The Jews of Odorheiu Secuiesc: A Small Community in the Heart of the Székely Land

Odorheiu Secuiesc — Székelyudvarhely in Hungarian — is the heart of the Székely Land in Harghita county. Until 1944 a few hundred Jews lived there in two congregations. On 3 May 1944, under Hungarian rule, 276 Jews from the town and nearby villages were rounded up, taken to the Târgu Mureș ghetto and from there to Auschwitz; 38 came back.

Two congregations in a Székely town

Jews were a small minority here. According to the journalist Márton Simó, who wrote a series on the town’s cemeteries for the Székelyhon portal, two congregations formed in the 19th century: a Status Quo Ante congregation and an Orthodox one, whose members came from the northern parts of the Habsburg Monarchy and from Galicia. Both existed until 1944. Under Austria-Hungary and between the wars the community numbered a few hundred, and the 1941 census counted 324 Jews, about 2.7 percent of the population — a figure also given by the historian Attila Gidó.

A local history teacher, Ioan Popa, said in 2013 that Jewish pupils often attended the town’s Reformed College. In an interview for the Centropa archive, Edita Adler described pre-war community life: the Jewish community club was the centre of social life, with Purim balls and Hanukkah celebrations. Family names such as Stein, Gottesmann, Hirsch, Kálmán and Goldstein are still remembered in the town.

The prayer house that was demolished

Unlike nearby Gheorgheni, Odorheiu never had a monumental synagogue. The Orthodox prayer house stood on Tompa László Street, and locals half-jokingly called it “the synagogue”. According to Elek Spierer, one of the town’s last Jews, it was still in use in the 1970s, and the community’s ritual objects were taken to Târgu Mureș. According to Székelyhon, the building was demolished in 2000. Nothing of it remains, and we found no authoritative source for when it was built.

1940–1944: labour service and deportation

Under the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, Northern Transylvania, including the whole Székely Land, was handed to Hungary. Jewish men aged 18 to 50 were drafted into forced-labour companies. According to Székelyhon, a company from the town was sent to Toplița (Maroshévíz), to Sărățel (Szeretfalva) and on to Ukraine. According to uh.ro, 214 Jewish men from the Udvarhely area died in labour service between 1942 and 1944, many of them at the Don bend.

After Germany occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, a regional meeting in Târgu Mureș on 28 April decided that the Jews of Udvarhely county would be concentrated in the Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely) collection camp, according to Gidó’s research. Ghettoisation in the area began on 3 May 1944. That day the Hungarian authorities gathered 276 Jews from the town and nearby villages in the courtyard of the teacher-training school (Tanítóképző), where they spent the night in the gymnasium. On 5 May they were taken by lorry to the Târgu Mureș ghetto, set up in a brickworks, and at the end of May they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to Transtelex, the trains left Târgu Mureș between 27 May and 8 June 1944, carrying 7,549 people.

According to Székelyhon, 208 of the 276 deportees died in the death camps or of hunger, disease and abuse. Uh.ro writes that only 38 returned, 22 men and 16 women, along with 88 men who came back from labour service. Another source says about a third returned, and the figures do not match.

After the war: a community that vanished

In 1948 the town had 88 Jews, but community life was never re-established. The communist regime confiscated property, and the survivors gradually emigrated to Israel and the United States. According to Székelyhon, the community had 58 members in 1956, 12 in 1966 and five in 1992. In the 2002 census one person declared the Jewish faith, and in 2011 nobody did. Elek Spierer, born in 1953, recalled in 2019 that when his father was buried in 1996, 11 men had to be brought from Gheorgheni, Târgu Mureș, Mediaș and Sighișoara to make up a minyan.

Memory: from 1994 to the 2026 memorial

The community’s own last commemoration took place in 1994. In 2019, the 75th anniversary of the deportation, the town hall and the town museum took over the ceremony, and Mayor Árpád Gálfi apologised to the Jewish community, acknowledging that many local citizens had helped with the deportation. In May 2026 a memorial by the sculptor Imre Berze was unveiled in the courtyard of the Baczkamadarasi Kis Gergely Reformed College, which opens onto the main square. Its plaques bear the names of the deported families, alongside lines by the Székely poet Sándor Kányádi, who remembered the Jewish friends he lost in the spring of 1944. Descendants from Israel attended, together with Renée Gold, born in the town and a survivor of Auschwitz, who turned 96 that day.

The cemetery

The Jewish burial ground lies beside the Reformed cemetery in the town centre, at the upper end of Éltetőkút Street. In 2013 Székelyhon described it as overgrown and hard to reach. According to uh.ro, a memorial was placed there for the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust at the initiative of Ernő Schwächter. Spierer also mentioned a further, neglected Jewish burial place towards the Cserehát district, but we found no other record of it.

Visiting

• The memorial (2026): in the courtyard of the Reformed College, which opens onto the main square.
• Jewish burial ground: beside the town-centre Reformed cemetery. No visiting hours are published. Visitors customarily cover their heads and leave a small stone on a grave.
• The prayer house: demolished in 2000; the site is not marked.

There is no Jewish community in the town. For information and arrangements, contact the Jewish Community of Târgu Mureș, Strada Aurel Filimon 23, per the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. Odorheiu lies about 100 km east of Târgu Mureș and a similar drive from Sighișoara, and fits well into a route that includes the Status Quo synagogue in Târgu Mureș.