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History of the Jews in Romania
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The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory.
Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I.
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The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory.
Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were the favorite target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society - from the late-19th century debate over the "Jewish Question" and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out by Romania as part of The Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.
Early history
Jewish communities on what would later become Romanian territory were attested as early as the 2nd century, at a time when the Roman Empire had established its rule over Dacia. Inscriptions and coins have been found in such places as Sarmizegetusa and Orsova.
The existence of the Crimean Karaites, an ethnic group adherent of Karaite Judaism, and apparently of Cuman origins, suggests a steady Jewish presence around the Black Sea, including in parts of today's Romania, in the trading ports from the mouths of the Danube and the Dniester (see Cumania); they may have been present in some Moldavian fairs by the 16th century or earlier. The earliest Jewish (most likely Sephardi) presence in what would become Moldavia was recorded in Cetatea Alba (1330); in Wallachia, they were first attested in the 1550s, living in Bucharest. During the second half of the 14th century, the future territory of Romania became an important place of refuge for Jews expelled from the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland by King Louis I. In Transylvania, Hungarian Jews were recorded in Saxon citadels around 1492.
Prince Roman I (1391-1394?) exempted the Jews from military service, in exchange for a tax of 3 löwenthaler per person. Also in Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457-1504) treated Jews with consideration. Isaac ben Benjamin Shor of Iasi (Isak Bey, originally employed by Uzun Hassan) was appointed stolnic, being subsequently advanced to the rank of logofat; he continued to hold this office under Bogdan the Blind (1504-1517), the son and successor of Stephen.
At this time both Danubian Principalities came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, and a number of Sephardim living in Istanbul migrated to Wallachia, while Jews from Poland and the Holy Roman Empire settled in Moldavia. Although they took an important part in Ottoman government and formed a large part of a community of foreign creditors and traders, Jews were harassed by the hospodars of the two Principalities. Moldavia's Prince Stefanita (1522) deprived the Jewish merchants of almost all the rights given to them by his two predecessors; Petru Rares confiscated Jewish wealth in 1541, after alleging that Jews in the cattle trade had engaged in tax evasion. Alexandru Lapusneanu (first rule: 1552-61) persecuted the community alongside other social categories, until he was dethroned by Jacob Heraclides, a Greek Lutheran, who was lenient to his Jewish subjects; Lapusneanu did not renew his persecutions after his return on the throne in 1564. The role of Ottoman and local Jews in financing various princes increased as Ottoman economic demands were mounting after 1550 (in the 1570s, the influential Jewish Duke of the Archipelago, Joseph Nasi, backed both Heraclides and Lapusneanu to the throne); several violent incidents throughout the period were instigated by princes unable to repay their debts.
During the first short reign of Peter the Lame (1574-1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. In 1582, he succeeded in regaining his rule over the country with the help of the Jewish physician Benveniste, who was a friend of the influential Solomon Ashkenazi; the latter then exerted his influence with the Prince in favor of his coreligionists.
In Wallachia, Prince Alexandru II Mircea (1567-1577) engaged as his private secretary and counselor Isaiah ben Joseph, who used his influence on behalf of the Jews. In 1573 Isaiah was dismissed, owing to court intrigues, but he was not harmed any further, and subsequently left for Moldavia (where he entered the service of Muscovy's Grand Prince Ivan the Terrible). Through the efforts of Solomon Ashkenazi, Aron Tiranul was placed on the throne of Moldavia; nevertheless, the new ruler persecuted and executed nineteen Jewish creditors in Iasi, who were decapitated without process of law. At around the same time, in Wallachia, the violent repression of creditors peaked under Michael the Brave, who, after killing Turkish creditors in Bucharest (1594), probably enagaged in violence against Jews settled south of the Danube during his campaign in Rumelia (while maintaining good relations with Transylvanian Jews).
Early Modern Age
In 1623, the Jews in Transylvania were awarded certain privileges by Prince Gabriel Bethlen, who aimed to attract entrepreneurs from Ottoman lands into his country; the grants were curtailed during following decades, when Jews were only allowed to settle in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia). Among the privileges granted was one allowing Jews to wear traditional dress; eventually, the authorities in Gyulafehérvár decided (in 1650 and 1741), to allow Jews to wear only clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity.
