Prosecutor’s office of the Hunedoara court at Deva

Collection

Holding institution:: National Archives of Romania, Hunedoara county directorate

Holding institution (official language):: Serviciul judeţean Hunedoara al Arhivelor Naţionale Române

Scope and content:: The fonds comprises the files of the Prosecutor’s office of the Court of Hunedoara in Deva from 1877 to 1952. It includes records of hearings of suspects and witnesses, denunciations, summons, warrants, ordinances, indictments in criminal cases for homicide, rape, injuries, insults, perjury, delicts concerning the state security, les-majesty, illegal political and religious propaganda and action, forgery, smuggling and speculation. It also contains circular orders, instructions from the superior authorities, official correspondence and crime statistics for Hunedoara county. The following files include Jewish references: No. 22/1933 - Statistical tables concerning the Jewish population of the county; No. 31-47/1938 - Revision of the nationality registers from the localities of the county; 26/1940 - Expropriation of the woods owned by the Rapaport and Blum families; No. 14/1941 - Jewish properties; No. 31/1942 - Prosecution of Jewish offenders; No. 25/1946 - Assassination of Jews originally from Bukovina; No. 52/1946 - Attack against the synagogue in Haţeg.

Archival history:: The fonds was preserved by the Court of Hunedoara county, being transferred after 1989 to the Hunedoara county directorate of the Romanian National Archives where it was inventoried and made available to researchers.

Administrative/biographical history:: Until the end of the First World War the legal system in Transylvania was organised in accordance with the Austro-Hungarian juridical legislation. The Prosecutors’ offices were established near the County Courts by Law XXXIII of 1871 modified in 1890 and 1899. They were responsible for criminal and matrimonial cases. From 1912 the prosecutors also had the control of censorship over the printed press in case of war. After the First World War the Romanian system was introduced based on the provisions of the Law of 1925 concerning the judicial system, modified by decrees in 1938 and 1941 by the Royal dictatorship of Charles II and by the regime of general Antonescu during the Second World War, which had an antisemitic character. After 1945 the interwar system was reinstalled until the end of the year 1947 when the newly installed Communist regime introduced the so-called popular assessors. The Constitutions adopted in 1948 and 1952 subordinated justice to the command of the Communist dictatorship until the fall of Communism in 1989.

Subject terms:: Antisemitism; Citizenship; Crime; Legal matters; Plunder; Real estate; Statistics

System of arrangement:: The fonds is organised in thematic files, within which the records are arranged in chronological order.

Finding aids:: Inventories no. 968, 969 and 970, held by the Hunedoara county directorate of the Romanian National Archives.

Yerusha Network member:: Romanian Institute for the Research of National Minorities

Author of the description:: Attila Gidó, researcher, Institute for Study of National Minorities Cluj-Napoca - 2019; Ladislau Gyémánt, emeritus professor - 2019