Les Juifs de Cluj (Kolozsvár)

Cluj, the principal city of Transylvania, was home from the eighteenth century onward to an Ashkenazi Jewish community that grew rapidly following emancipation granted by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Deeply divided among Orthodox, Neolog (Reform), and status quo currents, it developed synagogues, schools, and a Jewish press in Hungarian and German, with members active in commerce, the liberal professions, and industry. After the annexation of northern Transylvania by Hungary in 1940, its Jews were confined to a ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, where the vast majority perished. Survivors briefly reconstituted a community after the war before most emigrated to Israel and the West under the Romanian communist regime.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan