Șimleu Silvaniei: The Northern Transylvania Holocaust Memorial Museum

The synagogue of Șimleu Silvaniei, built in 1876 according to the museum’s founders, is the only synagogue left in Sălaj County. Since 11 September 2005 it has housed the Northern Transylvania Holocaust Memorial Museum, which tells what happened to the region’s Jews in the spring and summer of 1944. About five kilometres away, in the yard of a brick factory in the village of Cehei, some 8,500 Jews were held that year before they were deported to Auschwitz.

The Community of Somlyó

The town, known in Hungarian as Szilágysomlyó, belonged to Hungary until the end of the First World War and again from 1940 to 1944. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jews settled here in the 18th century. An organised Orthodox community was founded in 1841, and in 1885 it became the official centre for the Jews of the surrounding area. There were 838 Jews in 1891 (18.4% of the population), 1,586 in 1930 (21%) and 1,496 in 1941 (16.4%). A boys’ elementary school opened in 1894 and a girls’ school in 1921.

ANU – Museum of the Jewish People describes the community as largely Hasidic. Rabbi Moses Haim Lits Rosenbaum served from 1888 to 1897. In 1898 Rabbi Samuel Ehrenreich took office; the Judaica calls him extremely Orthodox. He stayed with his community to the end and was deported with it to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. The town was also the birthplace of the Hollywood producer Joe Pasternak (1901–1991) and of the pianist Gisella Grosz, who was deported to Riga in 1942 and murdered there. A list of the heads of Jewish families in the county in 1944, preserved in the Sălaj memorial book, names about 250 households in Șimleu: merchants and craftsmen, a chief rabbi, rabbinical judges, a shochet and the keeper of the mikveh.

The Synagogue

According to the Jewish Architectural Heritage Foundation (JAHF) of New York, a partner in the restoration, the synagogue was built in 1876. It served Jews from the town and from nearby villages such as Giurtelecu Șimleului and Nușfalău. The Judaica mentions a synagogue built in 1850; it is not clear whether that refers to an earlier building. After the war the building was neglected and fell into decay. According to the Judaica it was still standing in 1971, when 40 Jews lived in the town; ANU gives 21 for the same year.

The Ghetto at the Cehei Brickworks

Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. At a meeting in Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare) on 26 April, the authorities chose Szilágysomlyó as the place to concentrate the county’s Jews, and round-ups in the zone began on 3 May. The site was the Klein brick factory at Cehei, about five kilometres from the town, in an isolated, marshy area. According to the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, the yard measured 700 by 200 metres and had a three-room building, a kiln, two open sheds and 25 barracks with no side walls. The historian Attila Gidó classes it as a “collection camp” rather than a ghetto inside a town.

The Jews of the Crasna, Cehu Silvaniei, Jibou, Supuru de Jos, Șimleu Silvaniei, Tășnad and Zalău districts were brought here, about 8,500 people. Some 3,500 had no shelter at all. The daily ration was a bowl of soup and 80 grams of bread, and the drinking water was contaminated. According to the Virtual Museum, gendarmes under László Krasznai tortured the prisoners and raped many women. Pinkas HaKehillot records that the Jews of Cehu Silvaniei reached Cehei after a four-day train journey; of the 550 deported from that town, about 30 came back.

The camp was emptied in three transports to Auschwitz, on 31 May, 3 June and 6 June 1944. According to JAHF they carried 3,106, 3,161 and 1,584 people, 7,851 in all. The Virtual Museum states that about 70% were sent to the gas chambers on arrival. According to ANU, about 440 Jews returned to the town by 1947, but most later moved to other cities or emigrated to Israel.

From Synagogue to Museum

According to JAHF, the New York architect Adam Aaron Wapniak visited the synagogue in 2003 and, encouraged by Mihaela Gross, took up its restoration. He was joined by Alex Hecht, a dentist whose parents survived the Holocaust from Nușfalău, and who led the fundraising. The museum opened on 11 September 2005; Mayor Septimiu Țurcaș officiated. According to the AEPJ, the exhibition was arranged by the researchers Lya Benjamin, Oliver Lustig, Harry Kuller and Otto Adler.

JAHF says that it runs the museum together with the Romanian association Asociația Memorială Hebraică Nușfalău, and that the Claims Conference and the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania are among its supporters. The Wiesel Institute does not run the site. The official CIMEC museum guide lists the Șimleu Silvaniei town council as the administrator. According to the AEPJ, in January 2020 the museum’s representatives received the order of “Cultural Excellence”, Knight rank, from the President of Romania.

What to See

• The synagogue itself: the restored prayer hall and the Torah ark, shown in JAHF’s interior photographs.
• The permanent exhibition: according to CIMEC, an exhibition on the Holocaust of the Jews of north-eastern Transylvania in 1944, when the region was under Hungarian rule.
• The children’s plaque: unveiled in the courtyard on 27 January 2017, a granite plaque gives the surnames and number of persons of 546 Jewish children born in Șimleu who were sent to their deaths from the Cehei ghetto in June 1944 (Tribuna Învățământului).
• Cehei: according to JAHF, an information marker was placed at the former ghetto site in August 2005. Its present condition has not been verified.

The museum is also an education centre: JAHF says tours are led by students, and AGERPRES reports that thousands of pupils and teachers have learned there. For its 20th anniversary in 2025 the actress Maia Morgenstern performed there, and an educational handbook, The Jewish Heritage of Sălaj, was launched.

Visiting

The CIMEC museum guide gives the address as Piața 1 Mai nr. 1, Șimleu Silvaniei; Jewish Heritage Europe gives the same address as an event venue. The CIMEC entry (updated October 2026) lists visits as “on request”, so arrange your visit in advance through the museum e-mail it gives (muzeul.holocautului@gmail.com), and check before visiting. According to Adevărul, the synagogue is a few hundred metres from the Báthory castle in the town centre. We found no official address for the former ghetto site at Cehei. There is no active community in the town and we found no kosher food there, so bring supplies.