The Origins and Onset of the Romanian Holocaust

1. Iaşi

9 C h a p t e r 1 Iaşi Elie Wiesel spoke at the National Theater in Iaşi in late June 1991, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the pogrom and death trains. As he began, a woman sitting in the front row shouted out that he lied. Wiesel paused for a moment while she was escorted out of the building and then calmly went on speaking. It was the woman who lied, but what she said was not surprising given the time and place. In 1991 swastikas were still occasionally spraypainted on building walls in Iaşi, and most Romanian historians, as well as their country’s president, Ion Iliescu, had not yet admitted to any such thing as a Romanian Holocaust. As for the theater itself, it has not been immune to anti-Jewish slander. It is true that among the sculptures of prominent theater people that ring the building is a small pedestal-mounted bust of Avram Goldfaden (1840–1908), “father” of Yiddish theater, which he first staged in Iaşi at the Green Tree cabaret in 1876. Goldfaden’s bust, a rarity in Romania, representing a Jew, reminds us of the city’s and country’s once vital Jewish community. But the dominating sculpture, one that stands at the building’s entrance, is a larger-than-life statue of Vasile Alecsandri (1821–1890) after whom the theater is named. He is a much admired national figure, one of his country’s founding fathers but known best for advancing Romanian literature as publisher, poet, and “father of Romanian drama.” He despised Jews, depicting them as “village bloodsuckers,” greedy merchants, and cowards, reinforcing images that became, alongside established Christian myths of deicide and blood libel, fixtures of Romanian antisemitism.1 Between 1848 and 1878 revolutionaries, including Alecsandri, united the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia into the independent state of 10 C H A P T E R 1 Romania. These national heroes tended to be highborn and well educated, to be historians, journalists, playwrights, and poets as well as political activists. They not only brought Romania into existence but, as lawmakers and ministers , fixed its direction. They appeared at first to favor a broadly inclusive political system, proposing in 1848 that Romanian Jews be granted citizenship in the new state. This was, however, a proposal made to attract support for their rebellion, not to emancipate Jews. Once in power they not only denied Jews citizenship but assaulted them with numerous hostile laws and policies. When the government, pressured by European allies, did most reluctantly grant citizenship to Romanian Jews after World War I, the opposition was again led by the intellectual and political elite and by Christian university students. Among the most prominent and influential opponents were University of Iaşi professors: Romania’s most respected historian Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940) and political economist Alexandru C. Cuza (1857–1944). It was Cuza’s student, Corneliu Codreanu (1899–1938), who in 1927 created the Legion of the Archangel Michael (known also as the Iron Guard). It took some fifteen years, from the 1923 constitutional revision (granting Jews citizenship) to the Goga-Cuza government of 1937–38, for the unrelenting antisemitic clamor to move state leaders toward dismantling the political rights and economic means of Romania’s Jews and to put them on a path of destruction. A few blocks north of the National Theater is Union Plaza (Piaţǎ Unirii) where stands a bronze statue of Moldavian prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1820–1873). Plaza and statue commemorate the uniting of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859 when assemblies in each principality elected Cuza as their prince.2 Over the next several years, constitutional and administrative unification were worked out and Romania was born. Cuza’s reign was brief and extraordinary. Assisted by his prime minister, Mihail Kogălniceanu (1817– 1891), the two worked to achieve independent statehood, reduce the power of the church, establish foundations for free and compulsory public education , and bring about reform that, along with peasant emancipation, would reduce the immense gulf between rich landowners and poor debt-ridden farmers.3 The prince even sought to lift legal restrictions from Jews and create a constitutional path for their gradual naturalization. Unfortunately, his opponents, helped by scandals in his government and private life, were able to drive him out of office and from the country in 1866. A few blocks farther north on a street called Copou is Alexandru I. Cuza University, Romania...