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For future article on Jews in Romania

Yad Vashem PDF on "Righteous Gentiles" during the WWII period in Romania http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/what_new/data_whats_new/pdf/english/15%20Ch.%2011.pdf

Voudouris, Monica Săvulescu and Camil Fuchs, Jewish identity after the Second World War. Editura Hasefer, Bucharest, 1999, ISBN 9739235735.

30: In 1947 Zionism was officially attacked as "a bridgehead of the Jewish bourgeiosie, supported by Americans"

30: "In 1952... emigration to Israel was forbidden. Nonetheless, one could receive an isolated individual approval on the principle of counter-service [contra-serviciilor].

30:Ceausescu era: $5000 per emigrant

48:Romanian experience of anti-Semitism (people aged 20-35) compared to Dutch: "Do you experience anti-Semitism in the following areas" (weighted scores 0-100) In politics 25.0 60.8 In the media 28.3 69.2 At school 29.2 53.3 At work 22.5 33.3 In the street 32.5 44.2 In the family 19.2 17.5

49: "Have you personally experienced anti-Semitism" Directly 30% 70% Indirectly 30% 95%

56: Difference in the nature of attachment to Jewish identity. A typical Dutch Jew might describe his or her Jewish identity simply as "I was born Jewish," while a typical Jew in Romania would say, "I consider any form of denying as a proof of cowardice."

Possibly interesting items (some on other topics) in their bibliography:

Ido Abram, Joodse Identiteit (The Jewish Identity), Kok, 1993, in Dutch
R. Cohen, The Jewish Nation in Suriname, Amsterdam, 1982
St. Fischer-Galatzi, Fascism, Communism, and the Jewish Question in Romania, 1974
F.P. Karner, The Sephardics of Curaçao Amsterdam, 1969
S. Manuila and W. Friedman, ed. The Jewish Population in Romania, Fundaţia Culturală, Română, 1994
R. Vago, Antisemitism and the New Romania, SICSA, 1991
L. Volovich, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: the case of Romanian intellectuals in the 30's, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1991
L. Volovich, Antisemitism in Post Communist Eastern Europe: A Marginal or a Central Issue?, SICSA, 1994

Riff, Michael, The Face of Survival: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Past and Present with personal memoirs by Hugo Gryn, Stephen Roth, Ben Helfgott and Hermy Jankel; epilogue by Rabbi Moses Rosen. Valentine Mitchell, London, 1992, ISBN 0853032203.

"The Recipe" Moses Rosen, writing in 1987, 215-221: 215 compares Iron Curtain to the legendary river Sambation (covered in Lost Ten Tribes) "the ten tribes of Israel live, lost in the terra incognita. "The little red Jews".

216 "Almost 4000" lunch daily in ritual restaurants. 500 persons in "modern and beautiful" old people's homes. "Jewish bi-monthly journal in Romanian, Hebrew, English, and Yiddish, published regularly since 1956", in ten thousand copies, mailed legally to the Soviet Union, where it is xeroxed in thousands of copies" Visits from leading Israelis and other prominent Jews (incl. an Israeli Prime Minister), tens of thousands of Israeli tourists annually.

400,000 Romanian Jews survived the Holocaust.

Approx 22,000 in Romania as of 1987. (p.217: "Most of them aged.") About 400,000 in Israel. (p.217: 1400-1500 leaving annually)

Western visitors "had expected to find there a disaster, assimilation, the disappearance of Judaism".

217 "Can everything we have sen be like Potemkin's villages? If not, what is the recipe?"

Problem # 1 of our times: "the consolidation and development of the State of Israel." Problem #2: the situation of the millions of Jews living "in Eastern Europe, in a socialist society. No matter if one likes this or not, it represents a reality... Can they, somehow remain Jewish? The answer given by the past 40 years of the life led by a Jewish community in socialist Romania is categorical and irrefutable. Yes, indeed. They can. "Our 'balance-sheet' proves that, without making any noise, demonstrations or rows, we have succeeded in making Romania's interests correspond to ours..."

"I was young and inexperienced when, in 1948, I was given the responsibility of the destiny of the 400,000 Jews who were 'remnants' of the Holocaust'."

"Give and take" Quotes de Gaulle: "I have no enemies, I have no friends, I have interests."

218 "I succeeded in convincing the Romanian Government that, by doing good to the Jews, by meting out justice to them, it could obtain advantages in matters of favourable public opinion, trade relations, political sympathies... The 'business transaction' was profitable to both sides."

"If we limit ourselves to 'Let my people go!' we are resorting to a slogan that may be of any kind: touristic (i.e. let us travel), political (i.e. we want to leave a socialist country), but in no case Zionist."

