The books that form the Mediaș library were found in the Mediaș synagogue and Jewish community offices. The majority of the German and Hungarian-language volumes were catalogued by local high school students in the course of a project in 2016-2017. The volumes appear to be a mixture of private and communally-owned books. Though they are mostly religious books including siddurim and Jewish religious texts, some secular volumes were also found. In cases where owner information was inscribed or stamped in the book, a note was made in the catalogue record and, in general, a photo of the personal inscription was made. Please click on the individual titles below for more information.
Please note that this collection is being constantly updated. Please check back regularly for new additions.
This collection contains immatriculation registers and grade catalogues for the Aiud Jewish Elementary School. The material is fairly comprehensive from 1921-1936. Such registration catalogues and immatriculation books generally contain biographical data such as birth place and date, parental information including father's occupation, previous schools attended, place of residency and so forth. Please note that JBAT archivists did not survey these registers directly. The languages listed are languages customarily found in such records during this time period and this region.
The collection contains two sets of registers. The first set is the student catalogue books recording biographical details and grades for the years 1913-1924 (with gaps, registers for the following years exist: 1913-1914; 1916-1917; 1920-1921; 1922-1923; 1923-1924). The second set is immatriculation registers for the following years: 1898-1899; 1899-1900; 1909-1910; 1909-1911 [sic]; 1911-1912. Such registration catalogues and immatriculation books generally contain biographical data such as birth place and date, parental information including father's occupation, previous schools attended, place of residency and so forth. Please note that JBAT archivists did not survey these registers directly. The languages listed are languages customarily found in such records during this time period and this region.
This folder contains paperwork created by or for the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) regarding their work with refugees and survivors of World War II. Material includes lists of aid recipients (orphans from Transnistria, other Bukovinan Transnistria survivors, Transylvania survivors of Auschwitz) and correspondence from various communities requesting assistance in various forms.
This document is a Romanian translation of the original statutes from 1890. The translation is not dated, but it was definitely made after 1918 and probably before 1940. Please note this is a copy and not the original from 1890. The original statutes were presumably in Hungarian since they were submitted to and approved in Budapest. Also, similar statutes from the nearby Medias community are in Hungarian as well. The statutes include all such customary regulating of community life such as elections, member dues, community leadership, school administration, and so forth. Of particular interest is the outlining of power hierarchies in the nearby rural communities. Many nearby villages with "unofficial" communities are mentioned by name and required to report their civil records to the official community in Târnăveni. These include Cetatea de Baltă, Adămuș, Suplac, Coroisânmărtin, Bălăușeri, Deaj, Bachnea, Agrișteu, Cipău, Cucerdea româna, and Bun. The civil records for Târnăveni and the surrounding communities held in the Targu Mures national archives can be better understood on hand of this document.
The Jewish Communities of Romania Collection (sometimes also described by the Romanian National Archives as the Documents Collection of the Jewish Communities of Romania) contains documents created and received by Jewish communities and organizations functioning in Romania from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.
The documents until World War II are composed of a variety of items reflecting community life, including statutes, correspondence, reports, and membership lists. Documents from the World War II period generally address the plight of Romanian Jews during this period. This material includes reports on persecutions and expropriations, correspondence and other documents related to deportees, and emigration paperwork. The post-World War II material generally deals with the repatriation of Jewish deportees to the Romanian-organized camps in Transnistria, the welfare of survivors, emigration, and the activities of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania and of the Jewish Democratic Committee (communist Jewish organization). For the complete inventory list of the collection, please see this link (in Romanian only).
JBAT archivists surveyed folders containing material related specifically to Bukovina and Transylvania. For details on the contents of these folders, please see the list below and click on any link.
Please note JBAT archivists did not survey this material directly. The folder description provided by the CNSAS inventory reads: The Jewish problem. Statistics regarding the Jewish community of Fălticeni; personal identity documents; documents of organizations, associations, schools, synagogues belonging to the Jews of the town.
