In Kamenets-Podolsk, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) massacred approximately 23,600 Jews on August 27–28, 1941, described as the first large-scale massacre of the “Final Solution.”Īccording to historian Randolph Braham, approximately 2,000 Jews escaped and slipped back into Hungary in various ways. The train disappeared over the horizon all that was left was thick, dirty smoke…” 1 Standing on the station platform, we too were crying. Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian Police, they cried silently. “And then, one day all the foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet. This deportation was described by Elie Wiesel in Night through the experience of Moishe the Beadle (caretaker of a synagogue): In the summer of 1941, Hungarian authorities rounded up approximately 20,000 Jews who had not been able to acquire Hungarian citizenship, and deported them to Kamenets-Podolsk in German-occupied Ukraine. After the annexation, Sighet (part of Transylvania) was once again under Hungarian rule. This followed an agreement between Romania and Hungary, arbitrated by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and known as the Second Vienna Award. In 1940, Hungary annexed northern Transylvania from Romania. The town also functioned as a center for salt trade from nearby salt mines. Sighet, with its sawmills, became a center in the forestry business. Economyīy the late 19th century, once it became possible for Jews to own land and timber, many Jews worked in the lumber industry. In addition to Hasidic groups, members of Zionist youth movements and followers of Religious Zionism also populated the town. Culturally and economically, the Jews in Sighet and Mármaros County resembled the Jewish populations of many shtetls in eastern Europe, where religious Orthodoxy and Hasidism predominated.Īmong the main Hasidic sects were followers of Rabbi Yekuti'el Yehudah (1912–1944) Teitelbaum and later his uncle Yoel Teitelbaum (leader of Satmar Hasidism) followers of the Vizhnitser rebbe, whose Hasidim continued to dominate most of Máramaros County and followers of new Hasidic dynasties such as Spinka, founded by Yosef Me'ir Weiss, and Kretchnev (a Nadwórna offshoot), founded by Me'ir Rosenbaum. Sighet was located in a geographically isolated region surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains where the forces of modernization were slow to arrive. Nearly 10,500 Jews lived in Sighet at the start of World War II. Over the course of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Sighet grew, reaching close to 8,000 Jews on the eve of World War I (roughly 37% of the town's population). PopulationĪ significant Jewish population in the city can be traced to the early 18th century, when there were approximately 100 Jews living in the town. During World War II, the town was again part of Hungary between 19. Following World War I, when northern Transylvania was returned to Romania, Sighet became part of Romania. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Sighet was the capital of Máramaros County in the Kingdom of Hungary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |