THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
The dwindling Jewish community in Romania numbers about 14,000 out of a total population of 23.5 million. The major centers are in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj and Oradea, where the local communities are well organized. Jewish life is also fostered in some smaller communities. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania promotes and coordinates the activities of the communities. Besides publishing a monthly, Realitatea Evreiasca, the federation documents the history of Jewish life in Romania and its publications and symposia are well covered by the Romanian media. The Lauder Foundation operates a Jewish primary school in Bucharest. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been especially active in fostering welfare work among the impoverished elderly Jews of Romania.
The University of Cluj and the University of Bucharest have academic centers for Jewish studies, and hold conferences on Jewish topics and on Romania’s Jewish past (see also below).
The issue of restitution of private and communal property has yet to be resolved in Romania, although the community has secured the return of several individual items. Maintaining the vast number of synagogues and cemeteries, a reminder of the large Jewish population that resided in Romania before the war, is a daunting task for the diminished community.
POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
The most significant development in Romanian politics, which also had international repercussions, was the surprising electoral success of the Greater Romania Party (PRM), led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the most nationalist and antisemitic party in the Romanian parliament. Led by nationalists, formerly communist hacks and pseudo-intellectuals, the party obtained 4.54 percent and 4.46 percent in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, respectively, in the November 1996 general elections. It increased its share in the June 2000 local elections, which were seen as a test for the general elections of November 2000. The 21 percent it won in these elections made the PRM the second largest party. In the second round of the presidential elections, Vadim Tudor gained 33 percent of the vote, compared with 67 percent for Ion Iliescu who became president. On the eve of the second round of the presidential elections, there was a growing fear, especially among the Jewish community, of a rise in extremism, especially if Vadim Tudor were to win the presidency. Such concerns were reflected in an article by Ruth E. Gruber published by the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) on 4 December 2000, which focused on the record of the PRM and its leader.
Themes associated with Israel and the Jews figured frequently in the party’s attacks on outgoing President Emil Constantinescu, especially in the party’s organ Romania Mare (see ASW 1999/2000). The PRM also focused on the dangers of Hungarian irredentist claims, and the alleged anti-social nature of the Roma community. The party’s traditional ties with Le Pen’s FN, as well as with the Iraqi regime, remained close. After the elections, Vadim Tudor reportedly said (Reuters, 29 Nov. 2000), that “his newspapers may print slogans offensive to Jews, but he is a man of peace who would rid Romania of ‘mafia’ and corruption.” Moreover, he has “friends who are Gypsies, Jews and Hungarians.” His claim on the eve of the elections that he had received letters of support from Jewish community officials, was flatly denied.
The dangers of the rise of extremism were discussed extensively in the Romanian media, and various analysts attributed the results of the elections to Romania’s overall economic and social problems. Western analysts, such as Jonathan Eyal from the London-based Royal United Services Institute, asserted that Vadim Tudor was “playing the institutional mechanisms of the country in order to reverse them” (Reuters, 29 Nov. 2000). The Jerusalem Post carried an article on 22 November 2000 stressing that “11 years shaky post-communist reforms have left Romania’s 22 million people in deep poverty.”
The popular support for the PRM indicates the difficulties post-communist Romania is facing on the road to reform and prosperity. This dangerous extremism means that Romania and the PRM will be closely monitored by the international community, especially by the European bodies of integration which Romania seeks to join, and by world Jewry. (For a penetrating study of the PRM, see Michael Shafir, “Radical Continuity in Romania: The Greater Romania Party,” Parts A, B, RFE/RL – East European Perspectives (EEP) 16 Aug. 2000, 13 Sept. 2000.)
The Romanian Party of National Unity (PUNR) has a strong nationalist, anti-Hungarian, but not overtly antisemitic, line. According to Shafir, “antisemitism, though less prominent in daily pronouncements, has also played a role in the party’s evolution.” However, its close cooperation with the PRM makes it open to extreme nationalism and antisemitism. The party fared badly in the June 2000 local elections (less than 2 percent of the overall vote), an indication of its declining popularity, which appears to be related in part to a lack of internal unity (see Shafir, “The Party of Romanian National Unity,” RFE/RL – EEP, 11, 25 Oct. 2000).
Since it lost its parliamentary representation in the 1996 elections, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), a leading claimant to the legacy of the defunct former ruling Communist Party, has intensified its nationalist line. The party is led by Adrian Paunescu, who publishes two weeklies critical of alleged Jewish interference and participation in Romanian affairs.
Small nationalist, xenophobic and antisemitic Iron Guard, or Legionnaire, groups (derived from the wartime fascist movement) form the extreme right wing in Romania. “Nests” (the original name of local branches of the movement) of such groups exist in various localities. The Bucharest “nest” of the Legionnaire movement owns the Majadahonda publishing house, which issues works by Iron Guard founder Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and books about the movement.
ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES
Following the PRM’s electoral success there was an increase in antisemitic activity, which although not directly related to party members or supporters was apparently influenced by political developments. In late December 2000 the small Jewish Historical Museum in Bucharest was vandalized by two persons who demanded to see “soap made from the fat of Jews” and who then brutally attacked the elderly guide and guard and smashed windows (International Herald Tribune, 30 Dec. 2000). The attack, which took place during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, was linked, by Jewish community sources, to the rise of extremism in the country. The Romanian media reported on 29 December 2000 that the PRM had issued a communiqué censuring the attack, which it ascribed to “criminal elements” that the party had promised to combat in its electoral campaign. President Ion Iliescu strongly condemned it, and called for immediate action against the perpetrators.
As in previous years, antisemitic propaganda accompanied the continuing campaign to rehabilitate the legacy of wartime fascist ruler Ion Antonescu and to cleanse historical memory of the fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust (see below). Jewish topics were frequently raised by extremists and widely discussed by the Romanian media. During the election campaign the PRM attempted to distance itself from accusations of antisemitism, and lowered its tone. It even claimed it opposed racism and ethnic discrimination against Hungarians, Jews and Roma. However, it resumed its customary rhetoric shortly after its electoral success.
Sthe al-Aqsa intifida broke out at the height of the Romanian electoral campaign, the PRM concentrated on the home political front, especially during the second round of the presidential elections. However, in late November the PRM’s weekly Romania Mare resumed and intensified its anti-Israel campaign, emphasizing the Jewish state’s long history of barbarity.
Several antisemitic publications appeared in early 2001. A book of Jewish jokes published by a Cluj publishing house was withdrew after Jewish protests. According to the Israeli Romanian-language paper Oltima Ora and the June 2001 issue of the monthly Minimum, published in Tel Aviv, Mein Kampf was displayed at the Bucharest book fair in May.
ATTTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
Since the PRM’s electoral success, the pro-Antonescu school of Holocaust and World War II revisionism has gained considerable ground. The election of Gheorghe Buzatu, a historian who has long defended Antonescu, as vice president of the Romanian Senate on the PRM ticket was symptomatic of this trend.
In May 2001, the 55th anniversary of the dictator’s execution, a bust of Antonescu was unveiled in a Bucharest church courtyard. When the Jewish community protested, recalling the role of Antonescu in the Holocaust (a term rejected by Romanian nationalists) in Romania, Romania Mare lashed out at the community, asserting: “We are in Romania and not in Israel; they should not confuse us with the Palestinians who have been terrorized and massacred for decades. How can these Zionist agents… discredit the history of the Romanian nation? Why are they causing antisemitism?… The enslavement of Romanians by the Choral Temple [the main synagogue in Bucharest] is over. We are fed up with this ‘empire of infiltration’ which tortures and robs the planet.” Likewise, Corneliu Vadim Tudor spoke of the “death of the martyr” [Antonescu] who had “defended the Jews,” in a speech to the Romanian Senate on 4 June 2001, repeating Romania’s refusal to hand over the Jews to Nazi Germany, but ignoring the killing fields of Transnistria, the massacre of Iasi in June 1941 and similar atrocities. Vadim Tudor emphasized that “600,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up and handed over in such a hurry that Eichmann asked Hungary’s ruler Horthy to slow down as there were no more places in the gas chambers.” Vadim Tudor also came to the defense of Major General Mircea Chilaru, a recently retired chief of staff who attended the ceremony honoring Antonescu.
RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM
A seminar for Romanian teachers held in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, in May 2000 was a significant step in educating Romanians about the country’s Jewish past and the Holocaust (see ASW 1999/2000). Similar seminars were held at the Babes-Bolyai University’s Institute for Judaic Studies in Cluj. The institute’s training program for educators, which includes lectures by Israeli academics, promotes the introduction of the Holocaust and antisemitism into the Romanian educational system.
On the eve of the presidential run-off elections in December 2000, several public activities were aimed at warning of the dangers of the PRM’s electoral success. In Iasi the first public memorial honoring the more than 13,000 victims of the June 1941 pogrom was held (see, for example, AP report, Dec. 2000). The ceremony took place only a short distance from the local party offices of the PRM.
On 7 December 2000 some 800 people held a march and several hundred students held a separate demonstration in Bucharest to warn of the dangers of extremism.
The Federation of Jewish Communities actively opposed the PRM. They issued a statement asserting that Vadim Tudor “had for years been a staunch enemy of the Jews,” and had repeatedly displayed antisemitism and xenophobia. They also condemned the PRM’s discriminatory stance toward the Hungarian and Roma minorities.
