Filantropia: Bucharest’s Ashkenazi Cemetery and Those Buried There

In 1864 the old Jewish cemetery on Sevastopol Street was full, and a year later Bucharest’s Ashkenazi Jews opened a new burial ground on the north side of the city. Since then Filantropia has received Enlightenment-era physicians, writers and actors, community leaders and the victims of the 1941 pogrom — and its tens of thousands of headstones read almost like a row-by-row history of the community.

A New Burial Ground for a Growing Community

Bucharest’s old Jewish cemetery lay on Sevastopol Street; its oldest recorded headstone dated from 1716. When it closed for lack of space in 1864, the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities each received a burial ground of their own. The Ashkenazi one is Filantropia, named after the neighbourhood in the north of the city. According to a report by the Bucharest Jewish Community, it opened in 1865 and is the oldest of the city’s three active Jewish cemeteries. Jewish Heritage Europe also gives c. 1865. JewishGen’s cemetery survey records a headstone from 1863, earlier than the opening; it may be one of the stones later moved here from Sevastopol Street, but this has not been checked.

The Sephardic cemetery, opened the same year in the south of the city, is a separate story, as is the cemetery on Șoseaua Giurgiului, opened in 1929 when Filantropia itself was filling up.

Domes over the Tahara House

The most striking building on the site is the tahara house, the cemetery’s funeral hall: a square building crowned by five domes. Jewish Heritage Europe describes a “large, elaborate domed pre-burial house” and a striking Art Deco entrance gate. According to secondary sources (Wikipedia, drawing on the Romanian press and on Rudolf Klein’s study of Jewish cemeteries in Central and Eastern Europe), the chapel was built in 1908 by the burial society of the Jews of the “Western rite”, that is, the Ashkenazim. The same sources say it was designed by the architect Leonida Negrescu (Leon Schwartz) in a Moorish style with Romanesque and Neoclassical elements, and that it was damaged in the earthquakes of 1940 and 1977. In its own report, the Bucharest Jewish Community describes repairing the chapel roof and renovating the administration office and the waiting room.

From an Enlightenment Physician to Sebastian’s Journal

The grave regarded as the most important historically is that of Dr. Iuliu Barasch (1815–1863). Born in Brody in Galicia, Barasch was a physician, an educator and a spreader of Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) ideas among Bucharest’s Jews, and in 1858 he founded the city’s first children’s hospital. He was first buried in the Sevastopol Street cemetery, and when that cemetery was abolished in the 1940s his tomb was moved to Filantropia. According to Wikipedia, his tomb and the “Monument of the Heroes of 1916–1918” are the cemetery’s two entries on Bucharest’s list of historical monuments.

Others buried here include:

• Mihail Sebastian (1907–1945), playwright and novelist, whose journal of 1935–1944 is one of the key testimonies to wartime antisemitism in Romania. He was killed on 29 May 1945, when a truck struck him in Bucharest, just weeks after the war ended.
• Iosif Sava (1933–1998), musicologist and much-loved radio and television presenter, born in Iași as Iosif Segal.
• Academician Nicolae Cajal (1919–2004), virologist, vice-president of the Romanian Academy and president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania from 1994 until his death.
• Barbu Nemțeanu, poet and translator (born Benjamin Deutsch); one of the cemetery’s paths is named after him.
• According to the JewishGen survey, the historian Moses Schwarzfeld and rabbis of the Beck family are also buried here.

The Heroes’ Plot and the Victims of the Pogrom

Many Jews fought in the Romanian army in the First World War. On the main path and at the centre of the cemetery stand memorials to Jewish soldiers who died in that war. On Romania’s Heroes’ Day a wreath-laying ceremony is held here as part of the state commemorations; Mediafax reported one at the “Filantropia Israelite Cemetery”.

The next war left quieter traces. In the Iron Guard pogrom in Bucharest on 21–23 January 1941, some 120–125 Jews were murdered. According to Paul Schwartz, president of the Bucharest Jewish Community, their graves can be seen in the Giurgiului and Filantropia cemeteries. The historian Anca Tudorancea of the Center for the Study of the History of the Jews in Romania photographed their headstones in both cemeteries in order to recover the victims’ names and professions.

In 1942–1944 the Antonescu regime expropriated the Sevastopol Street cemetery and dug up its graves. Some of the remains and headstones were moved to the city’s other Jewish cemeteries, Filantropia among them.

The Grave of Adolf Hittler — the Hatter

One of Bucharest’s most curious headstones stands in the paupers’ section, row 18, number 9. It reads “Adolf Hittler”, with two t’s. According to a report in Evenimentul Zilei, based on a 1933 newspaper article, he was a Jewish hatter from Galicia who worked as a doorman at the Hotel Boulevard, opened a hat shop and died in 1892. The German dictator was born in 1889, so he was a boy of three when the hatter died. The Hebrew inscription names Rabbi Avraham Eliyahu son of Rabbi Shmuel and gives the date 20 Heshvan 5653. According to evidence gathered by the Eastern Europe blog Rio Wang, the Romanian inscription was chiselled off in the 1940s and restored in 1987. It is a small, strange witness to the way twentieth-century history reached even the headstones.

A Cemetery Whose Graves Mostly Have No Visitors

Filantropia is estimated to hold some 29,000 graves. Sources disagree on its area: one gives about 7 hectares, while the JewishGen survey records about 9.6 hectares. The headstones are made of marble, granite, sandstone and concrete, and they are inscribed in Hebrew, German, Romanian and French; the languages themselves tell the story of the community’s acculturation and emigration. The great majority of those buried here no longer have relatives who visit, because most of Bucharest’s Jews emigrated to Israel or elsewhere. According to the Bucharest Jewish Community, tree roots have dislodged headstones, and weeds can reach 2.5 metres in about six weeks. In recent years the community has cleared dozens of truckloads of vegetation, laid out a garden by the chapel and put round-the-clock security in place, with help from donors and the city hall.

Visiting

The entrance is on Bulevardul Ion Mihalache in the north of the city. Most sources give numbers 89–91, a few give 91–93. The site is far from the historic Jewish quarter and the Choral Temple, so plan a separate trip for it. This is an active cemetery run by the Bucharest Jewish Community, not a public park. We found no current, authoritative source for opening hours, so arrange your visit in advance with the community or with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. According to the community, visitors are served in order of arrival, and distances inside the grounds are large. If you are looking for a family grave, bring a full name, an approximate date of death and, if possible, a plot number.

By general Jewish custom, cemeteries are closed on Shabbat and on festivals, and men cover their heads. Kohanim (men of priestly descent) do not enter a cemetery. Visitors may leave a small stone on a grave and wash their hands on leaving. These are general customs, not the site’s rules, so check the exact guidance with the cemetery office. Many headstones are unstable, so do not lean on them. When photographing headstones, remember that they carry the names of families, some of whom are still living.