Cluj is today Transylvania’s most important city. The Jewish presence became significant here only starting in the late eighteenth century. The community, divided between those of Orthodox faith and Reformists, was uniformly annihilated in Auschwitz following imprisonment within the city’s ghetto.
Only a few dozen Jews live in Cluj today, the rare survivors of the Shoah here having mostly emigrated to Israel in the years following the war.
Make sure to visit Cluj’s very beautiful synagogue, referred to as the Temple of the Deportees. Built in 1866, transformed into a warehouse under the Horthy regime, and later damaged by the Nazis during their retreat, it has been subject to a number of restoration projects.
There are ancient Jewish cemeteries in Cluj, among them the ones located on the streets of Turzii and Soimului.