Ladislau Gyemant
| Key
words: Romanian Jewry, Tolerance, marginalisation, Transylvanian Jewry, civil emancipation, Jewish community, antisemitism, Romania |
Prof.,
Ph.D. Faculty of European Studies Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania e-mail: gyemant@zortec.ro |
The
Romanian Jewry: Historical Destiny,
Tolerance, Integration, Marginalisation
| previous |
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Abstract: To discuss what was the attitude of the Romanian society towards the increasing economic, social and political role of the Jews throughout history is one of the aims of this paper. Serban Papacostea, the outstanding specialist in mediaeval history, makes use of the syntagm "hostile tolerance", which specified the general attitude towards the Jews of the Orthodox mediaeval world of Byzantine origin. Tolerance - defined the unlimited opportunity for Jews to be accepted, settle, move and act freely within the Romanian principalities, all the way to the status of possessing properties in Moldavia and Wallachia. There were, however, mixed feelings of hostility manifest at three distinct levels: mental, juridical and political. As for the mentalities, both popular and high brow education as well as prejudices held the Jews guilty for the death of Christ. Even if physically the Jewish presence in Romania has become symbolical, the history of the Jews, the traditions of the Jewish culture and spirituality, the imprint of the Jewish contribution on the emergence and development of the Romanian society will remain the perennial values of a historiography aspiring to fulfill its duty, forever preserved in the conscience of generations to come. To reconstruct the historical destiny of the Romanian Jewry, which is still a blank page in our historiography, remains a task for the historians and researchers. Such early attempts as were made by Hasdeu and Iorga to trace "the history of religious tolerance in Romania" or "the history of the Jews in our countries", springing amid the bitter dispute over the civil rights of the Jews in late 19th and early 20th century1, did not have the expected follow-up in further research which, it was hoped, would produce a synthesis of this important issue. The Bibliography of the Jews in Romania, published by Jean Ancel and Victor Eskenasy in Tel-Aviv in 19912, is an inventory of partial contributions and documenting materials, which offer only the starting point for a future historical synthesis. The more recent History of the Jews in Transylvania, 1623-1944, published in Romanian and Hungarian versions by Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, former Chief-Rabbi of Cluj/Kolozsvár JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 85 and Emeritus Professor of Yeshiva University New York, offers an excellent synthetic view on the history of the Jews in this particular region, even while it calls for a collective effort to approach similarly the entire Romanian Jewry3. The beginnings of the Jewish history in this part of Europe are veiled by the legendary aura created by scholarly Humanism and militant Romanticism. Like other populations in the Central-East-European area, the Jews in Transylvania in mid 19th century, as shown in their political petitions for rights, looked for support in the historical awareness of their early presence in this part of the world. Such claims were put forth by the imaginative 16th century Saxon priest of Talmaciu by the name of Johann Lebel, who tried to trace the origins of the name of his village back to the Talmud. The ancient locals bearing the name had been allegedly called in to help the Dacian king Decebal against a common enemy, the Romans, after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the legions of emperor Titus4. Popular imagination added to, or overlaid, such scholarly constructions with oral folklore5, according to which such toponyms as Jidovar, Jidovina, Jidova a.s.o, were the links to the ancient Dacian and Roman fortresses or mediaeval strongholds attributed to hypothetical Jewish colonists6. While
thorough historical criticism exposed the lack of foundation and the anachronism
even of such folklore (for example, the origin of Talmud predates by far
the age of Decebal), archeology, on the other hand, keeps producing hard
evidence about the presence of These sporadic and scanty beginnings of Jewish life in Dacia fell victim to centuries of invasions in the wake of the collapse of the Roman rule, so that it is as late as the first centuries of the second millenium that documents in either Latin or Slavic offer the proof of the emergence and development of a Jewish society in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia. After some indirect and uncertain data from the 12th to the 13th centuries, the 14th to 16th centuries provide more and more documentary proofs concerning the Jewish population in the above mentioned provinces. The Jews came to this area from the West (Germany, Bohemia, Hungary), North (Poland) and South (the Ottoman Empire, where the Sephards expelled from Spain found a tolerating haven). Their economic role as revealed in the contemporary documents was of intermediaries in trade on the route that linked Poland to the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire, across the territory of Moldavia, and also in the relations established between the most important Transylvanian cities (Cluj, Brasov/ Brassó, Sibiu/ Szeben) and the regions across the JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 86
Carpathians or the Balkans. The second important component of the Jewish
economic activity was that of suppliers of the credit necessary both for
the rulers and the urban and rural comunities. Several of those who vied
for the throne obtained the nomination after resorting to the services
of the Jewish creditors who were influential in the Ottoman capital. The
nobility, the boyars, as well as the city dwellers raised money from the
Jews, who were thus integrated in the economic and social life by gaining
properties, paying taxes, participiated in court both as the accused or
the defended parties or as witnesses. The Jewish physicians, who practiced
the courts of the Romanian or Transylvanian princes, were in great demand
and efforts were put into bringing them over from Poland or the Ottoman
Empire8.
