The Australian Jewish News (Melbourne) (January 15, 1982)


TEL AVIV: Raphael Kotlowitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s aliyah department, told reporters upon his return from a visit to Romania the country’s Jewish community was disappearing, with almost no marriages or births and more deaths every day.

He quoted Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen as saying the community now numbered only 33,000 — less than usually thought.

Kotlowitz said most Romanian Jews were now elderly and many were living on welfare.

At one stop on his visit, at Tamishra, he learned only two Jewish babies were born this year while 65 elderly Jews had died, out of a total Jewish population of 1800.