ROMANIA 2001-2

 

Antisemitic activities in 2001 and the first half of 2002 did not appear to be linked directly to the success of the Greater Romania Party in the 2000 elections. There were no violent incidents in 2001, but two acts of vandalism were reported to the newly established Center for Combating and Monitoring Antisemitism in 2002. Despite official attempts to ban antisemitic literature, such works are published even under the auspices of academic and government agencies. The authorities took significant measures in 2001/2 to cleanse Romania’s past and present image, as part of its effort to gain admission to NATO and other European structures.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

According to the preliminary results of the Romanian census published in July 2002, the Jewish community in Romania has dwindled to less than 6,000 out of a total population of 21.5 million. Several thousand more, mostly in mixed marriages, are thought not to have declared themselves as Jews. The major Jews 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 their activities. 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. Hasefer publishing house issues dozens of titles on Jewish topics, including works by the community’s historical center. In 2002 it put out a work based on the proceedings of a conference held at the US Holocaust Museum in 1996, entitled The Extermination of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, edited by Randolph L. Braham. 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 Romania’s impoverished elderly Jews. 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 below).

The issue of restitution of private and communal property has still to be resolved in Romania, although the community has secured the return of several individual items. The community’s task of maintaining the vast number of synagogues and cemeteries, a reminder of the large Jewish population that existed in Romania before the war, has been alleviated by a government decree of March 2002 ordering the protection of Jewish sites as part of the national heritage (see below).

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

The nationalist and antisemitic Greater Romania Party (PRM), led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, became the second largest party in the Romanian parliament after it won 21 percent of the vote in the November 2000 elections. Vadim Tudor himself won 33 percent of the vote in the second round of the presidential elections that same year (see ASW 2000/1).

Following the September 11 events, the PRM initially printed allegations, based on foreign sources, that Israelis and Jews “had been warned” a day before the attacks. However, it modified its tone after deciding to support the war on terror. Furthermore, as part of its campaign to delegitimize President Iliescu, it claimed that he was responsible for training Arab terrorists on Romanian soil in accordance with an agreement with the Palestinian Authority to train security personnel.

In its ongoing slander campaign against former Jewish communists and against Israeli and Jewish businessmen in Romania, the PRM focused less than in previous years on alleged Israeli-Jewish-US hegemonic policies in the global arena. The PRM continued and even intensified its denial of the Holocaust of Romanian Jews (see below).

Vadim Tudor’s reputation of duplicity in dealing with Arab and Jewish themes is reflected in the party mouthpiece Romania Mare. The leading Romanian daily Ziua (16 May 2002) reviewed a book on Vadim Tudor written by two of his former associates. Ziua noted that in contacts with Arab officials, such as Libyan leader Mu‘ammar al-Qadhdhafi, Vadim Tudor vehemently attacked Israel, while at an alleged meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Strasbourg, he “justified Israeli policy.” According to Ziua, the book also claims that Vadim Tudor wrote a letter of condolence to Ariel Sharon, mentioning that the Israeli prime minister’s “late beloved wife,” like his own “beloved mother,” was from the city of Brashov. The Ziua review mocked the behavior of “the great liar,” as Vadim Tudor’s former associates referred to him.

Small nationalist, xenophobic and antisemitic Iron Guard, or Legionnaire, groups (derived from the wartime fascist movement) form the extra-parliamentary 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. There were several attempts during 2001/2 to organize meetings and public discussions over the fate of the Legionnaire movement. Thousands of posters with pictures of Codreanu appeared in central Bucharest in summer 2001, commemorating “75 years of suffering and sacrifice.” Pro-Iron Guard publications are openly displayed in book stalls in the major cities.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Antisemitic activities in 2001 and the first half of 2002 did not appear to be linked directly to the PRM’s electoral achievements. There was one incidence of vandalism in 2001 when 20 gravestones were smashed in the Jewish cemetery of Zalau in September, and there were two incidents of synagogue desecration in 2002. Vandals stole a sacred scroll from the Falticeni synagogue in April and smeared slogans on the walls, such as “Death and Gassing for the Jews” and “Heil Hitler.” The Vatra Dornei synagogue was broken into in late June, when the town was in total darkness due to an electricity failure. This was the fourth act of vandalism perpetrated at a Jewish site in Suceava County (where Vatra Dornei is situated) in the last three years (see Divers, 4 July 2002).

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). Topics such as Jewish ingratitude to Antonescu for having allegedly saved them from total extinction (Antonescu was responsible for the death of over 250,000 Jews), were frequently raised by extremists and widely discussed by the Romanian media.

Several antisemitic publications appeared in early 2001. A book of Jewish jokes published by a Cluj publishing house was withdrawn 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 2001.

