Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 29/1. (2009)
Istorie
Is torié ИЗ ELITA ECONOMICÄ EVREIASCÄ DIN TÄRGU-MURE§ ÍN PERIOADA INTERBELICÄ VASILE §ANDOR Jewish economic elite of Tärgu-Mure§ in the interwar period Abstract During the inter-war period the presence of Jews in Tg,-Mure§ was important, through their number of aproximately 3.500 in 1924, from a population of 35.000 inhabitants, over 4.800 out of 38.417 and 7.500 from a total population of aproximately 50.000 inhabitants in 1944 and, more importantly, through their visible and efficient labour conscription, both in economy and in liberal professions. The place they occupied in the town’s topography, with predilection, but not exclusively, in the central area, suggests even more the role of extremely present and dynamic factor of the Jewish community in town. According to the 1930 census data, that year the number of the total Jewish population was 4.828, with 22.387 Hungarians, 9.795 Romanians, 632 Germans, 400 Gipsies, 181 Russians, 70 Bulgarians, 55 Ruteno-Ucraniens, 36 Czechs, Slavokians, 26 Armenians, 18 Serbians, Croations, Slovenians, 9 Polish people, 5 Turkish people, 3 Albanians, 2 Greeks, 70 others (in the county there were 9.959 Jews, 132.719 Romanians, 123.317 Hungarians, 11.283 Germans etc). Until 1940, there have been 158 social Jewish firms, with Jewish participation with the social residence in Tg,-Mure§. If concerning the number of firms and their affiliation (associates, shareholders, the structure of the Administration Comittees and the Censors Comittees) the existing information has a reasonable degree of correctness, the situation is not the same as far as other aspects are concerned, such as staff structure - from a professional as well as from an etnical point of view, wages and social protection, capital, business numbers, etc., aspects slightly or not at all present in the existing documents. Among the Jews present in the city's economical life - manufacturers, merchants, financiers, lawyers, doctors, chemists, engineers - a part of them were involved, in different hypostasis - as owners, shareholders, leaders, censors, clerks and leaders of the branches or agencies of some firms from outside the city - in an important number of firms and can be considered as being part of the economical elite of Tg.-Mure§. Some find themselves in the leadership of some production, trade and services firms as well as some banks. Threatened, especially at the end of the 1930s, by the manifestations of the extreme right organisations, from Romania as well as, after the concession of Ardeal, from Hungary, the Jews from Tg Mure§ had been submitted then, in an extremely brutal way, to the terror broken loose by the fascist-horthyst government, under the pressure and with the collaboration of the Nazi authorities, from March-June 1944. Surviving the Holocaust in precarious conditions, only aproximately 1.500 Jews from Tg Mure§ returning to the Nazi camps (in total 2.208 persons were consigned as having returned from deportation in Tg Mure§, not all of them native of the city), the Jewish businessmen resumed, in 1945, the activities they had been forced to abandon in 1944. The inconvenience of the communist system, the constitution of the Israel State and the attractiveness of the Occident determined, however the emogration of the majority of Jews towards the Occident and Israel, nowadays the community from Tg.- Mure§ counting only aproximately 200 members, including the non-Jewish members of their families.