The collection includes the paperwork and material collected by the Suceava county Securitate (Romanian Communist Secret Police) offices under communism. The material includes select folders from the pre-communist period; these folders were presumably in the possession of the police and seized by the Securitate at some point in time. At the time of the JBAT survey (2015), the inventory for this collection was accesible only at the physical location of the CNSAS and only in digital form on the computers of the CNSAS reading room. The inventory provided no indication as to the linear extent of the collection and gave no additional details as to its history, content, or the number of pages in individual folders. The collection is large, over 1,000 files, and as such there are many hundreds of folders which are obliquely titled and may contain reference to Jewish residents, for example folders titled as dealing with religious issues or the nationality of residents or folders regarding the monitoring of individuals with relatives in the United States, of tourists in the region or of Romanians with ties to foreigners. It was beyond the scope of the present survey to inspect the contents of all such folders. There are, however, a number of folders with titles specifically referencing the Jewish content. Several of these contain material related to specific Jewish communities; others regard surveillance carried out in Jewish communities or on persons hoping to emigrate. For details on these folders and others with material clearly related to the Jewish population, please click on the link(s) below.
This file contains correspondence between provincial and national officials and district officials in Gura Humorului regarding schools and the provision of resources to needy students. Among the papers are some items regarding the establishment of a boarding house for Jewish students (Jüdisches Schülerheim).
This file contains various papers concerning the distribution of free textbooks to needy children and orphans, the destruction by Russian soldiers of school archives and holdings of Solca, Pârtești de Jos, and Soloneț which had been evacuated to Topoloveni, and various other materials relating to the relocation and return of school documents during and after the war. Although the records offer no indication of Jewish students or school staff, some of the papers indicate the presence of Jewish and/or German merchants in Suceava after the war – a bookdealer Nathan Weiner, a wood dealer Isidor Schläffer, and a hardware business called Bessler & Haimovic.
Access to view this item was not granted to the surveying archivists by the staff of the Suceava County Archives. According to the title, the folder presumably contains information dealing with German and Jewish property seized by Suceava county schools upon the repatriation or deportation, respectively, of those two populations during World War II.
This folder contains letters sent by the National Ministry of Education of Romania regarding the restitution of property seized during the occupation of Transnistria and Bessarabia by the U.S.S.R. There are also responses of schools and school districts to the Ministry regarding these circulars, occasionally with declarations or forms listing any property seized from these territories.
This file is an alphabetical index by name of teacher and name of school. The index relates the document numbers of the various requests, inquiries, evaluations, penalties, and various other types to the name of the individual or of the school. For each letter in the index, individuals are listed, followed by schools filed according to the name of their locality. For the Suceava district (see the end of the “S” section), several documents pertain to actions relating to the Jewish schools of Suceava district as a group. There are also entries for several Jewish teachers.
These stubs of graduation certificates list student's name, date and location of birth, and date of graduation. A substantial number of the students are Jewish. In most cases a photograph of the student is attached. Some full graduation certificates with diploma are also present, and these include on the verso the student's grades on most major exams.
This matriculation register lists each student's attendance and grades on trimester and final exams, along with the student's name, date and location of birth, religion, nationality, and in some cases previous school attendance. Name and religion of parents, as well as the profession of the father, are also listed. A considerable number of Jewish students are attested in this register.
This collection contains the papers of the office of the school inspector of Suceava county. The material includes a variety of documents and correspondence regarding the development of curriculum, administration of district schools, and evaluation of teachers and individual schools. A significant amount of correspondence with regional and national authorities is also present. The collection offers some insight into the numbers of Jewish teachers and students in the district and records, unintentionally, various anti-Semitic activities taking place during World War II (seizure of Jewish property by school administrations , etc). For details on a select number of items surveyed containing material specifically related to the Jewish population, please click on any link below.
This collection contains administrative correspondence and records regarding the management and maintenance of the school and the development of the curriculum and the staff. Some of the documents, such as item nr. 2/1904, indicate the presence of Jewish teaching staff in the district, and elsewhere there is evidence of a marked Jewish presence in the student body, as in item nr. 15/1925. For details on these records, please see the links below.
The collection consists of matriculation and attendance registers, graduation records, gradebooks, and some financial records. Jewish children were registered in the school. Registration records may include an array of vital data on a pupil including address, parental information, birthdate and place, and so forth. Some records also include photographs of pupils. For details on some of these records, please see the links below.
