The Jews of Beiuș: A Community in Southern Bihor, on the Romanian Side of the Border

Beiuș (Hungarian Belényes), a town in southern Bihor County at the foot of the Apuseni Mountains, was the centre of a small, active Orthodox community with a large synagogue, a Jewish school and learned rabbis. In 1940, when nearby Oradea was annexed to Hungary, Beiuș remained in Romania, and its Jews were not deported to Auschwitz. We found no source on the synagogue’s survival, but the community’s two cemeteries are still there.

A Romanian Town, with the Bishop’s Blessing

In the 19th century Beiuș was a centre of Romanian culture in Bihor, with a Romanian majority and a Hungarian minority of about a third. According to Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot Romania, the first Jews settled there early in the 19th century with the permission of the Romanian Orthodox bishop of Oradea, and later bishops also treated them with tolerance. The community was formally founded in 1852 by 15 settlers, although more than 15 families already lived in the town. Most Jews were in trade and crafts; they spoke Hungarian, with Romanian as a second language.

Synagogue, Burial Society and School

According to the Pinkas, the burial society was founded in 1857 and the large synagogue was built in 1858; the memorial book of the Transylvanian communities dates the synagogue and ritual bath to 1857. In 1894 the synagogue was enlarged to serve the Jews of the area as well, so that about 500 people could pray there on the High Holidays. The Orthodox community served as a marriage-registration centre for the whole area, and in 1908, according to the Pinkas, 103 villages of Bihor County were affiliated to it.

In 1886 a Jewish elementary school opened in the town, one of the first in Transylvania. Between the wars the community had a study house, a seven-classroom school, a ritual bath and housing for the rabbi, two ritual slaughterers, the teacher and the community secretary.

The Rabbis

The first rabbi, Jakob Rubin, later moved to Valea lui Mihai (Érmihályfalva). Rabbi Simon Pollak, author of Shem Shimon, served the town from the early 20th century until his death in 1929; the Pinkas and the Transylvania memorial book differ on the year he took office. He was followed by Rabbi Asher Halevi Pollak, from 1931 to 1947, when he moved to Oradea.

According to the Pinkas, 563 Jews lived in the town in 1920 (14.4% of the population), 483 in 1930 and 433 in 1941. In the First World War about 30% of the town’s Jews were drafted into the Hungarian army, and 33 were killed.

1940–1944: On the Romanian Side of the Border

Under the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, Bihor County was cut in two: Oradea and the north of the county were annexed to Hungary, and their Jews were deported to Auschwitz in May–June 1944. Beiuș, by contrast, “remained in Romania”, in the Pinkas’s words, which lists it among the communities of Southern Transylvania. Its Jews lived through the war under the Antonescu regime: race laws, expropriation and forced labour, but no ghetto and no deportation to Auschwitz.

Conditions had already worsened in the 1930s, and according to the Pinkas Beiuș became a focus of extreme antisemitic activity. On the night of 31 December 1940, during the Legionary regime, Legionnaires attacked the synagogue, the community buildings and the rabbi’s house, causing heavy damage. Days later Rabbi Pollak was investigated on suspicion of Communist sympathies, and an army officer beat him and the Jewish teacher.

In 1941 the Jews of the villages were concentrated in the towns, as Antonescu had ordered on 18 June that year, and most of the Jews of Beiuș itself, according to the Pinkas, were pushed out of their homes into small flats on the edge of town. Many young people were sent to forced labour, and, according to the same source, some of those sent to Transnistria disappeared. The mayor, an Iron Guard member, announced that the synagogue would become a club; only opposition from non-Jewish residents prevented it. The Pinkas also mentions a plan to concentrate all the town’s Jews, about 500 people, in Arad, and says that in the end the village of Ginta served as a place of concentration for the Jews of Beiuș and the surrounding area.

In September 1944, when the Hungarian army pushed into Southern Transylvania, almost all the Jews of Beiuș fled, most of them to Deva and other southern towns. At the end of October the first returned and found widespread destruction. In 1947, 230 Jews remained in the town.

The Two Cemeteries

The Federation’s 2007 list of Jewish cemeteries records two cemeteries in Beiuș, the old and the new. According to the 2000 survey of JewishGen’s Cemetery Discovery Project:

• The old (Orthodox) cemetery, on Strada Plopilor: oldest gravestone 1852, last burial 1903, between 20 and 100 stones with Hebrew, German and Hungarian inscriptions. At the time of the survey it was overgrown, with no fence or gate.
• The new (Neolog) cemetery, at Strada Romană 36, on a hill: oldest known gravestone 1893, last burial 1994, between 100 and 500 stones, a separate section for Kohanim, and inscriptions in Hebrew, Hungarian and Romanian. According to the survey, Jews living abroad cleaned the stones around 1998.

We found no authoritative source on what became of the synagogue building.

Visiting

• New cemetery: Strada Romană 36, according to the Federation’s list. No visiting hours are published.
• Old cemetery: Strada Plopilor, according to the Federation’s list.
• Arrangements: the Beiuș community is attached to the Jewish Community of Oradea, Strada Mihai Viteazu 4, according to the Federation. Arrange your visit in advance.
• On the way: Beiuș lies south-east of Oradea and can be combined with Oradea’s synagogues.