The Seini Synagogue: A Museum of Transylvanian Jews

The synagogue of Seini, a small town between Satu Mare and Baia Mare, stood for decades as a warehouse and then as a ruin. Between 2024 and 2026 it was restored, at a cost of €2.4 million, to house a Museum of the Jews of Transylvania, a concert hall and a cultural space. In October 2026 Jewish Heritage Europe reported that it was reopening, and that descendants and others were invited to contribute to the new museum.

A Community Among the Vineyards

In Hungarian the town was Szinérváralja. According to Pinkas HaKehillot, the first Jews arrived from Galicia in the 1760s, and a census of 1785 already counted Jews from 15 surrounding villages. By then the community had a synagogue, a cemetery that also served the villages, a Chevra Kadisha, a mikveh and a shochet. The Pinkas says the community grew until the mid-19th century, partly because nearby Satu Mare was closed to Jews until the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–1849. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Seini became the official centre for the Jews of the area in 1885. About 15 villages belonged to its rabbinical district.

The Jews of Seini worked in retail and wholesale trade, crafts and brokering. Some owned vineyards and kept grapes for kosher wine, and large yeast merchants exported to Galicia until the First World War. According to the Pinkas, there were 634 Jews in 1900 (12.5%), 673 in 1930 (13%) and 712 in 1941. Nearly all were observant, and in 1930, 596 gave Yiddish as their mother tongue.

Rabbis and a Printing Press

The Pinkas lists a line of rabbis: Tzvi Hirsch HaLevi Ish Horowitz (about 1810–1840); Michel Tzvi Schonfeld (1850–1884), who moved to Jerusalem and died there; and Yechezkel Baneth, who led the community and a small yeshiva from 1889. His son-in-law, Yissachar Dov Segal Levi, succeeded him. The last rabbi, Avraham Schwartz, was murdered in the Holocaust.

Seini was also a centre of Hebrew printing. Jacob Wieder founded a press here, in 1905 according to the Pinkas; the Judaica dates its first Hebrew book to 1904. The press worked until the Holocaust and, according to the Pinkas, printed 130 Hebrew books, 82 of them in 1920–1930, as well as eight periodicals. It was the third largest in Transylvania, after Sighet and Satu Mare. Wieder’s son Judah moved to Haifa in 1932 and set up a press there. Between the wars Zionist groups were active in the town too, among them the girls’ group “Aviva”, founded in 1924, and Mizrachi.

The Synagogue

According to Jewish Heritage Europe, the synagogue was built in 1904. Pinkas HaKehillot describes a new synagogue built in the mid-19th century and enlarged and renovated in the early 20th. Next to it stands the former kosher butcher’s shop. According to the Judaica, three Jewish families remained in 1971; they looked after the large synagogue, which was dilapidated but still standing. According to JHE, in 1984, under communism, the Federation of Jewish Communities sold the building to a local cooperative, which used it as a warehouse. In 1998 it was sold to a private owner, and after his death the town bought it in 2019.

1944

From 1940 to 1944 Seini, like the rest of Northern Transylvania, was under Hungarian rule. The Pinkas says it has no information on the years between the annexation and the deportation. In May 1944 the Jews of Seini were taken to the Satu Mare (Szatmárnémeti) ghetto and deported from there to Auschwitz, according to both the Pinkas and the Judaica. JHE gives the number deported from the town as about 615.

According to the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, about 18,800 Jews were concentrated in the Satu Mare ghetto, the second largest in Northern Transylvania. Six trains left it for Auschwitz between 19 May and 1 June 1944, carrying 18,863 people. According to the Pinkas, about 150 survivors gathered in Seini after the war, but they soon left, most of them for Israel. There is no Jewish community in the town today.

The Restoration: Museum and Concert Hall

According to JHE, the project cost €2.4 million, mainly from EU funds, with a state grant. The town published its plans in 2021, and work began in May 2024. The aim was to return the building as closely as possible to its 1904 condition, with new lighting, sound, heating and air-conditioning. The former kosher butcher’s shop has been turned into a service space and the courtyard into a small public garden. The mayor is Gabriela Florica Tulbure.

In May 2026 JHE reported, citing a statement by the Maramureș Heritage Association, that the restoration was complete. In April 2026 the town issued a tender for the project’s equipment and furnishings, which is listed as awarded. In October 2026 JHE reported that the synagogue was reopening and that the public was invited to contribute to the Museum of the Jews of Transylvania. As far as we could find, the exhibition’s contents have not yet been fully published. Besides the museum, the building is planned to host concerts, theatre, workshops, art exhibitions and film screenings.

Visiting

We found no current official source giving the synagogue’s street address, opening hours or prices. Because the museum has only just opened, check with Seini Town Hall (Primăria Orașului Seini) whether it is open and what is on display, and check before visiting. There is no Jewish community in the town, and we found no kosher food there. The nearest Jewish communities are in Satu Mare and Baia Mare, and the visit combines well with the Great Synagogue of Satu Mare.