This collection has four inventories. The first inventory, nr. 171, lists 279 items which for the most part are of an administrative nature or class newspapers. There are also a few class registers and various other registers which mostly refer to staff affairs. A student register book from the 1930s shows many Jews attending the school, alongside Romanian and Hungarians. Of particular interest amongst the items in this inventory are those administrative documents from the interwar period and especially following World War I in which nation-building and Romanianization measures are discussed. The second inventory, nr. 996, lists 155 items. The majority are class immatriculation registers and grade books, though there is also meeting minutes and budgetary and administrative paperwork. This inventory contains papers dating 1919-1948. The third inventory, nr. 1359, contains 26 items, dating 1920-1940. Of particular interest here are the annual school reports, which exist from 1920-1935, and which contain breakdowns of the student body by ethnicity and religion. In 1927, for example, Jews made up 25% of the student body. The other items in this inventory are administrative in nature. Finally, inventory nr. 1442, contains 16 items, dating from 1914-1941. The items in this inventory belonged to the former director of the school, Valeriu Boeriu. They consist primarily of personal momentos, photographs, manuscripts, and other items related to Boeriu's period as director (1914-1941).
According to the records, this school was attended by some Jewish students, but please note that the majority of the material is from after the deportation of the Jewish community and the numbers reflect this fact. There are several class registers but the majority of the material consists of administrative instructions, reports, and memos and information on the staff. Note that the school was opened after the Second Vienna Award and much of the material likely concerns the administrative restructuring and nation-building that followed in the wake of this event.
This school, though small and in an unassuming locality, had a significant Jewish student population. Records survive only from 1918-1926 but these include class registers in which are recorded the pupils' birthdate and place, parent occupation, nationality, and religion.
This school had some Jewish students, though proportionately the reform school had more. According to the preface in the National Archives inventory for this collection, this school was opened in 1836. It remained small (with 1-2 teachers) until the second half of the 19th century when it was able to construct its own building. By this time it had classes for both boys and girls. The majority of the material is in Hungarian; beginning in the post-Trianon period some of the material is also in Romanian. Most of the items are class register books with data on the pupils' backgrounds, grades, absences, and so forth and most registers date from the 20th century, though there are 15-20 items from the 19th century. Student register books will contain birth date and place of the pupil and information on the parents' occupations, mother tongue, nationality, and religion. The school was closed in 1948 in the wake of the restructuring of the Romanian school system under communism.
This school appears to have been attended primarily by Hungarians and Jews. The Jewish proportion of the students may have reached up to 20-25% at certain periods. The school was opened in 1860 but did not become well-established, with funds necessary to construct its own building and employ sufficient teaching staff until the end of the 19th century. There are a total of 78 items in the collection, all but two of them are from the 20th century. The oldest item dates to 1893 and is a registration book. Beginning in 1909 the records are, for the most part, comprehensive and without gaps and include class registers, grade books, and curriculum registers. Sometime after 1900 the girls were taught separately from the boys. The vast majority of the material is in Hungarian, though some of the registers in the post-Trianon period are titled in Hungarian and Romanian. Record books generally include information on the pupil's birth date and place, parents, their occupations, mother tongue, residence, nationality, and religion.
There is little known about this school except that it functioned at least from 1879-1889. The collection contains immatriculation and grade registers as well as an inventory for the library. From the student body make-up, it appears that the school was very mixed, attended by Germans, Hungarians, Jews and the former were both Protestant and Catholic. At least half of the student body looks to be female. It appears to have been a private school, perhaps even an elite private school for the daughters (and some sons) of wealthy families, but that is merely speculation. The books record pupil names, their birthplaces and dates, father names and occupations, mother tongue, subjects and grades. There is no other information regarding the history of the school or even its location.
