The Jews of Vișeu de Sus: Elefant House by the forest railway

At the narrow-gauge station of Vișeu de Sus, where the Mocănița forestry train sets out into the Vaser valley, stands a small wooden house that is a museum to the town’s Jews. Before the war Jews were about a third of the population — an Orthodox community with strong Hasidic influence that lived mainly from the forest and timber. In spring 1944 they were confined in a ghetto and sent to Auschwitz; today the cemetery and the museum remain.

Elefant House: a museum in a wooden house by the station

The Jewish Museum “Elefant House” (Casa Elefant) is registered in Romania’s national museum guide (CIMEC) as a private collection at Strada Cerbului 5, on the forestry railway station grounds. According to the guide, the permanent exhibition on the history of the Jews of Vișeu de Sus opened on 13 June 2011 in one of the town’s last Jewish wooden houses, dismantled and rebuilt beside the historic station. The guide also names the forestry railway company CFF Vișeu de Sus, the company R.G. Holz and the Swiss foundation Hilfe für die Wassertalbahn, which work together around the railway.

According to an article in Revista Baabel (2015), the “Elefant Project” was conceived by the Swiss journalist Michael Schneeberger as early as 2007, and the house itself was saved from demolition on 1 Mai Street. The article adds that the museum stands on the former works of Alexander Elefant, a Jewish industrialist whose sawmill operated where the station now is, and after whom the house is named. Google Arts & Culture shows a 1928 share certificate of the “sawmill of Elefant Alexandru” from the forestry railway’s collection. Radio Romania International (2017) gives 2007 as the museum’s opening — the gap with 2011 probably reflects the difference between the start of the project and the opening of the exhibition, but no source says so explicitly.

The house has two rooms. One, according to Radio Romania, holds photographs, documents and testimonies about the town’s deported Jews, and a glass case of objects from the camps; according to Baabel, thematic panels on Jewish life, customs and the community’s disappearance, with texts in Romanian, German and Hebrew. CIMEC also mentions a small library of old Jewish books and objects that belonged to local Jews. The second room is a café.

A town of forests and sawmills

Vișeu de Sus (Hungarian: Felsővisó) lies in the Vișeu river valley in Maramureș, and was part of Hungary until the end of the First World War and again in 1940–1944. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jews lived there earlier, but the community was organized in 1877 and grew quickly in the 1880s; in 1885 it became the Jewish centre for three neighbouring villages and later for others, and in 1895 a ḥevra kaddisha was founded. Figures given by Kinga Frojimovics in the Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania (2019) show the Jewish population rising from 239 in 1840 to 1,946 in 1880 and 3,667 in 1910. The 1930 census, according to the Judaica, counted 3,734 Jews — 33.7% of the population.

Most Jews, including labourers, made their living, according to the Judaica, from the forests and the timber industry. Radio Romania adds shepherds, farmers and craftsmen, and many who worked in log driving and the timber trade. According to Frojimovics, the owner of the town’s largest sawmill between the wars, Sándor Elefant, employed more than 150 workers.

A Hasidic community, a yeshivah and a press

The community was Orthodox, with strong Hasidic influence. The Judaica lists four synagogues, several prayer houses and a yeshivah; the CIMEC guide and Baabel speak of 14 synagogues and prayer houses in all. A Hebrew press operated in the town from 1896, and from 1922 the religious periodical Degel ha-Torah was printed there, running to about 80 issues.

Among the town’s rabbis was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Hager (1885–1941), son of Rabbi Yisrael Hager, the Ahavat Yisrael of Vizhnitz. According to the Kedem auction house catalogue, he served as rabbi in Vizhnitz and then in Vișeu de Sus, founded the Beit Yisrael yeshivah there, was a leader of Agudat Yisrael and a member of its Council of Torah Sages, and died in Tevet 5701, early in 1941.

1940–1944: under Hungarian rule

In September 1940 the town, with Northern Transylvania, passed to Hungarian rule. According to roholocaust.com, drawing on Frojimovics, 4,269 Jews lived there in 1941, and from 1942 Jewish men were sent to forced labour in Ukraine, where many died.

The ghetto was set up, according to the same source, between 16 and 23 April 1944 in the town centre. According to the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, the Jews of Vișeu de Jos, Borșa, Leordina, Moisei, Petrova, Poienile de Munte and the surrounding villages were also concentrated there, under the gendarmerie commander Ágyi Zoltán. Sources differ on its size: the virtual museum speaks of about 12,000 people, roholocaust.com gives 9,000 internees, and the Judaica estimates that some 35,000 Jews passed through the ghetto on their way to Auschwitz.

Four transports left the ghetto for Auschwitz on 19, 21, 23 and 25 May 1944. The virtual museum describes the gendarmes’ brutality and the killing of those who could not make the journey, and tells of two brothers, Șmil and Paises Indig, who escaped, were caught at Bârsana and executed.

After the war

According to the Judaica, about 700 Jews returned to the town; Frojimovics counts about 700 in 1947, 24 in 1977 and six in 1992. Emigration emptied the community. According to Baabel the main synagogue was demolished in 1970, and CIMEC notes that it was the last synagogue left. The last Jew of Vișeu de Sus, the shepherd Mendel Friedmann, died in 1998.

What remains to see

• Elefant House: the exhibition on the community’s history and deportation, in the wooden house at the forestry railway station.
• The Jewish cemetery: according to Baabel and CIMEC, the main physical trace of the Jewish presence in the town. Baabel places it on the hill; JewishGen’s cemetery project records a Jewish cemetery of Vișeu de Mijloc, merged into Vișeu de Sus in 1959, with photographs from 2016 and 2018. We found no official address.

Visiting

• Elefant House: according to CIMEC the address is Strada Cerbului 5, at the forestry railway (CFF) station. According to the guide, visits are by prior arrangement only. No opening hours are published in a current official source; check before visiting.
• The cemetery: no address or access arrangements are published. Check in advance with the Jewish Community of Sighet, listed by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, or with the Federation itself.
• Synagogue: according to the sources, no synagogue building survives in the town.
• Nearby: Sighet; the Maramureș Jewish heritage route; Baia Mare.