The status of Jews who had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy was established in Wallachia by Matei Basarab's Pravila de la Govora and in Moldavia by Vasile Lupu's Carte româneasca de învatatura. The latter ruler (1634-1653) treated the Jews with consideration until the appearance of the Cossacks (1648), who marched against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and who, while crossing the region, killed many Jews; the violence, led many Ashkenazi Jews from Poland took refuge in Moldavia and Wallachia, establishing small but stable communities. Massacres and forced conversions by the Cossacks occurred in 1652, when the latter came to Iasi on the occasion of the Vasile Lupu's daughter marriage to Timush, the son of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and during the rule of Gheorghe Stefan.
According to Anton Maria Del Chiaro, secretary of the Wallachian princes between 1710-1716, the Jewish population of Wallachia was required to respect a certain dresscode. Thus, they were prohibited from wearing clothes of other color than black or violet, or to wear yellow or red boots. Nevertheless, the Romanian scholar Andrei Oisteanu argued that such ethnic and religious social stigma was uncommon in Moldavia and Wallachia, as well as throughout the Eastern Orthodox areas of Europe.
The first blood accusation in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made April 5, 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamt were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes. The instigator was a baptized Jew who had helped to carry the body of a child, murdered by Christians, into the courtyard of the synagogue. On the next day five Jews were killed, others were maimed, and every Jewish house was pillaged, while the representatives of the community were imprisoned and tortured. Meanwhile, some influential Jews appealed to Prince Nicholas Mavrocordatos (the first Phanariote ruler) in Iasi, who ordered an investigation resulting in the freeing of those arrested. This was the first time that the Orthodox clergy participated in attacks on Jews. It was due to the clergy's instigations that in 1714 a similar charge was brought against the Jews of the city of Roman - the murder by a group of Roman Catholics of a Christian girl-servant to Jewish family was immediately blamed on Jews; every Jewish house was plundered, and two prominent Jews were hanged, before the real criminals were discovered by the authorities.
Under Constantin Brâncoveanu, Wallachian Jews were recognized as a special guild in Bucharest, led by a starost. Jews in both Wallachia and Moldavia were subject to the Hakham Bashi in Iasi, but soon the Bucharest starost assumed several religious duties. Overtaxed and persecuted under Stefan Cantacuzino (1714-1716), Wallachian Jews obtained valuable privileges during Nicholas Mavrocordatos' rule (1716-1730) in that country (the Prince notably employed the Jewish savant Daniel de Fonseca at his court). Another anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s, and was encouraged by the visit of Ephram II, Patriarch of Jerusalem.
In 1726, in the Bessarabian borough of Onitcani, four Jews were accused of having kidnapped a five-year old child, of killing him on Easter and of collecting his blood in a barrel. They were tried at Iasi under the supervision of Moldavian Prince Mihai Racovita, and eventually acquitted following diplomatic protests. The event was echoed in several contemporary chronicles and documents — for example, the French ambassador to the Porte, Jean-Baptiste Louis Picon, remarked that such an accusation was no longer accepted in "civilized countries". The most obvious effects on the condition of the Jewish inhabitants of Moldavia were witnessed during the reign of John Mavrocordatos (1744-1747): a Jewish farmer in the vicinity of Suceava reported the prince to the Porte for allegedly using his house to rape a number of kidnapped Jewish women; Mavrocordatos had his accuser hanged. This act aroused the anger of Mahmud I's kapucu in Moldavia, and the prince paid the penalty with the loss of his throne.
Russo-Turkish Wars
During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages in almost every town and village in the country. When peace was restored, both princes, Alexander Mavrocordatos of Moldavia and Nicholas Mavrogheni of Wallachia, pledged their special protection to the Jews, whose condition remained favorable until 1787, when both Janissaries and the Imperial Russian Army engaged in pogroms.
The community was also subject to persecutions by the locals. Jewish children were seized and forcibly baptized. The ritual-murder accusation became widespread; one made at Galati in 1797 led to exceptionally severe results - the Jews were attacked by a large mob, driven from their homes, robbed, waylaid on the streets, and many killed on the spot, while some were forced into the Danube and drowned; others who took refuge in the synagogue were burned to death in the building; a few escaped after being given protection and refuge by a priest. In 1803, shortly before his death, the Wallachian Metropolitan Iacob Stamati instigated attacks on the Bucharest community by publishing his Înfruntarea jidovilor ("Facing the Jews"), which pretended to be the confession of a former rabbi; however, Jews were offered refuge by Stamati's replacement, Veniamin Costachi. A seminal event occurred in 1804, when ruler Constantine Ypsilanti dismissed accusations of ritual murder as "the unfounded opinion" of "stupid people", and ordered that their condemnation be read in churches throughout Wallachia; the allegations no longer surfaced during the following period.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, the Russian invasion was again accompanied by massacres of the Jews. Kalmyk irregular soldiers in Ottoman service, who appeared in Bucharest at the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, exercised terror on the city's Jewish population. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), "They passed daily through the streets inhabited by the latter, spitted children on their lances, and, in the presence of their parents, roasted them alive and devoured them". At around the same time, a conflict emerged in Wallachia between Jews under foreign protection (suditi) and local ones (hrisovoliti), after the latter tried to impose a single administration for the community, a matter which was finally settled in favor of the hrisovoliti by Prince Jean Georges Caradja (1813).
In Habsburg-ruled Transylvania, the reforms carried out by Joseph II allowed Jews to settle in towns directly subject to the Hungarian Crown. However, pressured placed on the community remained stringent for the following decades.
Early 19th century
By 1825, Jewish population in Wallachia (almost completely Sephardi) was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people - of these, the larger part resided in Bucharest (probably as much as 7,000 in 1839); around the same time, Moldavia was home to about 12,000 Jews. In parallel, the Jewish population in Bukovina rose from 526 in 1774 to 11,600 in 1848. In the early 1800s, Jews who sought refuge from Osman Pazvantoglu's campaign in the Balkans established communities in Wallachian-ruled Oltenia. In Moldavia, Scarlat Callimachi's Code (1817) allowed members of the community to purchase urban property, but prevented them from settling in the countryside (while purchasing town property became increasingly difficult due to popular prejudice).
During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821 and the Danubian Principalities' occupation by Filiki Eteria troops under Alexander Ypsilantis, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions in places such as Falticeni, Hertsa, Piatra Neamt, the Secu Monastery, Târgoviste, and Târgu Frumos; Jews in Galati managed to escape over the Prut River with assistance from Austrian diplomats. Weakened by the clash between Ypsilantis and Tudor Vladimirescu, the Eterists were massacred by the Ottoman intervention armies - during this episode, Jewish communities engaged in retaliations in Secu and Slatina.
Following the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople (which allowed the two Principalities to freely engage in foreign trade), Moldavia, where commercial niches had been largely left unoccupied, became a target for migration of Ashkenazi Jews persecuted in Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria - by 1838, their number seems to have reached 80,000, and over 195,000, or almost 12% of the country's population, in 1859 (with an additional 50,000 passing through to Wallachia between the two estimates).
Despite initial interdictions under the Russian occupation of 1829 (when it was first regulated that non-Christians were not to be regarded as citizens), many of the new immigrants became leaseholders of estates and tavern-keepers, serving to increase both the revenue and demands of boyars - leading in turn to an increase in economic pressures over those working the land or buying products (usual prejudice against Jews accused tavern-keepers of encouraging alcoholism). At the same time, several Jews rose to prominence and high social status - most families involved in Moldavian banking around the 1850s were of Jewish origin. After 1832, following adoption of the Organic Statute, Jewish children are accepted in schools in the two Principalities only if they wore the same clothing as others. In Moldavia, authorities forced the community to abandon its traditional dress code through the 1847 decree of Prince Mihail Sturdza.
Before the Revolutions of 1848, which found their parallel in the Wallachian revolution, many restrictive laws against the Jews had been enacted; although they had some destructive effects, they were never strictly enforced. In various ways, Jews took part in the Wallachian revolt - Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, the painter, distinguished himself in the revolutionary cause, and paid for his activity with his life (being tortured to death by Austrian authorities in Budapest). The major document to be codified by the 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries, the Islaz Proclamation, called for "the emancipation of Israelites and political rights for all compatriots of different faiths".
After the close of the Crimean War the struggle for the union of the two principalities began. The Jews were sought after by both parties, Unionists and anti-Unionists, each of which promised them full equality; and proclamations to this effect were issued (1857-1858). In 1857, the community began issuing its first magazine, Israelitul Român, edited by the Romanian radical Iuliu Barasch. This process of gradual integration resulted in the creation of an informal Romanian identity assumed by Jews, while conversion to Christianity, despite encouragement by the authorities, remained confined to exceptional cases.
