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Cluj Children Survivors

By Peter Lande, Nolan Altman, and Joyce Field

· Background
· Database
· Acknowledgements
· Searching the Database

Background

Cluj (in Hungarian: Kolozsvár; in German: Klausenburg; in Romanian: Cluj-Napoca) is a city now in central Romania.

From 1790 to 1848, and 1861 to 1867 Cluj was the capital of Transylvania; until 1920 and between 1940 and 1945 it was in Hungary. Before 1848, there had been various prohibitions against Jews residing legally in Cluj. When these residence restrictions were lifted, the Jewish population increased rapidly. The Jewish population was 231 in 1857; 994 in 1869; 2,424 in 1891; 7,046 in 1910; and 13,504 in 1930. Cluj was incorporated into Romania in 1920, after which Jews were expelled from the university and government offices.

A Zionist organization began operating in late 1918, publishing the Hungarian language newspaper Uj Kelet. The national headquarters of the Jewish National Fund and Karen Hayesod opened in Cluj, which became the center in Transylvania of all youth and adult Zionist activities.

The schools of the Cluj community attracted students from throughout Transylvania. The Orthodox community opened an elementary school in 1870, and the neologist community opened one in 1904. A Hebrew Tarbut school, started in 1920, was closed by the Rumanian authorities in 1927. After Cluj was annexed by Hungary, Jewish children were prohibited from attending general schools. A Jewish secondary school for boys and girls was opened in October 1940; it remained open until students and teachers were interned in the ghetto.

After the Hungarian annexation in 1940, Jews suffered economically and physically. The Hungarian army entered Cluj on September 11, 1940. In July 1941, hundreds of Jewish families without Hungarian citizenship were deported to Galicia, most of whom were massacred in Kamenets-Podolski. In 1942 many of the men of military age in Cluj were conscripted for forced labor and sent to the Eastern front to the Nazi-occupied area of the Soviet Union, where most perished. When the Germans entered Cluj in the March 1944, they established a Judenrat. On May 2, the Jewish community was forced into a ghetto. Over 16,000 of the remaining local Jews, plus about 2,000 from the surrounding area, were put into a ghetto. From May 29 to June 13, they were deported to Auschwitz, where most perished.

(Sources: Encyclopedia Judaica, volume 5, page 618; The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, volume 1, pages 263-264).

Database

This list consists of the names of Jewish students enrolled in the Kolozsvár Jewish High School for the years 1940-1941 through 1943-1944. The names come from two different sources:

Survivors from a list from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and
A listing of students who died during the Holocaust from a list within the Cluj Yizkor book.

The USHMM list is part of the Moses Carmilly-Weinberger collection, currently at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. No further information on these children is available in this collection.

This database includes 1,144 names of students enrolled in the Kolozsvár Jewish High School for the years 1940-1941 through 1943-1944.

The fields for the database are:

Name (Surname, Given Name)
Page Number (within the Cluj Yizkor Book)
Other Surnames
Year of Birth
Source ("Cluj Yizkor Book", or "USHMM")

Acknowledgments

The survivor information contained in this database was indexed from the files of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Moses Carmilly-Weinberger collection, 1995 A-092). Images of the Cluj Yizkor book, Sefer zikaron le-yahadut Kluzh-Kolozsvar, The Memorial Volume For The Jews of Cluj-Kolozsvar, edited by M. Carmilly-Weinberger (New York, 1970), can be accessed from the New York Public Library Yizkor book collection site at: http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/yizkorbooks_intro.cfm.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible. Special thanks to Susan King, Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy. Particular thanks to the Research Division headed by Joyce Field, and to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Nolan Altman
January, 2006

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database, the JewishGen Hungary Database, and the JewishGen Romania Database.