romania 2007-8/9

 

The Greater Romania Party’s loss in the 2008 national elections prompted it to hint that this was yet another Jewish-Israeli attempt to destabilize the party. There were several cases of desecration of Jewish cemeteries and tombs in 2007-8. Antisemitic and anti-Israel articles continued to appear in some Hungarian language media in Romania, especially in Erdelyi Naplo.

 

the jewish community

According to the 2002 census, the Jewish community in Romania had 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 promotes and coordinates communal activities. In addition to publishing a monthly journal, Realitatea Evreiasca, the Federation documents the history of Jewish life in Romania through an active research center 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 and Romania’s Jewish past. The Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj was the first institution in Romania to initiate annual seminars on the Holocaust for Romanian educators; it also holds seminars on past and present trends in antisemitism. Similar events are organized at the University of Bucharest. Academic periodicals such as Studia Judaica (Cluj) and Studia Hebraica (Bucharest) publish studies on antisemitism and the Holocaust.

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 NGO 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 combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

The Greater Romania Party (PRM), led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, which suffered a resounding defeat in the November/December 2004 parliamentary and presidential elections (see ASW 2004), received only 3.15 percent of the vote in the 2008 parliamentary elections, the smallest number since 1990. Left outside both houses of Parliament, it has intensified its antisemitic campaign, linking all the PRM’s misfortunes to the "Jewish mafia," and attacking Israeli business interests that were allegedly corrupting the Romanian system, while ignoring the fact that in 2004 the party used the services of one of Israel's best known public relations firms.

            Nevertheless, after Romania joined the EU in 2007, the PRM sent five members to the European Parliament, enabling the formation of a right-wing group led by Le Pen's Front National. Relating to this event, the London Guardian (January 8, 2007) branded it “Romania's first gift to the European Union – a caucus of neo-fascists and Holocaust deniers." PRM representatives in the European Parliament focus more on anti-Roma and anti-immigration issues facing Europe than on Jewish ones.

Small nationalist, xenophobic, antisemitic Iron Guard, or Legionnaire, groups (deriving 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. Pro-Iron Guard, antisemitic and Holocaust denial publications, such as Obiectiv Legionar, are openly displayed at book stalls in the major cities. The New Right organization Noua Dreapta organized marches and religious ceremonies in 2007 and 2008 to commemorate Codreanu (see US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2008). In November 2007 and 2008 (see also below) the annual march commemorating Codreanu took place in Tancabesti (where Conreanu and 13 of his men were killed on the orders of King Carol II in 1938), with the participation of several dozen extremists. The events, which have become an annual ritual were covered by extremist websites, but largely ignored by the mainstream media. During the 2008 commemoration march, Puncte Cardinale, one of the most notorious pro-fascist publications of the 1990s and now an "independent [online] periodical with a national-Christian orientation" (www.punctecardinale.ro), dedicated its November issue to their memory. Stressing the Orthodox Christian dogma, Puncte Cardinale has moderated its brutally antisemitic tones of the 1990s, but still harps on conspiracy theories involving Jews and Freemasons.

The discourse of the New Generation Party (PNG], which received approximately 2 percent of the vote in the 2004 general election, and 2.28 percent in the 2008 elections mixes nationalist and religious messages, similar to those of the Iron Guard movement.

 

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, are rarely evidenced in Romania, except in the extremist media. 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, and they continue to focus less on the Middle East situation and more on issues such as the penetration of Jewish/Israeli capital into the Romanian economy, and the Holocaust, the fate of Romanian Jewry and Jewish demands for compensation.

In addition to extremist publications and Internet sites (see below), antisemitic and anti-Israel articles continued to appear in some Hungarian-language media in Romania, especially in Erdelyi Naplo. In its issue of December 17, 2008 it attacked "left−liberals" in Hungary, who were pressing for legislation against "alleged Holocaust denial," which "would limit freedom of opinion." Such attitudes among the Hungarian minority – albeit a small segment of it − reflect the polarization among Hungarians in Romania, who are divided on a number of issues linked to their status and rights in Romania. The extremists embrace nationalist views from Hungary, including antisemitism.

Antisemitic attitudes continued to surface in debates on the role of the Jews in the communist regime in Romania and in other east European states. The formation, in March 2006, of a Presidential Commission for the Study of the Romanian Communist Dictatorship, headed by a well known American scholar of Jewish−Romanian background Vladimir Tismeneanu, whose father was a communist activist, provided such an opportunity. From the time of its inception until the commission submitted its report to President Traian Basescu in 2007 (on the report and its Romanian text, see Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC), the antisemitic press frequently mentioned Tismaneanu's Jewish family background. As echoes of the report continued to reverberate in the Romanian media, the Jews’ alleged role in establishing and maintaining the communist regime in Romania remains a major item on the antisemitic agenda.