Under Alexander John Cuza
From the beginning of the reign of Alexander John Cuza (1859-1866), the first ruler (Domnitor) of the united principalities, the Jews became a prominent factor in the politics of the country. This period was, however, inaugurated by another riot motivated by blood libel accusations, begun during Easter 1859 in Galati.
Regulations on clothing were confirmed inside Moldavia by two orders of Mihail Kogalniceanu, Minister of Internal Affairs (issues in 1859 and 1860 respectively). Following adoption of the 1859 regulation, soldiers and civilians would walk the streets of Iasi and some other Moldavian towns, assaulting Jews, using scissors to shred their clothing, but also to cut their beards or their sidelocks; drastic measures applied by the Army Headquarters put a stop to such turmoil.
In 1864, Cuza, owing to difficulties between his government and the general assembly, dissolved the latter and decided to submit a draft of a constitution granting universal suffrage. He proposed creating two chambers (of senators and deputies respectively), to extend the franchise to all citizens, and to emancipate the peasants from forced labor (expecting to nullify the remaining influence of the landowners - no longer boyars after the land reform). In the process, Cuza also expected financial support from both the Jews and the Armenians - it appears that he kept the latter demand reduced, asking for only 40,000 Austrian guilder (the standard gold coins; about US$ 90,000 at the exchange rate of the time) from the two groups. The Armenians discussed the matter with the Jews, but they were not able to come to a satisfactory agreement in the matter.
While Cuza was pressing in his demands, the Jewish community debated the method of assessment. The rich Jews, for unclear reasons, refused to advance the money, and the middle class argued that the sum would not lead to tangible enough results; Religious Jews insisted that such rights would only interfere with the exercise of their religion. Cuza, on being informed that the Jews hesitated to pay their share, inserted in his draft of a constitution a clause excluding from the right of suffrage all who did not profess Christianity.
1860s and 1870s
When Charles von Hohenzollern succeeded Cuza in 1866 as Carol I of Romania, the first event that confronted him in the capital was a riot against the Jews. A draft of a constitution was then submitted by the government, Article 6 of which declared that "religion is no obstacle to citizenship"; but, "with regard to the Jews, a special law will have to be framed in order to regulate their admission to naturalization and also to civil rights". On June 30, 1866, the Bucharest Synagogue was desecrated and demolished (it was rebuilt in the same year, then restored in 1932 and 1945). Many Jews were beaten, maimed, and robbed. As a result, Article 6 was withdrawn and Article 7 was added to the 1866 Constitution; it read that "only such aliens as are of the Christian faith may obtain citizenship".
For the following decades, the issue of Jewish rights occupied the forefront of the Regat's political scene. With few notable exceptions (including some of Junimea affiliates — Petre P. Carp, George Panu, and Ion Luca Caragiale), most Romanian intellectuals began professing anti-Semitism; its most virulent form was the one present with advocates of Liberalism (in contradiction to their 1848 political roots), especially Moldavians, who argued that Jewish immigration had prevented the rise of an ethnic Romanian middle class. The first examples of modern prejudice were the Moldavian Fractiunea libera si independenta (later blended into the National Liberal Party, PNL) and the Bucharest group formed around Cezar Bolliac. Their discourse saw Jews as non-assimilated and perpetually foreign - this claim was, however, challenged by some contemporary sources, and by the eventual acceptance of all immigrants other than Jews.
Anti-Semitism was carried into the PNL’s mainstream, and was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Bratianu. During his first years in office, Bratianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. According to the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia: "A number of such Jews who proved their Romanian birth were forced across the Danube, and when [the Ottoman Empire] refused to receive them, were thrown into the river and drowned. Almost every country in Europe was shocked at these barbarities. The Romanian government was warned by the powers; and Bratianu was subsequently dismissed from office". Cabinets formed by the Conservative Party, although including Junimeas leaders, did not do much to improve the Jews' condition - mainly due to PNL opposition.
Nonetheless, during this same era, Romania was the cradle of Yiddish theatre. The Russian-born Abraham Goldfaden started the first professional Yiddish theatre company in Iasi in 1876 and for several years, especially during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 Romania was the home of Yiddish theatre. While its center of gravity would move first to Russia, then London, then New York City, both Bucharest and Iasi would continue to figure prominently in its history over the next century.