This economic and social role, made clear
with every documentary material produced, was closely linked to involvement
in the complex network of the international relations of the Central -
and Southeastern European area. Isac Beg, the Jewish doctor of Ozun Hasan,
the Turkmen Khan, during his mission in Europe to form an alliance against
the Ottoman Empire, also mediated an improvement in the relations between
Stephen the Great of Moldavia and Mathias Corvinus of Hungary, which resulted
in an agreement sealed by the granting of mutual trade privileges9.
In the second half of the 16th century, the Jewish personalities influential
in the Ottoman world got directly involved in the political destiny of
the Romanian principalities by backing and crediting pretenders to the
throne and by inte What was the attitude of the Romanian
society towards the increasing economic, social and political role of
the Jews? Serban Papacostea, the outstanding specialist in mediaeval history,
makes use of the syntagm "hostile tolerance", which specified
the general attitude towards the Jews of the Orthodox mediaeval world
of Byzantine origin. The first term - tolerance - defined the unlimited
opportunity for Jews to be accepted, settle, move and act freely within
the Romanian principalities, all the way to the status of possessing properties
in Moldavia and Wallachia. Under the protection of the law, the free practice
of their religion and the setting up of synagogues and schools complete
this facet of the Jews' status in the Romanian territories during the
Middle Ages. There were, however, mixed feelings of hostility manifest
at three distinct levels: mental, juridical and political. As for the
mentalities, both popular and high brow education as well as prejudices
held the Jews guilty for the death of Christ. The mural paintings
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 87
of the monasteries in Moldavia and the popular writings about the lives
of the saints place the Jews usually among the infidels and the heretics,
responsible for the martyrdom of saints, doomed to the flames of Hell.
The juridical codifying of the 17th century
following the model of the Byzantine codes stipulated the differences
between the Jews and Christians, by forbidding conversion to Judaism,
yet favoring those willing to convert to Christianity by granting them
pardon for all the previous misdeeds. The fact that the Christian priests
were forbidden to have any contact with Jews, to join meals in their homes,
to be consulted by Jewish physicians, although not generally observed,
is relevant for the mentalities of the epoch and the juridical approached.
As for everyday policy, the hostility was motivated by the competition
between the local and the Jewish tradesmen, the discontent of the debtors
with their creditors, the Jews being considered agents of the Ottoman
power in the Romanian provinces. Hence the restrictive economic measures
and the onset of the struggle against the Ottoman rule by taking repressive
measures against the Jewish creditors, who were at variance imprisoned
and compelled to surrender their fortunes to Stephen the Great, or simply
killed by Michael the Brave and Aron the Tyrant. Russian sources mention
severe measures against the Jews taken by Petru Rares, including their
general expulsion from Moldavia. On the other hand, one should not ignore
the trade privileges and tax-exemptions granted them by rulers such as
Alexandru the Good, Stephen Tomsa or Constantin Brancoveanu, or the protection
offered them by Vasile Lupu against the Cossacks of Hmelnicki. The advice
given by Archbishop Matei al Mirelor to the then prince to observe and
keep the promises he had made the foreign tradesmen, Jews included, which
would gain him fame in their distant homelands, completes the ambivalent
status of the Jews in the mediaeval Romanian society, a status characterized
by restraint and prejudices of old and new always accompanied and counterbalanced
by a permissive tolerance11.
Many similarities could be found in the
situation of the Jews in Transylvania, where they made themselves useful
as tradesmen, creditors and intermediaries in the relations with the Ottoman
Empire beginning with the 14th century. After the first privilege granted
in 1251 by Bela IV to the Jews in the Kingdom of Hungary, Transylvania
included, a privilege confirmed and renewed by most of his successors
until 1526, under the new circumstances as the autonomous principality
of Transylvania, Prince Gabriel Bethlen granted them in 1623 a privilege
which became the fundamental act of their social, economical and juridical
status until mid 19th century. This privilege issued within the context
of the policy of revival of the Principality by colonization ensured the
Jews the freedom to settle and move within the country, to freely practice
trade, to observe their religion without any discrimination, no discriminating
signs included. Although these rights were later amended by the decisions
of the Diet and the Code of Laws of the Principality limited the right
to settle to the town of Alba Iulia/ Gyulafehérvár, these
privileged
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 88
provisions reiterated periodically in the 17th and 18th centuries provided
the Jews in Transylvania with the oportunity to engage in an increasingly
dynamic economic activity and to lead a life in their specific tradition12.
