#interwar romania

[nadjaerna]

Rural life in interwar Romania

[nadjaerna]

Romanian women playing the alphorn (tulnic). Interwar period

[nadjaerna]

Exceptional photo of a lad wearing a traditional folk costume from the Maramureș region in Romania, dating from the interwar period.

[nadjaerna]

Somewhere in Romania, the 30s-40s.

[jewish-transylvania-bukovina]

Hot-Headed Elections in Vatra Dornei, mid 1920s

City police records can contain a variety of unique documents including reports on cultural, religious, and political activities. One file from today contained a number of election posters, all of them worded quite strongly.

The one addressed to Germans and the one addressed to the Jews written in German and Yiddish (the middle images) promote the same party and are very anti-Socialist (the Yiddish reads "Don't vote for the comrades in the Bund, who trample everything Jewish with their crude feet").

The next one is for the Social Democrats, the two candidates are mentioned by name (and insulted) in other posters. The last poster reads, in Romanian, "Cursed be You [if] you vote for lists with foreigners, against your interests!"  

My favorite is the first image, written in Yiddish with Latin letters and a few German spellings. The author(s) disagree strongly with the other Jewish poster and cite examples of why Jews should not vote for that party. They do not, however, say exactly who they think should be elected.

In 1916 the population of Vatra Dornei was approximately 5,500 with about 3,000 Romanians, 1,200 Jews, 1,000 Germans, and smaller groups of Ruthenians and Poles.

[jewish-transylvania-bukovina]

Suceava Boys Trade School : Diploma Receipts, 1930

Continuing on the theme of schools in Suceava, this collection consists of diploma receipts for graduates of one of the trade schools in 1930. Unassuming at first glance, these booklets of receipts have proven to be some of the only collections with photographs. Normally a picture of the student is affixed to his respective receipt. The receipt itself has little information other than the student's name and birth place and date, but the pictures put faces on an otherwise anonymous task.

Like most schools in Suceava, the student body at this one was mixed. Interesting to note is that the Romanian students are almost always photographed in the national costume, whereas the German and Jewish students are wearing suits or street clothes. The few students from Burdujeni, a village outside Suceava which had been part of the Romanian kingdom, seem to be dressed less well off than the German and Jewish students from Suceava or Austrian-Bukovina villages. Another difference can be found in the names - whereas the Burdujeni Jewish students sometimes have Romanianized last names and more traditional Jewish names, the Suceava Jewish students bear German last names and often more (German) assimilated first names.

[moonbutterfly]

Interwar Romania 1918/1920 - 1940 and nowadays Romania 1945 - 2011