Treaty of Berlin and aftermath
When Bratianu resumed leadership, Romania faced the emerging conflict in the Balkans, and saw its chance to declare independence from Ottoman suzerainty by dispatching its troops on the Russian side in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), which stipulated (Article 44) that the non-Christians in Romania (including both Jews and Muslims in the newly-acquired region of Northern Dobruja) should receive full citizenship. After a prolonged debate at home and diplomatic negotiations abroad, the Romanian government ultimately agreed (1879) to abrogate Article 7 of its constitution. This was, however, reformulated to make procedures very difficult: "the naturalization of aliens not under foreign protection should in every individual case be decided by Parliament" (the action involved, among others, a ten-year term before the applicant was given an evaluation). The gesture was doubled by a show of compliance - 883 Jews, participants in the war, were naturalized in a body by a vote of both chambers.
Fifty-seven persons voted upon as individuals were naturalized in 1880; 6, in 1881; 2, in 1882; 2, in 1883; and 18, from 1886 to 1900; in all, 85 Jews in twenty-one years, 27 of whom in the meantime died; ca. 4,000 people had obtained citizenship by 1912. Various laws were passed until the pursuit of virtually all careers was made dependent on the possession of political rights, which only Romanians could exercise; more than 40% of Jewish working men, including manual labourers, were forced into unemployment by such legislation. Similar laws were passed in regard to Jews exercising liberal professions.
In 1893, a piece of legislation was voted to deprive Jewish children of the right to be educated in the public schools - they were to be received only if and where children of citizens had been provided for, and their parents were required to pay preferential tuition fees. In 1898, it was passed into law that Jews were to be excluded from secondary schools and the universities. Another notable measure was the expulsion of vocal Jewish activists as "objectionable aliens" (under the provisions of an 1881 law), including those of Moses Gaster and Elias Schwarzfeld.
The courts exacted the Oath More Judaico in its most offensive form - it was only abolished in 1904, following criticism in the French press. In 1892, when the United States addressed a note to the signatory powers of the Berlin treaty on the matter, it was attacked by the Romanian press. The Lascar Catargiu government was, however, concerned - the issue was debated among ministers, and, as a result, the Romanian government issued pamphlets in French, reiterating its accusations against the Jews and maintaining that persecutions were deserved in exchange for the community's alleged exploitation of the rural population.
20th century
Before and after World War I
The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878; numbers rose and fell, with a major wave of Bessarabian Jews after the Kishinev pogrom in Imperial Russia (1905). The Jewish Encyclopedia wrote in 1905, shortly before the pogrom, "It is admitted that at least 70 per cent would leave the country at any time if the necessary traveling expenses were furnished". There are no official statistics of emigration; but it is safe to place the minimum number of Jewish emigrants from 1898 to 1904 at 70,000.
Land issues and predominantly Jewish presence among estate leaseholders accounted for the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, partly anti-Semitic in message. During the same period, the anti-Jewish message first expanded beyond its National Liberal base (where it was soon an insignificant attitude), to cover the succession of more radical and Moldavian-based organizations founded by A.C. Cuza (his Democratic Nationalist Party, created in 1910, had the first anti-Semitic program in Romanian political history). No longer present in the PNL's ideology by the 1920s, anti-Semitism also tended to surface in on the left-wing of the political spectrum, in currents originating in Poporanism - which favoured the claim that peasants were being systematically exploited by Jews.
World War I, during which 882 Jewish soldiers died defending Romania (and 825 were decorated), brought about the creation of Greater Romania after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and subsequent treaties. The enlarged state had an increased Jewish population, corresponding with the addition of communities in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania. On signing the treaties, Romania agreed to change its policy towards the Jews, promising to award them both citizenship and minority rights, the effective emancipation of Jews. The 1923 Constitution of Romania sanctioned these requirements, meeting opposition from Cuza's National-Christian Defense League and rioting by far right students in Iasi; the land reform carried out by the Ion I. C. Bratianu cabinet also settled problems connected with land tenancy.
Political representation for the Jewish community in the inter-war period was divided between the Jewish Party and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania (the latter was re-established after 1989). During the same period, a division in ritual became apparent between Reform Jews in Transylvania and usually Orthodox ones in the rest of the country (while Bessarabia was the most open to Zionism and especially the socialist Labor Zionism).
