Bacău, Romania

The Community of Bacau
(Bacău, Romania)

46°34' / 26°54'

Translation of
Kehilat Bacau; historiyah yehudit mefoeret

Editors: Meir Eybeschitz, Y. Voladi-Vardi

Published in Tel Aviv 1990

Acknowledgments

Student Translation Project Coordinator:

Prof. Naomi Sokoloff
University of Washington

This is a translation of: Kehilat Bacau; historiyah yehudit mefoeret (The community of Bacau),
Editor: Meir Eybeschitz, Y. Voladi-Vardi, Published: Tel Aviv 1990 (H 240 pages)

Note: The original book can be seen online at the NY Public Library site: Bacau

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of
fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by the copyright holder.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.

TOC translated by Yocheved Klausner

Preface		9

Pages of History		11
Memories from the Life of the Bacău Community	Meir Eybeschitz z”l	13
A City on the Banks of the Bistriţa		18
Testimony from Hundreds of Years Ago	Yizhak Schwartz-Kara	23
Memories from the Town	Menashko Kotter z”l	29
Jews of Bacău Immigrate to the Land of Israel in the First Aliyah		34
To Other Horizons Around the World		38
The Zionist Movement in the Bacău Community and Its Surroundings	Lika Avrahami-Guttman
“The Jews - a national danger”
Economic Life in Bacău		57
“Strada Mare” [The Great Street]

Holocaust Period		65
Signs of the Days of Wrath		67
Increasing Persecutions		70
Economic persecutions - poverty
A “Children's Home”		76
Spiritual Life in the Ghetto		79
“The Melody of Dreams”		83
Flight and escape
The Transnistria orphans
The End

New Horizons		101
The “Republic” in Bacău
Even in the Sun There are Shadows		107
A meeting with the past

From the Memories of Bacău Jews		113
Bacãu then… the Story of Two Torah Scrolls	Meir Eybeschitz z”l	115
Bacău: People Who Lived [There] in the Past	Yitzhak Schwartz-Kara	118
“Numerus Clausus”	Dr. Avraham Karatzo
Memories from Târgul-Ocna	Willy Sabin

Jewish Bacău in Literature		133
A story by S.Y. Agnon about the Jews in the Bacău county	Lucian Zev Hershkowitz
“Shame on the Jids”	Marius Mirko
The matchmaker from Bacău	Alexander Sever
Two poems	Yitzhak Barkat
Memories	Rabbanit Devora Landman

Reports from the Past		155
Porumbaru's catapult stones
From Bacău to Mikveh Israel Before World War	Lucian Zev Hershkowitz	162
Social conflict in the Bacău Jewish community before WWI	Chaim Glick
Coroiu [a known bandit]… and the Jewish Question
A literary discussion that will not be forgotten	Chaim Glick
The lights from Buhush
The dead man who returned from the cemetery
A volunteer in Republican Spain in 1936-39

The Bacău Jews are proud of them…	Yakov Harari (Ohringer)	187
The Eybeschitz “university”
Rabbi Dr. Alexandru Şafran, Shlita		203
Prof. Moshe Gyl
Prof. Solomon Marcus
Tehila Ofer
Bibiana Goldenthal
Rabbanit Devora Landman		210

Of Blessed Memory: They are not with us any more		211
Meir Eybeschitz z”l		213
Rabbis of Bacău (photographs)		216
Dr. Shmuel Shabat		217
Dr. Herman Aroneanu		217
Wolf Zev Isser
Yosef Itzikowitz
Yosef Goldenberg
Yosef Feldhar
The Schmeltzer brothers
David Vataru
Their names will never be forgotten

Historical Documentation		223
The register [pinkas] of the Poalei Tzedek Society, tailors, Bacău 1831	Yitzhak Schwartz-Kara
Register of the Gemilut Hasadim [charity] Society for mutual aid, Bacău 1836	Yitzhak Schwartz-Kara
The Hebrew Printing-shop in Romania	Yitzhak Schwartz-Kara
Memorial stones	Yitzhak Schwartz-Kara
An article that was never published: The Ancient History of the Jews in the World	A. D. Birenberg

Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page

Yizkor Book Director, Lance Ackerfeld
Emerita Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field z”l
This web page created by Lance Ackerfeld