The Jews of Borșa: A Hasidic Village at the Head of the Vișeu Valley

Borșa, the large village at the head of the Vișeu valley below the Rodna Mountains in Maramureș, was home to one of the region’s oldest and most Hasidic Jewish communities. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, communal life existed there by 1751, and in 1930 about 2,500 Jews lived there, more than a fifth of the population. In May 1944, under Hungarian rule, its Jews were deported through Vișeu de Sus to Auschwitz.

Beginnings: in the days of the Ba’al Shem Tov

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jewish communal life existed in Borșa by 1751, and a local Hasidic legend says the Ba’al Shem Tov himself visited the village. The community’s memorial book, Sefer Zikaron Borsha: The Beloved Village at the Foot of the Carpathians, edited by Gedaliahu Stein (Kiryat Motzkin, 1985), records a tradition that there was already a Jewish settlement in Borșa in the Besht’s early days. Another tradition in the book says the village’s first Jew was one Avraham, who came from Sighet on the advice of Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg.

At the start of the 19th century, according to the Encyclopaedia, about 250 Jews lived in Borșa, and Hasidism was strong there. Many worked as labourers in farming, forestry and logging, while others owned sawmills and woodworking shops.

A Hasidic village

The community grew steadily: according to the Encyclopaedia, Borșa had 1,432 Jews out of 6,219 residents in 1891, 1,972 out of 9,332 in 1910, and 2,486 out of 11,230 in 1930.

The memorial book, 655 pages in Hebrew, gives much of its space to the village’s Hasidic life. Its chapters cover the court of the local rebbe, Rabbi Alter Menachem Mendel Hager, visits by other rebbes and the journeys of Borșa’s Hasidim to their masters’ courts, and the village’s synagogues. Among the chapter titles are “Twelve synagogues”, “The Upper and the Lower Synagogue”, the Etz Chayim synagogue, “The Zidichov kloiz in Borsa” and “The Old Synagogue”, as well as chapters on the ritual baths. Other chapters deal with Zionism, livelihoods, folklore and service in the Romanian army.

The fire of 1930

After 1918 Borșa, with southern Maramureș, passed to Romania. On 4 July 1930 fire destroyed the village’s Jewish quarter. The Encyclopaedia Judaica describes it as arson inspired by the Iron Guard, the Romanian fascist movement. The memorial book devotes a whole section, “The Big Fire”, to it.

1940–1944: under Hungarian rule

In September 1940 Maramureș, with Northern Transylvania, came under Hungarian rule, and the anti-Jewish laws already in force in Hungary were applied to the Jews of Borșa. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, according to the Encyclopaedia, Borșa’s Jews were confined in a local ghetto and then moved to the ghetto and deportation centre at Vișeu de Sus (Felsővisó), together with the Jews of nearby communities. About 9,100 Jews were deported from Vișeu de Sus to Auschwitz in three trains, on 19, 21 and 25 May 1944.

According to the Wiesel Commission, about 132,000 Jews from Northern Transylvania were deported to Auschwitz in May–June 1944. Borșa’s memorial book closes with a list of the dead and a section titled “Borsa: The Chronicle of Pain”, in memory of those who perished.

After the war

In 1947, 395 Jews lived in Borșa, survivors who had returned. Most emigrated to Israel, and by the 1970s, according to the Encyclopaedia, only two or three families remained in the village.

The cemeteries

The memorial book describes three cemeteries. The first served the community for about 150 years and was then closed to burials, though people kept visiting it in the month of Elul and on memorial days. The second, on a hill above the village, filled up, the book says, “until the change of regime”. The third was fenced and dedicated by the burial society, and the first person buried there was the son of the village rabbi, who died after Yom Kippur. The Federation’s 2007 cemetery list names a Jewish cemetery in Borșa under the Sighet community, with no address.

Visiting

• Cemetery: registered with the Federation under the Sighetu Marmației community, with no address or details. We found no recent description of its condition; check the location and access in advance.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Sighetu Marmației, Strada Basarabia 8, according to the Federation. No hours are published.
• On the way: Borșa lies at the head of the Vișeu valley, about 25 km east of Vișeu de Sus, on the road to the Prislop Pass.
• Nearby: Vișeu de Sus, where the 1944 trains departed, and Sighet, with Elie Wiesel’s birthplace.