The Synagogues of Bacău: The “Popshoynikes Shil” and Two Cemeteries

Of the more than twenty synagogues and prayer houses that stood in Bacău on the eve of the First World War, only one survives intact: the Grain Merchants’ Synagogue, which the Jews called the “Popshoynikes shil”, the synagogue of the corn dealers. After decades in which it stood closed, hidden behind apartment blocks, it was rededicated in November 2024. A small prayer house still functions nearby, and at the edge of town lie two cemeteries, one of them from the early eighteenth century.

Twenty-Five Synagogues

According to the historian Itzhak Kara, Bacău had 14 synagogues in 1864, 21 around 1890 and 25 in 1939. The first “Great Synagogue”, near the church of St Nicholas, burned down in 1853, and the same fire destroyed the tailors’ synagogue, founded in 1815. Most stood along Lecca Street and the lanes around it, and each represented a group: old tailors and young tailors, shoemakers, furriers, carters, masons and tanners. Others bore the name of a rabbi, such as “Rabbi Israel” or the Safran family synagogue, or of a donor, such as the synagogue of Rebeca and Ozias Herșcovici.

The researcher Nicuța-Minodora Drâmbă found in community records from 1922 that the Grain Merchants’ Synagogue was the largest of them: 300 families, 1,414 people, more than three times any other congregation. In a study published in 2022 the historian Emanuel Bălan showed that in 1940–1941 the number of prayer houses in the town actually grew, as the Jews of the county were driven into Bacău, and that some synagogues were requisitioned by the army. According to Kara, community leaders were held hostage in the Grain Merchants’ and “Rabbi Israel” synagogues until 1942.

Most of the buildings survived the war. Their destruction came with the redevelopment plans of the communist period: according to Kara and Drâmbă almost all were demolished by the middle of the twentieth century and in the years after, and only two remained, the Grain Merchants’ Synagogue and the synagogue named after Rabbi Avram Arie Rosen.

The Grain Merchants’ Synagogue

The building at Strada Ștefan cel Mare 35 covers 397 square metres. Its date is disputed: the Federation of Jewish Communities gives 1887, local press 1899, and the municipal monuments list 1906. According to Drâmbă it was damaged by fire in May 1927 and rebuilt, then enlarged in 1935–1945; other sources say only that it went through several fires.

Outside it is a two-storey building, classical in composition with Baroque ornament and a high, curved tin roof. Inside is a square vaulted hall with a women’s gallery carried on columns on three sides. The masonry Torah ark is decorated in classical relief, and the bimah stands in the centre of the hall, as is customary in Orthodox synagogues. According to Adevărul it seated 300–400 in the hall and some 350 in the women’s gallery.

The Murals of Mendel Grünberg

The synagogue’s treasure is the painting of its dome and walls, the work of the Iași painter Avram Mendel Grünberg in 1926–1927. Executed in a Baroque Revival manner, they show biblical scenes, holy places in the Land of Israel, and animals — lions, deer, camels, sheep and even crocodiles — alongside plant ornament and Hebrew inscriptions. According to community members, few people in Bacău today can still read them.

From Abandonment to Rededication

The synagogue ceased to function in 1955. In the 1960s apartment blocks were built in front of it, hiding its façade, and anyone who does not know where to look walks past without seeing it. It escaped demolition, was declared a museum site in 1991 and entered Romania’s list of historic monuments in 2004. In 2016 the then community president, Izu Butnaru, said the community had no money to restore “this last beautiful synagogue” and proposed handing it to the municipality as a cultural centre.

In the end the building was renovated on the initiative of the Federation and the community, with funding from the Romanian government, the State Secretariat for Cults and Bacău City Hall, under the architect Teodor Anghel. In March 2024, with the work about 80% complete, Purim was celebrated there for the first time in decades. On 21 November 2024 it was rededicated: a mezuzah was fixed at the entrance, the Torah was read there for the first time, and the ceremony was attended by Israel’s ambassador Lior Ben Dor, Romania’s Chief Rabbi Rafael Shaffer and the mayor of Bacău. The Federation’s national “Bereshit” seminar followed immediately, with Shabbat and Havdalah services.

The Rabbi Rosen Synagogue

The second surviving synagogue is named after Rabbi Avram Arie Rosen. The Federation lists it as active, at Strada Erou Rusu 31, with a date of 1850. Kara wrote in 1995 that this prayer house, next to the community offices, was used for daily prayer, and Drâmbă notes that in 1941 it and the Grain Merchants’ Synagogue were the only ones still functioning in the town. In 2013 the newspaper Adevărul mentioned Bacău’s “Small Synagogue”, where Hainrich Brif, now the community’s president, served as cantor.

Two Cemeteries

The old cemetery, on Strada Ghioceilor, was already in use in the eighteenth century; the 1703 gravestone of “Aaron son of Joseph”, moved after the war to the Jewish museum in Bucharest, came from here. According to Kara a chapel was built in 1885 and a concrete wall in 1937. It was full by 1912, and the last burial took place in 1917. According to a JewishGen survey of 2000 it measures about 120 by 70 metres and retains a few hundred stones, enclosed by a wall and a locked gate.

The new cemetery, at Strada Alexei Tolstoi 16, opened in 1917 and still serves the community. The same survey counts about 20,000 stones, more than three quarters of them tilted or broken, and a tahara house. In the autumn of 1940 the municipality seized part of it and ploughed it for farming. The cemetery has a monument whose inscription begins “Here lie Jews turned into soap”; Yad Vashem has stated that the Nazis did not make soap from Jewish bodies, and the inscription reflects a belief widespread after the war. In March 2025 Nazi symbols were daubed on several gravestones, and an 18-year-old was detained.

Visiting

No regular opening hours are published for any of these sites. Visits to the synagogues and cemeteries are arranged in advance with the Jewish Community of Bacău, Strada Erou C.M. Hasan 2A, tel. +40 234 534 714, per the Federation’s website. What to see:

• Grünberg’s dome and wall paintings in the Grain Merchants’ Synagogue
• The masonry Torah ark and the central bimah
• The old cemetery, one of the oldest in Moldavia
• The monument and tahara house in the new cemetery

For the community’s history, see our story on the Jews of Bacău.