The Jews of Constanța: A Black Sea Port and a Synagogue Rebuilt from Ruin

Constanța, Romania’s Black Sea port, was home to two communities: Ashkenazim who arrived in the wake of the Russian army, and Sephardim from Anatolia. In 1941 the refugee ship Struma set out from here on its last voyage, and the community’s Great Synagogue, a ruin for decades, reopened in May 2026.

An Ottoman Town on the Coast

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, there was already a small Jewish settlement in Tomis, the town’s ancient name, in the 3rd century CE. The modern community began in 1828: according to the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), Jewish purveyors who came with the Russian army in the Russo-Turkish war stayed on in the town, then called Küstendje. Later, Sephardi Jews from Asia Minor founded a separate community. During the Russo-Turkish war of the 1850s the community grew and the cemetery was opened (1853 according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1854 according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica).

In 1868, on his way to Jerusalem, Moses Montefiore gave the community president, Ilie Avram, £200 to build a synagogue. Ten years later, in 1878, northern Dobruja passed from the Ottoman Empire to Romania. The Jews, as former Ottoman subjects, automatically received Romanian citizenship, so they were better off than most Romanian Jews, who were denied citizenship until after the First World War.

In 1899 Constanța had 957 Jews, 6.5% of the population, mostly merchants and craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths and watchmakers. In 1902 the community numbered about a thousand, some 400 of them Sephardim. It had two boys’ schools, a Sephardi one (taught in Spanish) and an Ashkenazi one. Rabbi Aaron Leib Feigenbaum led the town’s Hovevei Zion, and Rabbi Hayyim Solomon Donaufeld led Bnei Zion. In 1930 the town had 1,821 Jews, 3.1% of the population.

The Great Synagogue on Rosetti Street

The Ashkenazi synagogue stands in the old town, on the peninsula, on Strada C.A. Rosetti. The land was granted to the community by a firman of Sultan Abdülaziz, and a first prayer house was built on it in the late 1860s. In 1907 the community president, M. Bujes, applied to build a new one, and the municipality rejected the first plans. In 1910 the new president, Pincus Șapira, a watch and jewellery merchant, received a building permit. The architect Anghel Păunescu replaced the planned dome with a semi-cylindrical vault and designed a three-tiered façade with stone windows and doors in a Moorish idiom.

Sources disagree on the completion date: Romania’s Ministry of Development and the local press give 1911, while the Black Sea cities research project and the European Jewish Congress date the construction to 1910–1914. During the Second World War the building served as a German army depot. After the war it returned to use as a synagogue, and according to Adevărul services were held there until the early 2000s. Then it was abandoned: the roof collapsed, most of the stained glass was smashed and trees grew inside the hall.

For more than a decade attempts to save the building failed. At the end of 2017 the community handed it over to the National Investment Company (CNI), the restoration contract was signed in June 2023 and works began in August 2024. In February 2026 the Ministry of Development announced that the restoration was complete, at a cost of 15.7 million lei. On 29 May 2026 the synagogue was reopened at a ceremony attended by the Federation president Silviu Vexler, Chief Rabbi Rafael Shaffer, the local community president Sorin Lucian Ionescu, the minister Cseke Attila and the mayor.

The Vanished Sephardi Temple

The Sephardi community had its own synagogue from the mid-1860s, on a plot in the town centre donated, according to local sources, by Ismail Kemal Bey. As the community grew, the municipality approved in May 1903 a new “Israelite Temple of the Spanish Rite” to plans by the architect Adolf Linz. Sources disagree on the completion date: 1905 or 1908. The temple stood on Strada Mircea cel Bătrân, near the Greek church.

The building was badly damaged during the war, and again in the 1977 earthquake. According to Adevărul it was demolished after the earthquake; other sources give 1989, under Ceaușescu. Either way, nothing remains of the Sephardi synagogue.

War and Emigration Through the Port

In autumn 1940 a German military representative was posted to the town, and Jews were barred from the port. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, when the war against the Soviet Union broke out on 22 June 1941 all the town’s Jews were arrested and sent to a camp at Cobadin, and men and women were put to forced labour. In November 1941 they were allowed back to Constanța but confined to a special district. In 1942 the town had 1,532 Jews.

In those same years refugee ships sailed from Constanța. On 12 December 1941 the Struma left with about 770 refugees aboard. The ship was stuck in Istanbul harbour for some 70 days, because the British refused the passengers entry permits to Palestine. On 23 February 1942 the Turks towed it out into the Black Sea, and shortly afterwards it was sunk by a Soviet submarine’s torpedo. Only one passenger, David Stoliar, survived. In August 1944 the Mefküre left Constanța together with the Morina and the Bulbul. On the night of 5 August the Mefküre was sunk with about 300 passengers aboard, and only five of them survived. Who attacked it is disputed.

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, after the war and until 1951 Constanța was a port of departure for Jews emigrating to Israel. In 1947 it had about 2,400 Jews, among them refugees from Bukovina. By 1956 there were 586, in 1969 about sixty families with a synagogue and a rabbi, and in 2004 128 Jews.

The Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery is at Strada Bărăganului 4. According to a 2001 JewishGen survey, it measures about 300 by 400 metres and has more than 5,000 visible stones, over three quarters of them toppled or broken. The site is enclosed by a wall with a locked gate, so visits must be arranged in advance.

Visiting

• The Great Synagogue: Strada C.A. Rosetti, in the old town. We found no published opening hours.
• Community office: Strada Sarmisegetuza 3, tel. +40 241 611 598, per the Federation’s website.
• The cemetery: Strada Bărăganului 4, by arrangement with the community.

Visits to the synagogue and the cemetery should be arranged in advance with the community.