The popularity of anti-Jewish messages was, nevertheless, on the rise, and merged itself with the appeal of fascism in the late 1920s - both contributed to the creation and success of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Iron Guard and the appearance of new types of anti-Semitic discourses (Trairism and Gândirism). The idea of a Jewish quota in higher education became highly popular among Romanian students and teachers. According to Andrei Oisteanu's analysis, a relevant number of right-wing intellectuals refused to adopt overt anti-Semitism, which was ill-reputed through its association with A. C. Cuza's violent discourse; nevertheless, a few years later, such cautions were cast aside, and anti-Semitism became displayed as "spiritual health".
The first motion to exclude Jews from professional associations came on May 16, 1937, when the Confederation of the Associations of Professional Intellectuals (Confederatia Asociatiilor de Profesionisti Intelectuali din România) voted to exclude all Jewish members from its affiliated bodies, calling for the state to withdraw their licenses and reassess their citizenship. Although illegal, the measure was popular and it was commented that, in its case, legality had been supplanted by a "heroic decision". According to Oisteanu, the initiative had a direct influence on anti-Semitic regulations passed during the following year.
The threat posed by the Iron Guard, the emergence of Nazi Germany as a European power, and his own fascist sympathies, made King Carol II, who was still largely identified as a philo-Semite, adopt racial discrimination as the norm. On January 21, 1938, Carol's executive (led by Cuza and Octavian Goga) passed a law aimed at reviewing criteria for citizenship (after it cast allegations that previous cabinets had allowed Ukrainian Jews to obtain it illegally), and requiring all Jews who had received citizenship in 1918-1919 to reapply for it (while providing a very short term in which this could be achieved - 20 days); in 1940, the Ion Gigurtu cabinet adopted Romania's equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws, forbidding Jewish-Christian intermarriage, and defining Jews after racial criteria (a person was Jewish if he or she had a Jewish grandparent on one side of the family).
The Holocaust
Main articles: Romania during World War II, Wiesel Commission
Between the establishment of the National Legionary State and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Iron Guard began a massive anti-Semitic campaign, torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops (see Dorohoi Pogrom), culminating in the failed coup and a pogrom in Bucharest, in which 120 Jews were killed. Antonescu eventually stopped the violence and chaos created by the Iron Guard by brutally suppressing the rebellion. By the time Romania entered the war, however, atrocities against the Jews had become common, most notably in the Iasi pogrom, where over 10,000 Jews were killed in July 1941.
After the fall of the Iron Guard, the Antonescu regime, allied with Nazi Germany, continued the policy of oppression and massacre of Jews, and, to a lesser extent, Roma.
In July-August 1941, the yellow badge was imposed by local initiatives in several cities (Iasi, Bacau, Cernauti). A similar measure imposed by the national government lasted only five days (between September 3 and September 8, 1941), before being annulled on Antonescu's order. However, on local initiative, the badge was still worn especially in the towns of Moldavia, Bessarabia and Bukovina (Bacau, Iasi, Câmpulung, Botosani, Cernauti, etc.).
According to an international commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Romania murdered in various forms, between 280,000 to 380,000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria.
In 1941, following the advancing Romanian Army after Operation Barbarossa, and alleged attacks by Jewish "Resistance groups", Antonescu ordered the deportation to Transnistria, of all Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina (between 80,000 and 150,000), who were considered "Communist agents" by the official propaganda. "Deportation" however was a euphemism, as part of the process was to kill as many Jews as possible before deporting the rest in the "trains of death" to the East. Of those who escaped the initial ethnic cleansing in Bukovina and Bessarabia, only very few managed to survive trains and the concentration camps set up in Transnistria. Further killings perpetrated by Antonescu's death squads (documents prove his direct orders and involvement) targeted the Jewish population that the Romanian Army managed to round up when occupying Transnistria. Over one hundred thousand of these were in massacres staged in such places as Odessa (the Odessa Massacre - when Romanian troops shot of over 100,000 Jews during the autumn of 1941), Bogdanovka, Akmecetka in 1941 and 1942.
