Coordinator and Photographer in Oradea: Daniel Grunfeld

JewishGen Liaison/Advisor: Nolan Altman

Project Description

The objective is to secure sufficient funding to photograph 18th- and 19th-century and 20th-century burial records and headstones from Oradea, Romania.  Oradea, a major city in northwestern Romania near the Hungarian border, is also known as Nagy-Várad [Hungarian], Groysvardein [Yiddish], and Großwardein [German].  By the start of World War II, about a third of the total population of 90,000 was Jewish.  Additional information about the cemeteries can be found at: http://www.lo-tishkach.org/cemetery-focus-may-2009-oradea-velenta-jewish-cemetery-romania/.

The first phase of the project is to photograph and index burial record books for the new Orthodox and Neolog Cemeteries, and three additional smaller books recording recent burials in the Velenţa and Rulikovsky Cemeteries.

The books, which are in the possession of the Jewish Community Center of Oradea, contain primarily burials from the 20th century, with some as recent as the 21st century.

The books contain records of close to 5,700 burials, as follows:

• New Orthodox Cemetery: 3,685 records, from 1926 to present.
• New Neolog Cemetery (Temeto Street): About 1,500 burials, from about 1918 to the 1980's, primarily pre-World War II.
• Small Book 1: About 100 burials, for years 1947-1961 from both Velenţa and Rulikovsky Cemeteries.
• Small Book 2: About 120 burials, for years 1933-43.
• Small Book 3: About 290 burials, primarily from Rulikovsky Cemetery, for 1939.

The second part of the project involves removing vegetation from the overgrown part of the cemetery, cleaning headstones, and highlighting inscriptions as necessary using a medium that will not contribute to deterioration of the stones.  Workers will then photograph each stone and map its location.

Volunteers will be recruited from among JewishGen researchers to transcribe the burial record books, headstone inscriptions and burial locations to be incorporated as appropriate into the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR).

The project will cost a total of $6,450, and Mr. Grunfeld will receive payment as follows:

• $250 for photography of the burial books of the new Orthodox and Neolog cemeteries.
• $200 for photography of the three burial books for the Velenţa and Rulikovsky cemeteries.
• $1000 for each of six deliveries of 500 legible photographs of headstones in the Velenţa Cemetery.

Note: Roger S. Adler has advanced $450.00 for the first phase of the project, of which $200.00 will be a donation to JewishGen in honor of his great-grandparents Jekutsiel and Emma Adler, who are buried in the Velenţa Cemetery.

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Updated 14-Mar-2015 by LA, 26-Jul-2016 by WSB