The Jews of Ploiești: A Community in the Oil Town

Ploiești, capital of Prahova County, sits at the crossroads between Bucharest, Moldavia and Transylvania, and from the mid-19th century it was also Romania’s oil capital. Jews lived here from the second half of the 17th century, and at its height the community numbered nearly 4,000 people, with five synagogues and two schools. Of all this one synagogue survives — Beth Israel on Strada Basarabilor.

Beginnings: outside the town

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica and Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot, the first Jews settled in Ploiești in the second half of the 17th century. The community was so small that at first it buried its dead in the cemetery of Buzău, acquiring its own plot only at the end of the century. Gravestones from 1719–1740 were later found set into the floor of a church. Early in the 18th century the first synagogue was demolished on the ruler’s orders, and the Jews moved to live about two kilometres outside the town. The markets followed them to the Jewish quarter, and the road leading there was called “Jews’ Street” until 1882.

Early in the 19th century Sephardi Jews arrived from the Balkans — Pinkas HaKehillot gives the year 1806 — and settled on a street the Ashkenazim called “di frankishe gas”. In 1830 the Sephardim asked the hakham bashi to recognise them as a separate community and were refused. The result was a distinctive arrangement: one kahal and one cemetery for Ashkenazim and Sephardim, but separate synagogues and burial societies. The census of 1831 recorded 280 Jewish taxpayers in the town.

Trade, oil and Zionism

The Jews of Ploiești were smiths, tailors and shoemakers, and above all merchants: they exported farm produce, wool and hides to Brașov, Hungary and Vienna, and from the mid-19th century many of them dealt in oil — part of the process that made the town the centre of the Romanian oil trade. Life was not quiet: Pinkas HaKehillot lists blood libels in the early 19th century and in 1815, 1867 and 1871, and expulsion orders from the villages in 1844 and 1849. In 1899 the town had 2,478 Jews, 5.5% of the population.

In 1875 the boys’ school named after Luca Moise, whose estate funded it, opened, followed in 1896 by a girls’ school. The rabbis included David Moidel, who served here before becoming chief rabbi of Bucharest, and members of the Brezis family: Rabbi Judah Aryeh Brezis, who served until 1908, and his son Rabbi Dr. Joseph Hayyim Brezis (1911–1922), who later headed the office of the Zionist Organisation of Romania and the Jewish National Fund in the country. A Hovevei Zion society was founded in 1894, and in 1913 the townsman Baruch Kahana gave 130,000 gold francs to the Jewish National Fund; Kfar Baruch in the Jezreel Valley bears his name. Ploiești also produced the linguist Lazăr Șăineanu, who was repeatedly refused citizenship and moved to Paris, and the mathematician David Emanuel, a professor at the University of Bucharest.

Between the wars Jews sat on the town council, and one served for a time as deputy mayor. In 1930 the community numbered 3,843. In 1939 Rabbi Dr. Menahem Safran was elected rabbi of the town, serving until 1956.

Beth Israel on Strada Basarabilor

According to Pinkas HaKehillot the town had many synagogues: the “Rabbi’s Synagogue” (1780), the Great Synagogue (1820, rebuilt in stone in 1840), “Itzeles”, the Sephardi “Heikhal” and the artisans’ synagogue. The only one to survive is Beth Israel, the house of the “rit occidental” congregation — Jews of the Western rite, who according to local sources organised in 1882. According to the community history written by Laura Cristina Geala, their “temple” was first inaugurated in 1901 in an existing building; on 10 August 1910 the city authorised a new one, the foundation stone was laid on 17 April 1911, and the building was in use from April 1912. The journalist Bogdan-Lucian Sălăjan attributes the design to the architect Israel Goligher. The Federation of Jewish Communities gives 1910 as the year of construction.

The Moorish-style building is massive outside and refined inside: a central hall with two side aisles, flat ceilings and restrained decoration. Under communism it served as a state notary’s office and a Party kindergarten — which may be why it survived. It was restored after 1989 and rededicated on 13 November 2007. According to Sălăjan, the early 20th-century organ brought from Vienna can no longer be played. The Federation’s list marks the synagogue as active.

Autumn 1940: the Iron Guard in the oil town

The oilfields drew Nazi Germany to Ploiești as early as 1939, and in autumn 1940 German army units were stationed in the town. After the “National Legionary State” was proclaimed in September 1940, Cojocaru, an Iron Guard member, was made police commander; he confiscated Jewish businesses and arrested merchants and community leaders. On 10 November 1940 about thirty Jews were arrested on a charge of attending a Communist meeting and tortured for more than two weeks. On 17 November Legionaries demolished the Great Synagogue, the Rabbi’s Synagogue, the Sephardi Heikhal and the Luca Moise school, on the pretext that they had been damaged in that month’s earthquake. Torah scrolls were burned, and Jews conscripted for forced labour were made to carry out the demolition. The furnishings went to churches and monasteries, and the girls’ school and the bathhouse were confiscated.

On the night of 27–28 November 1940, 11 of the prisoners were taken to a nearby forest and murdered. Among them was Rabbi David Friedman, a scion of the Ruzhin dynasty, who kept a prayer house in his home. Chief Rabbi Menahem Safran was also arrested and tortured, and was released at the last moment through special intervention.

Forced labour, not deportation

Ploiești lies in the Old Kingdom (the “Regat”), and its Jews were not deported en masse to Transnistria as the Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia were. But after the war against the Soviet Union began, in summer 1941, men aged 18 to 60 were sent to the Teiș camp in Dâmbovița County, and youths aged 13 to 18 were conscripted for forced labour. In January 1942 men over 50 were released; others were dispersed to other towns and sent to forced labour in Bessarabia and Moldavia. The figures in Pinkas HaKehillot tell the story: 3,596 Jews in 1941, and only 2,075 in 1942. On 1 August 1943 the Allies bombed the town’s oil installations; according to local sources, Beth Israel came through the war as the only synagogue left standing.

After the war and today

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, nearly all of Ploiești’s Jews returned after the war, and in 1947 about 3,000 lived there. Emigration to Israel thinned the community quickly: about 2,000 in 1950, and about 120 families with one synagogue in 1969. In 2021 the then president of the community, Adela Herdan, said it had no more than 80 members. According to the Federation’s website the community is now led by Grațiela David and is also responsible for the Jews of nearby Câmpina.

The cemeteries

The cemetery opened in 1818 on Strada Vlad Țepeș, too close to the town, was closed at the end of the 19th century; according to a JewishGen survey from 2001, no stones remain visible on the small plot on Strada Vasile Lupu. The active cemetery is on Strada Aprodul Purice — no. 72 according to Adevărul, no. 74 according to JewishGen. It is walled with a locked gate and has a tahara house, thousands of gravestones in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Hungarian and Romanian, a plot of Jewish soldiers from the First World War and a memorial to the victims of fascism. In June 2021 some 16–19 stones were knocked over; police identified young suspects and found that the act was not antisemitic.

Visiting

• Beth Israel synagogue and community offices: Strada Basarabilor 12. Community telephone per the Federation’s website: +40 244 511 932. No opening hours have been published — arrange in advance.
• Cemetery: Strada Aprodul Purice; the gate is locked, visits by arrangement with the community.
• On the way: Ploiești lies on the main road from Bucharest to the Prahova valley, Predeal and Brașov, and makes a natural stop on a drive to the mountains.