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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev A BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF JEWISH HISTORY A Journey into the Intellectual World of the Romanian Jew Mihail Sebastian: Works, Testimony, Identity THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS YEHOSHAFAT CHRISTIAN POP UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF PROF. TUVIA FRILING November 2013 Abstract Both historiography and history of the Romanian Shoah are a matter which could be tackled without obstruction only after the fall of Communism (from the last decade of the past century on) with the accretion of documentary collection and the opening of archives that began in the 1990s. Then and then only, maybe finally and certainly more comprehensively, documents from Romania offered opportunities for studying a wartime regime that was second only to Germany in the killing of the Jews. The intention of my thesis is to create a very specific picture within the historiography of Romania’s fascism as well as its Holocaust, through the lenses of a historical figure who turned out to be one of the main catalysts for awareness of the Shoah in post-communist Romanian culture and society, namely that of Mihail Sebastian (born Iosef Hechter) and three sources written by him: the first one being his novel For Two Thousand Years / De două mii de ani (1934), the second a follow-up journalistic essay to his novel, entitled How I Became a Hooligan / Cum am devenit huligan (1935) and the third, his posthumously released Journal, 1935-1944, originally unintended for publishing. This study will deal with events and phenomena leading up to the Romanian Holocaust. The chapters are divided in chronological order according to the time of the works' writing and publishing, beginning with the first primary source, a novel which has often been called – against the author's will – autobiographical, and which will start the first chapter with a short literary critique, contextualizing afterwards the novel and using it to naturally call for a biographical portrayal of the Romanian Jewish intellectual Mihail Sebastian. The second chapter will focus on the essay Sebastian had written as a response to the scandal following the printing of For Two Thousand Years, entitled How I Became a Hooligan. The third and last chapter will look at the years during which the Journal was written. Each of the three works' discussion will intersect and raise questions of intellectual history, politics and identity as these emerge from the testimony and personal journey of the young author, playwright, lawyer, journalist and intellectual, Mihail Sebastian. The occupation with these various forms of literary witness will investigate the contribution of Sebastian to understanding the political but especially intellectual picture of the 1930s in Romania, up until the end of WWII. Last but not least, my hope is that the research will address questions referring to the protagonist's personal journey, his identity and position as Jew and intellectual in the midst of an increasingly anti-Semitic and fascist Bucharest intelligentsia. Table of Contents Introduction. 1 Chapter 1. For Two Thousand Years and the Period of 1907-1934 7 1.1. Literary Introduction to the Novel and its Context 7 1.2. The Novel and the Historians 19 1.3. The Author behind For Two Thousand Years 22 1.4. For Two Thousand Years and Dictatorship 33 1.5. For Two Thousand Years and Anti-Semitism 39 1.5.1 The Anti-Semitic Preface to the Novel 40 1.5.2. A Jewish Novel in an Anti-Semitic Milieu 49 Chapter 2. How I Became a Hooligan: The Hooligan Year 55 1934-1935 2.1. Mihail Sebastian's Hooliganism: Neither Right nor Left 57 2.2. The Credo and Testimony of a Romanian Jewish Intellectual 66 Chapter 3. The Journal and the Fascist Years 1935-1944 73 3.1. A Jewish Journal 79 3.2. A Historian's Journal 84 3.3. A Public Intellectual's Journal 88 Conclusion 100 Bibliography 102 Introduction Both historiography and history of the Romanian Shoah is a matter which could be tackled without obstruction only after the fall of Communism, from the last decade of the past century on, with the accretion of documentary collection and the opening of archives that began in the 1990s. Then only, maybe finally and more comprehensively, “documents from Romania offered opportunities for studying a wartime regime that was second only to Germany in the killing of the Jews.”1 The intention of my dissertation is to create a very specific picture within the historiography of Romania‟s fascist years as well as its Holocaust, with the help of and through the lenses of a historical figure who turned out to be one of the main catalysts for awareness of the Shoah in post-communist Romanian culture and society: namely that of Mihail Sebastian and three of his written works2: his