed by Allied air raids in 1944. Other sources attribute the destruction to the Nazis, or to the building’s use as a warehouse during the war.

From Synagogue to Memorial

The survivors who returned to Cluj — about 6,500 Jews were counted in 1947, many of them from the surrounding small towns — found the synagogue in ruins. The community decided to rebuild it and dedicate it to the memory of the deported Jews of Northern Transylvania. According to Germany’s Stiftung Denkmal, which documents Holocaust memorial sites, the building was renovated in 1951, and since then it has been called the “Memorial Temple of the Deportees.” ANU also mentions a restoration in 1970. In this way the synagogue of the Neolog congregation, once a minority in the city, became the main place of prayer for everyone who remained. In 2004 the building was listed as a protected monument.

Restoration and a Community Centre

In June 2017 antisemitic slogans and a crossed-out Star of David were painted on the façade. The Orthodox Archdiocese of Cluj condemned the act and expressed its solidarity with the community. In October 2018 a full restoration of the building began. According to Jewish Heritage Europe, the project was estimated at about €1 million, and the community, then numbering 423 members, financed it by selling land it owned. At the same time a plan was announced for a Jewish cultural and community centre in the neighbouring building, with a museum, a kosher restaurant, a medical office and guest rooms. According to a report from September 2026, the community’s offices moved from Tipografiei Street to Horea Street about two years earlier.

Visiting

The synagogue stands at Strada Horea 21, on the street leading from the railway station to the city centre, within walking distance of Piața Unirii. It is an active synagogue, and we found no opening hours published by a reliable source. Arrange your visit in advance with the Jewish Community of Cluj; the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania gives the telephone number +40 264 433 470 and an address at Strada Tipografiei 25, though according to the latest report the offices have moved to Horea Street. The visit combines well with the former synagogues in the city centre and with the Muzeon museum of Cluj Jewish history — which, according to the same report, moves at the end of 2026 to new premises at Strada Tipografiei 25 and will be closed for several months.