[2][3] The modern city of Gherla was founded by the Armenian community in the 1700s with the approval bought from Vienna, with the consent of Emperor Leopold I.

[6] Other institutions formed as well, such as the chevra kadisha (burial society), several organizations which helped take care of the needy members of the community, and even a guest house for the poorer visitors to the city.

However, because the Jews of Gherla were predominantly Orthodox and at the time Zionism was shunned by the majority of traditional Jews, most of the community was less receptive or even openly hostile to Zionist ideology, and the movement did not gain as wide a following or as vibrant a cultural life as it did in some other Transylvanian cities.

In June 1942, the board conscripted 424 Jews between the ages of 21 and 42 for labor service from Cluj, Gherla, and the surrounding areas.

The draftees were assigned to labor service battalions and sent to the Eastern Front in Ukraine, where most of them perished.

Of note are the actions of Imre Revicky, a colonel in the Hungarian army, who tried to deal more compassionately with the Jews.

Despite Revicky's job overseeing Jewish labor; he punished his subordinates for beating the workers, risking his own life repeatedly and saving the lives of hundreds of Jews in this way.

[8] Following the beginning of Germany's occupation of Hungary, on March 19, 1944, the Jews of Gherla were subjected to the Nazi's Final Solution.

[6] Marked with yellow stars and expropriated, the Jews were forced into the local brickyard ghetto on May 3, 1944.

[10] On April 26, all of them had taken part in a secret conference chaired by László Endre, Hungary's State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior.

[11] They were all deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the transport of May 25, where the overwhelming majority was murdered in gas chambers or through the harsh conditions.

A single exempted Jewish family, consisting of the First World War disabled veteran Hillel Pataki, his wife, and his unmarried son, were allowed to remain in Gherla, but they were on house arrest, could not leave the house without permission, and had to wear a white armband for identification.

A shelter and communal kitchen, which initially was supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, was able to provide meals every day for desperate refugees.

By 2002, there was only one observant Jew, Zoltan Blum, a Holocaust survivor, who was named honorary citizen of Gherla in June 2015.

[2] In the spring of 2016, the organization raised enough funds to build a Holocaust Memorial Monument on the grounds of the synagogue.

[15][16] In 2022, the city government of Gherla took over the management of the synagogue from the Romanian Jewish Federation, which owns the building.