romania 2005

 

While the overall number of antisemitic events was no higher than in previous years, the authorities are showing more openness by publicizing them and responding more rapidly. Antisemitic propaganda continued to accompany the campaign to rehabilitate the Antonescu legacy. The debate in Romanian society over the nation’s role in the Holocaust intensified in late 2005.

 

the jewish community

According to the 2002 census, the Jewish community in Romania 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.

The Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania coordinates communal activities. In addition to 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 Hasefer publishing house 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 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been especially active in fostering welfare work among Romania’s elderly and needy Jews. The universities of Cluj, Bucharest and Iasi have academic centers for Jewish studies, and hold conferences on Jewish topics as well as on Romania’s Jewish past.

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.

The Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism (MCA Romania, www.antisemitism.ro) monitors antisemitic manifestations and, jointly with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, initiates activities to fight antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

The Greater Romania Party (PRM), led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, suffered a resounding defeat in the November/December 2004 parliamentary and presidential elections (see ASW 2004). There was much speculation in 2004 as to whether Vadim Tudor’s change of attitude toward Jews and Israel was genuine or was a tactic calculated to win further legitimation, especially in the Jewish world. However, his gestures were largely rejected by the Jewish community, political analysts, and Jewish organizations both within and outside Romania. After the elections, analysts pointed to the PRM’s return to its previous line, although it was more preoccupied with internal power struggles than with Jewish issues.

Small nationalist, xenophobic, antisemitic Iron Guard, or Legionnaire, groups (deriving from the movement founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in the interwar period) 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 by these extremist groups in 2005 to organize meetings and public discussions on the history of the Legionnaire movement. Pro-Iron Guard publications, as well as antisemitic and Holocaust denial texts, are openly displayed at book stalls in the major cities. One such publication is Obiectiv Legionar, launched in 2003 (see ASW 2003/4). The New Right organization Noua Dreapta organized marches and religious ceremonies in 2005 to commemorate Codreanu (see US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices).

The discourse of the New Generation Party, which received approximately 2 percent of the vote in the 2004 general election mixes nationalist and religious messages, similar to those of the Iron Guard movement.

In November the annual march commemorating Corneliu Zelea Codreanu took place in Tancabesti (where Conreanu and 13 of his men were killed on the order of King Carol II in 1938), with the participation of several dozen extremists.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

In general, manifestations of the ‘new antisemitism’, which in Western Europe is 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 positions of nationalist and extreme right elements vis-à-vis the Jews/Zionism/Israel.

As in previous years, antisemitic propaganda accompanied the continuing campaign to rehabilitate the Antonescu legacy and to cleanse historical memory of the fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust. The material on pro-Legionnaire sites such as Pagina Romaniei Nationaliste and Dreapta Noua, attempts to introduce Codreanu’s doctrines to the younger 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’. Such propaganda activities may be linked directly to official and public reactions following submission of the Report of the International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania in October 2004 (see below).

There were several incidents of desecration of Jewish sites in 2005. While the overall number of antisemitic events was no higher than the average of recent years, the authorities are now showing more openness, publicizing antisemitic incidents and responding more rapidly. In March several graves were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery in Ploiesti. On 1 October four youths painted swastikas in the courtyard of the synagogue in Targu-Mures. The youths, who were apprehended, had also drawn swastikas on two buildings belonging to the Jewish community (NGO bulletin Divers, 6 Oct.). The investigation was discontinued after one of the accused committed suicide. In August a swastika was found on the wall of an unused synagogue in Cluj. Swastikas also appeared on a school and a neighborhood in Suceava.

In February four Torah scrolls were stolen from a synagogue in Iasi; they were later found by the police and returned.

 

ATTTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

The debate in Romanian society over the nation’s role in the Holocaust intensified in late 2005, with arguments for and against the rehabilitation of Ion Antonescu. Romania’s entry into NATO and negotiations over its pending membership of the EU and other structures of integration on 1 January 2007, heightened discussion concerning Romania’s need to face its role in the Holocaust.

The report of the International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania (often referred to in the media as ‘the Wiesel Commission’ – see also below) was presented to President Ion Iliescu prior the presidential elections in October 2004 (see ASW 2004). The report, which now serves as a guide for Romania's treatment of the Holocaust, was originally made available on the site of the Romanian presidency, www.presidency.ro, indicating its endorsement at the highest level; however it was relegated to a less accessible part of the site in 2005.

Denial and belittling of the Holocaust occur quite frequently in Romania; in 2005 there were several cases, the most well-known of which was that of Professor Corvin Lupu, a historian from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu who, according to the Romanian weekly 22 (22 June), published an article in the periodical Transilvania (3/2005) denying there was a Holocaust in Romania ("The notion that there was a genocide in Romania against the Jewish people is unacceptable. The Jewish people are the ones who should be indebted to the Romanian people"). MCA and the Jewish community filed complaints against Lupu. However, the charges were dropped by the prosecutor's office on the grounds that the article could not be classified as a crime according to a 2002 government decree (see US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices). In addition, Licar (League for the Struggle against Anti-Romanianism) leader Ion Coja published an open letter, on 8 April, in the PRM's Romania Mare to President G.W. Bush, denying Romanian participation in the Holocaust and making Jews responsible for antisemitism in Romania because of alleged pressure from abroad to see Antonescu as a war criminal.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

There were numerous responses in 2005 to antisemitism and a discourse on the implications of the past for the present and future of the country. The wide media coverage following publication of the Wiesel Commission Report generated much public interest and discussion of ‘the Holocaust in Romania’, a concept that has now entered Romanian terminology after years of debate as to whether there was a Holocaust in Romania.

The final report of the commission was published in a two-volume edition in 2005, both in Romanian and English. One of the volumes contains previously unpublished documents relating to the Holocaust in Romania, collected and edited by Lya Benjamin, a prominent historian of the Jewish community and member of the commission.

In October Holocaust Day was commemorated for the second time in Romania following the decision to mark 9 October, the beginning of deportations to Transnistria in 1941. The official high-level events indicated Romania's determination to confront its past despite continuing nationalist pressures and pro-fascist ideas often voiced in parts of the media. Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu participated in the inauguration of the Center for Judaic Studies at the prestigious A. Cuza University, where there was also a scientific conference attended by local leaders and guests from abroad, including Israeli Ambassador Rodica Gordon-Radian and senior representatives from Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust was officially inaugurated in Bucharest. Director Gen. Mihail E. Ionescu stressed the importance of the institute for research into Romania's past and its role in the Holocaust.

The year 2005 saw the extension of educational projects and teacher seminars, and the introduction of the Holocaust and antisemitism as topics in school textbooks. Romania's acceptance into the Task Force for Holocaust Education in late 2004 increased the scope for cooperation in this field with foreign organizations and bodies.

Following the desecration in October of the synagogue in Targu Mures, which is inhabited largely by the Hungarian minority, public activity against antisemitism intensified, including a meeting between Marko Bela, deputy PM of Romania and president of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, the largest political formation of this minority, and two leaders of the Association of Victims of the Holocaust. The Hungarian politician assured the Jewish leaders that educational material on the Holocaust would be translated into Hungarian. Further, the memory of Kristallnacht was recalled at a meeting in Targu Mures in November 2005 (Divers, 10 Nov.), One of the leaders of Liga Pro Europa, which deals with human rights and contacts between minorities, declared to the local Hungarian language paper Uj Magyar Szo that “antisemitism has become more and more common among young Hungarians in Transylvania” (Divers, 10 Nov.). He added that it had taken ten years to remove the name of Antonescu Street from Targu Mures.