The Jews of Odobești: a Synagogue in Wine Country and the Romanianisation Files

Odobești, a wine town at the foot of the Vrancea mountains near Focșani, was home to a small Jewish community about which almost nothing has been written. What remains is a synagogue from the 19th or early 20th century, and files in the county archive that record, almost year by year, how the town’s Jews were stripped of their citizenship, their land and their businesses under the Antonescu regime.

A community on the edge of Focșani

Odobești lies in the Moldavian part of the Old Kingdom (the Regat), in the historic county of Putna, whose seat was Focșani. Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot Romania has an entry on it in its section on the Regat, but the entry has not been translated into English, and we found no other authoritative source with population figures or the names of rabbis and institutions. The town hall archive, kept at the Vrancea branch of the National Archives, covers 1856–1950, and only from it can anything be learned about community life: in 1943, according to the description of the files, a confidential “search” was carried out in the archive and library of the Jewish community. In other words, the community then had an organised leadership, an archive and a library.

The synagogue on Strada Libertății

The list of synagogues of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania records a synagogue at Strada Libertății 21 in Odobești and dates it to the “19th–20th centuries”. It is not marked in the list as active. We found no architectural description or recent report on the building’s condition.

The war years in the archive files

Odobești was in the Regat, which stayed under Romanian rule, and its Jews were not deported to the death camps. But they went through every stage of the Antonescu regime’s “Romanianisation”. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) microfilmed the relevant files in the Vrancea archive, and the description of the collection makes it possible to follow the policy in a single town:

• 1938: files on the withdrawal of Jews’ citizenship.
• 1940: a “table of Jewish agricultural properties and real estate”. In a vineyard district this was the first step towards expropriation: according to the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, decree-laws of October and November 1940 and May 1941 barred Jews from owning rural land.
• 1941: at the Odobești district office (pretură): the sale of small plots of land expropriated from Jews, the reopening of closed Jewish shops under Romanian merchants, and a ban on Jewish employers hiring Christian servants.
• 1941–1943: expropriation of Jewish property, its transfer to the state and its lease to others. The National Centre for Romanianisation (CNR) also expropriated the Odobești alcohol factory and a property on Carol Street belonging to two Jewish owners.
• 1942–1943: lists of Jews and files on forced labour and public works.
• 1944: correspondence on “labour service in kind”, and a Putna prefecture file on returning a still to a Jewish owner from Odobești.

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jews expelled from the villages and towns of the district arrived in nearby Focșani during the war, and the community there also cared for 400 Jewish forced labourers from Southern Transylvania who had been brought to the area. We found no source stating whether the Jews of Odobești themselves were evacuated; the files of 1942–1943 show that at least some of them were still in the town. The plan to deport the Jews of the Regat to the Bełżec death camp, agreed to by the regime in the summer of 1942, was never carried out.

Visiting

• Synagogue: Strada Libertății 21, according to the Federation. The building is not in use and no opening hours are published, so check in advance whether it is still standing and whether it can be entered.
• Cemetery: we found no authoritative information on a Jewish cemetery in Odobești.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Focșani, Strada Oituz 4, according to the Federation.
• On the way: Odobești is close to Focșani and can be combined with a visit to the active synagogue there.