It appears from the contents of the books within this collection, that the Beregi school was originally the Jakab Wiener school (please see Jakab Wiener elementary school of Târgu Mureș collection) and became the Beregi school after 1903. This conclusion is made on the basis that the daughter of Jakab Wiener (who changed his name to Várnai) was also attending the Beregi school in 1904. Both Wiener and Beregi are the names of the respective director of the school during the time period for which there are records, so it appears that the school changed names with its director. This school was a Jewish school, that is attended exclusively by Jewish children. It had six grades and was attended by boys and girls. The collection contains 9 register books for the school years 1904-1913. The books record pupil names, their birthplaces and dates, father names and occupations, mother tongue, subjects and grades. There is no other information regarding the history of the school or even its location. Please note that in addition to this small, apparently private or semi-private school, the Status Quo community operated a Jewish school. See the collection Jewish Elementary School of Târgu Mureș.
The Jakab Wiener private elementary school was apparently run by Jakab Wiener himself. Over the course of the 10 years for which there are records from this school, he had his named Magyarized to Jakab Várnai. This school was clearly a Jewish school, that is, attended exclusively by Jewish students according to the extant record books. The collection contains 5 register books which record pupil names, their birthplaces and dates, father names and occupations, mother tongue, subjects and grades. There is no other information regarding the history of the school or even its location. It appears that the school became the Beregi elementary school after 1903. Please see the collection Beregi elementary school of Târgu Mureș. Please note that in addition to this small, apparently private or semi-private school, the Status Quo community operated a Jewish school. See the collection Jewish Elementary School of Târgu Mureș.
This collection has only one item, a folder of correspondence and miscellaneous written material, for the most part from or to the school director. There are several hundreds pages and included is a chart of the ethnic and religious breakdown of the students in 1892. According to the chart, approximately 10% of the student body was Jewish, though overwhelmingly female.
This collection contains comprehensive material from the main Catholic school in Târgu Mureș. In general, it appears that Jewish students were more likely to attend the Protestant schools, but one finds Jewish pupils in these records occasionally. The collection begins with papers from the mid-late 18th century, primarily dealing with administrative matters, ie contracts, rental agreements, decrees, lists of students. Beginning in the 19th century, there are fairly consistent immatriculation registers as well as folders containing correspondence on school affairs. Inventories of furnishings and libraries begin to appear consistently. By the 1870s, there are approximately 10 folders per year, containing meeting minutes of the school staff, statistical information, correspondence, immatriculation records, staff instructions, budget documents, and other miscellaneous papers. At the end of the inventory there are several items not related to this school, they contain diploma certificates from a school in Miercurea Ciuc, Târgu Secuiesc, and from the Școala Normală in Târgu Mureș (School of Education). These items date from 1929-1940.
This collection contains papers created by the Jewish Democratic Committee for the county of Mureș and town of Târgu Mureș and for the local branch of Reghin. The folders contain meeting minutes, reports, surveys, and other written material. It is not clear how the county of Mureș differed from the region of Mureș (there is also a collection for the Regional Jewish Democratic Committee for Mureș). The committee had a wide range of responsibilities, surpassing basic political tasks. The reports and meetings record decisions about secular and religious holidays, the Jewish school, teachers, emigration matters, unresolved events (missing persons) from World War II, religious staff (butcher, teachers), cultural events, and general happenings in community life. There are surveys on the community, including data on community numbers, language, occupations, and so forth. There are reports on the receptiveness to communist ideology versus Zionism and specific numbers are given for those who have requested to emigrate. There may also be speeches made by the leadership on holidays or for other gatherings. The collection may be of interest to those studying Jewish life in the immediate post-war period and especially those looking at questions of identity, Zionism, and Jewish roles in early communist Romania.
Please note that the inventory for this collection was missing in 2015, so the precise contents are not known. Two folders were requested, one dealt with the regional committee, as per the title of the collection; the other folder was from the Sighișoara committee. The folders contain meeting minutes, reports, surveys, and other written material created by the Jewish Democratic Committee for the region of Mureș (or Sighișoara). It is not clear how the region of Mureș differed from the county of Mureș (there is also a collection for the Jewish Democratic Committee for Mureș County). The committee had a wide range of responsibilities, surpassing basic political tasks. The reports and meetings record decisions about secular and religious holidays, the Jewish school, teachers, emigration matters, unresolved events (missing persons) from World War II, religious staff (butcher, teachers), cultural events, and general happenings in community life. There are surveys on the community, including data on community numbers, language, occupations, and so forth. There are reports on the surrounding towns and the respective population's receptiveness to communist ideology versus Zionism. There may also be speeches made by the leadership on holidays or for other gatherings. The collection may be of interest to those studying Jewish life in the immediate post-war period and especially those looking at questions of identity, Zionism, and Jewish roles in early communist Romania.
