SULITA

SULITA (Rom. Suliţa), village in Botosani district, Moldavia, Romania. Founded in 1817, the town passed in 1840 to the ownership of the Moldavian ruler Prince Michael Sturza who was interested in developing the locality. In 1843 when a conflagration destroyed the town, the Jews there wished to leave   but the ruler helped them to reestablish their dwellings and exempted them from taxes for 25 years. Their community increased from 496 in 1831 to 1,831 (63% of the total population) in 1899; 80% of the Jews were occupied as craftsmen, and others were merchants. Some were occupied in sheep raising and marketing. The community had five prayer rooms, a ḥeder and a primary school (founded in 1890 with the aid of the jewish colonization association ), a ritual bath, and a hostel for poor travelers. During the Peasants' Rebellion in 1907 nearly all the houses belonging to the Jews were pillaged and destroyed. By 1930 the Jewish population had decreased to 1,062, but their proportion in the population had increased to 76.1%. In 1932 the landlord of the estate on which the town was built brought a lawsuit to have the Jews expelled, but lost the case. In World War II the Jews in Suliţa were deported to Botosani. A few returned after the war, numbering 380 in 1947, and 250 in 1950. In 1969 there were fewer than ten Jewish families in Suliţa. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Schwarzfeld, Împopularea, reimpopularea si întemeierea târgurilor şi a târguşoarelor în Moldova (1914), 44, 84–85; PK Romanyah, 185–6. (Theodor Lavi)