Jewish pilgrims returning from Uman leave piles of trash at Romanian airport

Images on social media show widespread littering, long lines, clashes with police in Bacău airport, as some passengers say local authorities ‘made it impossible’ to fly home

Video screenshot from X of widespread littering around Romania’s Bacău "George Enescu" International Airport, October, 2024. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Video screenshot from X of widespread littering around Romania’s Bacău "George Enescu" International Airport, October, 2024. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Thousands of Jewish pilgrims returning to Israel from Uman via Romania left mounds of garbage in the vicinity of the airport before flying home, raising the ire of local authorities, Hebrew media reported Sunday.

Images circulating on social media showed widespread littering around Romania’s Bacău “George Enescu” International Airport, where tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims had been stranded due to flight cancellations in war-torn Ukraine, Ynet reported.

Other videos purportedly showed local police beating Jewish pilgrims suspected of smoking in the airport bathroom, according to HaMoked news site.

Ukraine closed its airspace in February 2022, at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, forcing visitors to travel overland via other European countries in order to reach Uman for the pilgrimage for the Jewish New Year.

Moreover, Moldova unexpectedly refused in September to allow charter flights for Jewish pilgrims heading for Uman, citing Israel’s alleged refusal to cover the costs of temporarily expanding capacity at Chișinău International Airport, as well as security and technical considerations.

This resulted in tens of thousands of pilgrims overcrowding Romania’s Bacău airport, chanting while garbage was scattered all around, as shown in a video dated October 8 posted by Ynet.

One passenger blamed local authorities for the chaos, telling Ynet that “the Romanian police created two long lines consisting of hundreds of people, with only one officer regulating their passage through a narrow opening, thus creating a bottleneck.”

Another passenger stranded at the local airport said that “people had been out in the cold for three days, without any money for a hotel. What did they expect?”

“There isn’t enough room at the airport to sit, not even on the floor,” another passenger told Ynet. “Initially, the airlines had attempted to operate normally, but the Romanian police’s conduct made it impossible. The result is that airlines are cramming in passengers as they come, rather than based on the original takeoff time.”

Jewish men seen outside the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman, ahead of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, October 1, 2024.(Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Some 35,000 Jewish pilgrims made their way to Uman this year to celebrate Rosh Hashanah at the grave of 19th-century mystic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, in defiance of Ukrainian authorities’ repeated travel warnings.

“Russia’s ongoing full-scale military aggression against Ukraine poses real threats to people’s lives and safety,” said the country’s Foreign Ministry in September, “[and] makes it impossible to guarantee the safety of foreign citizens on the territory of Ukraine.”

Uman lies in central Ukraine, relatively far from the front line, but has been targeted by attacks — including deadly strikes — since Moscow’s offensive began in February 2022.

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