The Jews of Turda: An Orthodox Community on the Border

Turda — Torda in Hungarian, Thorenburg in German — is the old salt town on the Arieș river, about thirty kilometres south-east of Cluj. For generations Jews were barred from living in the mining districts, so the community here is relatively young; yet between the two world wars Turda was a centre of Orthodox Judaism in Transylvania. During the Second World War the town remained on the Romanian side of the border, and Jewish refugees from Hungarian-ruled Northern Transylvania passed through it.

A salt town closed to Jews

According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, an Austrian imperial ban imposed between 1693 and 1700 kept Jews out of Transylvania’s mining districts, and Turda, whose life revolved around its salt mines, was one of them. The restrictions eased after 1850 and were formally repealed in January 1860. The Encyclopaedia Judaica mentions a document of 1669 in which a Jew from Alba Iulia signed an agreement with the townspeople, and describes settlement beginning at the end of the 18th century and an organised community in the 1830s. The figures show a tiny community until the mid-19th century: according to YIVO, only six Jews lived in the town in 1850 and 65 in 1857.

Once the restrictions were lifted the community grew steadily: 326 Jews in 1900, 482 in 1910 and 852 in 1930 — 4.2% of the population. Jews worked in trade and banking; among them were mill and factory owners, craftsmen and professionals, and today’s Strada Eminescu was the heart of the old Jewish quarter.

A centre of Transylvanian Orthodoxy

After the General Jewish Congress in Hungary in 1868–1869 the community chose the Orthodox stream and remained in it throughout its existence; unlike neighbouring Cluj, very few joined the Neologs. Only three rabbis led it over some eighty years: Rabbi Fülöp Wesel (1865–1898), his son Rabbi Ben-Zion Albert Wesel (1900–1938) and Rabbi Joseph Adler (1938–1944). According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica and YIVO, Rabbi Wesel and Rabbi Adler also headed the Central Bureau of the Orthodox Communities of Transylvania, making a relatively small town an organisational centre of Orthodoxy for the whole region.

From 1933 to 1940 the Hungarian-language Orthodox weekly Hoemesz (“The Truth”) was published in Turda. Alongside the rabbinate there were Zionist groups in the town, and a Jewish club was founded in 1936.

The synagogue on Strada Eminescu

According to YIVO, the community’s first synagogue was established in 1868. In its place, on Strada Mihai Eminescu, the Great Synagogue was built in the 1920s. Sources disagree on the date: local sources give 1921–1926, the Federation’s list of synagogues gives 1926, YIVO 1920 and the Encyclopaedia Judaica 1932. The building is eclectic with Moorish elements: the north and south façades carry pairs of lions in relief, the symbol of the tribe of Judah; the entrance is on the west and the Ark in the eastern apse. Above the entrance are two Hebrew inscriptions, the lower one from Psalms: “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter it.”

According to Biserici.org, the hall holds a black stone tablet of the Ten Commandments, donated in memory of Reb Moshe Dov Glanț and his wife Reisel, and a memorial plaque to Rabbi Ben-Zion Wesel, who died on 25 February 1938. The last service was held in the building in 1986 according to local sources, in 1996 according to the Cluj county tourism site; in 2000 the benches were sold. The synagogue is not among the active synagogues on the Federation’s list. In 2012 the municipal art gallery in Turda showed proposals by architecture students from Cluj for converting and extending the building, but we found no current source on a restoration plan.

The Second World War: on the Romanian side of the border

Under the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, Northern Transylvania — including Cluj — was torn from Romania and given to Hungary. Turda remained in Romania, close to the new border. In 1940 it had 726 Jews; in 1942 the Romanian authorities concentrated the Jews of the surrounding villages in the town, and the number rose to 1,805. According to the historian Ottmar Trașcă, in August 1942 the Antonescu government approved a plan to deport the Jews of Romania, which was to begin with the Jews of Timiș, Turda and Arad counties. The plan was never carried out.

Its closeness to the border made Turda a transit point. According to YIVO, a rescue centre was set up here in 1943, working with the Zionist movements and guided by Rabbi Moshe Weinberger (later Carmilly-Weinberger), the Neolog rabbi of Cluj; through it 2,500–3,000 Jewish refugees from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia reached Bucharest and Constanța, and many sailed from there to Palestine. In May 1944, when deportations from Northern Transylvania to Auschwitz began, the rabbi himself fled from Cluj to Turda and reached Bucharest on forged papers. The historian Antonio Faur quotes a Romanian police report of 25 May 1944, according to which checks by the Turda police found that many Jews from Cluj were trying to cross the border into Romania illegally. Professor Raoul Șorban also described a network of helpers in Turda, but his recognition as Righteous Among the Nations is disputed by survivors and historians.

In the autumn of 1944, after Romania had switched to the Allied side, Hungarian forces took Turda. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Soviet forces drove them out about five weeks later — before the town’s Jews could be deported.

After the war and today

Emigration to Israel and elsewhere quickly shrank the community. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, after the war services in the Great Synagogue were held only on festivals; by the early 1970s some 150 Jews remained, and in 2003 only 24, according to YIVO, belonging to the Cluj community. Turda has no separate community on the Federation’s list.

Visiting

• The synagogue: Strada Mihai Eminescu, in the heart of the old Jewish quarter (no. 24 according to local sources; the number is illegible on the Federation’s list). The building is not in use and no opening hours have been published; the façade and the lion reliefs can be seen from the street.
• The cemetery: We found no current, reliable source on the location and condition of the Jewish cemetery in Turda. Check with the Cluj Jewish community before visiting.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Cluj, Strada Tipografiei 25, telephone per the Federation’s website: +40 264 433 470.
• Nearby: Cluj — the synagogues and the memorial to the victims of 1944; Târgu Mureș.