Metadata: Town Hall of Oraviţa
Collection
- Country:
- Romania
- Holding institution:
- Romanian National Archives, Directorate of Caraş-Severin County
- Holding institution (official language):
- Arhivele Naţionale Române, Direcţia judeţeană Caraş-Severin
- Postal address:
- Şesul Nou Str. No. 12, Caransebeş 325400, Caraş-Severin county, Romania
- Phone number:
- 0040-255-512981
- Reference number:
- Fond 244
- Title:
- Town Hall of Oraviţa
- Title (official language):
- Primăria oraşului Oraviţa
- Creator/accumulator:
- Town Hall of Oraviţa
- Date(s):
- 1860/1990
- Language:
- Hungarian
- Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan
- Extent:
- 2,775 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains documents of Oraviţa town hall from 1860 to 1990. The overwhelming majority of the 2775 files refer to the 20th century, with only a few hundred files referring to the period before the First World War. The collection reflects the day-to-day activity of the town, its institutions, its social, economic and cultural life and its inhabitants. The Jewish-related material comes mainly from the interwar period and the Second World War. The most relevant information dates from 1938–43 and includes correspondence between the town hall and the authorities of Caraş-Severin County concerning the implementation of the revised citizenship laws, which required local authorities to list the Jewish families whose nationality rights had been established in court. The list presented by the town hall in 1938 includes data on 78 heads of Oraviţa’s Jewish families (inventory 1405, file 23/1938). Another list gives the number of Jewish communities in Timiş county in the same year, including 28 modern, ten Orthodox and one Sephardic community. A 1941 list gives information on 196 Jewish families living in the Oraviţa area, documenting the forced resettlement of rural Jewish families in local towns. The collection also includes lists of Jewish clerks and artists and the measures taken by the authorities to restrict their activity (file 59/1940). Many files concern the issue of Jewish properties, which were registered in 1941–42 as part of the process known as Romanianisation, including lists of Jewish houses, businesses, farms and factories that were confiscated (files 50/1941). The organisation, localisation and control of the activity of forced labour detachments is another frequent issue (files 79/1941 and 69/1943). Correspondence between the local Jewish community with the central Jewish offices in Bucharest reflects the details of the mechanisms of transmission of the official requirements to local level (file 60/1941).
- Archival history:
- Material from before 1860 is held by the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest, while later material was preserved by the Townhall Oraviţa until 1951, when it was transferred to the local branch of the Romanian State Archives which functioned until 1969, when the archive was transferred to the Romanian National Archives, Directorate of Caransebeş County.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Oraviţa is a mining town situated in the historical province of Banat, south-east of the capital Timişoara. It was settled in the 18th century by miners from Tirol, Pfalz and present-day Slovakia (Schemnitz and Banska-Bystrica). Its status as a mining town was officially recognised in 1834, and Banat’s first railway was built there in 1858. It was part of Krassó County and Krassó-Szörény County after 1881. After the First World War it was part of Romania and became the seat of Caraş County. After the 1968 administrative reforms it became part of Caraş-Severin County.
- System of arrangement:
- The collection is arranged in chronological order.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories No. 752, 1024, 1053, 1125, 1404, 1405, 1543, 1640 of the Romanian National Archives, Directorate of Caraş-Severin County.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Romanian Institute for the Research of National Minorities
- Author of the description:
- Attila Gidó (Institutul pentru Studierea Problemelor Minorităţilor Naţionale, Cluj-Napoca), Ladislau Gyémánt (emeritus professor, Cluj-Napoca), 2016