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<\/a><\/p>\nThe synagogue in Sighisoara, Romania, serves a town that no longer has any Jews. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Built in 1903, the Sighi\u0219oara Synagogue was, for a time, the spiritual center for roughly 200 Yiddish-speaking Jewish families. But the Holocaust claimed most of them, and the few who survived World War II eventually left for Israel. In 1984, the last prayer service took place, and the sole remaining Jew \u2014 a lawyer named Radicanu \u2014 died in 2009.<\/p>\n
Around that time, an American lawyer, David Blum, financed the renovation of the building at 11 Tache Ionescu St. in memory of his parents and grandparents. Since then, Viorica Balu\u021ba \u2014 an Orthodox Christian who lives next door \u2014 has been entrusted to care for the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe invested so much money that it would be a shame if this place fell apart,\u201d Balu\u021ba, 73, said of Blum. \u201cSighi\u0219oara is a tourist town, and lots of people come here from all over the world, regardless of their religion. People appreciate this synagogue, even if they aren\u2019t Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet not everyone does. In 2014, vandals tried to set fire to the shul, noted for the whimsical palm trees painted on either side of the ark, and its ceiling, which resembles a starry night. The following year, two teens spray-painted the entrance door with swastikas.<\/p>\n
And that was long before the current war in Gaza sparked a wave of antisemitism throughout much of Europe including Romania, which has a poor track record of protecting its Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s getting worse for sure,\u201d said Alexandru Muraru, a member of Romania\u2019s parliament and vice-president of its National Liberal Party, who is not Jewish. \u201cIn Western Europe, they have big Muslim communities, which generates antisemitism. In Romania, there are only one or two mosques, but our antisemitism has historical roots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, it does. In the 1930s, Greater Romania was home to some 800,000 Jews \u2014 giving it the world\u2019s fourth-largest Jewish population after the United States, Poland and the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, Jews made up an important proportion of Romanian society,\u201d said Gilbert \u0218aim, who\u2019s been the gabbai, or custodian, of Bucharest\u2019s famous Choral Temple for the last 10 years. \u201cDespite widespread discrimination, there were villages, towns, and cities with large Jewish majorities \u2014 even villages established by ethnic Jews centuries ago, like Podu Iloaiei.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nA group of Romanian Jews departs Vienna for Israel in 1950. (Photo by David Rubinger\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Around half of Romania\u2019s Jews, roughly 400,000 people, were killed by the Nazis and their local collaborators \u2014 a statistic cited by a trilingual monument in the Choral Temple\u2019s courtyard. In Ia\u0219i alone over a three-day period in June 1941, more than 13,000 Jews \u2014 more than a third of the city\u2019s Jewish population \u2014 were massacred, marking one of the worst pogroms of World War II.<\/p>\n
Even so, \u0218aim said, a 1947 census showed 167,000 of Bucharest\u2019s 650,000 residents still identifying as Jewish. At that time, the capital had around 150 functioning synagogues. But in the ensuing years, many young Jews emigrated \u2014 particularly during the 24-year Ceau\u0219escu dictatorship, which allowed 1,500 Jews to leave every year from 1965 to 1989 in exchange for cash payments of between $2,000 and $25,000 each, plus Israeli military assistance to Romania.<\/p>\n
Leaving offered Romanian Jews the only chance to preserve a Jewish identity in an era when communism was aiming to quash religious expression.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunism did what the fascists and Nazis didn\u2019t manage, to make an entire community nearly disappear,\u201d said Muraru, 43, whose grandfather survived the Ia\u0219i pogrom. \u201cThese days, you cannot imagine a state selling its own people in order to receive money and weapons. But for a country that suffered a lot, like Israel, it was important to bring everyone home. Less important was how they did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time Ceau\u0219escu was overthrown and executed in 1989, only 11,000 Jews remained in Romania. And today, barely 2,500 Jews live in this country of 19 million, said \u0218aim, who at 52 is among his congregation\u2019s youngest members; the rest, he said, are mostly in their 80s and 90s.<\/p>\n
