The Jews of Dorohoi: Pogrom, Deportation and Return

Dorohoi, a town in northern Moldavia on the Bukovina border, had a Jewish majority at the end of the 19th century: in 1899 it had 6,804 Jews, 53.6 per cent of the population. It was here, on 1 July 1940, before Romania had even entered the war, that Romanian army units carried out a pogrom, and a year and a half later most of its Jews were deported to Transnistria. The Dorohoi survivors were the first allowed to return, in December 1943.

A town on the trade road

Dorohoi lies on the Jijia river, at a crossroads of trade routes between Poland, Bukovina and Moldavia. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jews settled here in the 17th century; Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot mentions even earlier records and notes that the oldest dated tombstone in the old cemetery is from 1656. The community was organised as the “Jewish guild” (Breasla Jidovilor), first mentioned in 1799 and in existence until 1834, and received charters of privilege in 1799, 1808 and 1823. In 1803 about 600 Jewish families lived in the town.

Growth continued through the 19th century. In 1859 Dorohoi had 3,031 Jews, 50.1 per cent of its inhabitants, and in 1899, 6,804, or 53.6 per cent. According to the Pinkas, in 1831 all 24 of the town’s butchers were Jews, as were 27 of its 28 tailors. By 1930 the number had fallen to 5,820, still more than a third of the population.

Hasidim, rabbis and synagogues

Dorohoi was a Hasidic centre, and according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica rebbes occasionally lived here, among them Jehiel Michael Tierer and Hanoch Frenkel. Its rabbis included Hayyim Taubes (1847–1909), who had previously served in Sassov in Galicia and wrote commentaries and responsa, and Dov Ber Drimer, who served until his death in 1929. Before the Holocaust the town had 25 synagogues. According to the Pinkas, the Great Synagogue was built in 1825; alongside it stood the “Beit Shlomo” synagogue and craftsmen’s synagogues of the waggoners, hatters, shoemakers and tailors. A 2010 American survey dates the synagogue standing today to 1790, so its construction date is uncertain.

Modern institutions grew alongside religious life: a talmud torah and a secular Jewish school by 1895, a community hospital in 1920, and Hovevei Zion activity from the end of the 19th century. The Romanian-language writers Ion Călugăru, Sașa Pană and Ștefan Antim were born in Dorohoi.

1 July 1940: the pogrom

At the end of June 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and the Romanian army withdrew in disarray. In a clash with Soviet troops near Herța, a Romanian officer, Captain Ioan Boroș, was killed, together with a Jewish soldier, Iancu Solomon, who had tried to protect his commander. According to the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (the Wiesel Commission), on 1 July 1940, during the funerals in the Dorohoi cemetery, Romanian soldiers murdered on the spot ten Jewish soldiers who had attended. The violence then spread into the town, where soldiers killed Jewish civilians and looted their homes.

According to the Commission, most of the perpetrators belonged to the 3rd Group of Border Guards and the 8th Artillery Regiment. General Constantin Sănătescu, commander of the 8th Army Corps, put an end to the killing. The official count was 53 murdered Jews; the community and the Pinkas speak of close to 200. The investigation found two captains chiefly responsible, but none of the killers was court-martialled, and the punishments amounted to transfers and brief arrests.

November 1941: deportation to Transnistria

Historically Dorohoi was part of the Old Kingdom (the Regat), whose Jews were in general not deported. But according to the Pinkas the county was attached administratively to Bukovina in 1938 and returned to Moldavia only in 1944, and in November 1941 its Jews were sent to Transnistria together with the Jews of Bukovina. On 5 November the Jews were ordered to hand over gold, silver and foreign currency. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, about 2,000 men from the towns and villages of the county were gathered in the town and dispatched on 7 November, and the Jews of the town itself were deported from 12 November; by 14 November two transports carrying about 3,000 people had left. Many died in the sealed wagons before reaching Atachi on the Dniester.

The Wiesel Commission calls the deportation from Dorohoi County the best-researched case: the county prefect and the mayor asked the government to remove the Jews, and after the deportation their property was pillaged and 244 of the 607 Jewish homes stood empty. On 14 June 1942 about 450 more men were sent off; they were moved on to the German camps on the Bug, where most of them perished.

December 1943: the first to return

The Dorohoi community and the Union of Jewish Communities in Bucharest petitioned the Antonescu government to bring the deportees back. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica the government agreed as early as January 1943, but the decision was carried out only at the end of the year. According to the Pinkas, the first group left Transnistria on 20 December 1943, and by the end of the month 6,053 of the 10,368 deportees from the whole county had returned. Of the 3,074 deported from the town itself, about 2,000 came back. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica this was the first group of deportees allowed to return from Transnistria, and repatriation was halted at the end of January 1944. The Red Army entered the town in April 1944.

After the war and today

Refugees who settled in the town raised the community to 7,600 in 1947, and the communist authorities showed Dorohoi to foreign delegations as a “model shtetl”. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the last rabbi, Pinhas Eliyahu Wasserman (1917–1996), was required to stay in the town for some twenty years to maintain that image; he died in Jerusalem. A kosher restaurant operated in the town from 1967 to 1990. Emigration, mainly to Israel, emptied the town: 2,753 Jews in 1956, 1,013 in 1966 and only 49 in 2000. Former residents in Israel formed an association based in Kiryat Bialik, and a forest at Shoresh, near Jerusalem, commemorates the Jews of the town and county.

In a courtyard between apartment blocks near Union Square (Piața Unirii) two small synagogues still stand side by side; according to the 2010 American survey, one is used for prayer and the other is not in use. According to testimony given to the Centropa archive, the working synagogue is named after Rabbi Wasserman, and the nearby square now bears his name. The Jewish cemetery on Strada 1 Decembrie 1918 has, according to a 2000 JewishGen survey, more than 5,000 graves, monuments to the Holocaust victims, the pogrom victims and the Jewish soldiers, and a marked mass grave.

Visiting

• Synagogue — in the courtyard near Union Square (per the 2010 survey: Piața Unirii 3); no published opening hours.
• Cemetery and memorial — Strada 1 Decembrie 1918 no. 55; access by arrangement.
• Arranging a visit — the Jewish Community of Dorohoi, per the Federation’s website: Strada Spiru Haret 95, tel. +40 231 611 797.

A visit combines well with nearby Botoșani; arrange it in advance with the community or with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania.