קהילת יהודי בוקרשט

Rafael Radu Dragan (1909-1986), composer, pianist and teacher, born in Bucharest, Romania. He immigrated to Israel and during the 1950s he was the founder of the music conservatorium in Nahariya. He was a piano and voice training teacher. The Israeli composer, musician, singer, arranger, and lyricist Matti Caspi is one of his students. Dragan appeared on stage as an accompanying pianist of vocal music recitals. He died in Tel Aviv. 

Wilhelm Filderman (1882–1963), leader of the Romanian Jews, born in Bucharest, Romania. Filderman studied law in Paris, France. He returned to Romania and after teaching for two years at the Jewish high school in Bucharest, started his law practice in 1912. In 1913 he was elected to the central committee of the Union of Romanian Jews. During World War I Filderman was an officer in the Romanian army. At the Versailles Peace Conference he was chosen to be a member of the Comité des Délégations Juives. He demanded the total emancipation of the Jews and the inclusion of this principle in the peace treaty with Romania.

In 1920 Filderman became the representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Romania and in 1923 was elected president of the Union of Romanian Jews. Between the two world wars, he fought antisemitism, and worked for the effective realization of full citizenship for the Jews. He published a number of books against antisemitism. He was opposed to a separate Jewish party. In 1927 Filderman was elected a member of the Romanian parliament on the Liberal Party list. From 1931 to 1933 he was the president of the Jewish Community of Bucharest, and in the same period he became president of the Federation of Jewish Communities. When the enlarged Jewish Agency was constituted in 1929, he was elected as a non-Zionist delegate to its founding congress in Zurich.

After 1940, when the anti-Semitic fascist symparthiser Ion Antonescu took over the leadership of the country, Filderman intervened with him as a representative of the Federation, several times obtaining the revocation of serious measures, such as the wearing of the yellow badge, the deportation of Romanian Jews to Nazi death camps in Poland, etc. At the beginning of 1942, when the Federation of Communities was dissolved, Filderman continued to write to authorities to denounce the racial measures. He was a member of the underground Jewish Council, formed of representatives of the principal Jewish trends. When he expressed his opposition to the special tax of four billion lei imposed on the Jews he was sent to Transnistria (March 1943), returning after three months through the intervention of the papal nuncio and the Swiss and Swedish ambassadors. Back in Bucharest, he immediately reported to the Romanian government on the terrible situation of the deportees in Transnistria and asked for their return, which was obtained at the end of the same year.

After the war, he again became president of the Federation of Communities and of the Union of Romanian Jews and representative of the JDC. He was however persecuted by the Communists, In 1948 he secretly left Romania and settled in Paris.

Liviu Rotman (b. 1947), researcher of the history of the Jews of Romania, born in Bucharest, Romania. He graduated from the Mihai Viteazul High School and then attended the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest earning a PhD. He immigrated to Israel in 1985. Between 1990 - 2003 he worked as a researcher and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, especially within the framework of the Romanian Jewish History Center Goldstein-Goren, a department of the Diaspora Research Institute of the University.  Rotman is an associate professor at the University of Bucharest and member of the Academic Council of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Bucharest. Rotman edited a five-volume series on the history of Romanian Jewry. His works include Şcoala israelito-română: Învăţămantul evreiesc modern din România (“Education as a mirror of society: Jewish-Romanian school, 1851-1914”, 1999), Memory of the Holocaust in Communist Romania: from Minimization to Oblivion (2003); Evreii din România în perioada comunistă 1944-1965 ("Jews in Romania during the Communist regime", 2004); The Kehillah in Romania: The Pulse, Character and History of the Jewish Community of Romania (2015).

Myriam Marbé (1931-1997), composer of avant-garde music, pianist, and musicologist, born in Bucharest, Romania, the daughter of Max Marbe, a medical researcher, and of Angela Marbe, a piano teacher. She began her musical studies with her mother followed by studies at the Conservatory of Music of Bucharest from 1944 to 1954 under the guidance of Mihail Jora, a leading Romanian composer. She served as a film director at Casa de filme in Bucharest from 1953 to 1965 and a lecturer at the Conservatory of Music of Bucharest from 1954 to 1988. She participated three times at Darmstädter Ferienkursen in Darmstadt, Germany, during 1968-1972, and at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Royan, France, in 1971. Marbe was granted a working grant by the city of Mannheim during 1989-1990. Marbe composed over fifty pieces of music in a variety of genres - music for ballet, chamber music, liturgical music, symphonic compositions, vocal music, opera and lyrical music – including Nunta Zamfirei (1954), In Memoriam (1959), Le Temps Inévitable (1968-1971),  Serenata – Eine kleine Sonnenmusik (1974), Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1977), Souvenir d'un paysage inconnu (1979), Concertul pentru Daniel Kientzy și saxofon (1986), Dialogi – nicht nur ein Bilderbuch für Christian Morgenstern (1989), Fra Angelico - Chagall – Voroneț, Requiem (1990), Sym-phonia for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble on poems by Else Lasker-Schüler (1996), and Song of Ruth (1997).

סרג'ו קומיסיונה (1928-2005) מנצח.

נולד בבוקרשט, רומניה. למד באקדמיה למוסיקה בעיר הולדתו. הופעתו הראשונה כמנצח נערכה ב-1948. ניצח על האנסמבל הרומני הממלכתי ועל התזמורת הסימפונית של בוקרשט. ב-1961 עלה לישראל, וניצח על התזמורת הסימפונית של חיפה ועל התזמורת הקאמרית הישראלית. אחר כך השתקע בארצות-הברית וניצח על בתי האופרה של אלסטר ובלטימור. מעונת 1991/92 קומיסיונה הוא המנהל המוסיקלי של תזמורת ונקובר.

Julius Popper (1857–1893), engineer, adventurer and explorer, born in Bucharest, Romania. He started his education at his father's private school and at the age of 17 moved to Paris, France, where he attended the Politechnique and then the École des Ponts et Chaussées graduating as a mines engineer. He also attended various courses on chemistry, physics, meteorology, ethnography, geology and geography at Sorbonne.

He started his travels around the world in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey), from there he moved to Egypt where he worked for some time at the maintainance of the Suez Channel. He continued to India, China, and Japan, and from there he returned to Romania to visit his family in 1881, never to come back. He restarted his travels first to Siberia, Russia, and then to Alaska, Canada, and the USA, where he stayed for sometime in New Orleans, LA. Popper then moved to Cuba, at the time a Spanish colony, where he contributed to the urban planning of the city of Havana being the main responsible for its modern development. From Cuba Popper traveled to Mexico, where he started a journalistic career, then to Brazil, and finally in 1885 he arrived in Argentina following rumors of gold rush.

In Argentina he organized the "Popper Expedition" in 1886. Leading a team of eighteen people, Popper discovered gold dust on the beach of El Páramo, a Patagonian peninsula. He lead his team much as a private army and step by step, following the discovery of significant amounts of gold, his company Compania de Lavaderos de Oro del Sud succeeded in making large capital gains at the Argentine stock exchange. Popper started issuing his own coins and stamps and when the Argentinian currency lost its much of its value in the crash of 1890, his gold coins were widely accepted as trusted alternative currency.

Popper's activities in Tierra del Fuego have been quite controversial with accusations of involvement into the exploitation and even mass murder of the local native population. However, he received the support of the Argentinian government who was interested in the development of province of Tierra del Fuego, and Popper even started the preparations for an expedition to enforce the Argentine claim for parts of Antarctica.

Popper died in Buenos Aires in unclear circumstances: he was found dead in his room, some rumors suggested that he was assassinated, others that he committed suicide or died of a heart attack.

Mîndru Katz (born Mandy Katz) (1925-1978), pianist, born in Bucharest, Romania. While still a child, his talent was recognized by many leading musicians, among them by the Romanian composer George Enescu. He studied in Bucharest with the same teacher as Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950) and Radu Lupu (1945-2022). He continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in Bucharest graduating in 1947. He immediately started a successful career as pianist performing with Bucharest Symphonic Orchestra and other Romanian orchestras until his immigration to Israel in 1959. In Israel he developed a career of both a pianist and a music teacher.  Katz was one of the jury members of the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition held in Tel Aviv in 1974. During his career Katz performed in some 40 countries with the most prestigious orchestras, including Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Orchestra, and Symphony Orchestra in Cape Town. Katz died on stage while playing Beethoven’s Sonata 17 “The Tempest” in a recital in Istanbul, Turkey.

Iosif Iser (1881-1958), painter and graphic artist, born in Bucharest, Romania. He studied in Munich, Germany, and Paris, France. Iser, who harbored Socialist opinions, worked for the socialist publications Facla and Adevărul where he published numerous caricatures, of them many satirizing the Romanian monarchy.

His early style was strongly influenced by the expressionist movement, but he later created his own artistic language. His travels to Spain and then the discovery of the landscape and people of the south-eastern region of Dobruja (Dobrogea) were decisive for adopting exotic themes. Iser painted many portraits of the Tartar inhabitants of Dobruja; this series were followed by works that dealt with the life of harlequins and circus artists. Following the instauration of the Communist regime in Romania, Iser returned to his socialist inspired themes painting especially portraits of working people. Iser was elected a full member of the Romanian Academy in 1955.

Eugen Taru (born Eugeniu Starck) (1913-1991), graphic artist, best known for his cartoons, comics and book illustrations, born in Craiova, Romania. He studied at the Institute of Architecture in Bucharest, graduating in 1936. He began his artistic career in 1930 with drawings, caricatures, and portraits published in a number of periodicals. After the establishment of the Communist regime in Romania, he worked for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Scanteia, Romania libera, Scanteia tineretului, and particularly for the he satire and humor magazine Urzica, as well as for several children’s magazines. He participated in all annual Romanian state exhibitions, and after 1968 in the Humor Salons. In addition, his works were displayed at major international illustrated book fairs in Moscow, Leipzig, Bratislava, and Bologna as well as at numerous cartoon fairs in Bordighera, Tolentino, Gabrovo, Akșehir, Skopje, Moscow, Marostice, Montreal, and Athens. He was awarded the Gold Medal at Tolentino in 1969, 1971, and 1977, the Special Award of the magazine Krokodil of Moscow in 1973, and the First Prize in Tolentino in 1979. His important collection of art, known as Colectia Josefina and Eugen Taru, including paintings by leading Romanian artists (Ion Andreescu, Nicolae Tonitza, Theodor Pallady, Stefan Luchian, Iosef Iser, Alexandru Ciucurencu, Francisc Sirato, Dumitru Ghiata) as well as Chinese and Japanese porcelain and 18th century French furniture, was donated to the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest.

Moses Gaster (1856-1939), rabbi and scholar, born in Bucharest, Romania. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and the University of Leipzig, Germany. From 1881 he was lecturer at the University of Bucharest until 1885 when he was expelled on account of his protests at the persecution of Jews. He then settled in England where he taught at Oxford University until 1887 when he was chosen as Haham (chief rabbi) of the London Sephardi community, serving until his retirement in 1917. An authority on Romanian philology, literature and folklore as well as in many branches of Jewish knowledge , he wrote numerous studies in all these fields. A leader of Hovevei Zion in his native Romania, he joined the political Zionist movement at its outset. In 1898 Gaster was one of the founders of the English Zionist Federation and during World War I took a leading role in talks with British statesmen that culminated in the Balfour Declaration.