This collection contains minutes of meetings, reports, correspondence, speeches, and other memos written by or about the Jewish Democratic Committee of Târnăveni. The committee had a wide range of responsibilities, surpassing basic political tasks. The reports and meetings record decisions about secular and religious holidays, the Jewish school, teachers, emigration matters, unresolved events (missing persons) from World War II, religious staff (butcher, teachers), cultural events, and general happenings in community life. There are surveys on the community, including data on community numbers, language, occupations, and so forth. The collection may be of interest to those studying Jewish life in the immediate post-war period and especially those looking at questions of identity.
This collection contains registration books and grade books for the Jewish elementary school of Târgu Mureș. There are 68 items within the collection, most of which are class register books. The register books contain the names of pupils, their birth information, parental names and occupations, and place of residence. Some of the books include grades received. All the material is in Hungarian, with the exception of the books from the interwar period. The school was closed following the deportations to Auschwitz in spring/summer of 1944 but reopened in September 1945. Of particular interest may be item number 66, the register of meetings (registru de procese verbale ale ședințelor corpului didactic) held by school staff from 1945-1948. In addition to this school, which was operated by the community, a smaller, apparently private Jewish school functioned in the late 19th century-World War I (at least) led by Jakab Wiener (later Várnai) and then Nathan Beregi. Please see the corresponding collections for schools under these names.
This collection contains administrative documents and correspondence regarding instruction in the schools, school assets, and staffing matters such as hiring, firing, compensation, and evaluation. There are some materials regarding the war mobilization and the evacuation of the school.
This collection consists of various papers for a girls trade school, many having to do with accounting and inventories of supplies. Some matriculation and administrative records and correspondence are also present. Several of the students were Jewish.
This business preparatory school has its origin in 1883, when it was founded as a department of a larger trade school. In 1922 the business program separated from the trade school and took the name Școala Superioară de Comerț. The collection consists primarily of certificates of completion and notices of incompletion of course of study. As an example, see dosar 1/1936--the certificates contain the name of the student, the date, and also have a photograph of the student attached on the verso. A large number of the students of this school were Jewish.
This women's trade school was founded in the early 20th century to instruct girls in traditional “feminine” trades, above all in the floral, textile, and confectionary trades. The school was known from 1929-1936 as the Școala profesională de fete, thereafter as the Gimnaziul industrial de fete or the Liceul industrial de fete. The collection consists primarily of inventories of school supplies for the various handcrafts and trades taught at the school. Some student and administrative records are also present. Some of the students here were Jewish.
Attendance and class lists, as well as matriculation records. Some financial records and administrative correspondence are also present. Dosar 1/1884 provides a good example of the types of information available in this collection: a register containing students' grades, attendance, and notes on their conduct. Many of the students listed here are Jewish – their name, religion, date and place of birth, as well as the name and profession of the student's father are listed with each entry.
The collection consists primarily of matriculation records, registers of classes, statistics on grades and exams, and other documents and papers pertaining to students and instruction. Some administrative records and correspondence are also present. A significant percentage of the student population was Jewish.
The collection consists primarily of certificates of completion and notices of incompletion of course of study. The school reflected the multi-ethnic character of Cernăuți, and accordingly many Jewish students attended. A large number of diploma stubs are present, notable for containing photographs of the students: stubs list the name, birth date, and birth place of the student, as well as the date of graduation, with the photograph of the student on the verso.
