The Jews of Podu Iloaiei: The Shtetl Where the Death Train Stopped

Podu Iloaiei, a town on the Bahlui River about 20 km west of Iași, was a Moldavian shtetl where Jews were the majority for much of the 19th century. On 30 June 1941 the second “death train” from Iași reached its station, and more than a thousand of its passengers arrived dead. They lie in a mass grave in the town’s Jewish cemetery, where an annual memorial ceremony is still held.

A Shtetl by the Bridge

According to Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot Romania, the place was first called “Lea’s bridge”, after a Jewish woman who kept an inn there in the 17th century. This is a tradition the Pinkas reports, not a documented fact. In 1810 several Jews settled there, and in 1818 the estate owner received a licence from Prince Scarlat Callimachi to found a market town by the bridge; the licence was renewed in 1823. The estate owners promised the Jews tax-free plots for two synagogues, a ritual bath and a cemetery.

The community grew fast. According to the Pinkas, 284 Jews lived there in 1831, half the population, and 1,962 in 1899, 67.9% of the population. Most were merchants and craftsmen — bakers, furriers, shoemakers and blacksmiths — and some owned mills on the riverbanks. According to the historian Itzik Schwartz-Kara, a native of the town, the Great Synagogue was inaugurated in 1862, as inscribed on its façade (the JewishGen survey gives 1876).

Hasidism, Zionism and a Pogrom

From 1868 until his death in 1878 the community was led by Rabbi Gedaliahu Aharon, a Hasidic rabbi of distinguished lineage. His teachings were collected in Chen Aharon, published in Iași in 1910. In 1894 a branch of Hovevei Zion was founded in the town, and in the first community elections, in 1921, the Zionist list won most of the votes. A community school operated from 1899, and a Hebrew kindergarten opened in 1926.

In the peasant revolt of 1907 hundreds of peasants descended on the town. According to Schwartz-Kara, about 50 shops were damaged before soldiers from Hârlău dispersed the rioters. After the pogrom some families emigrated to the United States.

30 June 1941: The Death Train

In the Iași pogrom of 28–29 June 1941 thousands of Jews were murdered in the streets and in the courtyard of police headquarters. On 30 June the survivors were loaded onto two sealed freight trains. The second train left for Podu Iloaiei, 15 to 20 km away, and took about eight hours. According to the final report of the Wiesel Commission, the Romanian authorities’ official account recorded that 1,900 Jews boarded and 1,194 died; by the Commission’s estimate the train carried up to 2,700 Jews, of whom only about 700 got off alive. The last car held the bodies of 80 Jews killed before departure.

“When the doors opened, the dead fell out, clusters of people holding each other,” the Pinkas records. According to Schwartz-Kara, more than 1,200 bodies were taken off the train and buried in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery. The town’s Jews took in the survivors, first in the synagogues and then in their homes.

Expulsion and the End of the Community

According to the Pinkas, 1,454 Jews lived in the town in 1941. That year an order was issued to evacuate them all, but it was postponed, according to Schwartz-Kara, after the mayor, Dr Ionescu, intervened. In April 1942 the Jews of Podu Iloaiei — about 1,500 people, according to the Pinkas — were expelled to Iași and housed there in synagogues. A Jewish reporter wrote on 14 April 1942 that almost a thousand Jews from Podu Iloaiei had arrived in the city and another 400 were awaiting evacuation.

After August 1944 few returned. In 1947 there were about 300 Jews in the town, and most left within a few years. By 1965, according to Schwartz-Kara, only a few old men remained, and a smith named Avram prayed alone in the bomb-damaged synagogue. The Great Synagogue was demolished in 1967.

The Cemetery and the Mass Grave

The Federation’s 2007 list of Jewish cemeteries records the Podu Iloaiei cemetery under the Iași community. According to JewishGen’s 2000 survey, it measures about 400 by 150 metres and holds hundreds of stones, most of them toppled or broken. The oldest gravestone dates from 1829, and there are sections for Kohanim, unmarried men and children. Over the mass grave of the train’s victims the Federation erected, after the war, a monument with a bilingual inscription: “Here are buried the victims of the savage massacres against the Jewish population.”

Every year at the end of June official ceremonies are held at the Jewish cemeteries of Iași, Podu Iloaiei and Târgu Frumos as part of the pogrom commemoration; so it was again on the 85th anniversary, in June 2026.

Visiting

• Cemetery and mass grave: in Podu Iloaiei, according to the Federation’s list (no address). According to the 2000 survey the gate locks; no visiting hours are published.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Iași, Strada Elena Doamna 15, according to the Federation. The simplest way to visit is the annual ceremony at the end of June, or by arrangement with the community.
• On the way: Podu Iloaiei lies on the road from Iași to Târgu Frumos, and a visit can be combined with the Pogrom Museum and the Great Synagogue in Iași.