Sighet, Transylvaina
Josh D, Mary R, Kayleigh W, Brandon E, Nick H
Facts:
- Sighet is the birthplace of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel
- Sighet is located in the Northern part of Transylvania (modern day Romania), just South of the U.S.S.R.
- Part of Romania following WWI, Part of Hungary in 1940 & 1944.
- There was a large population of Jews in Sighet. Nearly 10,500 Jews in Sighet at the start of WWII.
Facts:
- 2,000 Jews escaped to Hungary to escape capture by the S.S.
- A ghetto was made after German Occupation in Sighet.
- The entire population of Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
- Approximately 40,000 Hungarian Jewish forced labors died of the Eastern front, in the Ukrainian Steppes.
The town of Sighet, Transylvaina
The picture above is of the town Sighet in Transylvania.
It was taken in 1941, which is around the time when the holocaust was taking place.
Ghetto in Sighet
Ghettos were made up of former areas of a town.
Facts:
- Sighet became a center for the forestry industry.
- Only a few hundreds of Sighet's Jews survived the concentration camp.
- Two ghettos were made to contain the 13 thousand Jews that lived in and around Sighet.
- Of the nearly 14,000 Jews deported from Sighet in May 1944, it is estimated that only several hundred survived after the war.
Facts:
- At the end of April 1944, a delegation planning the destruction of Hungarian jewry visited the ghetto. The delegation was headed by Adolf Eichmann on the German side and Laszlo Endre on the Hungarian side.
- Even in this "quiet Period," however, the Hungarian government enacted antisemitic laws similar to those in effect in Nazi Germany. Tens of thousands of Jews from the Maramaros region were still drafted into Hungarian forced labors battalions.