The Pinkas (Protocol) of the Community of Alba Iulia (the first and, for
a long time, the only organized Jewish community in the Principality)
reflects an internal organization with a rabbi who was beginning with
the middle of the 18th century the Chief-rabbi of the Transylvanian Jewry,
a local leadership elected by the majority vote, a legal system of its
own, with taxes destined to cover the needs of the community, and two
synagogues for the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews to practice their cult13.
The 18th century, which marks the borderline
between the pre-statistics and statistics period, will allow us for the
first time a quantitative assessment of the presence of the Jewish population
in the area under discussion. In Transylvania, the new Habsburg regime,
established at the end of the 17th century, inaugurated the practice of
recording the human and material resources by introducing a periodical
census. The first general census of the Jews in the Great Principality
of Transylvania, at the end of the reign of Maria Theresa (1779), registered
221 Jewish families with 461 children. The first modern census ordered
by Emperor Joseph II, registered in the Great Principality 394 Jewish
families with 2.094 members representing 0.14% of the entire population.
In western present day Transylvania (counties Caras, Timis, Torontal,
Arad, Bihor, Maramures, Satu Mare), then part of Hungary, the number of
the Jewish population, registered at the same time, was 6,884. Up to 1840,
the demographical evolution of the Jews in Transylvania was rather insignificant,
their number never exceeding 3,000-3,500 in the Great Principality. A
great increase occurred over the years prior to the Revolution of 1848,
and the immediately following, so that the Austrian census of 1850-1851
registered over 15,000 Jewish inhabitants in the province. The reason
of this increase is to be found in the massive immigration from the West
and the North (Galitzia, Bukovina and Hungary) to the more favorable economic
and social conditions offered by the Great Principality. In spite of the
continuous increase, the Jewish population of Transylvania did not reach
then 1% of the total population. After the civil emancipation in 1867,
the Jewish population increased considerably from 23,536 in 1869 to 60,074
individuals in 1910, with an increase in its percentage of the total population
from 1.2% to 2.4%. For the whole territory of present day Transylvania
before World War I, the Jewish population reached the number of 223,08214.
In Moldavia, the first census taken by
the Russian occupation military authorities during the war with the Turks
in 1774 registered 1,300 Jewish families. When Bukovina fell to Austrian
rule in 1775, successive statistics point to a decrease in the number
of Jewish families from 650 in 1776 to 175 in 1785 due to the expulsions
practiced by the new authorities. Later on, the relaxation of the restrictive
measures marked a new increase to 554 families in 1791. In the first half
of the 19th century, the data available for Moldavia show a sharp increase
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 89
in the growth of the Jewish population from 11,732 in 1803 to 79,164 in
1838. The explanation of this growth is to be found both in a spontaneous
immigration from Poland and Russia, then experiencing poor economic conditions
while enforcing severe anti-Jewish policies, and the colonization by the
Princes, boyars and the Church with a view to pointing out the value of
their respective domains. By 1848, over 60 smaller towns and villages
had been set up with Jewish majority population. If we also add the natural
increase due to early marriages, ritual sanitary and dietary prescriptions,
and the low mortality due to abstinence and stable family life, one has
now all the main causes of the growth of Jewish population until 1859-1860
to 134,100 persons, of which 124,897 in Moldavia and only 9,234 in Wallachia.
In the same period (1856), the Jewish population in Basarabia, which had
been integrated into the Russian Empire in 1812, reached the number of
78,751. By the end of the century, according to the 1899 census, the number
of the Jews in Romania doubled, reaching 269,015, and representing 4,5%
of the total population. Prior to World War I, in 1912, the census recorded
a slight decrease in figures and ratio (239,967 persons and 3,3% as a
result of the emigration due to declination of civil rights and the restrictive,
anti-Jewish official policy)15.
