Follow
This project seeks to collect all of the Jewish families from Pitești, Romania.
Information courtesy of various sources including:
https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e180538/Place/Pitesti
The Jewish Community of Pitesti
Pitești
A city in the Argeș County in the historical region of Muntenia (Wallachia), Romania.
The first Jews arrived in the first half of the 19th century, few in number; in 1831, there were only 28 Jews in the city. The growth of the Jewish population began in the second half of the 19th century, and in 1899, the Jews numbered 875 souls (55.6% of the total population).
The community institutions included a synagogue. In 1876, there were two elementary schools, one for boys, one for girls. Community relations were not amicable and some internal difference brought about the closing of the schools in 1883, in spite of the fact that in that year there were 150 pupils enrolled. In 1889, the boys' school was reopened; 100 pupils were enrolled, and, in 1922, they moved to a new building.
Differences within the community continued. In 1896, the meat tax was abolished. The community budget was tightened and was based mainly on contributions and on income from the synagogue. Camps based on different opinions arose and harsh confrontations necessitated police intervention.
Emigration by foot - fusgeyer in Yiddish - a mass movement within Romanian Jewry brought on by anti-Semitism and a harsh economic climate - had supporters also in Pitesti. The marchers wanted to reach ports in Western Europe to travel onward to the United States. In 1900, forty Jews from Pitesti joined the emigrants and the community supported them and organized a fund to help them out.
From the start of the Jews' settlement in Pitesti, their main source of income was trade. The city was surrounded by vineyards and among the Jewish merchants, there was a wine wholesaler. There were also wholesalers in textiles. Crafts was the second source of income. In 1908, there were 62 Jewish craftsmen (40% of all the craftsmen in the city).
Zionist activity began at the end of the 19th century. A branch of Hibbat Zion was established in 1896. Three years later, 75 women organized Bnot Zion, a Zionist women association. Their activity included lessons in the history of Israel, and support for the needy was their social action.
In 1930, 615 Jews lived in the city (3.1% of the population) and, in 1941, the year Romania joined in WWII, their numbers decreased to 423 (1.6% of the total).
The Holocaust
In September, 1940, General Ion Antonescu rose to power in Romania and he appointed members of his government from the ranks of the the Iron Guard - a nationalistic party espousing violent anti-Semitism. Local members of the party began terror tactics. A Jew was thrown from a train and killed. Jewish wine cellars were confiscated; Iron Guard militiamen prevented Christians from entering Jewish stores; Jewish accountants were fired. Jews were caught and sent to forced labor in the city and outside. One unit was sent to Transnistria, a Romanian captured territory in the Ukraine between the Dniester and the Bug rivers, to which almost 150,000 Jews from Romania were deported.
Twenty Jews expelled from the town of Gaesti and from Ploiesti, the center of the oil industry, reached Pitesti. The community also absorbed refugees from Poland and Czernowitz in northern Bukovina. The community supported refugees, families of forced labor workers and Jews from the city whose economic situation worsened and a large part of whom were left with no livelihood. From among 60 craftsmen and workers, only 16 worked, and so it was in other professions as well. The community set up a soup kitchen which fed 60 to 70 people every day.
In the first few years after the liberation, the Jews continued to live in the city and, in 1947, there were 450 Jews there. After the Communist takeover in Romania in 1948, the prison in the city also held Zionist activists who were persecuted and arrested all over Romania for their activities in encouraging immigration to Israel in the 1950s.
At the start of the 21st century, the local Jewish community numbered 58 people, 29 of whom were 60 years old or more.
Place Type:
עיירה
ID Number:180538
Written by researchers of ANU Museum of the Jewish People