Status Quo Ante Cemetery/Neolog Cemetery

Cemetery - Satu Mare (Satmar, Szatmar, Sathmar, סאטמאר Szatmárnémeti), Satu Mare

Satu Mare Status Quo Cemetery

The Status Quo Ante Cemetery, the smaller of the two Jewish cemeteries in Satu Mare, also is strewn with broken and toppled tombstones in need of restoration. However, the graveyard’s vegetation remains mostly under control with the same unpaid caretaker doing his best with few resources.[1,2]
More than 1,000 tombstones with still-legible names remain, with many others now unreadable. The stones in the Status Quo Cemetery tend toward simplicity without elaborate carvings or adornments, yet there are many ohels. A masonry wall with a gate surrounds the cemetery, which borders a residential area. Access is open with permission for both Jewish and non-Jewish visitors.[3,2,1]
With just a handful of Jews left in Satu Mare, the Staus Quo Ante Cemetery, also called the Neiolog Cemetery, is just one of about 129 that the city’s Jewish community is responsibile for maintaining. Since 1945, 90% of Romanian Holocaust survivors and their descendants have emigrated, leaving behind their cemeteries but no Jews to care for the graves. Jewish communities in other cities take on that obligation, outstripping their meager budgets, which is the situation in Satu Mare.[4]
All Jewish cemeteries in Romania fall under the auspices of The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FedRom), which tries to rein in and control unauthorized interventions at the cemeteries. Its budget also is stretched and does not have enough funding to restore the many hundreds of cemeteries in the country.[4]
Prepared by Anne Armel, December 2019
SOURCES
  1. “The Jewish Cemetery of Sathmar,” Satu Mare, 2010, https://www.jewishcomunity.ro/download/The+Jewish+Cemetery+of+Sathmar.pdf
  2. “Galician Traces,” “A Photographic Document of Eastern European Judaica by Charles Burns,” Satu Mare, non-Orthodox, Romania, 2018,http://galiciantraces.com/satu-mare-non-orthodox-romania/
  1. “Documentation of the Status-Quo Jewish Cemetery from Sathmar,” George Elefant, Tel Aviv, 2011, http://szatmar.us/db/neolog.html
  2. Samuel D. Gruber, “Historic Jewish Sites in Romania,” (United States Commission of the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, 2010), https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=rel

Details

Date Added Jan 29, 2020
Category Cemetery
Country RO
State Satu Mare
City Satu Mare (Satmar, Szatmar, Sathmar, סאטמאר Szatmárnémeti)
Exhibits

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