A monument in front of the synagogue in Dej (Hungarian: Dés), which lies in the historical province of Transylvania, commemorates the approximately 7,000 Jews from Dej and surrounding areas who were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in the summer of 1944.
History
Dej is located in the north-west of Romania, in the region of Transylvania. Previously part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Dej was ceded to Romania after the First World War. At the end of the 1930s, Hungary increasingly laid claim to the territories it had lost. In September 1940, Transylvania was divided under pressure from Germany and Italy, and the northern part (including Dej) was incorporated into Hungary. In 1941, Dej had about 16,000 residents, about 3,700 of them were Jews. In July 1941, the Hungarian authorities deported about ten Jewish families deemed homeless from Dej to Kamianets-Podilskyi in the Ukraine, where they were murdered by SS units. In July 1942, 70 Jewish men from Dej were drafted to do forced labour in a detachment for the Hungarian army; most of them later died on the eastern front.
In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. In the following months, the Hungarian authorities played a significant role in helping the Germans deport the Jews residing in Hungary. On May 3, 1944, all 3,700 Jews from Dej and about 4,000 Jews from surrounding areas had to move to a collection camp. The camp consisted of a few improvised barracks and tents in the Bungur forest, and many of the inmates were forced to stay in the open. Many of the prisoners were tortured by the police and members of the Arrow Cross Party who wanted to extract information about supposedly hidden valuables. 25 people died in the camp. Between May 28 and June 8, 1944, the Jews were deported in three transports to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Victims
About 7,000 Jews from Dej and surrounding areas were deported to Auschwitz after being held in a collection camp in the Bungur forest. It is not known exactly how many Jews from Dej and vicinity perished in the Bungur camp and in Auschwitz. About a thousand Jews returned to Dej after the war.
The Kingdom of Romania was politically unstable in the interwar period and threatened by territorial claims from its neighbours. The country sought an alliance with National Socialist Germany but the Nazi leaders in Berlin chose to support Hungary, Bulgaria and their temporary ally, the Soviet Union over the border issue. Romania had to agree to surrender large parts of its territory to these states during 1940. This led to increased radicalisation within the country. King Karl (1893–1953) granted unrestricted authority to General Ion Antonescu (1882–1946) but then had to abdicate to allow his son Michael (1921–2017) to come to the throne. The right-wing extremist »Garda de Fier« (Iron Guard), which was allied with Antonescu, immediately began to persecute the Jews. In 1941 Romania took part in the German attack on the Soviet Union. Romania organised the deportation of up to 155,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma from Bukovina and Bessarabia to the occupied Ukrainian territory of »Transnistria«. Tens of thousands died as a result of mass murder, imprisonment, forced labour, starvation and illness. Meanwhile, the Jews in northern Transylvania (part of Hungary since 1940) were subject to the anti-semitic legislation in this region. However, the majority were spared any violent persecution until the Wehrmacht invaded in 1944. The SS now began to deport Jews to Auschwitz in cooperation with the Hungarian authorities. The total number of murdered Romanian Jews is thus spread over various territories: 50,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina along with 20,000 Jews from central Romania were murdered and around 120,000 Transylvanian Jews died under the Hungarian-German occupation.
In August 1944, the Red Army offensive caused Romania to change sides. Michael I stripped Antonescu of his powers and the country came under Soviet control. The dictator was executed in 1946 and the king abdicated the following year. In the initial post-war period memory focused on liberation by the Red Army. A monument to the fallen Soviet soldiers was built in Bucharest. Romania’s alliance with Germany was ignored. Under Nicolae Ceausescu (1918–1989), who ruled the country with his secret service from 1965, the »liberation from the yoke of fascism« was presented as the achievement of Romanian heroes. With the end of the Ceausescu regime in 1989 many Romanians preferred to adopt a contrary approach: the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 was now more frequently viewed as a campaign against Bolshevism. There was growing admiration for Antonescu. In contrast, for some Romanians the king, now living in exile, became increasingly important as a symbol of democracy as he had toppled the dictator and was later expelled by the communists.
There was no place for the Holocaust in post-war memory. Most survivors had already left the country by the 1950s. Memory was left to the Jewish communities, which established a small research centre in 1977 and a small museum in Bucharest the following year as well as a number of memorials. In 2004 a committee was set up to research the Holocaust and Romanian crimes. The committee was led by Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner. A National Institute has continued the research since 2005. In 2009, a central Holocaust memorial was inaugurated in Bucharest that also honours the Roma who had been deported to Transnistria. However, apart from this sign, there is still little remembrance to the more than 12,500 Romanian Roma murdered during the war.
Remembrance
On June 4, 1947, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was dedicated on the square in front of the 1909 synagogue of Dej. The sculpture is the work of artist Izsák Márton. By the 1970s, most of the thousand survivors who had returned to Dej after the war emigrated to Israel.
