The Jews of Valea lui Mihai: a synagogue bought back and a cemetery of rabbis

Valea lui Mihai (Hungarian: Érmihályfalva), a small town in northern Bihor County near the Hungarian border, was home until 1944 to an Orthodox community of more than 1,400 people. In May 1944 its Jews were sent to the Oradea ghetto and from there to Auschwitz. The synagogue later served as a warehouse and was sold, and former residents of the town bought it back and began restoring it. In the large cemetery stand the ohels of the town’s rabbis and memorial stones to Holocaust victims.

A community in the Érmellék valley

According to JewishGen’s KehilaLinks site, built by descendants of the community, Jews from Galicia settled in the town around 1780. They worked in farming and trade, and the town became a centre of Jewish life for the surrounding villages. The town hall’s website counts 89 Jews around 1800, and says Jewish settlement “greatly accelerated” in the 19th century and that Jews contributed “to a great extent” to the town’s economic and social development. JewishGen’s Cemetery Project gives the same figure, 89, for the 1839–1840 census.

The 20th-century figures also differ from source to source. According to JewishGen there were 1,042 Jews in 1900 and 1,430 in 1930. According to the town hall’s website, there were 967 in 1900 and 1,604 in 1930. According to KehilaLinks, between the world wars Jews led local industry: flour mills, textile works and a cement and brick factory. Zionist youth movements were also active in the town in those years.

The town’s rabbis

KehilaLinks lists the community’s rabbis from the early 19th century. Among the later ones were Rabbi Yeshaya HaCohen Rubin, appointed in 1869, author of Ateret Yeshaya, and Rabbi Moshe Yochanan Schonfeld, author of Nachalei Mayim, who served from 1891 to 1913 according to the site. The site also gives photographs and transcriptions of rabbis’ gravestones in the cemetery:

• Rabbi Yeshayahu Katz, died 17 Tishrei 5651 (1 October 1890), with his wife Hinda Lea (1927) nearby.
• Rabbi Moshe Yochanan son of Rabbi Benyamin, died 20 Sivan 5673 (25 June 1913), and his wife Sara daughter of Mordechai Merkel (1924).
• His sons, Rabbi Avraham (1928) and Rabbi Benyamin (1939).

According to JewishGen’s cemetery survey, the cemetery has graves of tzadikim with ohels, including those of Abraham, Moshe and Beniamin Johanan and his wife Sara.

The synagogue: from warehouse to restored house of prayer

An article published in 2013 on the town hall’s website tells the building’s history. The first synagogue stood behind the present building. When it became too small, the present synagogue was built at the end of the 19th century. The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University dates it to “1900?” and describes a brick building in the Hungarian Secession style. A 2010 survey by the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad gives the year 1830. According to the town hall’s article, services ended in the early 1970s as the number of Jews fell. In the 1980s the community rented the building to the local consumer cooperative, which used it as a warehouse. In 1990 the building passed to the cooperative, and in 1996 it was sold to the town’s Baptist congregation. Former residents of the town then bought it back through a foundation they set up in the United States, Sinagoga In Vale, and began restoring it.

In a 1997 photograph of the Center for Jewish Art, the building’s condition is classed as “poor” and its use as “abandoned”. The Center records restoration work in 2013–2014. According to the town hall’s article, in October 2013 the synagogue opened to the public for an exhibition during the town’s festival, “for the first time in many years”. The building was then managed by Lajos Klein (Klein Lajos), a local man, on behalf of the heirs of the foundation’s head. A concert was held there in March 2023, according to the news site regiomm.ro.

Two further details appear only on KehilaLinks. First, according to the site, the cornerstone of the Torah ark “was hidden for over fifty years by a gentile in Érmihályfalva”. Second, the site has photographs of the community mikveh. We found no current source on the mikveh’s condition or location.

1941 and 1944

In 1940 Northern Transylvania, including the town, passed to Hungarian rule. According to KehilaLinks, in 1941 ten Jewish families from the town were expelled across the border into Ukraine and murdered at Kamenets-Podolsk. We found no confirmation of this in another source.

According to JewishGen and KehilaLinks, in May 1944 the town’s Jews were rounded up and taken to the Oradea (Nagyvárad) ghetto, and from there deported to Auschwitz. The historian Attila Gidó writes that ghettoisation in the region’s gendarmerie districts began on 3 May 1944. The first trains left on 16 and 19 May, and deportations from the zone were largely complete by 9 June. According to the Wiesel Commission, about 132,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Hungarian-ruled Northern Transylvania in May–June 1944.

The testimony of survivor George White, given on KehilaLinks, describes the route. On 11 May the town’s Jews were ordered to assemble at the synagogue. From there they were taken by train to Nagyvárad and held in a lumberyard with Jews from other communities. On 19 May they were loaded into cattle cars, and on 23 May they reached Auschwitz-Birkenau. Another testimony on the site gives different dates. According to the town hall’s 2013 article, about 1,800 Jews lived in the town before the deportation, and about 2,000 including the nearby villages.

The cemetery and the Holocaust memorial

According to JewishGen’s 2001 survey, the Orthodox cemetery was founded in the mid-19th century and is large: about 300 by 100 metres, with 100 to 500 stones of marble, granite, sandstone and concrete. The inscriptions are in Hebrew and Hungarian. Most stones are in their original places. In 1998–1999 local non-Jewish residents repaired the cemetery. It is fenced with a locked gate, and the Oradea community pays a regular caretaker. A 2025 update to the survey describes a very large and relatively well-kept cemetery.

The cemetery has a Holocaust memorial, whose photograph and list of donors appear on KehilaLinks. Beside it stand family memorial stones inscribed “deported 1944”, among them those of the Feldman and Gluck, Lörincz, Weisz and Fisch families.

The community today

According to the town hall’s article, few Jews returned after the war, and most of them later emigrated to the United States and Israel. In 2013 about ten people in the town identified as Jewish. In the contact list of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Valea lui Mihai is an obște, a congregation attached to the Jewish Community of Oradea.

Visiting

• The synagogue: we found no address in a current official source. According to the town hall’s 2013 article, it is very close to the town hall. No opening hours are published. Arrange in advance with the Jewish Community of Oradea (Str. Mihai Viteazu 4, according to the Federation) or with the Federation.
• The cemetery: fenced and locked according to the 2001 survey. No address in a current official source. Arrange entry through the Oradea community, which pays for its care.
• The mikveh: no current information on its location or condition.
• Nearby: Oradea and the Zion Synagogue; Carei; Satu Mare; the Holocaust memorial in Șimleu Silvaniei.