Giurgiului: A Cemetery of the Pogrom, the Ships and the Rescued Stones

In 1929, as the Filantropia cemetery in the north of the city was filling up, the Bucharest Jewish Community opened a new burial ground at the southern edge of the city, on Șoseaua Giurgiului. Here the victims of the 1941 pogrom were buried, here the refugees of the Struma and the Mefküre, lost in the Black Sea, are remembered, and here were brought headstones from the old cemetery that the Antonescu regime destroyed.

The Twentieth-Century Cemetery

According to the Bucharest Jewish Community, the Giurgiului cemetery opened in 1929. JewishGen gives 1929/1930, and an older American survey dates it more loosely to “the beginning of the 20th century”. It is the youngest of Bucharest’s three active Jewish cemeteries. Filantropia, the old Ashkenazi cemetery in the north of the city, opened in 1865, as did the Sephardic cemetery opposite Bellu. If Filantropia is the cemetery of the nineteenth century, of its maskilim and early community leaders, Giurgiului reflects the generations that came after them: the Jews of 1930s Bucharest, of the war, and of the communist decades.

JewishGen describes it as the second-largest Jewish cemetery in Romania, and Romanian sources call it the largest in Bucharest. Its area is estimated at some 14 hectares, and the number of people buried here at more than 35,000. The sources do not clearly identify the cemetery as Ashkenazi or Sephardic in rite. It appears to have served the community as a whole, but we found no explicit confirmation.

Winter 1941: The Graves of the Pogrom Victims

On 21–23 January 1941, during the rebellion of the Iron Guard legionaries, rioters rampaged through Bucharest’s Jewish neighbourhoods. Some 120–125 Jews were murdered, many of them in the Jilava forest. Paul Schwartz, president of the Bucharest Jewish Community, said at a commemoration that the victims’ graves “can be seen lined up in the cemetery on Șoseaua Giurgiului”; some were also buried at Filantropia. According to the JewishGen survey, 86 of the pogrom victims are buried here. Every year on 21 January a memorial ceremony is held at the monument in the cemetery, attended by the Federation of Jewish Communities; in some years it has been moved to the Holocaust Victims Memorial in the city centre.

The historian Anca Tudorancea of the Center for the Study of the History of the Jews in Romania photographed the victims’ headstones here and at Filantropia and used them to reconstruct their biographies, “people with names and professions”, in her words.

Two Ships That Never Arrived

The cemetery has two memorials to Jewish refugees who sailed from the port of Constanța for the Land of Israel and died in the Black Sea. The Struma sailed in late 1941, was held off Turkey for long weeks, and in February 1942 was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. Some 770 refugees and crew died, and only one person survived. A Bucharest Jewish Community report describes cemetery workers cutting back dead trees that had hidden “the Struma monument”.

The Mefküre was sunk on 5 August 1944, on its way from Constanța to Istanbul. According to JewishGen only 11 of its passengers survived, and the memorial’s inscription speaks of 301 victims. The memorial was erected in 2003 on the initiative of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania and the Bucharest Jewish Community.

Fragments of an Erased Cemetery

Bucharest’s old Jewish cemetery on Sevastopol Street closed to burials in 1864. In 1942 the Antonescu regime ordered it abolished. Until July 1944 the graves were dug up, and Jewish forced labourers had to move the remains. Some of the headstones were brought to Giurgiului, where, according to the JewishGen survey, they stand on a dedicated platform; others are scattered across the cemetery, and unidentified remains were placed in a mass grave. Giurgiului, the city’s youngest Jewish cemetery, thus became a refuge for fragments of its oldest.

A Field of Weeds and Records

The cemetery’s condition mirrors the fate of the community. Most of Bucharest’s Jews emigrated to Israel or elsewhere, and fewer than 2,000 remain in the city; many graves no longer have visitors, and weeds fill the plots. In October 2008 vandals toppled more than 130 headstones along two paths and ransacked the administration offices. According to Revista 22, this happened during the autumn Jewish holidays. In its report, the Bucharest Jewish Community describes its recent work at the site: clearing more than 4,000 tonnes of rubble along the wall, pruning 114 old poplars, laying concrete paths in plots 319 and 1A and repairing the 1,146 graves along them, rebuilding about 200 metres of collapsed fence, and round-the-clock security. According to the community, some 3,500 people buried at its expense across the three cemeteries have no relatives and no headstone.

For descendants of Bucharest families, the Giurgiului burial registers are held at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, and JewishGen runs a project to transcribe them. The early records are in Romanian, with Hebrew names added in various hands; the later ones are generally in Romanian only.

Visiting

The cemetery is at Șoseaua Giurgiului 162 in southern Bucharest. Do not confuse it with the Sephardic cemetery, at Șoseaua Olteniței 2 near the start of the same road. This is an active cemetery run by the Bucharest Jewish Community. 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. The grounds are large, and the community notes that visitors are served in order of arrival. If you are looking for a family grave, bring a full name, an approximate date of death and a plot number if known.

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. It is customary to leave a small stone on a grave and to wash one’s hands on leaving. These are general customs, not the site’s rules, so check the exact guidance with the cemetery office. Because of the vegetation and unstable headstones, keep to the marked paths and wear closed shoes.