Jewish Roots Travel

14/11/2019

The Filantropia Jewish cemetery in Bucharest was opened in 1865, being the oldest still existing Jewish cemetery of the city (there is a total of 3 Jewish cemeteries in Bucharest). It covers an area of almost 70 hectares and has almost 30.000 graves. Parts of the cemetery are overgrown, some inaccessible.

27/09/2019

In the interwar period, 11 % of the Bucharest's population was Jewish, around 70000 people. Today, the community is maybe 5 % of what it was, but Jewish traces can be found everywhere, if you look closely. Star& Cohn was a Jewish owned shop, like many were in downtown Bucharest. 80-90 years later someone opened a coffee shop with the same name. What a beautiful way to celebrate the history of the place!

16/04/2019

The Jewish Museum of Odessa was set up in 2002 in a former apartment, where in Soviet times 4 families, of which 3 Jewish, lived together. The museum is not big, but it is a true gem. We will visit it on our tours of Odessa.

10/04/2019

Odessa, what a great city with a rich Jewish heritage! We will write a lot about it when our new website will be launched. For now, here are a few photos.

The city was founded in 1794 by the Russian empress Catherine the Great.
For much of the late 1800s and until the Shoah, Jews made up more than 30 % of the population. We spent a few days here, walking, visiting, eating, checking hotels and we are so much looking forward to bringing you here!

06/04/2019

Our new research trip to the Ukraine starts in Odessa. Can't be too bad, if you start with a shakshuka!

01/04/2019

The Jewish cemetery of Kishinew/ Chisinau, Moldova's capital, is one of the biggest in Europe. We recently explored the cemetery on our research trip in Moldova. It has been cleared recently of vegetation, big trees were also cut. The problem is that some of the graves were damaged, hopefully everything will be restored.

Kishinew had one of the most important Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. The 1903 pogrom in Kishinew led to an increased immigration of Jews from the Russian Empire, around 150.000 per year leaving for the United states in the following years.

28/03/2019

The Gah Synagogue in Suceava, in the Bukovina region, was built 1870 and is the only remaining synagogue of the city. Before the Shoah, there were 12 functioning synagogues in Suceava. In autumn 1941, 91.845 Jews were deported from Bukovina to Transnistria, among them also 5942 from Suceava county, more than 3500 from the city itself. Many of them died- executed, because of disease, from hunger and cold. Nowadays, the community is small, but trying to keep the tradition alive.

18/03/2019

Vadul-Rascov in Moldova/ Bessarabia was once a flourishing market-town with a majority of Jewish inhabitants at the end of the 19th century and around 50 % Jewish inhabitants around 1930.

The local Jewish cemetery on the banks of the Dniester river is one of the most impressive in Europe. We visited it last week on our research trip. According to Jewishgen, the fate of Jews of Vadul-Rascov during WWII is unknown. The assumption is that most of them escaped to the Russian side of the Dniester. This is intriguing, we will try to dig deep into the archives both in Romania and Moldova to find out more about the fate of Vadul-Rascov Jews.

14/03/2019

We are on another research trip in Moldova (Bessarabia), full of new discoveries! When in Chisinau/ Kishinew, make sure to have a meal at the kosher-style Forshmak Gastronomic Restaurant. Great food, good service and nice decoration.

12/03/2019

Jews settled in the Danube port of Galati in the 16th century. The community grew especially in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. In 1930 there were almost 20.000 Jews living in Galati, 20 % of the total population. The town had 28 synagogues and a prosperous community. The only surviving synagogue in Galati is Templul Meseriasilor (Craftsmen's Temple) built 1875. Here are a few photos from its interior. We revisited it yesterday.

02/03/2019

The Holy Union Temple (Ahdut Kodesh) in Bucharest was built in 1836 by the tailors guild. It was reshaped in 1910 and again after the progrom and devastation of January 1941. Since 1978 it was used as a Jewish Museum. During the last few years the former synagogue was restored to its former glory. For the moment, it houses a temporary exhibition and different events. The main exhibition will be back in a few months. But the building itself and the arts exhibition are definitely worth a visit.

01/03/2019

The Beer family, this particular Beer family, originated in Czernowitz, nowadays Chernivtsi in the Ukraine, back then (late 19th century) in Austria-Hungary. One of the Beer brothers, Leib Beer born 1870 was deported from Vienna and killed in the Holocaust, another brother, Chaim vanished and we are still looking for his life story. This grave belongs to the third brother (no other siblings after going through all the Czernowitz Jewish births registers), Salomon, who died shortly after arriving in Vienna to study medicine. He was born 1867 in Czernowitz, graduated the Imperial Highschool in his hometown in 1889 and came then to Vienna. He died of mielitis at age 22 in the former hospital in Alserstraße 4. It was late autumn when we found his grave in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. May his memory be a blessing

01/03/2019

What a find!! While researching the Jewish cemetery of Dorohoi in Northern Romania, close to the Ukrainian border, we discovered this hearse. Dorohoi had a big Jewish community. If your ancestors left from Dorohoi you might be also interested in the available vital records.

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01/03/2019

This is the interior of the small Jewish museum in the Northern Romanian town of Viseu de Sus, called Oybervisha by Jews. The town lies in the province of Maramures, where Jews lived in almost every town and village before the Shoah. After the Second Vienna Award, Maramures belonged to Hungary between 1940 and 1944. In the 30s and 40s around 30-35 % of Viseu de Sus was Jewish. There were 4 synagogues and around 10 Jewish prayer houses in the town and around 3700 Jews living here before the deportations.

In May-June 1944 the whole Jewish population of the town and of the whole province of Maramures, more than 40000 people, was deported to Auschwitz. Among them also Elie Wiesel. Less than 3000 survived the Holocaust and few Jews came back to Viseu de Sus/ Oybervisha. The last synagogue was demolished by the communist regime in 1970. There are no Jews living in town nowadays, but the cemetery is fenced in and relatively well kept.

The small Jewish museum was established 2011in a former Jewish wooden home, that was moved from its original place. The exhibition remembers the Jews of Viseu de Sus and came into existence with the help of a former resident of the town who came from Israel a few summers in a row. The house stands now in the ”Mocanita/ CFF” railway stations, from were the steam locomotive trains start and carry visitors on daytours through the woods. The small wooden building houses also the Elefant cafe. # jews

01/03/2019

The grave of Eduard Reiss in the Czernowitz Jewish cemetery. Between 1905 and 1907 he was the first Jewish mayor of Czernowitz. Eduars Reiss was born in Zalozce in Galicia and died unexpectedly on 27. April 1907 of a stroke while on holiday in Vienna.

01/03/2019