romania 2003-4

 

There was no noticeable change in the pattern of antisemitic incidents in Romania, and their number remained low. As in previous years, antisemitic propaganda accompanied the continuing campaign to rehabilitate the legacy of wartime fascist ruler Ion Antonescu and to whitewash historical memory regarding the fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust. President Ion Iliescu claimed in an interview to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz in July 2003 that there was no Holocaust on “Romanian territory.”

 

the jewish community

According to the results of the Romanian census published in July 2002, the Jewish community in the country has dwindled to fewer 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 Jewish centers are Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj and Oradea, where the local communities are well organized. Religious services, especially during Jewish holidays, are well attended and attract members of the younger generation, in particular.

The Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania promotes and coordinates communal activities. Besides publishing a monthly journal, 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 publishing house Hasefer issues dozens of titles on Jewish topics, including works by the community’s historical center. The historical studies published by the Federation of Jewish Communities are of primary importance in the study of the Holocaust and the past of Romanian Jewry. 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 elderly and needy Jews. The universities of Cluj and Bucharest have academic centers for Jewish studies, and hold conferences on Jewish topics and on Romania’s Jewish past. Programs on Jewish studies and the Holocaust are conducted at local universities in Iasi, Craiova and Arad.

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. 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.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

A major test for the Greater Romania Party (PRM), led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, will be the November/December 2004 parliamentary and presidential elections. The PRM, which became the second largest party in the 2000 parliamentary elections, suffered a slight decline in the May 2004 local elections. An important question is whether Vadim Tudor’s change of attitude toward Jews and Israel is genuine or is a tactic calculated to win further legitimation, especially in the Jewish world. Supported by an Israeli PR firm led by Eyal Arad, Vadim Tudor has made numerous attempts to prove his ‘rediscovery’ of the truth, including a trip to the Auschwitz death camp (but not to Transnistria, the killing fields of Romanian Jewry). His gestures were largely rejected by the Jewish community, by political analysts, and by Jewish organizations both inside and outside Romania.

Small nationalist, xenophobic and antisemitic Iron Guard, or Legionnaire, groups (derived from the wartime fascist movement) form the extra-parliamentary extreme right in Romania. ‘Nests’ (the original name of local branches of the movement) of such groups exist in several 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 2003–4 to organize meetings and public discussions over the fate of the Legionnaire movement. Pro-Iron Guard publications, as well as various antisemitic and Holocaust denial texts, are openly displayed at book stalls in the major cities.

A new publication linked to the Iron Guard legacy, Obiectiv Legionar, appeared in summer 2003. Denying that the Iron Guard is a fascist movement, the first issues attempted to legitimize Legionnaire ideas by stressing that they did not contradict the spirit and letter of the Romanian constitution. The editor, Grigore Oprita, who was charged in the past with publishing fascist and racist material, has been trying, through the new publication, to exploit the right of free expression to whitewash the legacy of the Iron Guard.

The New Right organization, also with an Iron Guard orientation, continued to organize marches and religious ceremonies to commemorate Codreanu (see the US State Department’s Report on Global Antisemitism for 2003/4).

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

In general, manifestations of the ‘new antisemitism’, namely, the attacks in western Europe associated with the identification of Israel, Zionism and Jews as a single evil entity, have not been evidenced in Romania. In fact, there has been no marked change in recent years in the antisemitic positions of nationalist and extreme right elements.

There was no noticeable change in the pattern of antisemitic incidents, and their number remained low. In March 2003 the synagogue in Bacau was broken into. In August 2003 antisemitic graffiti was found in the Jewish cemetery in Sarmas, where the victims of a 1944 mass murder of Jews by Hungarian fascists are buried.

As in previous years, antisemitic propaganda accompanied the continuing campaign to rehabilitate the legacy of wartime fascist ruler Ion Antonescu and to distort historical memory concerning the fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust (see below). Extremist sites on the Internet in Romania, including some related to the legacy of the Iron Guard, appear to be expanding their content. The material on the pro-Legionnaire sites attempts to introduce the doctrines of Codreanu to the new generation through historical revisionism, including whitewashing the Iron Guard’s murderous activities, such as the January 1941 pogrom in Iasi, which it attributes to ‘Jewish behavior’.

 

ATTTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

The debate in Romanian society on the nation’s role in the Holocaust intensified in 2003/4, with arguments for and against the rehabilitation of Ion Antonescu and linkage being made between the need for Romania to face its role in the Holocaust following its entry into NATO, and the intensification of talks to join the EU by 2007, as well as other structures of European integration.

Western observers of Romania and Jewish organizations, as well as some sectors of Romanian civil society, were surprised by the declaration by President Ion Iliescu who, in an interview to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz in July 2003, claimed that there was no Holocaust on “Romanian territory” (see ASW 2002/3). The president’s remarks caused tensions between Romania and Israel. Efforts were made by both sides to limit the damage, and one outcome was the formation in October 2003 of an International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania, chaired by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and with the participation of prominent historians and experts from Romania, Israel and the US. The findings of the commission were to be presented before the presidential elections in late 2004 and are expected to serve as a guide in Romania's treatment of the Holocaust.

Following Iliescu's remarks, the Center for Independent Journalism organized a public debate on the “Problem of the Holocaust in the Romanian Media” in which noted author and academic Andrei Oisteanu analyzed Iliescu's views not as a ‘mistake’ but as a calculated gesture to draw voters away from the PRM in the 2004 general elections (Divers, 14 Aug. 2003). Similar views were voiced by other commentators who linked Iliescu's pronouncements to the intensification of the ruling Social Democratic Party’s electoral campaign and its efforts to attract nationalist elements (see also ASW 2002/3).

An increasing number of Holocaust commemorative sites are being erected in Romania, including one in March 2003 in Targu Mures, Transylvania, which was under Hungarian rule from 1940 to 1944. It should be noted that Romanian nationalists are usually eager to expose the deeds of the Hungarian fascists, who were responsible for the destruction of the Jews in Northern Transylvania.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

During 2003/4 there were numerous responses to antisemitism and debates on the implications of the past for the present and future of the country. Following Iliescu's remarks to Ha’arez, a new wave of discussion on the Holocaust was launched in the media. There is still a wide gap between the various Romanian positions and that of the Jewish world, reflected in the above-mentioned report of the International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania.

The experience of the past few years indicates that the Romanian authorities, especially institutions of higher learning and the defense establishment are interested in expanding education about the Holocaust and the Jewish past in Romania. First, major efforts to improve the teaching of the subject in textbooks took place, although the State Department's report on antisemitism for 2003/4 concluded that these “efforts remained limited and inconsistent.”

The Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania continued its activities. Much of its focus in 2003/4 was on the attempts of the PRM to change its image and whitewash its antisemitic past.