Simultaneous with the demographic increase,
the 18th-19th centuries marked significant developments at the institutional
level too. In Moldavia and Wallachia the leader of the Jewish communities
became the so-called Hahambasha established by the Prince of After the 1848 Revolution, the supporters
of the institutional and educational reforms managed to organize two conferences
of the representatives of the Jewish communities in Transylvania. In 1852
and in 1866, projects were proposed at these conferences for the reorganization
JSRI
• No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 90
of the communities and of the school-system and for reducing the prerogatives
of the Chief Rabbi. The chance for these projects to be implemented came
with the civil emancipation, when in 1868 a congress of the Jewry of Hungary
was organized in the new political conditions created by the Austro-Hungarian
dualism. The main effect of the centralized institutional and educational
system proposed by the Congress was a break between the Jewish communities,
which lasted until World War II. Thus, those who acknowledged the resolutions
of the Congress became the congressist or neolog communities, while their
adversaries declared themselves Orthodox (supporters of a strict observance
of ritual prescriptions and of a full community autonomy) or status-quo-ante
(partisans of maintaining the situation previous to the Congress)17.
Beyond these internal problems, the main
concern of the Jewish society in the 18th and 19th centuries was emancipation,
gaining full civil rights18. In Transylvania, the first half
of the 18th century is characterized, as regards the official policy towards
the Jews, by the alternation of restrictive measures taken by central
and local authorities with periodical renewals of the privileges gained
in the previous century. The situation of the Jews worsened sensibly during
the reign of Maria Theresa, when, within a generalized system for Hungary,
a special burdensome tax of tolerance was introduced for the Jews in western
present day Transylvania. In Banat (counties Caras, Timis and Torontal),
a regulation entitled Judenordung was adopted in 1776 restricting drastically
the admissible number of Jewish families, restraining free mobility, the
right to practice trade, confining residence to special districts, and
strictly limiting the social and economic relations between Jews and Christians.
This policy climaxed in 1779-1780, when it was determined that the entire
Jewish population of the Great Principality be localized in Alba-Iulia,
that all professions except trade were forbidden, and moving out of the
area had to stop. The death of the Empress, and the ascension of Joseph
II prevented the implementation of these projects, while the new era of
Josephinism brought about a policy in the spirit of tolerance.
With a view to integrating the Jewish
population into society as a class of useful taxpayers, Joseph issued
in 1783 the Edict of tolerance for Hungary, applicable to the Jews in
western present day Transylvania too. This meant access to trade training
and membership of guilds, free admittance to public schools at every level,
universities included, removal of the humiliating distinctive signs and
creating opportunities to set up their own school system. In exchange,
the Jews were asked to integrate into the general educational system,
to introduce the Latin, German or Hungarian languages in their official
or business records, to adopt German names19. In the Great
Principality, some partial measures taken, such as permission to promote
freely economic activities like peddling or brandy distilling, and stopping
the practice of baptizing Jewish new-borns by midwives against their parents'
will, are signs of a positive change, without however, finalizing into
a general Edict of tolerance20.
JSRI
• No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 91
During the first half of the 19th century the issue of emancipation became
a hot debate at the level of the state central institutions and the local
authorities, as well as for the public opinion and the press of the time.
Within the context created, the emancipation of the Jews became part of
the reform-program promoted by the liberal gentry. Consequently, the Jews
in western Transylvania benefited from the measures adopted by the Diet
of Hungary in 1840 which provisioned their right to settle and live in
all towns except in the mining area, to start factories and practice all
trades and commerce. In spite of the claims by the Jewish communities
of the Great Principality to civil rights similar to those granted for
the rest of the population, the Diet of Transylvania did not consider
the request until 1848.
Concomitant to these attempts at official
level to improve their status, the Jews of Transylvania conducted a long
and tenacious struggle in the towns and villages of the Principality for
the right to settle, freely practice economic activities, observe the
prescriptions of their cult and build synagogues and schools. The 1848
Revolution, instead of the expected and coveted emancipation brought about
an outburst of anti-Jewish persecutions in the main towns of Hungary and
Transylvania21, while the Neo-Absolutist regime of 1849-1860,
introduced by the Austrian Empire following the suppression of the Revolution,
annulled such few rights as had been gained in the previous years (the
right to purchase properties, for instance). After the liberalization
of the political regime in 1860, the idea of emancipation imposed by a
process of modernization in both the social-economic structures and mentalities,
was materialized in 1867, conjectured by the new dualist Austro-Hungarian
regime's attempts to prove its legitimacy by solving in a liberal spirit
the long-debated problem of the Jewish civil emancipation through one
of the first laws adopted directly after setting up.