"If you want Olim, you need Jews." "More than 90 per cent of the Romanian Jews reached Lod. They did not 'lose their way' heading for other continents..."

Criticized failure of Soviet Jews to take advantage of legislation that would have let them, like Orthodox, Caltholics, Protestants, Muslims establish a legal organization.

219 In USSR, "There are great possibilities of bringing about - if not with the official approval of the authorities, then with their tacit consent - the creation of the beginning og Jewish cultural and religious life, of organising communities at least in the big cities in each of which hundreds of thousands of Jews live."

220 Contra refuseniks, quotes a Moscow Jew: "We, sho do not leave, who cannot leave... or... who do not want to leave, are we not Jews?... Is no voice reaised so that we may remain Jews?"

"...this experience which, at a certain moment, in the years of Stalinism, could have proed fatal to me..."

221 Afterword, post-1989, published 1992

"The excuse can no longer be made that Soviet Jewry cannot be saved because of the terror in Russia. Soviet Jews now have the choice: to affirm their identity as Jews, or not. And... the furhter choice: to go on Aliya, either now or later.

Talks about the economics of Israel absorbing Jews, that many will be left behing, that Jewish life in Russia remains an issue. "On the brink of disappearing into the anonymity of assimilation. We need now to declare a Jewish glasnost..."

"Memories of Hungary" Stephen Roth p. 125-141

Born in Gyoengyoes

126 After 1956, Jews were an estimated 10% of the 200,000 emigres.

Present (1990) estimates 80,000-100,000 Jews in Hungary, >80% of them in Budapest

"While some claim that the 'official estimates' given by the community are somewhat inflated for the purpose of obtaining social and cultural benefits from abroad, others believe that there are in fact many more Jews but that they are so assimilated and distanced from their Jewish identity that they cannot easily be detected, let alone quantified. Either theory may be valid." Some older Jews "...will have nothing to do with the Jewish community but their friends and bridge partners remain Jews."

127 Before WWII, 200,000 Jews in Budapest, 400,000 in Hungary; another 325,000 in the territories annexed during the war. 600,000 of these 725,000 killed in the Nazi era. "The Communist regime must be complimented for maintaining and supporting what exists. At the same time, however, the negative Communist approach to religion... inevitably lessened the demand for Jewish facilities."

1990: only remaining rabbinical seminary in central or eastern Europe, 10-12 students at a formerly great institution. (p.140: Alexander Scheiber, died circa 1990, charismatic, started Friday night gatherings.)

1990: one Jewish secondary school (Anne Frank Gymnasium); before WWII, 11 secondary schools, 144 elementary, 2 teacher-training institutions. 1990: small Jewish hospital in Budapest, subsidiary of the Pre-WWII hospital that had 670 beds, 14,000 patients/year.

Pre-WWII: Orthodox and Neologs, the latter being comparable to "the more traditional wing of US Conservatives". Communist gov't forced them to unite ("semi-autonomous Orthodox section"). This was among factors resulting in a decline of Jewish institutions.

128 "Bureaucratism had replaced volunataristic communitarianism."

129-130 "My parents' social contact was only with Jews" (except for the mayor, who played cards at the Jewish social club "partly for sound electoral reasons, but partly because he had a special liking for Jews"). State gymnasium: most teachers were "known antisemites" (knwon to have made remarks, but not unfair as teachers).

131 "an alien minority... we lived reconciled to the fact that der Jid is in Goles, the Jew lives in exile. Within this limitation, and by 'knowing one's place' among the majority population of the country, one could be reasonably happy... And in purely material terms, Jews could do very well."

132 "We were enriched in our Jewish environment by the very best of Hungarian culture..."

"Hungarian Jews were opposed to Zionism because they hoped that somehow they could achieve equality with other Hungarian citizens, not just in law but in fact, and that they could be integrated into the country as Hungarian Israleites. The word 'Israelite' denoted only religious affiliation and was free from the ethnic or national conotation attached to the word 'Jew', which they therefore regarded almost as a derogatory term. Hungarian Jews did attain remarkable achievements in industry, in culture, some even in politics. But even the most successful Jew was not accepted by the majority of the Magyars as one of them -- as the Hungarian reaction to the Nazi invasion of the country has so tragically demonstrated."

Every year "at the beginning of the academic year, there were student demonstrations organised by the right-wing unions, when the Jews were at best thrown out of the university building or frequently cruelly insulted and beaten up.

133 Zionist body: Maccabeah. Roth active in that and in the Jewish student union. Later a leader of Hanoar Hatzioni. vs. very assimilationist Jews who Magyarised therir names: "Hungarian-Israelite patriotism", "lamentably weak liberal, democrativ, or social-democratic parties... the equally weak and illegal Communist Party."

