Nagyvárad Ghetto

Members Boys and their families were imprisoned in the Nagyvárad Ghetto.

Nagyvárad Ghetto was one of a network of ghettos set up by Nazi Germany after it invaded in Hungary in March 1944.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

^{Nagyvárad/Oradea, views of the Synagogue.}

Oradea is now part of Romania but was annexed by Hungary from the 1940 Second Vienna Award until the spring of 1944. It was then known by it Hungarian name of Nagyvárad. To find out more about Oradea, its surrounding and the Boys who grew up there click here.

Imre Hitter, pictured in Kloster Indersdorf, Germany in 1945, was held in the ghetto.

in March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary and began to set up ghettos in all of the Jewish communities.

The ghetto in Nagyvárad was the second largest in Hungary.

Structure

There were two ghettoes in the city. The first, for Nagyvárad’s Jews, numbered 27,000 inhabitants and was situated near the Orthodox synagogue and the Great Square.

The other was in the the Mezey lumber yard and held 8,000 Jews from the surrounding countryside.

Daily Life

The ghetto was extremely overpopulated. Conditions were such that one room had to shelter 14 or 15 Jews. As in other ghettos, the Jews suffered from a lack of food and drink. The local authorities often interrupted the flow of electricity and water to the ghetto.

Deportations

In the spring of 1944, the ghetto was evacuated in nine transports, the first two from the lumber yard and the remainder from the city. A total of 27,215 Jews were sent to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

Memorialisation

The Holocaust memorial stands in the back of the courtyard between the Orthodox Synagogue and what had been the Jewish Boys’ School. For more information on visiting the region click here.