Why we Should Know More About The Holocaust In Romania

Carol Iancu, La Shoah en Roumanie : les Juifs sous le régime d'Antonescu (1940-1944):documents diplomatiques français inédits,Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry, coll. « Sem », 2000 Radu Ioanid (préf. Paul Shapiro), La Roumanie et la Shoah : destruction et survie des Juifs et des Tsiganes sous le régime Antonescu : 1940-1944 [« Evreiisubregimul Antonescu »], Paris, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2002 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9mographie_de_la_Roumanie https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/la-marche-de-l-histoire/la-marche-de-l-histoire-20-fevrier2019

Prof. Roşu Alina, Technological High School "Dimitrie Dima" Piteşti, Argeş

The Holocaust in Romania refers to the persecution and extermination of Jews in the territories controlled by the Romanian state in 1937-1944, which means from the first anti-Jewish laws of the Goga-Cuza government until the coup of August 23, 1944. According to historian Raul Hilberg, the inclusion the fate of the Jews from the former Romanian territories before 1940, but who were not under Romanian control at the time of the facts, is an erroneous definition of the Holocaust in Romania. Anti-Semitism in Romania before the war. Anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution were common in Romania before the war. The most persecuted Jews are those who live near the border with the Soviet Union because they are (often wrongly) associated with Soviet communism. Fascist movements, such as the Iron Guard, are popular with the general public; many Romanians support their demand to expel Jews from the country. In September 1940, King Charles II was forced to abdicate. A coalition government made up of radical right-wing military officers takes power and calls for a German military mission to be sent to Romania. On November 20, 1940, Romania officially joined the Axis alliance (Germany, Italy, Japan). The government quickly adopted several restrictive measures against Romanian Jews. It is also common for members of the Iron Guard to rob or arbitrarily confiscate Jewish-owned business. Many Jews are also attacked and even killed in the middle of the street for no other reason than to be Jews. Romania participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. A few days after the attack began, the Romanian authorities carried out pogroms in the newly occupied cities. At the request of the Germans, but also on their own initiative, the Romanian army and gendarmerie

massacred thousands of Jews. The pogrom committed on June 27, 1941 by Romanians in the city of Iasi left over 13,000 dead. The Romanian authorities are also setting up ghettos and concentration camps. Very few prisoners from these camps will survive. The phrase "Holocaust in Romania" refers to the persecution and extermination of Jews in Romania, which began in 1937 with the discriminatory measures of the government of Octavian Goga, continued and worsened in 1940 with the establishment of the "State National-Legionnaire”, became systematic in 1941 with the Antonescu regime and ended on the evening of August 23, 1944 when Antonescu was overthrown and Romania joined the Allies. He was referring to the Jewish community in Romania which, according to the 1938 census, numbered almost 790,000 people. The victims were identified by a commission of inquiry, the "Wiesel Commission", which was based on previous historical works, but also on Romanian military archives, accessible since 1990.

In 1952, according to Raul Hilberg, only 53% of the 790,000 Romanian Jews in 1938 still lived there. In 2003, the President of Romania Ion Iliescu set up a commission of inquiry led by Elie Wiesel to shed light on the history of the persecution and extermination of Jews under the Antonescu regime: according to the conclusions of this commission, the 47% missing (almost 380,000 people) either emigrated to Palestine in Romania (approximately 90,000 people), either from the ex-Romanian regions of the USSR (36,000 people), or were victims of the Horthyste regime after the cession of northern Transylvania to Hungary (130,000 people of whom 120,000 were deported to Germany) and the Antonescu regime during Operation Barbarossa (250,000 people who became Soviets by ceding their territories to the USSR where they lived, of whom over 120,000 perished in Transnistria; to this must be added another 4,000 Jews who became Soviets who fled east during the attack). German-Romanian and who were overtaken by the Einsatzgruppen and killed in Ukraine. In total, of the 380,000 missing people, there are 290,000 victims and 126,000 displaced or emigrated2. Like Pétain's France, Antonescu's Romania is a state that was directly involved, beyond the Nazis' expectations, in the deportation and implementation of the destruction of European Jews present on its territory. The Antonescu regime participated in the death or expulsion of almost half of its pre-war Jewish population, but still disassociated itself from the Nazi extermination plan and in 1942 refused to allow the deportation of Romanian Jews to German extermination camps, which explains why 53% of the Jewish population survived the war. Of the 756,930 Romanian Jews in 1938, 420,000 changed their nationality in 1940, when Romania ceded large areas of the USSR, Hungary or Bulgaria, 369,000 retained Romanian citizenship and 356,237 appeared in the 1951 census. Over the years, the community withered, emigrating to Israel, France or the United States, and Jews numbered only 146,274 in the 19563 census, 24,667 in the 1970 census, 9,670 in the 1992 census and 6,179 in the 2002 census (see Demography of Romania). Moreover, of the 420,900 Jews who became Soviets, Bulgarians or Hungarians in 1940, two-thirds died between 1941 and 1944, victims of Ion Antonescu's regimes. Between a quarter and a third of the remaining Romanians were also victims of the Antonescu regime, or 47% of Romanian Jews in 1938. Before Romania officially became an ally of Nazi Germany and fell under its influence, Romanian society (like other contemporary European societies) had a large number of integrated Jews (including in political, economic and academic spheres.), as well as a minority of

