The Jews of Tecuci: A Small Community in Southern Moldavia

Tecuci, a town in Galați County in southern Moldavia, was home to more than 1,500 Jews in 1930. Today it has an independent Jewish community registered with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, and two Jewish cemeteries. Verified material on the town is thin, so we set out precisely what is known and what still needs checking.

A community that grew in the 20th century

The census figures given by the JewishGen cemetery project describe a community that grew slowly in the 19th century and suddenly in the 20th: 44 Jews in 1803, 77 in 1831, 96 in 1838, 161 in 1859, 412 in 1910 and 1,531 in 1930. The source does not explain the jump between 1910 and 1930.

Tecuci has an entry in volume one of Pinkas HaKehillot Romania (p. 138), but we found no accessible translation, and no entry on the town in the major Jewish encyclopaedias. We therefore have no verified source on the founding of the community, its rabbis or its institutions.

One 19th-century detail is documented in a Romanian study of the history of medicine in the county. The historian Doru Parascan describes Dr. Moritz Kernbach, whom he calls a notable figure of the Jewish community of Botoșani, as county physician of Tecuci in 1846. According to Parascan, Kernbach came to the town through the efforts of the boyar Costache Conachi, and later served again as county physician from February 1855 to February 1857.

The synagogues: two addresses and an open question

The Federation’s list of synagogues gives two synagogues in Tecuci: one on Bran Street, with the year 1840, and one on Gheorghe Asachi Street, from the 20th century. Working synagogues are marked in bold on the list, and neither of these is; the list carries no date.

The sources disagree on which synagogue is the older and which still stands. According to Wikipedia’s list of synagogues in Romania, the Asachi Street synagogue was built around 1840 and still stands, while the state of the Bran Street synagogue is unknown — the reverse of the Federation’s dating. A review of Synagogues in Romania by the architects Aristide Streja and Lucian Schwarz (2009; Romanian edition 2012, published for the Federation) notes that the book’s table marks a synagogue in Tecuci with the letter D, “disappeared”. Jewish Heritage Europe lists “Tecuci Synagogue” among the buildings documented by a photographic project on Romanian synagogues, without further detail.

We found no current official source confirming which building stands today or in what condition, so check with the community before visiting.

The war years

Tecuci lay in the Old Kingdom and remained under Romanian rule throughout the war. According to the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, on 21 June 1941 Antonescu ordered Jewish men aged 18 to 60 from the villages between the Siret and the Prut to be sent to the Târgu Jiu camp, and their families and the Jews of the other Moldavian villages to be moved to the nearest towns. The JewishGen cemetery project records briefly that in 1941 the Jews of Tecuci were deported to Caracal in southern Romania. We found no other source for this, and have no details on the scale or length of the deportation or on who was included.

A study published by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania describes the forced-labour regime the authorities imposed on the Jews of the Old Kingdom in 1941. According to the International Commission, Antonescu wrote in 1943 that all trade in Moldavia, “up to Focșani”, must be “Romanianized”. In the autumn of 1942 Antonescu postponed indefinitely the Romanian-German plan to deport the Jews of the Old Kingdom and southern Transylvania to Belzec, and it was never carried out. We found no detailed source on what happened to the Jews of Tecuci themselves in these years.

Two cemeteries

A JewishGen survey carried out by the historian Lucian Nastasă on 17 December 2000 documents two Jewish cemeteries in Tecuci. The larger was established in the 20th century; its oldest known stone dates from 1912, and the last recorded burial was in December 2000. It covers about 300 by 250 metres, with between 500 and 5,000 visible stones, more than three-quarters of them toppled or broken. It has a Holocaust memorial and a memorial to Jewish soldiers. It is enclosed by a masonry wall with a locked gate, entry is by permission, and the land belongs to the community.

The old cemetery, from the 19th century, is much smaller — about 30 by 60 metres, with 20 to 100 visible stones, most toppled or broken — and its last known burial was at the end of the 19th century. According to the survey it is fenced with no gate, access is entirely closed, and seasonal vegetation blocks it. Inscriptions in both cemeteries are in Hebrew and Romanian.

The community today

The Tecuci community is listed as an independent community in the contact list of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, with Iancu Aizic as president. The 2000 survey estimated the number of Jews in the town at 10 to 100. We found no current source on regular services in the town.

Visiting

• The community: according to the Federation, the community’s address is Strada Bran 13, and a telephone number is given on the Federation’s website. Arrange any visit in advance.
• The synagogues: it is not verified which building stands today or in what condition; check with the community before you go. No opening hours are published.
• The cemeteries: the large cemetery is locked and entry is by permission, according to the JewishGen survey; the old one is closed altogether.
• Nearby: Galați; Focșani; Bârlad.