The Jews of Târgu Neamț: the Shtetl Below the Fortress

Târgu Neamț, the market town at the foot of Neamț Fortress in northern Moldavia, was a classic Jewish shtetl for some two hundred years: in 1899 Jews made up about 42 per cent of its population. It had synagogues and study houses of craftsmen, tailors and Hasidim, and a large cemetery on the hill. Today one synagogue, the Craftsmen’s Synagogue, and only a handful of Jews remain.

From the 15th to the 18th century

According to a local tradition cited by the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Stephen the Great, who ruled Moldavia from 1457 to 1502, allowed Jews to settle in the town. In 1579 Peter the Lame expelled the Jews from the principality. They returned in the 17th century, and according to the Encyclopaedia the oldest tombstones found in the town date from 1677 and 1689. According to the Romanian Holocaust database, drawing on Matatias Carp’s Black Book, the town already had a synagogue in 1737.

The historian Emanuel Bălan, author of the community’s history (Evreii din Târgu-Neamț, Hasefer, 2019), describes two waves of settlement: craftsmen invited by the princes in the 15th and 16th centuries to towns under the fortresses, and merchants who came to the annual fair in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, stayed and built the shtetl. Only 12 Jewish families were counted in 1772–1774; by 1821, according to Carp, there were 220.

Libels, fires and a monastery

Life under the fortress was not quiet. In 1710 the town’s Jews were accused of ritual murder after the body of a Christian child was found. According to Carp, five members of the community were killed and 22 arrested; the inquiry found them innocent and they were released. The Encyclopaedia Judaica lists further blood libels in 1765, 1806, 1816, 1836 and 1859. In 1821, during the Greek Eterist revolt, the town was set on fire. The Encyclopaedia says about half the Jewish population was killed; Carp says at least a hundred Jews were murdered and the synagogue burned.

One episode involves the nearby monastery. In 1849, according to the Encyclopaedia, its abbot ordered the old synagogue and the mikveh demolished, and six Jews were killed trying to resist. The community appealed to Constantinople, and the vizier ordered the monastery to pay damages. In 1855–1856 the monastery provided land, money and bricks for a new synagogue and mikveh.

A shtetl of study houses

In 1859 Târgu Neamț had 3,006 Jews, and in 1899 3,671, about 42 per cent of the inhabitants. Most were merchants, craftsmen and cattle dealers. The community’s history records many prayer houses, named after their founders or congregations: “Chabad” (1830), “Meites” (1826), “Boslever” (1836), “Iosel Șoils” (1852), “Alter Novacs” (1854), the Tailors’ (1869), “Klazel” (1874) and the Craftsmen’s. On the eve of the Second World War, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, there were eight prayer houses, an old-age home, a mikveh and a school.

The religious climate was conservative. A Jewish primary school opened in 1890 was closed in 1893 under pressure from religious circles backed, according to the Encyclopaedia, by the Hasidic rebbe of Buhuși, and reopened only in 1897. Rabbi Hayyim Mordecai Roller served as the town’s rabbi from 1895 to 1941 and died in Jerusalem in 1946. Between the wars Jews sat on the town council, and in 1931 a Jew served as deputy mayor.

The war years

After September 1940, under the National Legionary State, Jews were arrested, beaten and extorted into handing over their property and businesses. The community’s president was held for three days and tortured until he signed sale contracts. In early July 1941, 377 Jews were taken hostage and interned in camps, and men aged 20 to 60 were sent to forced-labour detachments. In August 1941, 78 hostages were held in the community’s old-age home and in the Leipziger and Boslever synagogues. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that during the war the town’s Jews were expelled to Piatra Neamț, while its entry on Buhuși lists the Jews of Târgu Neamț among those moved to Buhuși. In February 1944 Dr David Morghenștein brought to the town 75 orphans rescued from Transnistria, and the local community cared for them.

Emigration and what remains

About 2,900 Jews lived in the town in 1947, 1,800 in 1950 and some fifty families in 1969. In 1954 one synagogue remained in use and the rabbi was Shalom Dramer. Among those who left for Israel was the Kabbalah scholar Professor Moshe Idel, Israel Prize laureate, born here in 1947, who emigrated with his family in 1963. In an interview with the Shalom Hartman Institute he described the town as a “shtetl” where nearly all Jews spoke Yiddish. Most synagogues were demolished in the 1960s and 1980s; the Boslever synagogue came down in 1983. The 2011 census counted four Jews in the town.

The Craftsmen’s Synagogue (Sinagoga Meseriașilor), a low building with tall windows and wooden shutters, still stands. Its date is disputed: according to a local newspaper it was completed in 1857, according to the 2010 report of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in 1870. The same newspaper says the interior is painted with landscapes and animals, and that the building was consolidated in 1977 together with the cemetery. The 2010 US report listed it as a functioning synagogue.

The cemetery on the hill

According to Bălan, the community had three successive cemeteries: the oldest, behind the fortress, was swallowed by landslides; the second, from the 18th century, stood on the site where the old hospital was built in 1852; the third, from 1838, lies on the road to Fălticeni and is still in use. A 2000 JewishGen survey counted about 5,500 gravestones on an area of roughly 200 by 150 metres, more than three quarters of them toppled or broken. Inscriptions are in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Hungarian and Romanian, and they include veterans of Romania’s War of Independence. A visitor who documented the site noted the deep carving and traces of paint on the stones.

Visiting

According to the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Târgu Neamț is today attached to the Piatra Neamț community. Visits to the synagogue and the cemetery should be arranged in advance with the Piatra Neamț community (Strada Petru Rareș 7, tel. +40 233 223 815). We found no published opening hours.

• The Craftsmen’s Synagogue — Strada Mărășești 1, per the 2010 US report
• The cemetery on the hill, on the road to Fălticeni — by arrangement
• Neamț Fortress above the town
• On the way: Piatra Neamț and the wooden Baal Shem Tov synagogue