traditionalists living in the communities targeted on them (especially in the north and east country). Public opinion is more or less anti-Semitic, led by nationalist and xenophobic parties, which are initially very minor. After the Great Depression, the credit of these parties increased in public opinion, especially among the poor petty bourgeois who adhered to the theses of Prime Minister Octavian Goga (who took the first numerus clausus measures in universities and the liberal professions in 1937) or the Iron Guard, a violent anti-Semitic movement. While opinion remains divided, these by far-right parties receive some popular and official support when they demand that Jews in Romania be excluded from positions of influence or expelled directly from the country. Indeed, the electoral base of these parties is now recruited from among rural workers and the poor, who have been marginalized under the Austro-Hungarian and Russian imperial regimes and who imagine their Jews as agents of Soviet or Hungarian imperialism, or again corrupt Western capitalism, illustrated by the escapades of Charles II and his mistress (of Jewish origin) Elena Lupescu (Charles II's marriage to Elena Lupescu will be formalized in Brazil in 1947). The first measures of exclusion date from December 1937, when the Goga government withdrew Romanian citizenship from 120,000 Jews; some of Goga's successors continue along the same lines and issue professional bans that still affect only people of the Jewish religion. On August 8, 1940, the new professional bans no longer affected only people of Jewish faith, but also Marranes (Christians of Jewish origin). Mixed marriages are prohibited. These various forms of discrimination apply in particular (but not exclusively) to Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi in Galicia and Russia, whose naturalization took place after 1918. Of the 756,930 Romanian Jews from 1938, the situation is as follows: -420,000 changed their nationality in 1940, when Romania ceded vast regions of the USSR, Hungary or Bulgaria (countries then linked to Germany through treaties of friendship); -369,000 retains Romanian citizenship and -356,237 appear in the 1951 census, but over the years, the community dwindles, emigrating to Israel, France or the United States, and Jews are only 146,274 in the 1951 census and 6,179 in the 2002 census. Since the fall of 1940, when measures of professional exclusion were tightened, several thousand Jews a month have left Romania for Palestine (approximately 80,000 people, thanks to the Aliyah association chaired by Eugène Meissner and Samuel Leibovici). Not everyone will succeed, especially after the Allies declared war on Romania (December 1941), which made them citizens of an enemy country, which were no longer granted visas for Palestine, as evidenced by the Struma tragedy ( among others). Radu Mihaileanu's film "The Train of Life" also evokes these tragedies. In the regions ceded to Hungary (northern Transylvania), Admiral Horthy's regime refused to deport Jews despite Hitler's insistence. But when the Nazis invaded Hungary and instituted the Arrow Cross regime, they deported 120,000 Jews in April 1944, or 80% of the Jewish population in that territory (150,000 people). In the ceded regions of the USSR (northern Bukovina and Bessarabia), Jews will not be worried as such by the Soviet authorities, but those who were traders will lose their (nationalized) property and those who were officials of the Romanian state will be deported to Kazakhstan as "Lackey of an exploiting power." For them, Antonescu's entry into the war during Romania's

Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, marked the beginning of the Holocaust. Indeed, the Antonescu regime considered them without discrimination as "the henchmen of Bolshevism." Most of the massacres were carried out by Romanian troops in war zones, often in collaboration with the German Einsatzgruppen, but there was a lot of persecution in the back as well. Immediately after June 22, an incident involving deserters who fired on the army triggered the pogrom in Iasi: 12,000 Jews were massacred or imprisoned in trains where they died slowly, of thirst or hunger. At the end of July, Romanians expelled between 25,000 and 30,000 Jews from Bessarabia east of the Dniester, in Podolia (Transnistria), where they were massacred by the Germans. The Romanians later received Transnistria: they could send 160,000 Jews there in such precarious conditions that only 135,000 were still alive on arrival8. Half of the 320,000 Jews in Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Dorohoi district were killed in the months following Romania's entry into the war. After the first massacres, they are still victims of pogroms, gathered in ghettos before being sent to Transnistria in about fifteen concentration camps. In Romania itself, corruption feeds on the plundering of Jews in all its forms. Even after the fall of the Iron Guard, the Antonescu regime, another ally of Nazi Germany, continued the policy of persecution and massacre of Jews and, to a lesser extent, of the gypsies. Forced labor imposed on Jews on roads and earthworks has been introduced since 1943: 40,000 men are assigned to daily work near their residence, they have to show up in the morning with shovels and pickaxes and often bring lunch. Along with the Antonescu regime's policy towards the Jewish population, the Nazis will exert pressure for this policy to conform to the main lines of the Final Solution, that is, clearly, starting with 1942, the systematic extermination of Jews. But the Antonescu regime, which itself had massacred so many Jews in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria, was then reluctant. At the end of 1941, SS Gustav Richter and Radu Leca, Romanian plenipotentiary for Jewish affairs, had obtained from Mihai Antonescu the creation of a puppet Jewish council: the Central of Jewish in Romania, but at the same time Wilhelm Filderman and the Romanian Confederation of Jewish Societies continue to operate and organize aid for Jews in Transnistria. In November 1941, the German embassy in Bucharest caused Romania to lose interest in the fate of Romanian Jews in Germany, but in the "protectorate" of Bohemia-Moravia and other conquered countries, Romanian consuls continued to protest and intervene. when Jews of Romanian nationality are threatened. In July 1942, the Romanian Embassy in Berlin stressed that Hungarian Jews in Germany had not been deported and that Romania could hardly accept that Romanian Jews had been treated worse than those in Hungary. Also in July 1942, to the great joy of Adolf Eichmann, the head of RSHA, the Nazis seem to have obtained all the agreements to continue the deportation of Romanian Jews present in the Lublin district of occupied Poland and in August, Radu Leca is in Berlin to initiat the agreement, but it was poorly received and will therefore endeavor to delay the operation. Maybe he was bribed for that too. The definitive nature of the Romanian change did not appear to the Germans until December 1942, when they learned that Antonescu was planning to authorize between 75,000 and 80,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine in exchange for a large allowance. Unlike the other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where a large proportion of Jews were sent to extermination camps,