Antonescu did halt deportations despite German pressure in 1943, as he began to seek peace with the Allies, although at the same time he levied heavy taxes and forced labor on the remaining Jewish communities. Also, sometimes with the encouragement of Antonescu's regime, thirteen boats left Romania for the British Mandate of Palestine during the war, carrying 13,000 Jews (two of these ships sunk, and the effort was discontinued after German pressure was applied).
Half of the 320,000 Jews living in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the former Dorohoi County in Romania were murdered within months of the entry of the country into World War II during 1941. Even after the initial killing, Jews in Moldavia, Bukovina and Bessarabia were subject to frequent pogroms, and were concentrated into ghettos from which they were sent to concentration camps, including camps built and run by Romanians. The number of deaths in this area is not certain, but even the lowest respectable estimates run to about 250,000 Jews (and 25,000 Roma) in these eastern regions, while 120,000 of Transylvania's 150,000 Jews died at the hands of the Fascist Hungarians later in the war (see Northern Transylvania). Romanian soldiers also worked with the German Einsatzkommando to massacre Jews in conquered territories. Antonescu's government made plans for mass deportations from the Regat to Belzec, but never carried them out.
Nonetheless, in stark contrast to many countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the majority of Romanian Jews survived the war, although they were subject to a wide range of harsh conditions, including forced labor, financial penalties, and discriminatory laws. The number of victims, however, makes Romania count as, according to the Wiesel Commission, "Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, [responsible] for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself".
Romanian Fascism had been all too viciously and murderously antisemitic; however, unlike its Nazi ally, it had not formulated a "Final Solution" of systematically hunting down and killing every single Jew, and there was no Romanian equivalent to the Wannsee Conference. The killing of Jews was unsystematic, taking place in some places and times but not in others - especially, far more intensively where the Romanian Army was acting as an occupying force rather than in Romania's own sovereign territory. Fortunately for the Romanian Jews, the Nazis never got a chance to take direct control of the process and "systematise" it, as they did in Hungary at mid-1944.
Post-War
According to the World Jewish Congress, there were 428,312 Jews in Romania in 1947. Mass emigration ensued, much of it to the British Mandate of Palestine and later Israel, and much of it technically illegal (see Berihah). By 1956, there were 144,236 Jews in Romania. From 1948 until 1960, more than 200,000 Romanian Jews went to Israel, reducing the population in Romania to less than 100,000 by the 1960s.
During the period of transition towards a communist regime in Romania, following Soviet occupation (see Soviet occupation of Romania), Jewish society and culture were subject to the same increasingly tight control by the authorities. The community leader Wilhelm Filderman was arrested in 1945, and had to flee the country in 1948. On April 22, 1946, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej attended a meeting of Jewish organizations and called for the creation of a new body, the Jewish Democratic Committee, which was in reality a section of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).
After the proclamation of the People's Republic, the government formed by the PCR outlawed all Jewish organizations at a meeting on June 10–June 11, 1948, stating that "the party must take a stand on every question concerning the Jews of Romania and fight vigorously against reactionary nationalist Jewish currents [that is, Zionism]". In 1952-1953, the Stalinist anti-Semitic charge of "rootless cosmopolitanism" brought the purging of the party's own leadership (including Ana Pauker); the charge was then inflicted on the larger part of the Jewish community, beginning with a trial engineered by Iosif Chisinevschi. Jews who were perceived as Zionists were given harsh labour sentences in communist prisons such as Pitesti (where they were subject to torture and brainwashing experiments; several died). The 1952 trial of engineers made responsible for the failure of the Danube-Black Sea Canal project also involved allegations of Zionism (notably aimed at Aurel Rozei-Rozenberg, who was eventually executed).
The situation for the Jews of Romania later improved, but the community has shrunk, mainly through aliyah - today only 9,000-15,000 Jews live in Romania.
Hasidic dynasties originating from today's Romania
Major groups
Other groups
- Bohush, from Buhusi
- Bucharest, from Bucharest
- Faltichan, from Falticeni
- Nasod, from Nasaud
- Pashkan, from Pascani
- Sasregen, from Reghin
- Seret, from Siret
- Shotz, from Suceava
- Shtefanesht, from Stefanesti
- Temishvar, originating from Timisoara
- Vasloi, originating from Vaslui
See also
External links
- from ISurvived.org. Extensive collection of web links.
- , Jewish Education in Romanian
- , with links to major Romanian Jewish websites
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