Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Romania Ex-Shul Hit by Firebombing

A firebomb thrown into a former synagogue in central Romania caused minor damage, a local Jewish watchdog group said.

The firebomb was aimed at the wooden part of the floor of the former synagogue of Sighisoara, the Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania said in a statement Tuesday about the recent attack.

The building, which has been converted into a cultural center, is in proximity to the site of an earlier attack in Ploiesti, near Bucharest, where a local synagogue’s windows were shattered when vandals pelted them with stones, wrote the watchdog group’s director, Maximillian Marco Katz.

Police are investigating both incidents.

Katz wrote that violence against Jews and buildings associated with Jews is rare in Romania. He added that “growing anti-Semitism in Hungary, the Hungarian extremism imported into Transylvania and the general growth of the anti-Semitism in Europe” may have triggered the attacks.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.