The Jews of Reghin: A Timber Town on the Mureș

Reghin — Sächsisch-Reen to the Saxons, Szászrégen to the Hungarians — is a timber town at the confluence of the Mureș and Gurghiu rivers, about 32 kilometres north of Târgu Mureș. The Orthodox and Hasidic community that formed there in the mid-19th century numbered more than 1,600 on the eve of the Holocaust. On 4 June 1944, 3,149 Jews from the town and its surroundings were sent from a ghetto in a brick factory to Auschwitz.

A Saxon town on the Mureș

Reghin is first mentioned in 1228, and for centuries it was home to Saxons, Romanians and Hungarians. Jews were not welcome. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, the first evidence of a Jewish presence dates from the early 19th century, when a Jewish cloth dyer was allowed to live in the town; the Encyclopaedia Judaica puts the beginnings of settlement at the end of the 18th century. An organised community formed in the mid-19th century — in 1849 according to the Judaica, and after the restrictions were lifted in 1851 according to YIVO — and most of the settlers came from Bukovina and Galicia, bringing a strong Hasidic influence with them.

According to YIVO, in 1852 thirty-nine Jewish families rented a prayer house, and in 1866, when 282 Jews lived in the town, they founded a synagogue. The community then grew quickly: 394 Jews in 1891, about 7% of the population; 1,587 in 1930, about 16%; and 1,653 in 1941. Jews worked in trade, industry and crafts, and above all in timber — some owned sawmills. In 1885 Reghin became the administrative centre for the rural Jewish communities around it.

An Orthodox and Hasidic community

After the emancipation of 1867 and the General Jewish Congress of Hungary in 1868–1869, the community chose the Orthodox camp, and remained Orthodox throughout its existence. Its first rabbi was Hillel Pollák, whom the Encyclopaedia Judaica describes as spiritually close to Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein. He was followed by Rabbi Moses David Sofer and by Rabbi József Freund, who had studied in Frankfurt and led the community from 1907 to 1944. Alongside the great synagogue there were two kloyzn, prayer houses where the Hasidim worshipped under their own rabbis.

A Jewish elementary school was founded in 1874; it closed, was reorganised in 1910 and operated until the war years. Until 1918 it taught in Hungarian, and afterwards in Romanian. According to the Judaica, some of the cheders translated the Pentateuch into German rather than Yiddish, so that the children would learn the language. The community maintained a burial society and an association for poor children, and from 1919 Zionist activity flourished; many members of the youth movements emigrated to the Land of Israel.

1944: the ghetto in the brick factory

Under the Second Vienna Award, in August 1940, Reghin passed with northern Transylvania to Hungary. According to YIVO, in April 1944 the community numbered 1,682. After the German occupation of Hungary the town became one of the 13 central ghettos of northern Transylvania. In May 1944 the Jews of Reghin and the surrounding area were concentrated in a brick factory, a place never meant for human habitation. Jews from the eastern districts of Maros-Torda county and from the Csík region were also brought to the ghetto.

Zsuzsa Diamantstein, who was brought to the ghetto from the region, told the Centropa archive that her group was first taken to the brickyard, and that the farmhouses along the road leading to it were emptied to house the detainees: women in the rooms, men in the lofts and young people in the hayloft. She and other young girls were taken to work in the officers’ club.

On 4 June 1944 a single transport left Reghin for Auschwitz, carrying 3,149 Jews from the town and its surroundings — according to YIVO and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project. The Encyclopaedia Judaica estimates the number of deportees at about 6,000, and we were unable to reconcile the two figures. Most of the deportees were murdered on arrival.

After the war

After the war, 820 survivors and Jews who had come from other parts of Romania rebuilt the community. Emigration to Israel and elsewhere gradually thinned it: by 1971 only 20–25 families remained, and by the early 21st century no more than ten Jews. The Jews of Reghin now belong to the Târgu Mureș community.

The great synagogue still stands, but it is no longer a house of prayer. Photographs published on the Leo Baeck Institute’s JBAT site show the former building, not far from the German church further down the street, filled with small vendors’ stalls and commercial space. We found no reliable source giving its exact address or legal status.

The cemetery

The Jewish cemetery is at Strada Cerbului 35. According to the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project survey of 2000, it was founded in the 19th century and is enclosed by a masonry wall with a locked gate. It holds between 500 and 5,000 gravestones of marble and granite, inscribed in Hebrew, Hungarian and Romanian — many decorated with reliefs, portraits and iron grave fences. There is a rabbi’s ohel and a Holocaust memorial. In 2000 Jews from abroad restored the stones, the gate and the wall.

Rabbi Hillel Pollák is buried here. In April 2026, after the cemetery was desecrated, Benny Gantz said that Pollák was his great-great-grandfather and that other relatives of his are buried there. On the night of 11–12 April 2026, according to the Romanian police, 14 gravestones were knocked over, and the police opened a criminal investigation. According to Marius Geller, a native of Reghin, this was the third desecration in nine years: in October 2017 minors displaced ten gravestones, and at Passover 2023 another 20 graves were desecrated.

Visiting

• The cemetery — Strada Cerbului 35; the gate is locked, so arrange in advance.
• The former synagogue — now commercial space; it can be seen from outside.
• Târgu Mureș community — Strada Aurel Filimon 23, Târgu Mureș; tel. +40 265 266 455 per the Federation’s website.

We found no opening hours published by a reliable source. Arrange a cemetery visit in advance with the Târgu Mureș community, to which the Jews of Reghin belong. There is no kosher restaurant in the town, so plan ahead.