The emancipation of the Jews in Moldavia
and Wallachia proved to be a slower and more difficult process, although
in mid 19th century the conditions seemed favorable for a positive solution.
The liberal generation that prepared and carried out the 1848 Revolution
adopted such provisions as "the emancipation of the Israelites and
equal rights for all citizens of other denominations" (in Wallachia)
or "the gradual emancipation of the Israelites" (in Moldavia).
Attracted by these promises and interested in economic, social and institutional
modernization and liberalization, the Jews supported the Revolution. The
affiliation was maintained in the period following the defeat of the Revolution
as part of the general struggle for the unification of the Romanian Principalities
under the first ruler of the unified Romania, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who
opened up new ways of putting into practice civil emancipation in the
years to come. Thus, some Jewish personalities were appointed to public
office and the communal law of 1864 granted the Jews the right to participate,
under certain conditions, in the municipal elections. The Civil Code issued
in the same year stipulated the individual naturalization of the Jews
after a ten-year residence in the country22.
JSRI
• No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 92
After the overthrow of Cuza, public opinion and the political class's
attitude to the issue of Jewish emancipation changed radically. Adopted
under street pressure, the 7th article of the 1866 Constitution granted
the right to citizenship only to those of the Christian confession. The
governments in power until 1872, led by the outstanding politicians of
the liberal generation of 1848 such as Ion Bratianu, Mihail Kogalniceanu,
or Ion Ghica inaugurated a series of anti-Jewish actions (mass expulsion,
interdiction of settling in villages, restriction of economic activities),
which were aggravated by an abusive local administration intent on implementing
them. There are manifold and complex causes of this radical shift in direction
in the Jewish policy of the liberal generation of 1848. The growing demographics
of the Jewish population, the massive immigration, the orientation of
the Jews towards professions characteristic for the middle class that
was just taking shape in the Romanian society, all caused a negative reaction
among the liberal political forces, who regarded the Jewish competition
as the main obstacle in the building up of the social strata in Romania
which they targeted as their main support. Within the electoral system
established in 1866, the civil emancipation of the Jews would have meant
a radical change in the third college, the electoral stronghold of the
liberals. In Moldavia was formed a so-called liberal independent fraction,
acutely xenophobic and anti-Jewish, whose indispensable support for the
uphold in power of the liberal governments had a great contribution to
the unfavorable turn in the liberal policy towards the Jewish issue.
As for the conservative political forces,
they proved to be much too moderate as the representatives of the landholders
interested in exploiting the economic resources with the help of the Jewish
leaseholders and seeking social and political interest opposed to that
of their liberal adversaries. Not incidentally then, the conservative
government of Lascar Catargiu between 1872-1876 considerably mellowed
the anti-Jewish measures of the previous governments, and political personalities
of conservative orientation such as P.P. Carp, Titu Maiorescu, and Take
Ionescu, endorsed the arrival at a just solution for the Jewish issue
in Romania23.
Under the circumstances, when the idea
of emancipation became a reality across Europe and the international Jewish
organizations had been acknowledged as politically influent, Jewish emancipation
in Romania transcended the area of internal confrontations to attract
the interest of the Great Powers in the delicate context of the "Oriental
problem". At the end of the 1877-1878 War, when the Peace Congress
in Berlin traced the new political frontiers in the Balkans, the Great
Powers conditioned the recognition of the recently gained independence
by Romania on the amendment of Article 7 of the Constitution to ensure
civil rights to all the residents of the country irrespective of their
denomination.
On being met with a strong opposition
by the political forces and the public opinion in Romania, the modification
of the Constitution triggered a real political storm consisting in new
elections and changes of governments, whereas the long and tiresome negotiations
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 93
with the European capitals delayed by more than a year the recognition
of the independence of Romania. Finally, an advantage was taken both of
the specific contradictions and interests of England, France, Germany
and Russia, and of the hesitant attitude of a part of the Jewish leadership
in Romania, and a surrogate "solution" was propounded in the
re-formulation of Article 7 offering the possibility of individual naturalization
for the Jews with a ten-year residence in the country. With one single
exception, that of the block-naturalization of the 883 participants in
the war for independence, this solution of gaining civil rights for the
Jews proved entirely impracticable, and the total number of Jews naturalized
between 1878-1913 did not exceed 52924.
From 1878 to World War I, a particularly
restrictive legislation was added to this infelicitous solution, an aggravation
to the drastic limits set to Jewish participation in industry and trade,
in the liberal professions, and in public administration, also blocking
access for the Jews to instruction at any level and legalizing the system
of Jewish expulsion from the rural areas.
