The Jews of Galați: A Danube Port and the Capital of Hibbat Zion

Galați, Moldavia’s Danube port, was a community of merchants, craftsmen and boatmen, and the scene of repeated mob violence. In the 1880s it was the seat of the central committee of “Yishuv Eretz Israel,” which supported the beginnings of Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pinna, and it was the birthplace of the painter Reuven Rubin.

A Port on the Danube

Jews settled in Galați at the end of the 16th century. According to Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot, tombstones from 1590–1595 were found in the old cemetery. In the 18th century the town was Moldavia’s main port, and rivalry between Jewish merchants and Greek and Bulgarian ones took on an antisemitic edge. After the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) and the town’s declaration as a free port, the community grew: from 72 taxpayers in 1803 to some 6,000–7,000 people in 1841, and 13,066 in 1890, 22.1% of the population.

The community was formally organised in 1812. It founded a hospital in 1845, and in 1873 the “Franklin” B’nai B’rith lodge was founded, chaired by Joseph B. Brociner. In 1897 Galați hosted a convention of Romanian communities, with 49 delegates from 18 towns, and in 1906 the community received legal status.

Libels, Riots and the Drownings of 1867

Every year on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Greek sailors waiting for the Danube to thaw paraded an effigy of a Jew and attacked Jews. The Scottish missionaries Bonar and M’Cheyne, who visited in 1839, wrote about this custom. In 1797 (1796 according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica) a mob rioted after a blood libel, and Jews were killed and drowned in the Danube. In 1821, during the Greek uprising, rebels set synagogues on fire. Further riots followed in 1842 and 1846.

In spring 1859 several Jews were arrested, accused of drawing blood from a Greek child’s arm for Passover. The rioting lasted three days: several Jews were murdered, homes were looted and the Great Synagogue was destroyed. It ended only after foreign representatives intervened, chiefly the French and Baron Rothschild.

The affair that shook Europe came in 1867, under Ion Brătianu’s government, when Jews were expelled from Moldavia as “vagabonds.” According to the Pinkas, a group of deportees was put on a boat at Galați towards the Turkish bank, and Romanian soldiers landed them on a flooded island. The Turks rescued them and brought them back to the Romanian bank, where the soldiers pushed them into the water. Three drowned and six were jailed. The consuls of Austria, France, Britain, Italy, Prussia and Russia protested, and the Romanian government blamed the Turks. In 1868 there were further riots in the town.

Capital of Hibbat Zion in Romania

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, from 1881 to 1919 Galați was the centre of the Zionist movement in Romania. In summer 1881 Samuel Pineles founded the “Yishuv Eretz Israel” society, and at the Focșani conference in January 1882 Galați was chosen as the seat of its central committee. In September 1883 the movement decided to hand over to Baron Rothschild the two settlements founded with its support, Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pinna. In 1893 Hovevei Zion was founded here, and in 1899 it became the Zionist Organisation of Romania, based in Galați. Pineles corresponded with Herzl, and the paper Hatikva appeared in the town from 1915.

Even after the Zionist leadership moved to Bucharest, Galați remained an active centre. Until early 1921 some 11,000 refugees from the Ukrainian pogroms passed through it on their way to Palestine. In 1926 the Revisionist Zionist Organisation of Romania was founded in the town, and in 1928 the Zionist Baruch Zosmer was elected deputy mayor. In 1930 Galați had 19,912 Jews, 20% of its population.

Natives of Galați

• Reuven Rubin (1893–1974) was born in Galați. In 1912 he went to Jerusalem to study at Bezalel, and in 1923 he settled in Tel Aviv. After independence he was Israel’s first envoy to Romania. His house on Bialik Street in Tel Aviv is now the Rubin Museum.
• Nina Cassian (1924–2014), poet and pianist, was born in Galați into a Jewish family. In 1985, while visiting the United States, she learned that the Securitate had found her poems, and she was granted asylum there.
• Barbu Nemțeanu (Benjamin Deutsch, 1887–1919), a poet who translated Heine into Romanian.
• Abba Berdichev, a native of Galați, one of the Yishuv parachutists dropped into Europe. He was murdered at Mauthausen in January 1945, and Alonei Abba is named after him.

The Second World War

On 30 June 1940, during the withdrawal from Bessarabia, Romanian soldiers opened fire on a crowd gathered at Galați railway station. According to the Wiesel Commission about 300 people were killed, most of them Jews. In September 1940 fifty of the town’s Jews were declared hostages. In June 1941 the police herded some 3,700 Jewish men into a cinema, and from there they were taken to a camp in the village of Filești. According to the Pinkas, a plot to massacre them was foiled. From 3 July 1941 Jews had to wear a yellow star, and Jews from the surrounding villages were expelled into the town.

Men were sent to forced labour diverting the Siret and building dams, and some were deported to Transnistria. 1,557 houses and 25 ships were confiscated. In August 1944 the retreating Germans set whole quarters on fire, mostly Jewish ones, synagogues among them. The community itself was not destroyed: in 1942 it numbered 12,946 Jews.

After the War and Today

In 1947 Galați had about 13,000 Jews, in 1950 about 9,000, and by 1969 some 450 families remained. Most emigrated to Israel. In the 2002 census 115 residents declared themselves Jewish. The community, whose offices are at Strada Dornei 7–11, maintains the Craftsmen’s Temple, rededicated in 2014, and the cemetery. For both, see our story “The Synagogues of Galați.”

Visiting

The community office and synagogue are at Strada Dornei 7–11. According to the Federation’s website, the phone number is +40 236 413 662. No fixed opening hours have been published, so visits to the synagogue and the cemetery should be arranged in advance.