THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF AVAS UJVAROS, HUNGARY

According to the 1877 Gazetteer, at that time the Jewish residents of Ujvaros worshipped in Avas-Felsofalu (now Negresti Oas), about 10 kilometers to the east. That is where my grandmother's brother Dovid was born in 1879.

At the end of World War I, the 1920 Treaty of Trianon gave Transylvania to Romania. Some historians say that a 1916 agreement between Romania and the Allies promised to award the eastern territories of Hungary, and the eastern part of the Banat to Romania in exchange for changing sides in World War I. The area south of the Tisza River, including Szatmar megye, was ceded to Romania while the region to the north became part of the new Republic of Czechoslovakia.

The Jewish population of Ujvaros changed little during the following years, growing from 234 at the turn of the 20th century to a high of 254, about 10 percent of the total population, in 1930. When the Nazis conducted their census of Hungary's Jewish population in 1944 there were 226 Jews living in Ujvaros according to Jewish community's recordkeeper, Rabbi Samuel Teitelbaum in Avas-Felsofalu.

Between 1542 and 1688 Transylvania was a relatively independent principality that maintained relations with both Hungry and Turkey. In 1687, after the Hapsburgs defeated Turkish forces, Transylvania became an Austrian crown colony and the Jewish population began to grow due to increased migration of Ashkenazi Jews from the north and west. Still barred from living in towns, Jews began to settle on the estates of noblemen.

In 1769, there were only 177 Jewish families in all of Szatmar Megye (county) representing less than 1 percent of the total population. After the partition of Poland in 1772, there was a massive migration of predominantly rural and Orthodox Jews from Galicia to the north, across the Carpathian mountains into Hungary. Censuses ordered by the Hapsburg rulers show that the Jewish population of Transylvania increased by more than 80 percent between 1785 and 1813. It was during this period that the first Jews settled in Avas Ujvaros.

By 1828, there were 99 households living in Ujvaros including at least six identified as Jewish. In 1877, a year before the birth of my grandmother Zlata (Lottie) Berkovics, the Jewish population was 128, close to 11 percent of the population. The undated picture below shows the shul in Avas Ujvaros.

The Second Vienna Award (August 30, 1940) divided the province of Transylvania into Northern and Southern Transylvania and gave Northern Transylvania, including Szatmar megye, back to Hungary. Hungarian authorities established two ghettos in the county, one in the city of Szatmar (Szatmarnemeti) and the other in Nagybanya. Jewish males between the ages of 20 and 48, including young men from the Berkovics and Bal families, were conscripted into the Hungarian labor service. In Northern Transylvania, many of these recruits owed their survival to Colonel Imre Reviczky, the commander of the recruitment center in Nagybanya, who was honored as a Rightous Gentile after the war.

In April and early May of 1944, after the Nazis invaded Hungary, the remaining Jewish residents of Ujvaros, along with their neighbors from Vamfalu, Avasfelsofalu, Sarkoz, and Szinervaralja, were ordered to move into the Szatmarnemeti ghetto. Between May 19 and June 1, 1944, the ghetto was liquidated and its 18,863 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in six transports.

After the war, there were 70 Jews left in Ujvaros, including some of the Bal sons, who returned from the Russian prisoner of war camps. Within a few years, along with many other survivors, they moved to Israel.

References:

Randolph Braham, Genocide and Retribution: The Holocaust in Hungarian-Ruled Northern Transylvania, Springer, 1983.

Ladislau Gyemant, The Jews of Transylvania in the Age of Emancipation, 1790-1867, Carmilly Institute for Hebrew and Jewish History, Editura Enciclopedica, Bucuresti, 2000.

Peter Hanak, "Jews and the Modernization of Commerce in Hungary, 1760-1848, Jews in the Hungarian Economy, Magnes Press, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1992.

Pinkas HaKehillot (Romania), Vol. 1, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1969.