Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In the first half of the seventeenth century, Jews settled in Bârlad.
There were inscriptions found on gravestones in the old Jewish cemetery located in the centre of the city.
In a document dating from the year 1738, there is mention of a “starosta” (community leader) who stood at the head of the Jewish guild, which is assumed to have been established as far back as the preceding century.
In 1762, Boscocivi, a noted traveler, wrote about the Jews who dwelt in the city.
A Romanian certificate from 1769 deals with Jewish merchants of Bârlad and refers to a “Street of the Jewish Storekeepers”. Bârlad was the wheat marketing centre for the neighboring counties.

In 1887, out of the 954 merchants in Bârlad, 389 were Jews.
The large flour mill serving the county was built by Jews.
At the end of the nineteenth century the economic situation for the Jews of Bârlad deteriorated. There was persecutions, and the middlemen and merchants suffered the most.
The Romanian merchants of Bârlad opposed the discrimination against their Jewish colleagues.
In 1898, the merchabts presented their objections to the ministry of Commerce in Bucaresti opposing the decision by the local office of commerce to remove the Jewish middlemen.
In 1867, the Christians brought a libel against the Jews in Bârlad, accusing them of killing a monk, and fell upon Jewish homes. The government ordered an investigation, and the Minister of the Interior announced in parliament that the Jews were at fault.
In 1868, another riot occurred because of the feud between a Greek and a Jew.
In 1870, the French consul protested against the persecution of the Jews in Bârlad and demanded intervention by the responsible world powers.
In 1881, a branch of Yishuv Eretz Yisrael was established in Bârlad.
In 1883, a group of twenty families was organized to purchase land in Israel and to emigrate.
In 1886, a new wave of persecution occurred which brought about the beginnings of Jewish emigration out of the city.
In 1899, emigration from Bârlad increased.
Every two to three days about ten to fifteen families left.
In 1896, the “Bnei Tzion” was established.
In 1897, a branch of Chovevei Tzion, in memory of Max Nordau, was founded in Bârlad.
In order to finance the group, a tax on meat, bread and kerosene was imposed.
In 1898, a women's group, “Bettulat Bat Yehudah”, was established.

At the beginning of 1900, the flow of emigration had grown and spread from Bârlad to the countryside.
It was called the “Emigration on Foot”.
In the spring of that year two organized groups of “Emigrants on Foot” left the country, one of them consisting of seventy-two individuals, and the second of thirty- eight.
In 1910, a Zionist culture club named after Max Nordau was established by the students of the gymnasium, headed by Michael Landau, who served as representative in the Romanian parliament.
All the participants of the club were expelled from the gymnasium for one year.

In November 1940, Jewish males in Bârlad were taken for forced labor.
After a short time the academics among them were released, as the result of protests from the Romanian academic community, who threatened that they would come to work with their Jewish colleagues.
Four Jewish students were arrested and convicted of promulgating Communist opinions.
They were brought to Vaslui and were tortured there in order to extract their confessions.
On November 19, 1940, in Galati, they were acquitted.
In June, 1941, with the outbreak of war between Romania and the Soviet Union, all the Jews from the villages of the county were deported to Bârlad, from Plopana, Murgeni, Avramesti, and Radeni, as well as from Beresti and Falciu.
In the spring of 1943, the hospital, the old people's home and the bath-house were confiscated by the “National Centre for Romanization”.