In order to counteract this discrimination,
the Union of the Native Jews was set up in Bucharest in 1910, assuming
the responsibility of coordinating the struggle for emancipation. It was
these efforts, the support of the European public opinion and of the international
Jewish organizations that prepared the field for the favourable conditions
at the end of the World War I which made the Jewish emancipation a reality
in Romania. The decrees issued in 1919 by Ion I. C. Bratianu's government
and the acceptance by Romania, not without resistance, of the guarantees
comprised in the Treaty for minorities imposed at the Versailles Peace
Conference25, also counted as contributions.
The civil emancipation, gaining full civil
rights, did not mean here, as, actually in the whole of Europe (see the
Dreyfus case) the expected and hoped for solution for the Jewish issue.
The social integration of the Jews proved to be a process which, due to
its implications, transcended juridical emancipation, triggering and arousing
deep rooted sensibilities, reserves and hostility and, leading, eventually,
to some tragic events. On the other hand, the opportunities offered to
the Jews by their emancipation in the economic, social, political and
cultural life, which they fully turned into account by gaining major positions
in the economy, finances, press, the liberal professions, culture and
education, caused the birth and rise of an organized type of modern anti-Semitism,
one which embarked upon the programmatic elimination of the Jewish factor
in society.
In turn, the Jewish community, despite
some disposition at being assimilation, on the whole proved to be refractory
to such process, which entailed the renouncement of their specific individuality.
For this complex situation emerging after
the achievement of civil emancipation, the Jewish community tried to find
three types of solutions. Part of the Romanian Jews adopted the ideology
and mode of action of modern Nationalism, specifically of the Zionist
movement, setting up the goal of transforming the Jewish people into a
modern nation within an administrative
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 94
state on the territory of ancient Israel, with a national language, culture
and institutions, similar to all other nations. This movement was popular
in Romania where, prior to World War I and during the inter-war period,
the Zionist organizations planned and achieved the gradual emigration
to Palestine of a part of the Romanian Jews.
Another section of the Jewish community
oriented itself towards the left-leaning and extreme left movements, considering
that the solutions to the Jewish problems were to be found within the
general re-organization of the society, which, by ridding all economic
and social injustice, would wipe out the roots of ethnic or confessional
discrimination. The advocates of such orientations played an important
role in the organization and development of the socialist movement in
Romania, with Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea as its most important opinion
leader. After the World War I, both the Social Democrat and Communist
movements featured an important Jewish component.
Lastly, the third group thought that the
solution was to integrate into the Romanian society by preserving their
specific cultural and spiritual individuality, and thus achieving full
equal rights. It was the Union of the Romanian Jews which militated
in favor of this idea and paved the way to a political and parliamentary
solution for the objective, by participating in the elections in coalition
with the governmental parties and by winning seats in the Parliament.
In Transylvania, where pro-Hungarian assimilation
tendencies were strong in the wake of the emancipation of 1867, part of
the Jewish population, after World War I and the Union with Romania, supported
the Hungarian Party, while others constituted the National Union of
the Jews of Transylvania featuring a strong Zionist orientation26.
The inter-war period marked the strong
affirmation of the Jewish component in the social, economic, political,
as well as cultural life of Romania. An important network of community,
philanthropic, cultural, artistic, and sports associations, a multitude
of organizations and even political parties, a strong Jewish press, all
emphasized the way in which the opportunities offered by the new emancipated
status had been capitalized by the Romanian Jewry. The ascent of Fascism,
of the extreme right movements in Europe and Romania, too, were the alarming
signals of anti-Semitism in the pre-war period. The Iron Guard set for
itself the task to eliminate physically the entire Jewish component of
the Romanian society making known its intentions not only by an extremely
aggressive press and literature, but also through violent actions against
the Jewish persons and properties27.
