The Jews of Oradea
The photographic essay and accompanying story explore the lives of Holocaust survivors in a community that shaped a region.
Under the flickering buzz of fluorescent lights, Teodor Koppelmann, President of the Jewish Community Center in Oradea, Romania, sits behind his cluttered desk. Smoke billows upward from the long, thin cigarette he holds loosely between his lips. He exhales, rubbing his fingers on his wrinkled forehead, pinching his weathered skin. The smoke cascades down from his nose and then upward, drifting across his tired eyes as it settles around the lights above. Koppelmann slicks his hair back and secures it with his kippah as he sits back into his chair and sighs. "Where to begin?" he whispers in a gruff voice. Clearing his throat, he begins to tell the story of his people, their history and his hope for their survival.
One of the largest in Romania, the grand Zion Neologic Synagogue rises above the quiet Transylvanian city of Oradea, Romania. It has been empty for decades. The city, which dates back to the 10th Century, is situated along the banks of the Crisul Repede, a river just a few miles from the border with Hungary. Three hours east of Budapest, Oradea was near the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following the end of the First World War, it became part of the Transylvanian territories that officially joined the Kingdom of Romania as part of the dissolution of the empire. The inhabitants of the city have historically been diverse- travelers making their way along trade routes between Europe and the Orient often settled in Oradea. Jews have been a part of the city’s history for centuries.
Raised in an affluent Orthodox Jewish family in the small central Romanian town of Tarnaveni, Koppelmann grew up under the strict religious practices of his father, Leo, who was also the president of his local Jewish community. During the Second World War, Koppelmann's father, a physician, had been sent by the Romanian authorities to work at a leper colony in Transnistria. His son, now an imposing figure and influential local leader, had been born at the culmination of one of the greatest genocides in human history.
In the years leading up to the Second World War, Oradea’s Jewish community numbered more than thirty thousand, making it a third of the city’s entire population. There were more than twenty active synagogues scattered throughout the city, and members of Jewish society helped Oradea earn a reputation for architectural masterpieces, as well as bringing industrial, medical and artistic firsts to the region. The city was booming and life was good.
In the late 1930s, however, the world would choose sides in a war started by Germany's rapid invasion and occupation of sovereign territories across Europe, bringing with its Wehrmacht a fierce nationalism that spread like a virus into cities across Europe. During the summer of 1940, Hungary annexed Northern Transylvania, a territory it long-viewed as its own. Within months, Hungary joined Germany with hopes to secure its approval for the annexation of the rest of Transylvania.
Oradea, called at the time by its Hungarian name, Nagyvarad, elected staunchly anti-semetic mayor by the name of László Gyapai, who oversaw the methodical destruction of the Jewish way of life in the city. More than thirty thousand Jews were crowded into the city’s ghetto, the second largest under Hungarian control. The eight thousand Jews from the surrounding countryside were rounded up and housed in a second ghetto after the first filled to capacity. All of the local Jews were robbed of their possessions and deported, either to labor camps across Europe or to the death camp, Auschwitz.
Romania also had a significant role in the Holocaust, a fact seldom acknowledged throughout Romania to this day. Under the military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania also joined the Germans, ironically with the hopes of avoiding further Hungarian annexation. They had also hoped to guard against a further Soviet advance. Anti-Semitism against local Jews grew rapidly, seen as a sign of loyalty for some, and an opportunity to express long-harbored hatred by others. By the end of the Second World War, Romania carried out the murder of nearly 300,000 Jews, even higher than the number killed in Germany. Hoping to avoid defeat and, with it, both the loss of land and the admission of its role in the atrocities against the Jews, Romania switched sides as the Allies swept across Europe, retaking territories once held by the Nazis.
During the early stages of the war, however, Hungary had perfected its ruthlessness towards Jews throughout its controlled territories.
“I was fifteen when they sent me and my family to Auschwitz Birkenau.” says Gabriela (Hamlet) Bóné. Her father owned a mirror factory in Targu Mures, just a few hours east of Oradea. “Every city was the same,” she continues. “The Hungarian police crammed us into wooden train cars that had barbed wire covering the small windows. We traveled without food and with very little water for nearly a week without knowing what fate lay before us. We arrived at Auschwitz having barely slept, only to be inspected by Dr. Mengele himself and the other SS officers. I remember someone tapping me on my shoulder and whispering to me to lie about my age, to say that I was sixteen. When we arrived, someone said to me, "You came in through the door, but you’ll leave through the chimney.” ”
Unbeknownst to her at the time, Bóné’s life was spared by the advice. The Nazis sent the elderly, weak and young directly to the gas chambers. Nearly everyone under the age of sixteen that passed through the gates of Auschwitz was murdered. Bóné was robbed of all her possessions, except her spirit. She and her family were amongst the endless sea of humanity that arrived through the gates of Auschwitz. They were stripped naked, heads shaved, and ruthlessly beaten by the guards.
Confused and afraid, Gabriela was briefly comforted by her mother who told her that they were only there to work for the Germans until the war was over, and that life in Auschwitz would surely be better than it was back in the ghetto under the cruel Hungarian Gendarmes (police) who had taken great pleasures in their suffering. Moments later, however, Gabriela was separated from her mother, father, and three younger brothers. She never saw them again.
Alone with only her sister, Bóné endured the Nazi death camp for over a year before being transferred to a light bulb factory in Weisswasser, Germany, which she attributes to her survival. The sisters were later transferred with several hundred other women to another factory as the front drew nearer to German borders. Soon the allies liberated the women, ending one of the greatest atrocities in human history. For many Jewish survivors, however, the end of the war only meant the beginning of a new life with neither their families or their communities- a life in which they would have to return to the towns and cities that had sent them away to be forgotten.
