Great Synagogue of Galați

The Jewish community

Jews are documented in Galați from the end of the sixteenth century, when they already had prayer houses and a cemetery, but the town was repeatedly burned by Tatars, Turks and Russians, and nothing from that period survives. In 1803 there were 72 Jewish taxpayers; by 1841 some 6,000 to 7,000 Jews lived in the town, 13,066 in 1890 and 19,912 in 1930, a fifth of the population. The first synagogue, built in 1780, was followed by many others founded by guilds and groups: tailors in 1826, Chabad Hasidim in 1846, carters in 1860, a modern choral temple begun in 1863 and a craftsmen's temple in 1892. Pinkas Hakehillot notes that each congregation hired its own rabbi and collected its own meat tax, which weakened the central community. Just before the Second World War Galați had 22 synagogues. Rabbi Avraham Margulies served the town from 1852 to 1896 and his son Yaakov Margulies from 1896 until 1962.

Architecture and design

Very little is known about the building's appearance. The 1931 history describes the synagogue of 1780 as consisting of two rooms and a long corridor. A ritual bath (mikveh) was later installed in the courtyard, fed directly by a spring, because behind the synagogue a ravine ran down past the later fish market towards Vadul Roșca and the Danube. Over the bath stood a steam bath, and the mikveh was reached by fifty steps, which were rebuilt in marble when the bath was restored in 1813. The writers thought it a remarkable piece of architecture and said it closely resembled a celebrated mikveh at Hamburg, on whose plan it had apparently been built. In 1850, because the old synagogue had become far too small, the members M. Schein, M. Thal, Leibiș Cahane, M. Schmierer, Iosif Baraș and Avram Keiner had it rebuilt from its foundations; the mikveh was filled in and a room for circumcisions was built over it. The architect, style, size and seating of the 1850 building are unknown, and no photograph, drawing or plan of it has been found.

Life inside the synagogue

The 1931 Bulletin calls the Great Synagogue the place where the leading Jews of Galați prayed, and for a time the community's governing body, the Epitropia, had its seat in the building. In 1829 the congregation had to defend its right to the site in a lawsuit, which it won. The congregation suffered in every outbreak of violence against the town's Jews: at Christmas 1846 its windows were smashed and its Torah scrolls torn and burned; on 9 and 10 April 1859, during Passover, it was almost wholly devastated, its scrolls carried into the street and torn, and for a time members had to pray in private houses; in October 1867 rioters attacked it again. After the 1859 riots part of the town's elite decided to build a modern Choral Temple instead. In 1931 the Great Synagogue had 330 members and was run by a committee under Nathan Kleiner, president, with I. M. Schaechter as vice-president, Iosif Herș Jurisi as secretary general and Șulim Schaechter as treasurer; its gabbaim were I. M. Schechter and Herș Grinberg.

Destruction

Pinkas Hakehillot, the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities published by Yad Vashem, states that after the armistice in August 1944 Nazi German forces set fire to entire quarters of the city, especially the Jewish quarters, and that they burned the big synagogue, the modern prayer house, and the Orthodox study house of the craftsmen and the tailors. It names no unit or commander. This is the only account of the Great Synagogue's end found in this research. Arthur Viorel Tuluș's 2016 study of the Galați synagogues says more generally that all the town's synagogues except the Craftsmen's Temple collapsed or were demolished, either through the destruction of the town in the Second World War or through urban systematisation under Communist rule, but it does not say which fate befell the Great Synagogue. No source found records any rebuilding after 1944, and the Jewish community of 1969 had only two synagogues, so the entry treats the fire as the end of the building. Who cleared the ruins, and when, is unknown.

The community’s fate

The Jews of Galați were not deported as a community, but they lived under constant persecution by the pro-Nazi Romanian regime. In September 1940 fifty prominent Jews were taken as hostages. In June 1941 the police gathered about 3,700 Jewish men aged 18 and over in a cinema and moved them to a camp at Filești outside the town; in July they were declared hostages, and from 3 July 1941 Jews had to wear the yellow star. Men were sent to forced labour, 1,557 Jewish houses and 25 ships were confiscated, and some Jews were deported to Transnistria. The town had 13,511 Jews in 1941 and about 13,000 in 1947, when the community also cared for refugees and orphans returning from Transnistria. Emigration, mostly to Israel, then reduced it to 9,000 in 1950 and about 450 families with two synagogues in 1969. In 2005, 252 Jews lived in Galați, and Tuluș gave about 140 in 2016. Only the Craftsmen's Temple remains in use.

The site today

The synagogue stood on Marcu Aureliu street, formerly Podul de Piatră, which linked Brașovenilor street with Vadul Sacalelor in the old lower town, with the fish market and the ravine of Vadul Roșca behind it. No street of that name exists on today's map, and the exact plot has not been identified, so what occupies the site now is unknown. Tuluș writes that the old town's synagogues vanished through war damage and Communist-era rebuilding of the city, and that the Craftsmen's Temple is the only synagogue building left in Galați. The map pin is a placeholder at the centre of Galați, not the synagogue's location.

Notable names