Alexandru Florian, director-general of the Bucharest-based Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, said only 20% of Romanians know about the Holocaust or its wartime role under pro-Nazi puppet Ion Antonescu.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nGeorge Simion, president of Romania’s right-wing AUR party, attends a protest about COVID-19 rules in Bucharest, Dec. 21, 2021. (Daniel Mihailescu\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cAntisemitism is exploding on social media, Facebook, TikTok and Telegram, though less visible in traditional mass media. The COVID pandemic amplified conspiracy dating back to the late 19th century,\u201d he said, adding that despite a ban on glorification of Nazi heroes, \u201cat the end of November 2024, there was a public ceremony to commemorate a fascist leader. Those who participated are under criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Muraru: \u201cThe extreme right was very powerful here in Romania in the 1930s. And today, these extreme parties present themselves as mainstream, and sometimes they try to legitimize themselves by attending Jewish events or conferences in Israel. This is a very worrying trend given the fact that our parents and grandparents were deported or killed by such people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those fears were recently exacerbated by the 2024 presidential aspirations of Calin Georgescu \u2014 a far-right candidate representing the Alliance for the Unity of Romania party, known as AUR, and a self-avowed admirer of Romania\u2019s rabidly antisemitic Legionnaire Movement of the 1930s. The party drew criticism in 2023 after calling the Holocaust \u201ca minor topic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romania\u2019s Supreme Court cancelled that election, citing concerns about Russian interference, and Georgescu was replaced on the AUR ticket by George Simion, a populist who opposed Romania\u2019s commitments to NATO and the European Union.<\/p>\n
In the May 2025 runoff, centrist candidate Nicu\u0219or Dan, the mayor of Bucharest, defeated Simion with 54% of the vote \u2014 a margin too narrow to calm Muraru\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a major victory for Romanian democracy, but as Americans say, we\u2019re just buying time,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we bought three years, five years or 10 years. But imagine that 5.3 million Romanians voted for an extremist candidate who is also very violent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrei Dumitrescu, 43, manages a classic car museum across the highway from Bucharest\u2019s international airport. He grew up in the Israeli city of Haifa but came back to Romania, where he was born, at the age of 18, he said, because life was so hard there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think Nicu\u0219or is the greatest president, but he was better than the alternative,\u201d Dumitrescu said. \u201cI would never believe that in 2025, we\u2019d be worried about fascism. The problem is that people don\u2019t know history.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nAlexandru Florian, director-general of the Elie Wiesel National Institute, displays a blueprint for the planned National Museum of Romanian Jewish History and the Holocaust. (Larry Luxner)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
To that end, Florian\u2019s institute is planning a National Museum of Romanian Jewish History and the Holocaust to be located in central Bucharest. The seven-story, 10,000-square-meter building, projected to cost $50 million, will trace the trajectory of Romania\u2019s Jews from the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E. to the present day. It\u2019s expected to be completed by 2029 \u2014 though fundraising has been slow-going.<\/p>\n
Klaus Iohannis, Romania\u2019s president from 2014 to 2025, recently endorsed the project, saying, \u201cThe museum will be an ally of education against ignorance, a fortress of solidarity and civic patriotism in the face of intolerance, antisemitism and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, 600 students \u2014 40% of them non-Jews \u2014 are learning about the Holocaust and Israel at the prestigious Laude-Reut Educational Complex founded in 1997 by Jewish philanthropist Ronald Lauder. The private school\u2019s Israeli-born founder and principal, Tova Ben-Nun Cherbis, said classes run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and that tuition runs \u20ac12,000 per year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have 200 staffers including 11 Hebrew teachers, and everybody studies Hebrew,\u201d said Cherbis, who has lived in Romania for the past 30 years.\u201d Whoever comes here knows it\u2019s a Jewish school, and that it\u2019s considered a bridge between Romania and Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the presidential campaign, said Cherbis, a number of teachers privately approached her, warning that if Simion won, they\u2019d consider leaving Romania.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people that surrounded him were not prepared to be leaders. They are violent,\u201d she said. \u201cSimion wanted to visit our school twice, but we politely turned him down.\u201d<\/p>\n