A History of the Jews of Oradea

In his book, the historian Antonio Faur from the University of Oradea, draws a history of the Jews of Oradea on the eve of Holocaust, during their persecution, ghettoization and deportation. Although between 1940-1944, the Jews of North-West Transylvania were under Hungarian rule, their condition was worse than of the remaining Jews from the Kingdom of Romania. They were deported to German and Polish concentration camps. In modern epoch, the Jews of Transylvania constituted a civilizing factor for the Austrian Empire, being in a tight alliance with the Hungarian aristocracy. But on the eve of anti-Semitism, once with the rise of fascism and numerus clausus law, Hungarians delimitated from Jewish influences. An anti-Jewish legislation was introduced in Hungary, after the outburst of the Second World War. In North-West Transylvania, there were a few Romanian ethnics who helped the Jews to escape from certain death, sometimes by emigrating in the Kingdom of Romania. Jewish contribution to Transylvanian culture, values, architecture, literature are underlined by the author Antonio Faur. The lessons that can be drawn by the readers of this book, it is that multiculturalism and tolerance would be more than helpful in order to build better European society.