This register book was apparently used by the spa and resort ”Regina Maria” (Queen Maria”) to record guests. The book records the name, birth year, and occupation of the guest, day of arrival, spouse's name and birth year (sometimes), town of residence, identity card information, address where they are staying in Solca, and cost for the spa services. Solca was known for its salt waters and fresh air. The vast majority of the guests in this book are Jews, many from Bessarabia as well as elsewhere in the Regat and of course Bukovina.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains the paperwork for an individual from Arad applying to be exempted from forced labor. The documents include birth information and, possibly, a photo of the individual. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains a declaration for an individual from Brașov applying to be exempted from forced labor. The document includes birth data, employment and educational informate. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number of this entry.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains the paperwork for an individual from Timișoara applying to be exempted from forced labor. The folders may include a variety of documents including birth data, educational and professional training information, photographs, various declarations, receipts of payment, and so forth. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number of this entry.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains the paperwork for an individual or individuals from various towns in the county of Hunedoara (mostly Deva, Hunedoara, Hațeg) applying to be exempted from forced labor. The documents include birth information and, possibly, a photo of the individual. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains the paperwork for an individual or individuals from Hunedoara applying for permission to exercise their respective profession and/or to be exempted from forced labor. The documents may include birth details, occupational details, various references and recommendations, and often a photo of the individual. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains the paperwork for an individual from Sighișoara petitioning to be allowed to exercise their profession (with the support of their employer) and/or to be exempted from forced labor. The documents may include birth details, occupational details, various references and recommendations, and often a photo of the individual. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number.

This collection contains only four items. The registers retained by the community are all related to the cemetery with the exception of one book registering births, marriages, and deaths from the late 1930s. For additional details please see the Scope and Content note and container list below.

The bulk of the Alba Iulia community archival material was removed to Bucharest at some point. This material, or at least some of it (it is not possible to verify the extent of the removed material),  may be found at the Centrul pentru Studiul Istoriei Evreilor din România (CSIER, Center for the Study of the History of the Jews of Romania). The inventory for their documents related to communities may be accessed here. Please note the CSIER website and inventory is only in Romanian and no details regarding the history of the collection or other contextual information are provided.

The zincographs contained in this collection were found in 2016 in a cabinet in the former Neologue synagogue of Cluj. They were cleaned, printed, put into appropriate storage and the printed images were digitized and are now available through the present online catalogue. The original zincographs along with two sets of the printed images are stored in the offices of the Jewish Community of Cluj. None of the images contained indications as to their date, original purpose or creator. The images do, however, all appear to relate to the Jewish community in Transylvania or Jewish individuals in the region. There are several images of Transylvanian synagogues (Sebeș/Mühlbach, Făgăraș/Fogorasch, Cluj, and one unidentified), numerous portraits of men which can be identified as Jewish by their clothing, and what appears to be an architectural rendering for a "Jewish Cultural Palace" proposed in the immediate post-World War II period. To view the individual images, please click on the digitized material thumbnail to the right. Each image includes a title (designated by Leo Baeck archivists), the dimensions of the zincograph and any other information available (this was rarely the case). If you can identify any of the individuals or buildings in the images, please contact the director of the JBAT project, Julie Dawson at jdawson [at] lbi.cjh.org.

The artwork and photographs in this digital collection were found in 2016 in the choir loft or attic of the former Neologue synagogue of Cluj. They were photographed on-site and the digital images are now available through the present online catalogue. The original pieces have remained in the Cluj synagogue and are the property of the Cluj Jewish Community. Very few of the pieces contained information regarding their creators or subjects. In the case that there was an artist signature or other provenance indication, this information is provided on the respective digital image record (see digital material affiliated with this record). Many of the portraits appear to have been local community leaders or other well-known Jewish figures (Theodor Herzl). Most of the pieces appear to date to the pre-World War II period, though a collection of paintings (of the Cluj synagogue, the Wailing Wall, etc) seem as recent as the late 20th century. There are two large, framed montages: one depicts the interwar Neologue community leadership and the other contains photographs of teaching staff and pupils at the Jewish school in 1947. In addition to the complete montages, close-ups of individual photographs within these montages are provided on the JBAT website. To view the individual images, please click on the digitized material thumbnail to the right. Each image includes a title (designated by Leo Baeck archivists if no title was provided), the dimensions of the piece and any other information available (this was rarely the case). If you can identify any of the individuals or content in the images, please contact the director of the JBAT project, Julie Dawson at jdawson [at] lbi.cjh.org.