After the victory of Nazism in Germany,
anti-Jewish pressure increased, extending at official and legislative
levels. The signal sent in 1934 by the passage of the Law of the exploitation
of Romanian labor, with provisions which limited the proportion of non-Romanian
employers and managers in the economic companies, combined at the end
of 1937 with the adoption by the ephemeral Goga-Cuza government of the
first overtly anti-Jewish law which revised citizenship and endangered
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 95
the civil rights of thousands of the 756,930 Jews registered by the 1930
census. Although the economic boycott declared by the Jewish businesses
against the government and the international protests proved efficient,
and the Goga-Cuza government had to resign after three weeks, in the summer
of 1940, the complex situation engendered by the blietzkrieg success of
Nazi Germany, the fall of France, Romania's main ally of Romania, the
major territory losses in Basaraby and Transylvania, made the Gigurtu
government introduce a new anti-Semite legislation aligned to the Nazi
model. The policy took on paroxysmal dimensions during the dual government
of general Antonescu and the Iron Guard (September 1940-January 1941),
and continued in 1941-1944. In line with the racial criteria of the Nûrnberg
laws, the anti-Jewish legislation annulled civil rights and liberties,
decreed the expropriation of all Jewish possessions (within a process
called Romanization), eliminated Jewish manpower from the companies, introduced
numerus nullus in education and the liberal professions, established
restrictions on mobility, re-located the Jews from the countryside to
towns, enforced compulsory labor and heavy taxation, and dissolved the
institutional system of the Jewish communities. Although not all the measures
were applied consistently (for instance, the process of "Romanization"
of the Jewish properties and the elimination of the Jewish specialists
was considered by Antonescu too long a process to avoid unfavourable economical
consequences), the coming to power of the Iron Guard added physical violence
to these laws, as an aggravating variable which climaxed in the massacres
during the rebellion against Antonescu at the end of January 194128.
The war that broke in June 1941 turned
violence from an exception into mass practice. After the pogrom of Iasi
and the "death trains" of Moldavia, there followed in the autumn
of 1941 the massacre and mass deportation of the Jews of Basarabia and
Bucovina to Transnistria. They were declared "foreign Jews"
siding with the "bolshevik enemy". During the summer and autumn
of 1942, the plans for mass deportation of the Jews from old Romania and
southern Transylvania to the extermination camps in Poland were at work.
The opposition put up by leading personalities of the Romanian political
and ecclesiastical elite, among which the Royal House was foremost, the
actions of the Jewish leaders, especially of Dr. Wilhem Filderman, and
not least of all, the change of the course of the war after Stalingrad,
put an end to this project, and thus, about 300,000 Jewish lives were
saved out of the 441,293 registered by the 1941 census on the territory
of old Romania, southern Transylvania, Basarabia and Bucovina29.
In Northern Transylvania, under the Hungarian
administration introduced in August 1940, the 151,125 Jews recorded in
the 1941 census had been subject to anti-Jewish legislation in action
for some years in Hungary. This legislation was racial in nature and pursued
the elimination of the Jews from the economic life, liberal professions,
public services and the educational system. The German occupation in March
1944 and the
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 96
Slálasi government hastened the state of things towards a tragic
end, ghettoing and deporting as many as 131,633 Jews from Northen Transylvania
by June 1944. The courageous stand taken by such personalities as the
Greek Catholic Archbishop Iuliu Hossu or the Roman Catholic Bishop Márton
Áron, the salvation actions initiated by Jewish organizations with
the support of some intellectuals and local peasants did not as much as
limit the proportion of the disaster30.
The Jewish population in Romania reduced
to half as compared to the inter-war period (412,312 Jews in 1947) set
its hopes, after the terrible shock of the Holocaust, in the new regime,
democratic in the beginning, later Communist, which promised to solve
once and for all national injustices. It is not by accident that the Jews
participate in the building up of the new social-political and economic
regime, which, unfortunately, proved very soon to be the deception of
a new type dictatorship, whose ferocity was comparable to the one past.
The shattered expectations and the disillusionment
with the Communist system corroborated with the emergence of the State
of Israel, re-orienting the Jews in Romania towards emigration, so that
the number of Jews decreased from 146,264 in 1956 to 24,667 in 1977. The
Ceausescu regime, by depriving an entire population of the basic necessities
of a decent life and by negotiating the emigration of Jews for hard currency,
carried through the process of finishing off the Jewish community, with
the result that the latest official census Even if physically the Jewish presence
in Romania has become symbolical, the history of the Jews, the traditions
of the Jewish culture and spirituality, the imprint of the Jewish contribution
on the emergence and development of the Romanian society will remain the
perennial values of a historiography aspiring to fulfill its duty, forever
preserved in the conscience of generations to come.
Notes:
1 B. P. Hasdeu, Istoria tolerantei religioase
în Romania, Bucuresti, 1868; Nicolae Iorga, Istoria evreilor în
tarile noastre, Bucuresti, 1913.
2 Jean Ancel, Victor Eskenasy, Bibliography
of the Jews in Romania, Tel-Aviv, 1991.
