A memorial in Oradea (German: Großwardein, Hungarian: Nagyvárad), located on the square in front of the orthodox synagogue, commemorates the city's Jews who were deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.
History
The city of Oradea lies in the historical region of Crişana close to the Hungarian border. After World War I, the Kingdom of Hungary had to cede the region - along with Transylvania and parts of Banat - to Romania. In 1941, there were about 21,000 Jews residing in Oradea, about one quarter of the population. Almost all Jews in Oradea considered themselves Hungarian nationals. Since the end of the 1930s, Hungary had begun to raise ever stronger claims to the ceded territories. In September 1940, Transylvania was divided under German and Italian pressure, and its northern part, including Oradea, became part of Hungary. In the summer of 1941, the Hungarian authorities deported several Jewish families deemed stateless to occupied Ukraine, where they were murdered by the SS in Kamianets-Podilskyi. In 1942, the Hungarian army deployed about 500 Jewish men in work service, most of whom later died on the eastern front.
In March 1944, the German Wehrmacht occupied its ally Hungary, and employees of the »department for Jewish affairs« from the Reich Main Security Office under Adolf Eichmann arrived on site. The SS and Hungarian authorities began registering Jews, expropriating and deporting them. Members of the Hungarian constabulary concentrated the Jews of Oradea in a ghetto on May 1, 1944: about 20,000 Jews were crowded in a small area, making the ghetto in Oradea one of the largest in Hungary. Moreover, Hungarian authorities set up a further ghetto close to the city for 8,000 Jews from the surrounding areas. On May 27, 1944, the deportations from Oradea to Auschwitz began. They continued until the end of June 1944.
Victims
At least 20,000 Jews from Oradea and about 8,000 Jews from surrounding areas were concentrated in two ghettos. By June 27, 1944, all Jews from Oradea had most probably been deported to Auschwitz. How many of them perished there is not known.
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
After the war, several thousand surviving Jews returned to Oradea, many of whom were not originally from there. In 1947, there were about 8,000 Jews residing in Oradea. In 1946, a memorial to the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz was erected on the initiative of survivors close to the orthodox synagogue. In the following years, many members of the Jewish community of Oradea emigrated from communist Romania to Israel. In 1970, there were 2,000 Jews left in the city; in 2002, there were only 170. In 2003, the Jewish community renovated the memorial with the support of the Lempert Family Foundation. Memorial plaques in English, Hebrew, Romanian and Hungarian were added.