The school was founded as the Griechisch-orthodox kaiserlich-königliches Gymnasium by order of the Ministry of Education in Vienna in 1860. The language of instruction was German until 1882, at which point a Romanian section was established in parallel to the German-language sections. In 1919, the school was renamed Liceul de băeți “Ștefan cel Mare” ("Ștefan cel Mare Boys Lycee"). Throughout its history, the school maintained a reputation as one of the best in Bukovina and attracted students from the entire Bukovina region and beyond. The collection contains matriculation registers, administrative correspondence, administrative and faculty meeting minutes, and various papers pertaining to budget and finances. Matriculation registers from the period of the Habsburg regime are arranged by class, and then alphabetically by student's surname within each class. As can be seen from the entries for the students, the student population was quite mixed and included Germans, Jews, Romanians, Ruthenians, Armenians, and many of the other nationalities present in the Bukovina region at the time. For some classes there are multiple sections, including in some cases special “German” or “Romanian” sections. Each page contains an entry for a single student, and lists the students coursework and grades, as well as comments on the student's conduct and other observations. The entry also lists the student's religion, residence, nationality, and native language, as well as the name, residence, and profession of the student's father (sometimes of the mother as well), and if applicable the name of any guardians or of the address where the student resides and boards while attending the school. At the start of each class's entries are general statistics on the class's performance for that year, as well as a list of instructors, including instructors for religion sections (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish).
The collection contains matriculation registers, attendance lists, gradebooks, and administrative papers for the school during the first half of the interwar period, as well as during the years following the second world war. Often the matriculation registers and gradebooks (cataloage de clasă) provide a fair amount of vital statistics information on the students and their families.
This collection contains only matriculation registers. Each page contains an entry for a student containing their grades for the school year, as well as basic vital information (date of birth, name, residence, and profession of parent(s). If applicable, additional observations are given, as well as the names of any schools the student previously attended.
This collection contains matriculation registers, registers of students' grades, attendence, and graduation, school bulletins, general correspondence about the school, reports on school inspections, and registers of incoming and outgoing correspondence and of other communiques.
This collection contains matriculation registers, registers of students' grades, attendence, and graduation, school bulletins, general correspondence about the school, reports on school inspections, and registers of incoming and outgoing correspondence and of other communiques.
Collection contains the instructor R. Hirsch's daily log or curriculum book and some papers related to immatriculation. The log book (1946-1948) features a daily outline of the lesson plan, attendance numbers, and other obsevations. The matriculation papers include requests for immatriculation, a list of students (1946-1947), a general schedule of classes, and a couple of items of correspondence with the regional education administration.
The Medias Jewish Community Collection contains material spanning the life of the community, with documents dating from the late 19th century until the end of the communist era as well as general administrative paperwork into the 1990s (when the community, for all intents and purposes, no longer existed). The bulk of the material is from the mid-20th century (1940s-1970s) and of administrative or financial nature. Several extensive items of particular historic significance have been digitized and are available below in Series III: the 500-page book of meeting minutes covering board member and community meetings from 1930-1947 (Box OS21); hundreds of registration forms created by the Jewish Council (Centrala Evreilor) during the war which recorded an individual's family background up to the grandparents (names, birthplaces and date) (Box OS18 and OS19); the burial registry with details on tombstone location, date (and sometimes cause) of death and accompanying index of names (OS13); and the cemetery map (last item in Series III). The original statutes of the community, in Hungarian from 1894, as well as later German and Romanian versions, are also digitized and can be found in Series V (SD2/folder 2). The material in this collection may be of interest to those researching Jewish life, identity, and culture in southern Transylvania before and during World War II and Jewish life under the Romanian communist government. For additional details on the contents of each series, please see the comprehensive container list below. The collection is arranged by series and chronologically within each series.
This file contains a wide variety of correspondence, legal papers, charts, and tables related to communal matters in Câmpulung in 1921. Of particular interest are charts of registered voters and of women over the age of 21. The figures are broken down by nationality, marital status, level of education, and profession.
The register includes lesson plans for various subjects, class lists, and information about the teachers. Most of the students are ethnically Romanian, though there are still some Jewish students.
The register book is divided by class and lists each student by name and the grades received. No other information related to vital statistics (parents, birth information, residence) is provided. There are less Jewish students than prior to World War I, but there is still a significant Jewish presence.