134 Because of loss of territory after WWI, Hungary resented minorities: recognized Jews only as a religious group, not a national minority (in contrast to Cz, Pol, Rom, Yugo). Persisted post-WWII. Did have some advantages: anti-religious Hungarian communism never set up a specific "Jewish section". However, detrimental to "cultural work of a secular character... Jewish history, literature, or art... in the case of a national religion like Judaism, the national elements cannot be divorced from religion." These policies eased over time.

135 "A medley of Nazi parties... to show off their separate Hungarian identity... variations of the swastika: the Scythe Cross, the Clubbed Cross and the most infamous Arrow Cross." Appeasement of Nazis by anti-Jewish laws began spring 1938. (Roth could no longer head towards being a lawyer).

Refugees from Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland. Mostly illegal, many interned. Zionists and Orthodox more directly in contact with illegals than "official" Jewish groups. Vaadat Ezra v'Hazala (Aid and Rescue Committee "established at the initiative of Jerusalem." His German let him talk to Yiddish-speaking escapees from Poland; he picked up Yiddish. "Hungary was then an island in the Nazi ocean." 40,000 Jews perished in the labour service, but still relatively free. '43 Roth started compiling documentary material.

136 19 March 1944, "the Germans marched in". Zionist & Aid and Rescue Committee began smuggling Jews out to Romania; Roth had to burn his archives. A few months later, the Gestapo got his name from a captured and presumably tortured refugee. He was arrested, questioned and...

137 ... beaten for 36 hours; 3 months of imprisonment and interrogation, sent to Auschwitz "with special designation" (i.e. intent was "straight into the gas ovens"). Elaborate story not recounted here of escape of the transport due to intervention of Admiral Horthy (still head of state). Roth returned to Zionist underground. Swiss embassy cover: representing UK, had 7800 certificates for emigration to Palestine and would issue "protective passports" (Swedish invention, later pursued on a larger scale by Sweden's Raul Wallenberg). Used "by the Zionist underground under the Swiss flag. Its activists became 'Swiss Embassy officials' who not only issued the permitted number of 7,800 protective passports byt forged their own documents ten times over."

One supporter was a plate-glass merchant; built a glass house (in a city that was being bombed!), donated as a Swiss Embassy branch office for "representation of foreign interests". Arrow Cross gained power 15 Oct 1944; Zionist "Swiss officials" & their families retreated to the "extraterritorial safety" of the glass house. Ultimately some 3,000 people in appalling conditions.

138 Held out until Russians came 18 Jan 1945.

Glass house was (and is?) in the Vadász-utca.

"I like Budapest today" (just before and just after fall of communism) both the reconstruction and...

139 ... museums, opera, (etc.) but also "deeper values"... "openness" even among party members about "political and social problems, with a healthy self-criticism...

1967: Jewish question still taboo, blamed on Germans. Beginning mid-1970s, and especially after 1984 began to face Hungary's own role. Contacts w/Jewish historians abroad. Although there is still antisemitism, "but not at governmental or administrative levels".

141 New organizations w/ the new regime. Hungarian Zionist Federation revived, first Zionist body in "liberalised Eastern Europe". Offices in Budapest for World Jewish Congress, World Zionist Organization. Additional school planned. But freedom also means freedom for anti-semites.

Riff, on Rosen p.202

"An ex-officio Member of Parliament and called by some the 'Red Rabbi' for his good relations with the Romanian Communist leadership, he has been an indefatigable defender of Jewish interests in his country. It was largely his influence that prevented Communist Party members from holding leadership posts in the community.

Riff. 12 migration of Jews westward & southward from the Polish lands begins c. 1650.

Most of the Jews of other parts of Eastern & East Central Europe got there this way:

Romania
Hungary
Czechoslovakia

Esp. Northeastern Slovakia, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, Transylvania, where the social structure was similar: Jewish publicans, shopkeepers, produce merchants, and later industrialists "played a conspicuously disproportionate role"; with non-Jewish teachers and officials, constituted the middle class.

Transyl & Sub-Carpat developed density of Jews comparable to Galicia.

Chmielnicki Rovolt of 1648 triggered initial migration.

Major migration in 2nd half of 18th century triggered by Poland's political decline.

13 many other Jews "led marginal existences as petty traders or even day labourers and farmers", esp. in Sub-Carpat w/ highest per capita Jewish population in Europe.

Religion Orthodox and Hassidic, although Zionists and the Left made inroads.Yiddish-speakers. The elite learned Hungarian from late 19th century.