The Jews of Orăștie: the Synagogue on Castle Street and the Rabbi’s Daughter

Orăștie — Broos to the Saxons, Szászváros to Hungarians — is an old Saxon town in southern Transylvania, between Deva and Sebeș. Its Jewish community was small and Neolog, and what remains of it is chiefly a synagogue on Castle Street, restored by the municipality and turned into an exhibition hall. The town was also the birthplace of one of the leading scientists in multiple sclerosis research.

A small community in a Saxon town

For centuries Orăștie was a town of Saxons, Hungarians and Romanians, and Jews settled here late and in small numbers. Unlike the large communities of northern Transylvania, which were mostly Orthodox and Hasidic, the community here belonged to the Neolog stream — the moderate, acculturated Judaism of Hungary that stressed its members’ Hungarian identity. The building’s listing as the “former Neolog synagogue” attests to this, as does the biography of the town’s best-known daughter, discussed below. We found no reliable source with exact population figures for the town’s Jews.

The synagogue on Castle Street

The synagogue stands on Strada Cetății, “Castle Street”, near the walls of the old town. According to the Explore Carpathia database it was built in 1896 and used as a synagogue until the mid-20th century. Other sources give earlier dates, 1867 and 1878, and we found no primary source that settles the question. The building is a listed historic monument.

Once the community was gone the building stood empty. According to a 2021 JTA report it had been renovated about fifteen years earlier, that is, in the mid-2000s. Today it is an exhibition hall run by the town council for exhibitions and cultural events. In October 2017 a permanent exhibition of old illustrations and photographs of the town, “Orăștie as Our Grandparents Knew It”, opened there, organised by the “Aurel Vlaicu” branch of the ASTRA association with the support of the town hall.

In June 2021 the building’s windows were smashed with stones. Two archaeologists from the local ethnography museum discovered the damage, and the police identified several children and teenagers as suspects and classified the incident as vandalism.

The rabbi’s daughter: Elizabeth Roboz Einstein

In 1904 Elizabeth Rosenbluh was born in Szászváros, the daughter of Jenő Rosenbluh, the rabbi who led the town’s synagogue. According to a biography published in Scientific American, the family was Neolog; the father died in 1914, leaving the mother to support five children. The family adopted the Hungarian name Roboz. Elizabeth graduated in 1920 from a Lutheran secondary school in the town and, because the numerus clausus law restricted the admission of Jews to Hungarian universities, went to study chemistry in Vienna, graduating with distinction in 1928.

In 1940 she emigrated to the United States. In the 1950s she turned to neurochemistry, and with Marian Kies she purified and characterised myelin basic protein — research that helped establish multiple sclerosis as an autoimmune disease and eventually contributed to the development of Copaxone. In 1959 she married Hans Albert Einstein, the son of Albert Einstein. She died in 1995.

The war and the cemetery

After Transylvania was partitioned in August 1940, Orăștie remained on the Romanian side. The Jews of southern Transylvania were not deported to Auschwitz like their brethren in the north, which passed to Hungary, but they suffered under the racial laws of the Antonescu regime and the nationalisation of Jewish property. In 1942 their deportation to Poland was planned, and the plan was cancelled. We found no reliable source describing the fate of the Jews of Orăștie itself in those years.

JewishGen’s cemetery project lists a Jewish cemetery in Orăștie, without details of its location or condition. About twelve kilometres from town, in Geoagiu, there is a small Jewish cemetery whose oldest stone dates from 1831; according to a 2000 survey it was kept by a caretaker paid by the Deva community.

Visiting

The synagogue can be seen from outside at any time, on Strada Cetății near the remains of the fortress. An exhibition is shown inside, but we found no opening hours published by a reliable source — check with the town hall in advance. There is no active Jewish community in Orăștie today. The nearest is the Deva community; according to the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania its address is Strada Gheorghe Barițiu 5, tel. +40 254 215 550. Contact it with questions about the cemetery too. There is no kosher food in town.