This entry is for multiple folders; each contains registration forms for a woman or women from Făgăraș recording their occupation and requesting exemption from forced labor. The women in these folders were employed by the Jewish women's organization. The documents may include birth details, occupational details, various references and recommendations, and often a photo of the individual. For the names of individuals applying, please see the National Archives online guide to this collection (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B54MeDlSJl3IMXVrTkFLMEhtVXM, only in Romanian) and consult the folder (dosar) number listed under the call number.

The documents in this collection were created by the staff and students of several Jewish schools in Cluj. The majority of material stems from the period 1940-1944 when the Jewish lycée operated under the Horthy regime and from the time immediately following the reestablishment of the community in 1945 and continuing until schools organized by religious communities were banned by the communist government in 1948. The material from the interwar period and Austro-Hungarian period is fragmented and represents only a handful of items. Please note that due to the changing governments and frequent shifts in legislation affecting educational institutes, these papers do not represent one Jewish school which operated continually over the period, rather they are papers from both primary and secondary institutes. There are also printed reports on Jewish schools in Miskolc, Târgu Mureș, and Oradea (Series III).

This collection is relatively extensive for a Transylvanian community that fell under the Horthy regime during World War II. Like all community collections that have survived to the 21^st century, we have no information as to how or why certain documents survived while others did not. The current community offices are on the premises of the former Status Quo community property, including the synagogue and connected buildings. However, there is a significant portion of material that originated with the former Orthodox community, so the material was transferred at some point in time in the post-war period to the Status Quo offices. The former Orthodox synagogue building still exists nearby but is now used as office space.

Series I contains numerous register books of member dues, through which details on the community make-up can be gleaned. Series II is of significant interest to researchers, containing the interwar- and war-time board meeting minutes from the Orthodox community, which appear to be complete from 1926-1948, presumably with a gap after deportations, and then of the Unified community from 1948-1962. Presumably, the minutes will reflect the changing fate of this important Transylvanian community, spanning as they do interwar Romanian rule, Horthy fascist rule, the deportation period, restablishment of the community by survivors, communist rule, and the waves of mass migration that began in the late 1940s.  

Series III contains only four items, yet they are directly related to the persecutions and deportations during the war and measures taken by the reestablished community in the initial post-war years. Series IV contains several Orthodox Chevra Kadisha statutes and two civil record books from the interwar and even pre-World War I period. Series V contains correspondence logs (registers of incoming and outgoing correspondence) and Series VI contains material related to the two main local cemeteries as well as the cemetery in Sighișoara, which is now within the county of Mureș.

Finally, Series VII contains three items that were identified in 2015 but not able to be located in 2017. Please see the scope and content notes for the respective series for more information.

