The Jews of Huși: the Bishop’s Town on the Prut

Huși, the bishop’s town in south-eastern Moldavia near the Prut, was for more than two hundred years a town of Jewish merchants and craftsmen: in 1899 it had 4,057 Jews, more than a quarter of its population. The community survived the Second World War, but emigration emptied it. One synagogue and two cemeteries remain, the older with tombstones from the mid-18th century.

Under the bishopric

Huși was the seat of an Orthodox bishopric and the capital of Fălciu County, about nine kilometres from the Prut. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the first Jews settled here in the last quarter of the 17th century. Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot relates that in 1676 the prince of Moldavia allowed the estate’s owner to bring “foreigners” onto his land, after which Jews began to settle in the town, and that in 1806 the bishop was permitted to bring in another group. The town’s website, written by Paul Steimberg on the basis of Hera Steimberg’s research, cites a bishopric document of 8 January 1604 listing seven Jewish merchants and craftsmen among its debtors — evidence we did not find in any other source.

The major growth came in the 19th century. In 1831 there were 261 Jews, 5.2 per cent of the population; in 1859, 2,395; and in 1899, 4,057, or 26.2 per cent. Jews traded in grain, butter, honey and hides at the weekly fair, and worked as craftsmen. In 1889, according to the Encyclopaedia, 70 per cent of the town’s merchants were Jews.

Synagogues and cemetery

According to the Pinkas and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the synagogue was rebuilt in 1794. Christian neighbours objected to the building, and the dispute lasted until the mid-19th century. In 1860 the district governor closed one of the synagogues as being too close to a church, and the Interior Ministry ordered it reopened after the community appealed. Around 1910 the town had seven independent synagogues. According to the town’s website the guilds had synagogues of their own: the furriers’ (Blănari), the tailors’ (Croitori), the “Great Klaus”, the Beit Midrash and the Postelnicu synagogue. A mikveh was built in 1880.

The old cemetery was founded, according to local tradition, in 1680 on land bought from the bishopric, and its oldest surviving tombstone dates from 1747. The burial society’s minute book was opened in 1775. A new cemetery was opened in 1880; according to JewishGen it holds about 700 graves.

Doctors, schools and struggles

A Jewish hospital operated in the town from 1822 to 1906. The physician David Almogen (1823–1897), born in Galicia, settled in Huși in 1866, served as municipal physician and wrote popular medical works. Education was the scene of a long struggle between modernisers and the Orthodox: the school opened by the B’nai B’rith lodge in 1876 closed and a talmud torah replaced it in 1877; the modern school of the “Cultura” association, founded in 1897, became a talmud torah in 1901. A Zionist branch was founded in 1898. According to the Pinkas, the town’s rabbi before the war was Nahum Shemaryahu Schechter, born in Darabani, who emigrated to Israel in 1952 and died in Jerusalem in 1967.

Antisemitism accompanied the community: a blood libel (in 1822 according to the Pinkas, in 1882 according to the Encyclopaedia), restrictions on Jewish merchants in 1884, and the “Romanian Brotherhood”, founded after 1900 to boycott Jewish traders. In 1907, during the peasant revolt, some 400 armed peasants tried to loot Jewish homes and were dispersed by the army. In 1911 Ion Zelinski-Codreanu, father of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, later founder of the Iron Guard, began teaching at the town’s secondary school. According to the Encyclopaedia, the school remained a centre of antisemitism between the wars.

The Second World War

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the community was not destroyed during the war. In 1941 the town had 1,972 Jews. According to the Pinkas, after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union in June 1941, 120 heads of families were arrested on suspicion of aiding the enemy, because a large military camp lay nearby. Huși became a collection point for Jews expelled from the villages of Răducăneni, Drânceni and Hoceni, and the community ran a soup kitchen for the poor, the deportees and the forced-labour battalions working in the area. Jewish houses, mills, factories, land and vineyards were confiscated, and craftsmen, clerks and merchants lost their livelihoods. In the spring of 1944, 108 orphans from Transnistria arrived in the town, and the community took care of them.

After the war and today

The expelled villagers and refugees from northern Bukovina stayed in Huși, and in 1947 it had 2,750 Jews. Communist nationalisation and emigration, mainly to Israel, broke up the community. By 1969 some sixty families and a synagogue remained; by 2000, 26 Jews; and by 2005, twenty. According to the town’s website, most synagogues and community buildings were demolished for lack of funds, and the one remaining synagogue opens twice a year. In March 2019, 73 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery were smashed; the Federation of Jewish Communities noted at the time that the community numbered a few dozen, mostly elderly members. Former residents in Israel paid for a new fence and a mortuary house at the cemetery still in use.

Visiting

• Synagogue — the one remaining synagogue opens twice a year, according to the town’s website; its address is not published by an authoritative source, so arrange with the community.
• Old cemetery — on Strada Călărași; most stones are toppled or damaged.
• New cemetery — per JewishGen: Șoseaua Stănileștiului 6.
• Arranging a visit — the Jewish Community of Huși, per the Federation’s website: Strada 1 Decembrie 16, tel. +40 235 472 741.

Huși lies between Iași and Galați; it combines well with a trip to Iași, and visits should be arranged in advance.