The Romanian prosecution launched an inquiry in 2001 into the publication of a book that includes antisemitic and xenophobic texts. The Nationalist, by Vlad Hogea , a 24-year-old PRM deputy, contains a collection of articles by the author originally published in Romania Mare (see RFE – Weekday Magazine, 23 Aug. 2001), grouped under chapter headings such as “These Jews Who Rule Us.” Some of the texts also strongly attack Roma and Hungarians. Hogea denies he is an antisemite. The book aroused a fierce public debate in the Romanian media, since it was published under the auspices of a research institute affiliated with the Romanian Academy of Sciences and headed by the controversial historian Gheorghe Buzatu, a PRM senator and deputy speaker of the upper house of parliament, who leads the pro-Antonescu campaign. The “scandal, as the media branded the affair (see, for example, Jurnalul National, 25 Aug. 2001), developed when the book was launched at the PRM offices in Bucharest. The president of the academy, Prof. Eugen Simion, denied any knowledge of the book (Jurnalul National, 25 Aug. 2001). Gheorghe Buzatu, for his part warmly praised Hogea’s work. Leaders of the Jewish community and of the Roma and Hungarian minorities spoke out against the book, especially its connection to the Academy of Sciences. On 24 August 2001, Romania Mare responded with a long article, which began: “In the face of Zionist attempts to punish the Romanian Academy of Sciences for the publication of The Nationalist, the Jewish Mafia is warned: Leave Romania in Peace.” Among other classic antisemitic slurs, it branded the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania “a state within a state.” The paper denied that there was antisemitism in Romania, aside from that caused by Jewish elements, which had brought communism and were continuing to “torture” the innocent nation. The paper concluded, “just as the Israelis are nationalists and do not need a permit for their feelings, neither do we Romanians need a permit from anyone.”

Another book, In Search of the Lost Legion,” by Razvan Codrescu, was published in 2001 with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Religion. The book, a collection of essays originally published in one of Romania’s most extreme right-wing publications, Puncte Cardinale, is an open attempt to whitewash the record of the Iron Guard, including allegations that in fact the movement and its leader Codreanu were not antisemitic.

These examples, as well as the open display of antisemitic literature at bookstores in major cities, indicate that despite official attempts to ban it and to educate the public against racism and antisemitism, such works are being published and distributed even under the auspices of academic and government agencies.

There was a notable increase in the number of websites linked to the Romanian extreme right, especially to the Iron Guard, which appears to parallel the expansion of the Internet in Romania. The material on those sites is an attempt to introduce the doctrines of Codreanu to the new generations through historical revisionism, including whitewashing the Iron Guard’s murderous activities, such as the January 1941 pogrom, which it attributed to “Jewish behavior.”

 

ATTTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

During 2001/2 the debate in Romanian society on the nation’s role in the Holocaust intensified, with arguments for and against the rehabilitation of Antonescu and the fate of Romanian Jewry being clearly linked to Romania’s attempts to enter NATO, the EU and other bodies of European integration. In anticipation of the NATO summit in Prague 2002 which will decide on Romania’s accession to the organization, the country’s authorities have initiated a series of measures (see below) aimed at proving that Romania is able to set its historical record straight.

However, despite these significant steps taken by the government, as well as by state and public institutions, to ban Holocaust denial and to clamp down on the Antonescu cult, especially in 2001/2, the overall picture remains complex and revisionist elements are far from being suppressed. According to one analyst, many Romanians “are still reluctant to discuss one of the darkest moments of their history, such as participation in the Holocaust under Antonescu”; many also “remain indifferent to attempts to rehabilitate the image of Antonescu” and are “still unable to admit to their country’s participation in the Holocaust” (Eugen Tomiuc, “Romania: Past Imperfect – Role in Holocaust Only Reluctantly Admitted,” RFE, 19 July 2001).

Romania’s refusal to acknowledge its role during the Holocaust may be placed in the wider context of various forms of Holocaust denial in the post-communist states. In a comprehensive discussion of this topic, Michael Shafir noted that in “most cases Holocaust denial comes in forms and shapes that enable its propagators to claim that they never meant what they said or wrote. Outright negation is rare, but not insignificant” (Michael Shafir, “Outright Holocaust Negation in Postcommunist East Central Europe: The Unexpected ‘Globalization’,” East European Perspectives – RFE, 12 June 2002; see also Michael Shafir, Between Denial and Comparative Trivialization, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002).

In the public discourse, semantics and ad hoc attempts to define or redefine terms such as the “Holocaust” often lead to confusion and contradictions. Thus, at a conference organized by the Romanian Academy of Sciences in late June 2002, “The Holocaust and Its Implications for Romania,” Minister of Culture Razvan Theodorescu considered that “Romania had nothing to do with the Holocaust, but, under the Antonescu regime and following the occupation of territories beyond the River Dniestr, Romania participated in the Holocaust” (Rompress, 28 June, 2002). Not only does such a statement conflict with the current historiographic approach in Romania itself, as elaborated at historical seminars and conferences, but also basic facts, such as the discovery in July 2002 of a mass grave of murdered Jews from the June 1941 Jassy pogrom, in which more than 12,000 Jews were slaughtered, and which took place not beyond the Dniestr river and not in territories occupied in the Soviet Union by Romanian forces (see Jerusalem Post, 6 Aug. 2002). At the same conference, PRM Member of Parliament Gheorghe Buzatu shifted the debate on the nature, dimensions and role of Romania in the Holocaust to the “red Holocaust,” which produced millions of victims throughout the world” (for a comprehensive study on attempts to distort facts and manipulate public opinion in Romania, see Randolph L. Braham, “Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: Attempts to Whitewash the Past” [translated into Romanian] Sfera Politicii 100, 2002).