This collection comprises documents deposited with the post-war Cluj Jewish community and linked in some way to the community, either culturally, religiously, or administratively. The material of this collection was stored in the Neologue synagogue and it is not known by whom or at what point in time the material, which sheds light on cultural and religious Jewish life during the interwar, World War II and post-war periods, was deposited in storage cabinets of the synagogue. The collection is unique in its inclusion of a series of sheet music belonging to the Goldmark Philharmonic, a Jewish orchestra which existed from 1934-1942 in Cluj (see Series V), thus representing an exclusively secular Jewish institute. On the other hand, indicative of the scope of material, Series VI is a collection of liturgical pieces, both for choir and cantor and it includes printed and handwritten music.
The bulk of the material is from the World War II period and the immediate post-war years when the community was reestablished. Most of the interwar items are the printed material in Series III, which include holiday sermons and essays by Dr. Mózes Weinberger (Moshe Carmilly Weinberger). The collection comprises six series containing administration documents, registers, printed material, a group of documents selected at a former point in time by an individual within the Cluj community (who separated these documents from the other material), and the two series of music mentioned above. For details on each of these series, please see the respective scope and content note below. The content is diverse and ranges from membership lists, budgetary documents, meeting minutes, statutes, ephemera, information on converts to Judaism (a register, Series II), printed war-time and post-war reports, and correspondence. Though the material was found in the Neologue synagogue, there are also documents related to the Orthodox community (they were joined together in the post-war period), especially regarding conflicts between the two.

This collection contains only documents related to the post-war period. Like all Transylvanian communities that came under the Horthy regime during World War II, the fate of the pre-war documents is unknown but most likely the bulk was destroyed. The two series here, however, are also unique in that Series I, administrative documents, begins immediately after the war but ends in 1960. The location of administrative documents post-1960 could not be ascertained during the course of this survey. Series II is also unique in that the documents were not created by the Satu Mare Jewish community, but rather were transferred to the community at some point in time, probably in the 1980s and possibly even later. These documents were created in Oradea by the Federation of Jewish Communities’ regional division responsible for overseeing Jewish communal properties (“serviciul bunuri”).  The documents comprising this series are of great interest, revealing details of survivor life in the post-war period, tensions between various administrative bodies (Jewish and non-Jewish), and the efforts made by this division to determine the fate of Jewish communal property. For more details, please see the scope and content note for Series II.

This collection is very small and certainly represents only a tiny remnant of the records of the Deva Jewish community. There is no indication as to why these documents survived and others did not nor whether there may be another deposit of community paperwork (more likely it seems material was destroyed or thrown away). The synagogue was restored in 2018-2019 but the president at the time was unable to say whether additional archival material was found in the course of the restoration. Nevertheless, the collection contains several unique items of interest. There is a notebook with an alphabetic list of Jews “evacuated” from villages during World War II (“evacuated” was the euphemism used for the law requiring the compulsory resettlement of rural Jews in towns) (Box1, folder 1), a unique book of prints published in Cluj in 1947 by D. Izareli, and several registers from the Deva Jewish school during the war-time period. For more details as to contents, please see below. Particularly unique is a map, damaged by water, depicting Jewish community institutes in the Hunedoara district in 1956 (oversized box, OS-1).

The documents in this collection are a relatively sparse representation of Caransebeș Jewish community life in the late 19th and 20th century. There is no indication as to why these documents survived and others did not nor whether there may be another deposit of community paperwork (more likely it seems material was destroyed or thrown away). Nevertheless, the collection contains several unique items of interest including multiple folders from the interwar rabbinate’s correspondence with information regarding birth, death, and marriage certificates or other related confirmations of civil status or Jewish background (including education certificates). There is a parchment in poor condition, only partially legible, which appears to be related to the construction of the synagogue. There are several volumes of minutes of meetings from various organizations within the community and the 1931 statutes from the women’s charity organization. Most of the pre-World War II documents are in German, some are also in Hungarian. Beginning around the war-time period Romanian becomes more common. There are numerous folders of correspondence from the early post-war period between other Jewish communities within Romania; this material may be especially interesting for scholars researching the reestablishment of Jewish institutes in the post-war era and issues of identity or affiliation during the first decade after the war, during the period that saw the establishment of the communist state but also the founding of the State of Israel. Please see the Series descriptions for more details on contents.

The Lugoj Jewish Community Collection represents the most extensive collection surveyed by the Leo Baeck Institute in the course of its survey of material held by existing Jewish communities in Transylvania.  It comprises 25 series and contents range from material related to the community during the second half of the 19^th century, through to the interwar and war-time period, and the decades of mass emigration following the war. Enabling the relatively rapid processing of such an extensive amount of material was the existence of an archival inventory dating to the late 1960s. The inventory had the material arranged by year and title. LBI archivists made the decision to group the material prior to World War II thematically, since not all years contained items and the material was related thematically more so than annually. Thus, the Rabbinate series (Series I) contains correspondence, birth and marriage certificates, and other administrative documents created by the Rabbinate offices from the late 19^th century through to World War II.  Beginning in the early 1940s the amount of material per year went up dramatically and we separated the series by years. Moreover, beginning with the post-war era, the material was very similar from year to year. Thus, every year contains standard accounting files as well as several files of correspondence. In light of the size of this collection and the limited time available to archivists, rarely was the content of the files able to be in detail, where this was possible and content of unusual interest was found, this is noted in the respective series scope and content note. In addition, the decision was made to maintain the integrity of the folder contents, wherever possible, except in the case of unambiguous human error. Thus, it is possible that the contents do not always reflect, exactly, the title of the folder, since we maintained both the original title as well as the folder contents. Please note that because we maintained the integrity of the original folder contents, this means that multiple folders contain documents from the same years, for example correspondence from the 1940s may be found both in the Rabbinate series, if the folder was labelled as “rabbinate correspondence“ as well as in Series IX, Administrative and Correspondence 1943-1945. The only exception to maintaining folder integrity was that some excessively large files were split into two folders. In this case, however, if an especially large folder contained documents spanning a wide period and needed to be divided into two folders, the documents were left in the order they were found, rather than being divided by date, since often documents related to one topic were filed next to each other yet spanned several years. Thus, for example, the four folders “Death and birth certificates, related documents” (box 5, folders 2-5) within the Rabbinate series were originally within one folder and were separated into four folders for easier usage.

A handful of files listed on the inventory were not found, in such a case the file title is still provided on the inventory, with the designation [MISSING], to provide for the chance that the file is discovered at a later point in time. The original inventory from the late 1960s may be found in Series IV: Administrative (1905-1947; 1968); box 10; folder 15.  The file reference number from the original inventory is not included in this finding aid but is within our records, please contact the project director, Julie Dawson at jdawson[at]lbi.cjh.org for more information or to report errors or corrections.

Please note that in addition to material related to the Lugoj Jewish community there are several files related to the Salonta Jewish community (Bihor county, south of Oradea), these files were apparently brought by the former rabbi of Salonta to Lugoj after the war, please see Series VII for more information.

This collection contains almost exclusively documents related to the post-war period. Like all Transylvanian communities that came under the Horthy regime during World War II, the fate of the pre-war documents is unknown but most likely the bulk was destroyed. Neither do these four series represent a comprehensive collection of post-war community documentation; the location of the bulk of the documentary material created by the post-war Jewish community of Sighet is unknown; it may also have been destroyed or lost. Nevertheless, the files here provide us with fragmented but valuable portraits of post-war Jewish life in rural Maramureș. Series I contains registers and photographs, many of these registers record details related to the immediate aftermath of World War II and the return of survivors from death camps and forced labor. Series II is unique in that the documents were not created by the Sighet Jewish community, but rather were transferred to the community at some point in time, probably in the 1980s and possibly even later. These documents were created in Oradea by the Federation of Jewish Communities’ regional division responsible for overseeing Jewish communal properties (“serviciul bunuri”).  The documents comprising this series are of great interest, revealing details of survivor life in the post-war period, tensions between various administrative bodies (Jewish and non-Jewish), and the efforts made by this division to determine the fate of Jewish communal property. Series III contains administrative documents related to Jewish communal property within the town of Sighet itself and Series IV contains accounting documentation. For greater detail on the contents of each series, please see the respective scope and content note below.