Cluj Ghetto

The Cluj Ghetto was one of the lesser known Jewish ghettos of the World War II era. This was a harsh ghetto existing in Cluj, Hungary (now known as Cluj-Napoca in Romania).

The ghettoization of the Cluj Jews began on May 3, 1944, and was completed within a week. The Jews were concentrated in the Iris brickyard in the northern part of the city. Consisting mostly of shacks used for drying bricks and tiles, the ghetto had practically no facilities for the approximately eighteen thousand Jews who were assembled there from Cluj county. The concentration of the Jews was carried out by the local administrative and police authorities with the cooperation of SS advisers, including SS - Hauptsturmfuhrer Dieter Wisliceny. The ghetto was under the command of Laszlo Urban, the city's police chief. Its internal administration was entrusted to a Judenrat (Jewish Council), whose members included Fischer (as head), Rabbi Akiba Glasner, Rabbi Mozes Weinberger, and Erno Marton. As in all the other ghettos in Hungary, the local brickyard also had a "mint," a special building where the police tortured Jews into confessing where they had hidden their valuables.