The Jews of Hațeg: the 1864 Synagogue and the 1941 Evacuation Centre

Hațeg (Hungarian Hátszeg), a small town in the south of Hunedoara County, at the gateway to the upland region known as the Hațeg Country, was home to a small Jewish community whose synagogue, built in 1864, still stands. In 1940 the town remained on the Romanian side of the border, and its Jews were not deported to Auschwitz. But in 1941 Hațeg became one of three “evacuation centres” to which the Jews of the county’s villages were forcibly moved.

A small community, little written about

Very little has been written about the Jews of Hațeg. Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot Romania has an entry on it in its section on Southern Transylvania, but the entry has not been translated into English. According to a 2017 article by the journalist Daniel Guță in Adevărul, Hațeg was one of the larger Jewish communities of Hunedoara County, together with Deva, Petroșani, Hunedoara, Vulcan and Orăștie.

The synagogue on Strada Bisericilor

The list of synagogues of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania records a synagogue on Strada Bisericilor in Hațeg, with no street number, and dates it to 1864. It is not marked in the list as active. The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University photographed the building in 1997 (photographer Boris Khaimovich). Its index describes it as a 19th-century Ashkenazi brick synagogue, “abandoned”, in “fair” condition and of regional significance. We have found no authoritative record since then of its condition or of any new use.

1940–1944: the county’s evacuation centre

Under the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, Transylvania was partitioned. The whole of Hunedoara County, Hațeg included, remained in Romania, and the Pinkas HaKehillot lists Hațeg among the communities of Southern Transylvania. Its Jews suffered the Antonescu regime’s racial laws, expropriation and forced labour, but there was no ghetto here and no deportation to Auschwitz, as there was in Hungarian-ruled Northern Transylvania.

On 18 June 1941, on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Antonescu ordered the Jews of the villages moved to county seats and towns, according to the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. According to research by the historian Dan Grecu, based on the Hunedoara county archives and reported by Adevărul, most of the county’s Jews were concentrated in three “evacuation centres”: Deva, Ilia and Hațeg. In a 2019 article Adevărul describes “a castle on the outskirts of Hațeg” used for forced housing, and estimates that the three sites together held almost 5,000 Jews over the war years. According to Wikipedia, this was the Nalatzi-Fay manor in the village of Nălațvad, next to the town. Many of the evacuees were put to work building roads and railways and on public works.

Hațeg also reached the Jewish press abroad. In August 1943 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that more than 8,000 Jews from the small towns and villages of Romanian Transylvania had been sent to the “Hatzeg internment camp”, stripped of their belongings and required to feed themselves. This is a contemporary report, and the figure has not been confirmed by research. A 1942 file of the Jewish Council of Romania, kept in the National Archives in Bucharest and described on the Leo Baeck Institute’s site, deals with the “evacuation of Jews from smaller towns in the county” and with the affairs of the Hunedoara and Deva communities. The plan to deport the Jews of the Regat and Southern Transylvania to the Bełżec death camp, agreed to by the regime in the summer of 1942, was never carried out.

After the war

After the war, as in the rest of Romania’s communities, the town had a branch of the Jewish Democratic Committee, the communist body that took control of Jewish life. The National Archives in Bucharest hold a short 1948 note from the Hațeg committee about the coming elections. In the following years most of the region’s Jews emigrated, mainly to Israel. According to Adevărul, the 2011 census counted four Jews in Hațeg. The Federation lists no community in Hațeg today; the nearest is the community of Deva.

Visiting

• Synagogue: Strada Bisericilor, according to the Federation (no street number). The building is not in use and, as far as is known, can only be seen from outside. No opening hours are published.
• Cemetery: we found no authoritative information on a Jewish cemetery in Hațeg; ask the Deva community.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Deva, Strada Gheorghe Barițiu 5, according to the Federation.
• On the way: Hațeg is about 40 km south of Deva, and can be combined with Deva’s restored Great Synagogue and the synagogue of Orăștie.