Cluj 1944: The Iris Ghetto, the Trains to Auschwitz and the Kasztner Train

In five weeks in the spring and summer of 1944, almost 18,000 Jews from Cluj and its district were crowded into the open drying sheds of the Iris brickworks and sent in six trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 388 of them were taken out of the ghetto and eventually reached Switzerland on the “Kasztner train” – an episode that, a decade later, set off one of the gravest public crises in Israel’s history.

From Romanian Cluj to Hungarian Kolozsvár

In 1930 Cluj had 13,504 Jewish residents, 12.7% of the city, according to the community database of ANU – Museum of the Jewish People. In late August 1940 the Second Vienna Award handed Northern Transylvania, Cluj included, to Hungary. The city became Kolozsvár again, and Hungary’s racial laws were applied to its Jews.

The first blow came before the German occupation. In the summer of 1941 several hundred Jews without Hungarian citizenship were deported from the city to Kamianets-Podilskyi in occupied Ukraine and murdered there. In 1942 most men of military age were drafted into forced-labour companies and sent to the Eastern Front; many never came back.

The German Occupation and the Iris Ghetto

On 19 March 1944 Germany occupied Hungary. Within weeks almost 160,000 Jews in Northern Transylvania were concentrated in ghettos, according to the Wiesel Commission report (2004). In Cluj the order was posted one day in advance, and the round-up began on 3 May 1944. The Jews of the city and the county were brought to the open sheds of the Iris brickworks in the north of the city. By 10 May the ghetto held 12,000 people; at its peak, just before deportation and after the Jews of the Gherla ghetto had been moved in, it held “close to 18,000”.

The ghetto was run directly by the city police chief, László Urbán. The Jewish Council was headed by József Fischer, head of the Neolog community; its members included Rabbi Akiba Glasner, Rabbi Mózes Weinberger (later Professor Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger) and Ernő Marton, editor of the Zionist daily Új Kelet. The Commission notes that the ghettos of Northern Transylvania each had a “mint”: a building where Jews were tortured into revealing where they had hidden their valuables.

Six Trains to Auschwitz

The ghetto was emptied in six trains between 25 May and 9 June 1944. Appendix 1 of the Wiesel Commission report lists them:

• 25 May – 3,130 people
• 29 May – 3,417
• 31 May – 3,270
• 2 June – 3,100
• 8 June – 1,784
• 9 June – 1,447

That is 16,148 people in all, the same figure given by the Leo Baeck Institute’s Jewish Bukovina and Transylvania archive. The Commission itself cautions that its appendix figures do not always match other sources. From Northern Transylvania as a whole, the report states, 131,639 Jews were deported in 45 trains. How many of the Cluj deportees were murdered at Auschwitz is not known precisely. In 1945 a small number of survivors returned, joined by Jews from the surrounding towns; by 1947 the community numbered about 6,500.

The Kasztner Train

Dr. Israel (Rezső) Kasztner was born in Cluj in 1906, worked as a journalist on Új Kelet and as a Zionist activist, and moved to Budapest in 1942. There he helped found the Relief and Rescue Committee and, after the occupation, negotiated with Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher. According to the Wiesel Commission, under his “controversial deal with the SS” 388 Jews, among them József Fischer – Kasztner’s father-in-law – and his family, were taken out of the Cluj ghetto and brought to Budapest on 10 June 1944 – the day after the last train left for Auschwitz.

The train left Budapest on 30 June 1944. Yad Vashem gives 1,684 passengers, the USHMM 1,686. Instead of travelling to a neutral country it was diverted to Bergen-Belsen, where the passengers were held in the “Hungarian camp”. In August 1944, 318 of them were taken to Switzerland; the rest arrived there in early December 1944.

The Trial, the Murder and the Controversy

In Israel Kasztner was a government official and a Mapai activist. Malchiel Gruenwald published a pamphlet accusing him of collaborating with the Nazis, and the state prosecuted Gruenwald for libel. His lawyer, Shmuel Tamir, turned the case into a trial of Kasztner himself. On 22 June 1955 Judge Benjamin Halevi accepted most of the defence’s claims, writing that Kasztner had “sold his soul to the devil”. The verdict brought down Moshe Sharett’s government.

In early March 1957 Kasztner was shot near his home in Tel Aviv by young men from former Lehi circles, and died of his wounds days later. In January 1958 the Supreme Court, by a majority of three to two, overturned the core of the ruling on the collaboration charge. In July 2007 Yad Vashem received Kasztner’s private archive.

The controversy has never been settled. Critics argue that the community leaders in Cluj knew about Auschwitz and did not warn the public; the Wiesel Commission notes that Fischer was “reputedly” one of the few provincial leaders fully informed about the Final Solution. Defenders point to the 1,684 people who were saved, and to the fact that the Jews in the ghetto had no means of changing their fate. Historians are still debating the question.

Visiting: Places of Remembrance in Cluj

• Holocaust monument in Caragiale Park (Parcul I. L. Caragiale, city centre) – Cluj’s first monument to the victims of the Holocaust. It was made by the artist Egon Marc Lovith with the Jewish community and unveiled on 27 May 2014, seventy years after the deportations.
• The “Memorial Temple of the Deported” – the Neolog synagogue at Strada Horea 21, dedicated to the memory of the deportees, with a memorial plaque on its wall. The candle-lighting of the annual ceremony takes place here.
• Plaques at the railway station – in 2014 memorial plaques were placed on the façades of the Cluj and Dej railway stations, from which the trains left for Auschwitz.
• The Iris district – the brickworks stood in the Iris district in the north of the city. We found no current, reliable source describing a memorial at the site itself.
• Muzeon – a museum of the history of the Jews of Cluj, opened in July 2020. Its displays cover the deportations, the Kasztner train and a book with more than 10,300 names from the Yad Vashem archive. According to a September 2026 report, the museum is moving in November 2026 to a building at Strada Tipografiei 25 and will be closed for several months; check before you go.

The city’s memorial ceremony is held in early June, around the anniversary of the deportations. To visit the synagogue or attend the ceremonies, arrange in advance with the Jewish Community of Cluj or the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania.