Romania: Holocaust Monument to be Dedicated in Bucharest

Romania: Holocaust Monument to be Dedicated in Bucharest
by Samuel D. Gruber

The Government of Romania has announced that a Romanian National Holocaust Memorial will be dedicated in central Bucharest on Thursday, October 8, on the occasion of Holocaust Commemoration Day. The memorial, designed by artist Peter Jacobi, will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma and other Romanian victims of the Nazis and their Romanian allies and collaborators.

The erection of the monument was announced several years ago as a result of intense criticism of Romanian government leaders' denial that there had been a Holocaust in Romania, and their efforts to distance past Romanian governments from Jewish and Roma suffering. Under Communism and in the post-Communism years official policy was that the Germans were the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and that Romanian leader Antonescu was not involved, this despite the destructive policies of Anotonescu's regime.

As a result, an international commission headed by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, was established to provide the factual basis for Romania to re-evaluate this period of its history - a history which has been frequent neglected, distorted or denied during the decades of Communist rule. Wiesel is a native of the town of Sighet, now part of Romania.

One result of the Commission's recommendations, included in the its 400-page report, is that President Traian Basescu laid the cornerstone for the new memorial in 2006. He is expected to attend the dedication of the near-complete monument this week, together with Holocaust survivors and dignitaries from several countries.

The Romania Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage described the monument as "a contemporary expression of a memorial, the bearer of a message, a visible sign, an active space with which the public can interact freely." It consists of five symbolic sculptures symbolizing representing the suffering of Jews and Roma. There is a central memorial site and two installations using Jewish gravestones that from local cemeteries that had been desecrated. Attending the dedication from the United States will be Warren Miller, Chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, and Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of International Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, who also serves as the OSCE representative on combating anti-Semitism.

Previous Monument Erected by Jewish Community in 1991

Until now, the only other monument to Holocaust victims in Bucharest is a memorial erected in 1991 by the Jewish community in front of the Choral Synagogue, the center of Romania’s Jewish communal life.

At that time, in a public ceremony, Romania’s chief rabbi and other representatives of Jewish groups publicly denounced the Romanian involvement in massacres of Jews during the Holocaust, and the country’s subsequent silence about the matter.
The ceremony took place in the wake many anti-Semitic episodes following the fall of dictator Nicolai Ceacescu.

The inscription on the monument, which was erected in front of the Bucharest’s Choral Synagogue, explicitly refers to “German, Romanian and Hungarian fascists” as the perpetrators of the murders of 400,000 Romanian Jews.

The stark bronze monument, in the form of a giant menorah set on a marble base, was unveiled to the accompaniment of a military band. Separate from the main monument, along a wall flanking the forecourt where the monument stands, is a listing of the various places of death and the numbers of people killed in each place. At that time, Elie Wiesel unveiled the plaque commemorating the murder of 150,000 Jews in Transylvania, where he was born.

Weisel was quoted in the New York Times as saying “I address my words to the leaders of this country. I hope you know that your representatives have great difficulties in the world to mobilize sympathy, political and economic support for you. Your image is not the best. You must know that. You must know that unless these anti-Semites are shamed in society, you will suffer. You will be isolated.

Neither the Romanian president nor prime minister attended the event, though both sent word of sympathy and support.

18 years later, this week's ceremony is intended to rectify the situation. It remains to be seen whether this will be merely a temporary symbolic gesture, or whether it will have lasting meaning in Romania.

Other Monuments in Romania

There are several other monuments to Holocaust victims scattered through Romania. A prominent figural monument to the deported in Dej by sculptor Izsák Márton was erected in the 1980s or earlier. Few other monuments, however, appear to be prominently sited. Several are in Jewish cemeteries. These include a memorial to the deported in Cluj and a monument at the cemetery in Podul Iloaei, to those who died on the Death Train from Iasi. There are no longer any Jews in this town but the cemetery and monument are well maintained. There is also a monument to the victims of the Iasi Death Train in the Jewish cemetery in Roman.

USA: ISJM to Survey Post-World War II American Synagogues

Syracuse, NY. Former Temple Beth El, built in the 1960s. Photos taken shortly before closure and sale to a church in 2007. The building has never been documented, but I was able to photograph it top to bottom before it was cleared of furniture and Judaica fitting. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber/ISJM

USA: ISJM to Survey Post-World War II American Synagogues
by Samuel D. Gruber (President, ISJM)

The International Survey of Jewish Monuments (ISJM) is launching a new documentation initiative aimed at gathering information about the architecture, art and condition of modern American synagogues built in the second half of the 20th century. The emphasis of the survey will be on buildings designed and erected between 1945 and 1975 as these are most at risk.

Research by ISJM members has shown that many of these buildings - even when designed by master architects - are poorly documented, and often threatened with radical alteration or complete demolition due to specific congregational factors and larger demographics shifts. Synagogues built in the 1950s and 1960s are regularly altered, expanded, sold and demolished due to expanding congregations, new liturgical and congregational expectations, changing tastes in style, and sometime high cost of maintaining deteriorated materials.

In the past decade alone synagogues designed by such as noted architects including Pietro Belluschi, Sidney Eisenshtat, Harrison & Abramovitz, Fritz Nathan, Percival Goodman. Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Kivett & Myers, Eric Mendelsohn and Werner Seligmann have been significantly altered and in some cases even demolished. Scores of synagogues by lesser known local architects, such as Beth El in Syracusee pictured above, have shared this fate. Many others, like Adat Israel i Newport News, Va (below) are at risk.

Change is an inevitable process and ISJM's project is not intended to dictate how a congregation should use its property. The primary purpose of the survey is documentation, but documentation can lead to more informed decisions about future use. Also, since many of these buildings are now eligible or will soon be eligible for National Register listing, ISJM will encourage and assist congregations in this process when appropriate. We are pleased to note, for instance, that the NY Landmarks Conservancy has recently assisted the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn with NR nomination. Based on past success, it is hoped that interest by architectural historians and others through ISJM will also stimulate more interest in their buildings among congregants and also with local architecture and preservation organizations.

Newport, News, Virginia. Adat Israel is for sale. On a recent visit I was able to photograph the exterior, but could not get inside. One interesting feature is the room with windows to the right of the entrance in the photo immediately above. The room has no roof - it contains a permanent sukkah frame. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber/ISJM Sept 2009.

Plans call for an organizing committee of volunteers for this project, each to be responsible for collating inventories and organizing documentation based on location. Volunteers in New York, Florida, Illinois and Minnesota have already responded.

ISJM also welcomes informative and learned discussion on related issues of architects, patronage, planning, design, materials, construction, use and re-use of modern synagogues and all modern religious buildings. ISJM will aslo assist members with organizing lectures, seminars and conerence sessions on these topics.

With the exception of a few iconic buildings by a few noted architects (i.e. Wright's Unity Temple and Beth Sholom Synagogue; Kahn's First Unitarian Church and unbuilt Mikveh Israel Synagogue; Belluschi's sacred spaces), religious architecture in American mostly receives short shrift in the literature of architectural history.

If you are interested in participating as an organizer, documentarian, sponsor or organizational partner please contact me directly at samuelgruber@gmail.com.

ISJM is especially eager to hear from architects and builders (or their descendents) to learn about synagogues they have designed, and to discuss with them the eventual disposition of their papers, drawings and other documentation concerning such projects.

Poland: Roma Sites Documented - Including Holocaust Mass Grave and Memorials

Zabno, Poland: Roma Mass Grave and Monument. Photo: Adam Bartosz, 2005

Poland: Roma Sites Documented - Including Holocaust Mass Graves and Memorials

by Samuel D. Gruber

Beginning in 2005, when I was serving part-time as the Research Director of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, I had the privilege of working with Polish scholar and minority-rights activist Adam Bartosz on an inventory and survey of all known Roma (Gypsy) cultural heritage sites in Poland. Adam had previously helped with the survey of Jewish cemeteries carried out in the early 1990s, and he had subsequently researched and published widely on Jewish heritage in the Tarnow region, where he administers local museums.

My work was only to define the parameters and methodology of the project, and then to review Adam’s field work. Adam did all the real work and visited and photographed them. Later, with the help of Katrina A. Krzysztofiak, program manager at the Commission and a native Polish speaker, I edited Adam’s findings into a report for the Commission.

I am happy to write that the report Roma Historical and Cultural Sites in Poland has now been released by the Commission and is available online.

It is not a long report, but it is an important one. To my knowledge it is the first ever compiled and published list of Roma cultural sites from any country. It is an important step in the acknowledgment of Roma history and culture in Poland. Unfortunately, as the report demonstrates, that history has not been a happy one, especially since the Holocaust and under the Communist regime. Since there is little recorded Roma history before recent times, most of the sites identified are either associated with the Holocaust – mostly death and burial sites, and a few recent memorials.

Lodz, Poland. Part of Memorial to Deported Jews and Roma at Radegast Station.
Photo: Adam Bartosz, 2005

Szaflary (Malopolska), Poland. Roma settlement. Photo: Adam Bartosz, 2005

We do not advocate the same sorts of cultural heritage protection policies for these residential sites (nor for the private tombs in cemeteries which are also recorded) as for more traditionally defined cultural hertiage sites, but we do not want them ignored and forgotten either. For Polish Roma themselves, this report may prove valuable. Since the restriction of Roma seasonal migration and gatherings in Poland during the Communist regime, many Roma are also mostly ignorant of the extent of the Roma settlement and cultural sites.

Tarnow, Poland: Outdoor exhibit at Ethnographic Museum. Photo: Adam Bartosz, 2005

There have been moves in recent years to combat this ignorance and neglect. Bartosz himself founded the "Gypsy" in Tarnow(actual name is the Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the Regional Museum of Tarnow) to collect testimony and artifacts of Poland Roma culture. The museum, one of the first of its kind in the world, is not entirely accepted by all in the Roma community, but it has gradually developed into an institution that Roma find a positive contribution to their minority status in Poland.

Even more important for establishing Roma cultural presence has been the annual pilgrimage, led since 1995 by Roman Catholic priest Stanisław Opocki, to visit and remember Holocaust-era sites in the country. In many ways Poland’s Roma community have looked to the Jewish community for inspiration and ideas for how to reclaim and represent their hertiage, and how to better establish themselves and ensure recognition as a distinct cultural minority in Poland today, that is nonetheless, part of the Polish nation.

According to the report:

The survey team identified the following types of places associated with the Roma:

Places of martyrdom. This includes sites of suffering and death inflicted upon the Roma during the years of the Second World War, the major site being the German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Monuments have been planned at other concentration camp sites. There are also several graves of Roma Holocaust victims in local cemeteries, some of which have been marked and are now the destination of annual commemorative pilgrimages.

Places of pilgrimage. There is one major important religious site, the Monastery of Capuchin Friars (Zakon Braci Mniejszych Kapucynów). It has a figure of the Holy Mary of Rywałd, which is popularly known as “Mary of the Gypsies.” This site has been the focus of pilgrimages since the years between the First and Second World Wars.

There is also an annual Roma pilgrimage in Łososina Górna, Koszary (Małopolska Province) which has been led by Roman Catholic priest Stanisław Opocki. Begun in 1995, it is a major activity in the settlement. Pilgrims set out on foot from the nearby church in Łososina (part of the town of Limanowa) to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrow in the town situated 6 km away. It is the most colorful Roma pilgrimage in Poland, with over 1,000 participants annually from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Places commemorating important individuals. This category includes sites associated with Papusza, a Roma poet, and other noteworthy Roma, such as painter Ignacy Pawłowski. Graves are mentioned in descriptions of cemeteries even though they have not been singled out with special monuments.

Museum and private collections. The Roma themselves have not initiated any known private collections or exhibitions. In recent years, however, some exhibits have opened, the largest of which is in Tarnów. There is also a small collection in Gorzów. The Tarnów Museum is the first museum in the world to create a Roma collection. The survey team also visited private collections. Because the material culture of Roma is very scarce, even small collections are of great importance for documenting Roma traditions.

Roma settlements. Settlements of poor Mountain Roma still exist. There has been gradual improvement in the condition of these places due to the government aid program.

More recent concentrations of Roma also exist in many cities where the Roma were forced to move to by the government in 1964. The residents of these poor communities are gradually dispersing due to improved economic circumstances of individual Roma.

Cemeteries. The survey covers the best-known cemeteries. There presumably are, however, other cemeteries used by Roma that have not yet been identified. Not much is known of the burial sites Roma used before the Second World War but today Roma often erect richly-decorated monumental tombs with expensive materials. In municipal cemeteries, there is frequently considerable attention given to burying the dead near other members of the group.