3 Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, Istoria evreilor
din Transilvania (1623-1944), Bucuresti, Edit. Enciclopedica, 1994.
4 "Blätter für Geist, Gemüth
und Vaterlandskunde" (Brasov), 1846, 5, p. 29-30; Bittgesuch der
Israeliten an das hohe Gesammtministerium, Pest, 1852.
5 Eisler Mátiás, A zsidók
legrégibb nyomai Erdélyben, în " A kolozsvári
felolvasó-egyesület évkönyve", 1906, p. 101-103.
6 Téglás Gábor, Zsidó
nevû vagy jelzetû helyek és régisék Dáczia
területérõl, în "IMIT Évkönyv",
1909, p. 114 -123.
7 Silviu Sanie, Cultele orientale în
Dacia Romana, Bucuresti, Edit. Stiintifica si enciclopedica, 1981, p.
148-162; Izvoare si marturii referitoare la evreii din Romania, I, Bucuresti,
1986, p. 141-144 (în continuare: IMER).
8 IMER, I, passim; SHVUT (Tel Aviv), 1993,
p. 59-83.
9 Magyar-Zsidó Okleveltár,
XII, Budapest, 1969, p. 27-44.
JSRI
• No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 97 10 Romanian-Jewish Studies,
I, 1897, p. 7-13. 11 See note 8. 12 Carmilly, op. cit., p. 49-65. 13 Eisler Mátiás, Az erdélyi országos fõrabbik, in "IMIT Évkönyv", 1901, p. 221-244; Ernest Neumann, The Chief-Rabbinate in Alba Iulia between 1754 and 1879. Organization and Development, in "Studia Judaica" (Cluj-Napoca), 1996, V, p. 102-115. 14 Ladislau Gyémánt, The Jews of Transylvania in the Age of Emancipation 1790-1867, Bucuresti, Editura Enciclopedica, p. 13-41; 219-245. 15 Carol Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie 1866-1912; de l'exclusion a l'emancipation, Aix-en-Provence, 1978, p. 142-143. 16 IMER, II/1, Bucuresti, 1988, p. 113-126; 163; II/2, Bucuresti, 1990, p. 52-53; 178-179; 351-352; 402-404. 17 Carmilly, op. cit., p. 110-111. 18 Gyémánt, op. cit., p. 99-212. 19 Angelika Schaser, Die Juden Siebenbürgens vom 16. Bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, in "Südost Forschungen" (München), 1990, p. 66-74. 20 IMER, II/2, p. 251-257; 314-315; 328-329; 345-348. 21 Bernstein Béla, A negyvennyolcas magyar szabadságharc és a zsidók, Budapest, 1939, p. 25-162; Catherine Horel, Juifs de Hongrie 1825-1849. Problemes d'assimilation et d'émancipation, Strasbourg, 1995. 22 Dan Berindei, Le Juifs dans les Principautés Unies (1866-1888), in "SHVUT", 1993, p. 133-149. 23 Beate Welter, Die Judenpolitik der rumänischen Regierung 1866-1888, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris, 1989, p. 37-45; 52- 65. 24 Iancu, op. cit., p. 150-205. 25 Idem, L'émancipation des Juifs dans les Principautés Unies (1859-1865), in "SHVUT", 1993, p. 133-149. 26 Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, Bloomington, 1983, pp. 171-211; Krista Zach, Die Juden Rumäniens zwischen Assimilation und Auswanderung, in vol. Aspekte ethnisher Identität, München, 1991, p. 257-298; Carol Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1919-1938). De l'emancipation à la marginalisation, Paris-Louvain, 1996. 27 Leon Volovici, The Nationalist Ideology and Anti-Semitism. The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, Oxford, 1991. 28 Lya Benjamin, Evreii din romania între anii 1940-1944. Legislatia antievreiasca, I, Bucuresti, ed. Hasefer, 1993. 29 Jean Ancel, Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Hollocaust, I-XII, New York, 1985-1986; Carol Iancu, La Shoah en Roumanie, Montpellier, 1998. 30 Béla Várgó, The Destruction of the Jews of Transylvania, in "Hungarian-Jewish Studies" (New York), I, 1966, pp. 171-211; Moshe carmilly-Weinberger, Road to Life. The Rescue Operation of Jewish Refugees on the Hungarian-Romanian Border in Transylvania 1936-1944, New York, 1994. 31 Zach, op. cit., p. 283, Asezarile evreiesti din Romania. Memento statistic, Bucuresti, 1947, p. 11. JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 98 JSRI • No. 3/Winter 2002 |
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