The Jews of Râmnicu Vâlcea: A Small Community in the Olt Valley

Râmnicu Vâlcea, the capital of Vâlcea County in northern Oltenia, was never a city of many Jews: about two hundred at most, and in the memory of one native, only a handful of families. Yet this small community had a synagogue, a rabbi and a cemetery, and the cemetery, enclosed by a wall, still exists. The city was part of the Old Kingdom of Romania (the Regat), and its Jews lived through the war under the Antonescu regime, with no deportation to Auschwitz.

A Small Community in a County Town

Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot Romania lists Râmnicu Vâlcea (under its old name, Râmnicul de Olt) among the communities of the Regat. According to the census figures cited by JewishGen’s Cemetery Discovery Project, about two hundred Jews lived in the city at the end of the 19th century, and 197 in the 1930 census.

The “Shul” and the Rabbi

Mira Tudor, who grew up in the city and was interviewed by the Centropa archive, remembered a modest community of ten to fifteen families. They had a small synagogue, a “shul” with a very large garden, and a rabbi who lived on a salary paid by the Jewish merchants. The Romanian community in the city, she said, also respected him. She contrasted the modest Jewish life of Râmnicu Vâlcea with Moldavia, where children studied in yeshivas from an early age. She and her sister, she recalled, were the only Jewish girls at the city’s high school; she graduated in spring 1940 with the highest average in her year.

1940–1944: Under the Antonescu Regime

Râmnicu Vâlcea lay far from the borders that changed in 1940, and its Jews spent the war years under the race laws of the Antonescu regime. According to the final report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (the Wiesel Commission), on 18 June 1941 Antonescu ordered the Jews of the villages moved to county capitals and towns, and 84,042 Jews aged eighteen to fifty were registered to supply unpaid labour. In 1942 the regime agreed in writing to deport the Jews of the Regat and southern Transylvania to the Bełżec death camp, then reversed course and resisted German pressure. The Jews of Vâlcea were not deported.

We found no published source on exactly what the city’s Jews went through in those years. The records exist: the Vâlcea branch of the Romanian National Archives holds the correspondence, reports and statistics of the Râmnicu Vâlcea community from 1929 to 1942, and of the neighbouring Drăgășani community from 1941 to 1943, as well as a fragment of the 1941 census of Jews. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) holds a filmed copy.

After the War

According to Mira Tudor, the city’s Jews “all left between 1950 and 1960”. The last known burial in the cemetery, according to the JewishGen survey, was in 1994. Today Râmnicu Vâlcea has an obște — a tiny community attached to the Jewish Community of Pitești — whose responsible person is Dominic Teleki, according to the Federation.

The Cemetery

The Federation’s 2007 list of Jewish cemeteries records a Jewish cemetery in Râmnicu Vâlcea, under the Pitești community. According to JewishGen’s 2001 survey, it was founded in the second half of the 19th century, and the oldest known gravestone dates from 1890. It measures about 70 by 40 metres and is part of a municipal cemetery complex, next to a Catholic cemetery. A masonry wall and a locked gate enclose it, and its pre-burial house has become the caretaker’s home.

• The stones: between 20 and 100, including double and sculpted tombstones, some with portraits or iron grave fences, inscribed in Hebrew, German and Romanian.
• Who is buried here: according to the survey, two Kohanim, Gustav Katz and Solomon Koch, and Sami Stern, a former president of the community. The Jews of Brezoi, in the Olt valley, were also buried here.
• Condition: at the time of the survey the community paid a caretaker who cleaned the stones and re-erected fallen ones.

Visiting

• Cemetery: in Râmnicu Vâlcea, according to the Federation’s list (no address). The gate is locked; no visiting hours are published. Confirm the location and access in advance.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Pitești, Strada Eroilor 1, according to the Federation; the person responsible for the Râmnicu Vâlcea community is Dominic Teleki.
• On the way: Râmnicu Vâlcea lies on the road from Bucharest and Pitești to Sibiu through the Olt valley, and can be combined with visits to Pitești and Sibiu.