Roma graves are found in various types of cemeteries including those maintained by municipalities and the Roman-Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Although there are not formal sections exclusively for Roma burials, Roma often combine plots, and create distinct enclaves within the larger necropolis. Roma tombs have various forms but they are typically more ornate than the surrounding tombs. In many cases, these are large chapel-like structures or large gravestones of expensive stone.

Roma graves are generally well maintained. Customarily, large crowds visit burial sites and drink vodka to honor family members on All Saints Day (November 1).

Israel: Synagogue from Second Temple Period Excavated at Migdal

Israel: Synagogue from Second Temple Period Excavated at Migdal

(ISJM) According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, a synagogue from the Second Temple Period (pre-70 CE) was excavated at Migdal, near the Sea of Galilee .The remains appear to have been remarkably well preserved with surviving perimeter benches, floor mosaic and traces of colored wall painting.

The most unusual feature is a large stone covered with symbolic relief carving (see photo). This includes what archaeologists believe is the earliest known representation of a menorah in a synagogue setting. The discovery of the synagogue - during construction of a hotel - adds important new evidence of extensive building of Jewish synagogues prior to the destruction of the Temple. There is still no consensus, however, on what exactly took place in these meeting halls. Torah reading? Study? Individual and collective prayer? When it is fully Migdal will no doubt now be included in the standard synagogue histories in which the Second Temple period is dominated with mention of Gamla and Masada.

Migdal, Israel. Carved stone from the excavated synagogue, Photo: IAA

Here is the IAA Press Release:

A synagogue from the Second Temple period (50 BCE-100 CE) was exposed in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting at a site slated for the construction of a hotel on Migdal beach, in an area owned by the Ark New Gate Company. In the middle of the synagogue is a stone that is engraved with a seven-branched menorah (candelabrum), the likes of which have never been seen. The excavations were directed by archaeologists Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The main hall of synagogue is c. 120 square meters in area and its stone benches, which served as seats for the worshippers, were built up against the walls of the hall. Its floor was made of mosaic and its walls were treated with colored plaster (frescoes). A square stone, the top and four sides of which are adorned with reliefs, was discovered in the hall. The stone is engraved with a seven-branched menorah set atop a pedestal with a triangular base, which is flanked on either side by an amphora (jars).

According to the excavation director, Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “We are dealing with an exciting and unique find. This is the first time that a menorah decoration has been discovered from the days when the Second Temple was still standing. This is the first menorah to be discovered in a Jewish context and that dates to the Second Temple period/beginning of the Early Roman period. We can assume that the engraving that appears on the stone, which the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered, was done by an artist who saw the seven-branched menorah with his own eyes in the Temple in Jerusalem. The synagogue that was uncovered joins just six other synagogues in the world that are known to date to the Second Temple period”.

According to the Minister of Culture and Sport, MK Limor Livnat, “This important find attests to the extensive Jewish settlement in the northern region at the time of the Temple. I am certain that the site will constitute an attraction for tourists from abroad and from Israel and will shed light on life in the Jewish settlement during the Second Temple period”.

Jose Miguel Abat, legal representative of "Ark New Gate" company, expressed his joy for the finding and said it reinforces the company's intention to establish a center of dialogue and respect between the different religions and cultures. Abat said that "we are sure this finding and the planned center will attract tourists and visitors from Israel and from around the World".

The synagogue is located in Migdal (‘Magdala’ in Aramaic), which is mentioned in Jewish sources. Migdal played an important role during the Great Revolt and was actually the main base of Yosef Ben Matityahu (Josephus Flavius), commander of the rebellion in the Galilee. Migdal also continued to resist the Romans after both the Galilee and Tiberias had surrendered. ‘Magdala’ is mentioned in Christian sources as the place whence Mary Magdalene came, one of the women who accompanied Jesus and the apostles and who Christian tradition has sanctified. After it was conquered by the Romans, the city was destroyed and many of its residents were killed. At the end of the Second Temple period Migdal was an administrative center of the western basin of the Sea of Galilee. Until the founding of Tiberias in the year 19 CE, Migdal was the only important settlement along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The site is currently closed to visitors and will be opened to the public in the future.