novel For Two Thousand Years (De două mii de ani) (1934), the follow-up essay to his novel, How I Became a Hooligan (Cum am devenit huligan) (1935) and his posthumously released Journal, 1935-1944, published for the first time in 1996. The awareness caused especially by the publication of the last of these three works was desperately needed in a society whose Holocaust denial was ranging from sheer negationism – in the form of collective defense of national “historic memory”; politically and governmentally empowered negationism; academic distortions and minimalization in a post-communist era; explicit-aggressive as well as implicit- defensive negationism; and all the way to the merely banal and cynical forms of denial.3 The character found in the Romanian Jewish intellectual, Mihail Sebastian, born Iosef Hechter, who had become a voice in Romanian intellectual and cultural circles already during the years in which ethnocratic, anti-Semitic and legionary commitment 1 Raul Hilberg. “Sources and their Uses”, in: Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (editors). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 9. 2 These are actually the only three of Mihail Sebastian's works that made their way into the Hebrew language with the help of Yotam Reuveni, Israeli poet, author and editor of the Nimrod publishing house: מיכאיל סבסטיאן. מה זה אלפיים שנה )תל אביב: נמרוד, 2004(; מיכאיל סבסטיאן. איך הפכתי לחוליגן )תל אביב: נמרוד, 2008(; מיכאיל סבסטיאן. יומן: 1935-1944 )תל אביב: נמרוד, 2003(. 3 See introduction of Michael Shafir. “Between Denial and 'Comparative Trivialization': Holocaust Negationism in Post-Communist East Central Europe”, in: ACTA – Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism (Jerusalem: SICSA, 2002). Retrieved from: http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/shafir19.htm. 1 were forming deep roots and providing the pathway for the fascist turn (I am referring here to the years between 1930-1938)4, is the very same character whose voice became gradually and increasingly silenced during the years of 1935-1944. A complete stifling of this man‟s voice did not occur, however, with his rather absurd death (at 38 years of age) due to an accident at the end of May 1945, a few months after the total overthrow of the old regime and the already newly established Soviet presence in Bucharest . It was a rather temporary silence, which began with the last entry in his diary at the end of 1944 and the fulfillment of the very repression Sebastian had foreseen in the last pages of his journal, namely Stalinism, and the Romanian version of it. Even the half decade of suppression could not fully dampen the Star without a Name5, and the Jewish playwright could still shed his creative light during and upon communist darkened decades. In 1996, however, his prophetic voice would resound again and help reignite a historical flame which Romania had tried to extinguish for too long. Dr. Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, acting as Foreign Minister of Romania when introducing the fresh off the press Final Report, i.e. the International Commission‟s report on the Holocaust in Romania6, explained to the Israeli academic public at the harbinger event organized by Hebrew University in July 20057, that Sebastian‟s Journal was the “testimony that turned on the light” in 1996, and the witness that released “the wave of emotions that would finally catch up with Romanian readers”; that it was this man‟s too long silenced voice that “called those [hundreds of thousands of] souls”, murdered on Romanian soil (or Ukrainian – under Romanian 4 1930-1938 are the years marked by the gradual steady growth of fascist ideology in the political, cultural and social sphere. See chapter 2 in Leon Volovici. Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1991). 5 Mihail Sebastian's play Steaua fără nume (A Star without a Name) written during the war years, was originally intended to be named "Ursa Major", and the playwright watched it at the Alhambra theatre in Bucharest, where it opened in 1944 under a pseudonym – Victor Mincu – in order to hide Sebastian's Jewish identity. The play is a bitter comedy that becomes a pinnacle in terms of style and dramatic structure. The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama states that today, hardly a season passes without one of Sebastian‟s plays being produced around the world‟s theatres. In Israel, as well, “A Star Without a Name” has been performed numerous times under Nicu Nitay‟s direction. See: "כוכב בלי שם" בהצגה של ניקו ניתאי: /http://www.epochtimes.co.il/news/content/view/2413/89 6 Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu. (editors). Final Report: International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania; president of the commission (Iași: Polirom, 2004).
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