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 (see ASW 2000/1). Likewise, Corneliu Vadim Tudor spoke of the “death of the martyr [Antonescu]” who had “defended the Jews.” “I love Antonescu,” he declared (see ASW 2000/1 and George Jahn, “A Nation’s Soul-Searching Reveals Deep Veneration for Hitler’s Romanian Ally,” AP [online], 11 April 2002).

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

Two “emergency measures” were taken by the Romanian government on 21 March 2002: the first to ban racist, fascist, and xenophobic organizations, as well as monuments honoring people guilty of crimes against humanity, and the second to protect Jewish heritage sites and cemeteries. These ordinances, which aroused a lively discussion in the media, particularly as to the precise meaning of the ban on the cult of convicted war criminals, resulted in the removal of several busts of Antonescu and the re-naming of streets. However, observers also noted that the words and meaning of Ordinance no.31 may be manipulated to enable continuation of the pro-Antonescu campaign. The xenophobic mayor of Cluj, Gheorghe Funar, a leading PRM member, was investigated by the police following his refusal to remove a bust of Antonescu from the City Hall. The bust was eventually moved to a less conspicuous place. In the face of continuing international pressure, including from the US Helsinki Commission, to remove all symbols of the Antonescu cult, Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs Razvan Theodorescu stated that the situation on the removal of Antonescu symbols was much better than that described by the commission (BBC Monitoring from Rompress, 1 July 2002). Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase’s declaration that “Marshall Antonescu is a part of Romanian history” and that Romania had to accept both its negative and positive elements, was ironically headlined by one Romanian newspaper: “A History Lesson from Victoria Palace [the seat of government]” (Curentul, 2 Aug. 2002).

During 2001/2 there were numerous responses to antisemitism and discussions on the implications of the past on the present and future of the country. Prime Minister Adrian Nastase emphasized several times during the year that Romania should assume responsibility for the past; however, differences of opinion remain between the official Romanian position and Western historians and the Jewish world on the extent of the Holocaust in Romania. This gap was highlighted during the visit to Romania in July 2002 of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who declared that while Romania’s President Ion Iliescu “had made noble efforts” to educate the Romanian people about the fate of the Jews in their country, he “ought to do more to admit his country’s role in the Holocaust” (Guardian, 31 July 2002). Wiesel urged Romanians to confront their past and Romania’s role in it and to expand education in order to draw lessons from it (“A Haunted Romania Is Urged to Remember Its Past,” International Herald Tribune, 2 Aug. 2002).

Indeed, education has become a major means for teaching new generations about the true dimensions of the Holocaust of Romanian Jewry. Academic conferences, too, have played an important role in discussing and generating further interest in the fate of Romanian Jewry, as well as in combating antisemitism. Romanian Minister of National Defense Ioan Mircea Pascu sent a message on the opening of the conference, “The Holocaust and Romania: Contemporary Significance,” organized by the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History, of the Ministry of National Defense in July 2002, emphasizing the significance of the topic for the present. The conference, which was well covered by the media, was attended by Romanian and foreign, including Israeli, experts (see, for example, Adevarul, 2 July 2002). Likewise, a course on the Holocaust was given at the National Defense College, and Holocaust- and antisemitism-related projects have continued for the second year at teachers’ seminars held at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj. The University’s Moshe Carmilly Institute for Jewish History and Judaic Studies has become a center for the organization of such educational activities. Similarly, a teachers’ seminar took place at Bucharest University’s Goldstein-Goren Center of Hebrew Studies, with the participation of lecturers from various countries.

A Center for Combating and Monitoring Antisemitism in Romania began operating in 2002, in affiliation with the ADL; and in conjunction with a website (www.antisemitism.ro).

The position of the Jewish community is important, since its views are sought and respected by the government. The community leadership’s attitude that “there is no antisemitism in Romania, but there are antisemites,” and its stand vis-à-vis the Antonescu cult were criticized by factors both inside and outside Romania as being too soft and timid. Community leaders reject this criticism, pointing to numerous activities they have initiated to combat and monitor all forms of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

In May 2002 the Romanian government came under foreign diplomatic censure for agreeing to provide identity papers and asylum to Nikolaus Schiffer, an ethnic German born in Romania and stateless former death camp guard, who served in the Romanian army during the war, then joined the Waffen-SS and served, among other camps, in Majdanek and Trawniki. In the face of local and international pressure the Romanian government decided to ban World War II criminals from sheltering in the country in the future. “Romania,” a government spokesman declared, regards it as its duty “to show the international community we are not an oasis for Nazi war murderers” (Reuters [online], 2 Aug. 2002). The Romanian media attributed the decision to ban such cases to the country’s wish to please the West and NATO; Jewish organizations wondered why Romania had not immediately rejected Schiffer’s application for sanctuary.