Rabbi Senkman Synagogue, Galați

סקירה

הסיפור של Rabbi Senkman Synagogue, Galați

Galați had a Jewish presence from the late sixteenth century, and by the eve of the Second World War its community of about 13,500 people kept some twenty to twenty-two synagogues and prayer houses. Most were modest buildings founded by a trade guild, a Hasidic group or a single benefactor, and many carried the name of their founder or rabbi. The Rabin Senkman Synagogue at Serii Street 13 belonged to this world. It is known today only as a name and an address in a list of Galați synagogues 'no longer in existence' compiled for the JewishGen KehilaLinks page on the town, alongside the Bleizer Synagogue on Războieni Street and several houses of prayer shown on a 1910 map.

Serii Street lay in the district on the hill above the old Jewish lower town, which Jews began to settle in 1769, together with Israelită (later Războieni), Movilei and Traian streets. The synagogue's founding date, its founder, the identity of the rabbi Senkman whose name it bore, its appearance and its congregation are all unknown. The historian Arthur Viorel Tuluș, writing in 2016, records that every Galați synagogue except the Craftsmen's Temple was either destroyed with the town during the Second World War or demolished during Communist urban systematization, but he does not name this building. The street itself no longer appears on present-day maps.

מיקום

Where it stood

Historic: Strada Serii 13, Galați (hill district above the old lower town). Today: street not found on present-day maps; placeholder pin at the centre of Galați (approximate).

פתיחת מפה גדולה ←

הקהילה היהודית

Jews are documented in Galați from the end of the sixteenth century, at first mainly in the valley below the town on Dogarilor (today Dogariei) Street. From 1769 they also settled the hill above, along Israelită Street (later Războieni), Serii, Movilei, Tecuci, Română and Traian streets, where small traders lived beside wealthier families. The first synagogue and ritual bath are dated to 1780. Many more followed in the nineteenth century: the tailors' synagogue in 1826, the Chabad Hasidim in 1846, the Blinzer synagogue on land given by Şloim Isac, the Ohel and Edelstein synagogues in 1848, the carters in 1860, a progressive choir temple in 1863 and the craftsmen's temple in the 1890s. The community numbered about 14,500 in 1894, 19,912 in 1930, about a fifth of the town, and 13,511 in 1941. Long-serving rabbis included Avraham Margulies, rabbi from 1852 to 1896, and his son Yaakov Margulies, who presided from 1896 until his death in 1962. No source consulted links any of these figures to the Senkman synagogue.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

No description, plan or photograph of the Rabin Senkman Synagogue was found. The only facts recorded about the building are its name and its address, Serii Street 13. Its date of construction, architect or builder, materials, size, seating capacity and the layout of its prayer hall are all unknown. By comparison, the 1931 monograph of the Galați community reproduced by Tuluș describes most of the town's prayer houses as small buildings put up by guilds, Hasidic circles or individual donors, often on donated plots in residential streets, while only a few, such as the Choral Temple on Cuza Vodă Street and the surviving Craftsmen's Temple, were large purpose-built temples. It is likely that the Senkman synagogue was one of the smaller houses of prayer, but this is an inference from its context, not something any source states. The JewishGen KehilaLinks page also shows a photograph of an abandoned Galați synagogue that it could not identify; nothing ties that picture to Serii Street, and it is not reproduced here.

החיים בבית הכנסת

Nothing specific is recorded about worship or communal life in the Rabin Senkman Synagogue. Its name suggests that it was associated with a rabbi called Senkman, perhaps its founder or its spiritual leader, in the same way that other Galați prayer houses were named after the men who founded and endowed them: the Blinzer synagogue after Srul Blinzer, the Habad synagogue after its donor Burach Feldman-Habatnic, and the Dolingher prayer house after Simon Dolingher. Who Rabbi Senkman was, when he lived and which tradition his congregation followed have not been established. The wider community's religious life was mainly traditional. Hasidic circles had their own prayer houses, guilds of tailors, carters, ironsmiths and craftsmen kept theirs, and a progressive congregation with a choir and organ formed in 1863. In 1941 the community still ran elementary and secondary schools with some 700 and 500 pupils, and it supported growing numbers of needy families through the war years.

הרס

The date and manner of the synagogue's destruction are unknown, and no source consulted names who destroyed it. Two general explanations are recorded for the loss of Galați's synagogues. Tuluș states that all of them except the Craftsmen's Temple were either destroyed when the town was devastated during the Second World War or demolished through urban systematization under Communist rule; the abstract of his study also cites earthquakes and the emigration of the community to Israel. The Choral Temple, for example, collapsed in the earthquake of 9 to 10 November 1940. Pinkas Hakehillot records that in August 1944, after Romania's armistice with the Allies, retreating Nazi German forces set fire to Jewish quarters of Galați and burned the Great Synagogue, a modern prayer house and the study house of the craftsmen and tailors. Serii Street lay in the Jewish hill district, so the Senkman synagogue may have been lost then, but no source says so. By the time the KehilaLinks list was compiled, around 2000, it no longer existed.

גורל הקהילה

Galați's Jews suffered under the Iron Guard and the Antonescu regime but were not deported as a community. In September 1940, with the help of the Legionnaire government, fifty prominent Jews were declared hostages and had to report daily to the police. After a plot to kill local Jews during the Bucharest pogrom of January 1941 was abandoned, the police in June 1941 rounded up all 3,700 Jewish men aged 18 and over, held them in a cinema and then in a camp at Fileşti, and forced them to sweep the streets. From July 1941 Jews had to wear the yellow star. Men were sent to forced labour at Voineşti, Cotul-Lung and Vadul-Roşca, some Jews were deported to Transnistria, and by 1942 most craftsmen were unemployed and much property had been confiscated. About 13,000 Jews lived in Galați in 1947, but emigration, chiefly to Israel, reduced them to 9,000 in 1950 and 450 in 1969. Tuluș counted about 140 members in 2016.

האתר כיום

No street called Serii appears in OpenStreetMap or the Nominatim gazetteer for present-day Galați, which suggests that the street was renamed or erased, probably during postwar rebuilding of the old town, though no source consulted confirms this. The exact position of number 13, and what stands on the plot today, are therefore unknown, and no remains of the synagogue are recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Galați and does not mark the site. Fixing the location will need the 1910 and c. 1900 town maps linked from the KehilaLinks page, a street-name concordance from the Galați county archives, or the 1906 and 1931 monographs of the Galați Jewish community.

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