Only a small number of Oradea's Jews survived to return. “I remember the soldiers telling me not to go back home after we were liberated,” says Bóné, “but to go instead to America or Britain where we could go to school and have a future. But I wanted to go back home and try to find my family.” Head shaven and clothes tattered, Gabriela Bóné made the trip back to Transylvania on foot with two thousand other survivors.
Life would not be easy for the Jews returning to their homes from across Europe after the war. After abandoning its allegiances to the Nazis when it became apparent that the retreating German army could not slow the advancing Soviet forces, Romania joined the allies and would secure the Transylvanian territory after the war..
Seventy years later, under the Star-of-David-shaped fluorescent lights in the meeting hall of the community center, Iudit Varadi plays a game of dominoes with some of the elder members of the quiet community. Varadi also survived Auschwitz. “My brother and mother died in the camps.” She says. “Altogether, I lost around eighty members of my extended family in the Holocaust, so when I returned home I was alone. I had to start my life all over.” Varadi had survived the horrors of fascism, and was drawn to the ideals of equality she found in communism.
“We were idealists. We were communists. I believed that true equality could exist between all people, that whether one was Hungarian, Jewish, Romanian, Gypsy, or German, we all had the same rights. And to me, as someone who was oppressed for being a Jew, this ideology of equality I saw in communism appealed to me, though there was no actual realization of this idea.”
At the height of communism in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu ordered the destruction of historic architectural masterpieces all across the country. In their places he issued the construction of massive soviet-style high-rise apartments, a symbol of modern Romania's strength. Many of these imposing blocks were built around local synagogues, effectively hiding them from sight. The goal of the regime was to bring about international respect and domestic authoritarianism through nationalistic pride. In doing so they stamped out individuality in the forms of ethnic, political and religious diversity.
Unlike the rest of the city's crumbling facades, the small Jewish community in Oradea slowly began rebuilding during the safety provided by communism. For the most part, Jews were not allowed to be openly discriminated against under the ideology. The Jewish Community Center of Oradea added a kindergarten and assistance programs for its elderly members. However, economic instability across Romania began to take its toll. Many Jewish families took advantage of opportunities to leave Romania for the promise of a better life abroad in Israel, Canada, or the United States.
Communism fell in Romania in 1989, but by then most of the Oradea’s over twenty synagogues had already been destroyed. The ones that survived are crumbling and in need of major repairs. Ironically, much of Oradea’s historic city center, which was designed in large part by Jewish architects, was spared by the unflattering, communist facades that had covered them for decades. However, the city’s largest synagogue, a one thousand seat giant, had been left abandoned to the elements.
Today, community life is quiet. Though they still hold a few religious services and celebrate the annual Jewish festivals, the long-term future of the community remains uncertain. Andrei Seidler, the community administrator, speaks of the growing problem amongst Jewish communities all across Romania,
“The Torah dictates that, in order to be considered Jewish, one must have a Jewish mother. Unfortunately, no one could ever have imagined that there would have been six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, many of them coming from Hungary and Romania. So, many of the marriages after the war were mixed; meaning, there are not many full-blooded Jews left in the community here in Oradea. It causes major difficulty in preserving our customs and our ancient way of life. Without a solution, I really don’t know what our community will look like in twenty years. I only hope it still exists.”
Many of the small communities ensure their future through preserving their history. Cities across Europe have built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust. To date, however, Oradea has very few reminders of either the tragedies of the Holocaust or the historical legacy of its Jewish community.
Since the beginning of communism in 1947, Romania’s public school system has offered limited, if any, space in its curriculum towards educating students on the role their nation played in the Holocaust, or of the major contributions Jews have made to its early cultural triumphs. Much of this lack in education has stemmed from the notion that cities such as Oradea were under foreign control during the Second World War, hence nullifying any responsibility by the Romanian government to establish more comprehensive memorials or adding local Jewish history to the standard curriculum.
At the forefront of the efforts to bring education about the Holocaust and local Jewish history to Oradea’s school systems is Mariana-Emilia Teszler, president of Tikvah Association Oradea. The organization, which began in 2010, visits schools in the region with the purpose of using education to fill in the gaps of local Jewish history and to promote the understanding and protection of human rights. “We must learn to treat every human being with respect,” says Teszler. “If we cannot respect individuals or groups that are different from us, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations.”
Back in his smoke filled office on the second floor of the Jewish Community Center in Oradea, Mr. Koppelmann’s days are filled with meetings and phone calls as he works diligently to provide for the needs of the community members. Commanding attention comes naturally to him. He lived through the aftermath of a world war that saw two out of three European Jews exterminated. His candor can easily be misinterpreted if one doesn’t understand the burden he bears. Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the small Jewish community of Oradea continues to fight for its continued existence. As its president, Koppelmann has dedicated his life to ensuring their continued presence in a city from which so many perished.
With the reality of an uncertain future, the members of Oradea’s Jewish community have determined to endure. “I believe the community has a future,” says Paul Spitzer, a community leader. “It's like a branch that has been broken, but the seed has survived." The small Jewish community of Oradea, Romania looks into their uncertain future with the resolution that they will not only outlast the hatred that once tried to erase their history, but they will overcome it with life.
*Since the publication of this story, most of the survivors from the documentary, including Gabriela Bóné, Iudit Varadi and Zakaria Salman, have passed away. The documentary is dedicated to committing their stories, as well as those of the tens of thousands of Jews from Oradea whose lives were cut short during the Holocaust, to our eternal memory.