While the overall number of antisemitic events was no higher than the average for recent years, the authorities are showing more openness, publicizing antisemitic incidents and responding more rapidly. However, according to MCA Romania, they still tended to downplay antisemitic incidents, often attributing acts of vandalism to children, drunkards or the mentally deranged. Disappointment was also expressed over the high number of court acquittals in vandalism cases.

There were several cases of desecration of Jewish cemeteries and tombs in 2007−8, including in Bucharest, Tulcea and Resita. On October 22, 2008 some 131 gravestones were desecrated in the Jewish cemetery in Bucharest, an act unparalleled in recent years. The Romanian media reported widely on the incident, and leading officials such as the prime minister and the minister of justice condemned the act and all manifestations of antisemitism. The Federation of Jewish Communities called for an urgent inquiry. The police reportedly identified a group of school children between the ages of 13−15 who admitted to having vandalized the cemetery.

The Federation of Jewish Communities has begun a new tactic of suing individuals caught but not prosecuted by the authorities − for example, in the Tulcea case, in which several tombstones were desecrated on two occasions by two minors.

In February 2008 a youth who drew swastikas and "Heil Hitler" on the windows of a trolleybus in Bucharest, was charged with vandalism of public property.

 

ATTTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

The debate in Romanian society over the nation’s role in the Holocaust continued in 2007−8, with arguments for and against the rehabilitation of wartime fascist leader Ion Antonescu. Despite Romania’s entry into the EU in 2007, antisemitic propaganda accompanied the pro-Antonescu campaign. The material posted 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 unsuccessful attempts to prosecute a professor of history, Ion Coja, who denies in his lectures and books that a Holocaust took place in Romania. The Federation of Jewish Communities had filed a criminal complaint against him in January 2007. He presented himself as a candidate for the 2010 presidential elections, and on his Internet site www.ioncoja.ro/ emphasized that although Holocaust research has produced a vast body of documents and research, there is insufficient evidence of a planned, systematic Nazi policy of exterminating the Jewish nation. He also reiterated on his site his thesis that there was no Holocaust in Romania, and again at a conference in Bucharest in November 2008 and before a group of German journalists (see his website; for some of Coja's previous views, see Michael Shafir, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 13, 2004; Andrei Oisteanu, "The Holocaust in Romania: New Studies, Testimonies and Documents," Studia Iudaica (Bucharest), no. 2/2002, pp. 368−78.)

Frequently, newspapers such as the daily Ziua published articles alleging that the Jews’ fate during the Holocaust was more positive in Romania, including a higher rate of survival and the possibility of emigration under the Antonescu regime. While not overtly denying the Holocaust, such publications promote a revisionist view of events.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

There were numerous responses to antisemitic, xenophobic and Holocaust denial publications and statements 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 report of the International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania (the Wiesel Commission − see ASW 2004) generated much public 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 there.

In January 2007 and 2008 various events were held to commemorate the anniversary of the 1941 pogrom in Bucharest. In June of both years, commemorative events and a major conference were held in Iasi, where more than 15,000 Jews were killed during several days of atrocities, also in 1941.

Romania’s Holocaust Day, held in October to mark the beginning of the deportations to Transnistria in 1941, was commemorated in 2007 and 2008. The official events, attended by high-level functionaries, indicated Romania's determination to confront its past despite continuing nationalist pressures and pro-fascist ideas often expressed in parts of the media. President Basescu stated that there was still much to do in order prove that the nation felt remorse over the fate of Romanian Jewry. The president laid the cornerstone for a Holocaust memorial in Bucharest.

In September 2008 an international conference on antisemitism was organized in Bucharest by the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe).

At the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Bucharest, inaugurated in 2005, Director General Mihail E. Ionescu stressed the importance of the institute for research into Romania's past and its role in the Holocaust. Among its activities in 2007−8 , the institute organized conferences and projects related to the Holocaust in Romania.

The years 2007−8 saw the expansion of educational projects and teachers 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 has increased the scope for cooperation in this field with foreign organizations and bodies.

 

 BETWEEN ANTI-ISRAELIsm AND ANTIsEMITISM

The outbreak of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008 prompted few expressions of criticism of Israel with antisemitic messages. The extremist media, including the two papers of the PRM, Romania Mare and Tricolor, strongly denounced "Israeli aggression" and the "murder of innocents."

            On some mainstream websites the headlines and titles were often milder in tone than those in the western media. Moreover, some of the talkbacks were more anti-Hamas than anti-Israel. For example, an article posted on www.ziare.com under the headline "Obama Is Silent, People Are Dying" (January 17, 2009) received many talkbacks focusing on Hamas' use of civilians as shields facing superior firepower.