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HOLOCAUST PUBLIC MEMORY in POSTCOMMUNIST ROMANIA STUDIES in ANTISEMITISM Alvin H HOLOCAUST PUBLIC MEMORY IN POSTCOMMUNIST ROMANIA STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor HOLOCAUST Public Memory in Postcommunist ROMANIA Edited by Alexandru Florian Indiana University Press This book is a publication of Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Herman B Wells Library 350 Publication Data 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA Names: Florian, Alexandru, editor. Title: Holocaust public memory in iupress.indiana . edu postcommunist Romania / edited by Alexandru Florian. © 2018 by Indiana University Press Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2018] | All rights reserved Series: Studies in antisemitism | Includes bibliographical refer- No part of this book may be ences and index. reproduced or utilized in any Identifiers: LCCN 2017041142 form or by any means, electronic (print) | LCCN 2017040235 or mechanical, including (ebook) | ISBN 9780253032744 photocopying and recording, or (e- book) | ISBN 9780253032706 by any information storage and (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN retrieval system, without permission 9780253032713 (pbk. : alk. paper) in writing from the publisher. The Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish Association of American University (1939–1945)— Romania— Presses’ Resolution on Permissions Historiography. | Romania— constitutes the only exception to Ethnic relations. this prohibition. Classification: LCC DS135.R7 (print) | LCC DS135.R7 H645 The paper used in this publication 2018 (ebook) | DDC meets the minimum requirements 940.53/180720498— dc23 of the American National Standard LC rec ord available at https:// lccn for Information Sciences— . loc . gov / 2017041142 Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. 1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18 Contents List of Abbreviations vii Memory under Construction: Introductory Remarks / Alexandru Florian xi Part I. Competing Memories and Historical Obfuscation 1 1 Ethnocentric Mindscapes and Mnemonic Myopia / Ana Bărbulescu 3 2 Postcommunist Romania’s Leading Public Intellectuals and the Holocaust / George Voicu 41 3 Law, Justice, and Holocaust Memory in Romania / Alexandru Climescu 72 4 Romania: Neither “Fleishig” nor “Milchig”: A Comparative Study / Michael Shafir 96 5 “Wanting- Not- to- Know” about the Holocaust in Romania: A Wind of Change? / Simon Geissbühler 151 Part II. National Heroes, Outstanding Intellectuals, or Holocaust Perpetrators? 173 6 Mircea Vulcănescu, a Controversial Case: Outstanding Intellectual or War Criminal? / Alexandru Florian 175 7 Ion Antonescu’s Image in Postcommunist Historiography / Marius Cazan 208 vi | Contents 8 Rethinking Perpetrators, Bystanders, Helpers/Rescuers, and Victims: A Case Study of Students’ Perceptions / Adina Babeş 242 Index 283 List of Abbreviations AFDPR Asociaţia Foştilor Deţinuţi Politici din România (Association of Former Po liti cal Prisoners in Romania) ALDE Alianţa Liberalilor şi Democraţilor (Alliance of Liberals and Demo crats) ANR Alianţa Noastră România (Our Alliance Romania) BIRN Balkan Investigative Reporting Network BPN Biroul Politic Naţional (National Po liti cal Office) CA Consiliul de Administraţie (Administrative Council) FCER Federaţia Comunităţilor Evreieşti din România (Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania) FIDESZ Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Federation of Young Democrats– Hungarian Civic A lliance) GpR Grupul pentru România (Group for Romania) HČSP Hrvatska Čista Stranka Prava (Croatian Pure Party of R ights) HDZ Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Demo cratic Union) HOP Hrvatski oslobodilački pokret (Croatian Liberation Movement) HRT Hrvatska radiotelevizija (Croatian Radio– Television) viii | List of Abbreviations IHRA International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance IICCMER Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului şi Memoria Exilului Românesc (Institute for the Investigation of Communist Regime Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile) INSHR– EW Institutul Naţional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România “Elie Wiesel” (Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania) JTA Jewish Telegraphic Agency KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) LPR Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families) ĽSNS Ľudová strana– Naše Slovensko ( People’s Party– Our Slovakia) MCA Asociaţia pentru Monitorizarea şi Combaterea Antisemitismului din România (Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania) MpR Mişcarea pentru România (Movement for Romania) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organ ization NCHA National Central Historical Archives NCSSA National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives ND Noua Dreaptă (The New Right) NDH Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (In de pen dent State of Croatia) PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice) PNL Partidul Naţional Liberal (National Liberal Party) PNȚCD Partidul Naţional Țărănesc Creştin Demo crat (Christian Demo cratic National Peasants’ Party) PRM Partidul România Mare (Greater Romania Party) List of Abbreviations | ix PRON Patriotyczny Ruch Odrodzenia Narodowego (Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth) PSM Partidul Socialist al Muncii (Socialist Labor Party) PUNR Partidul Unităţii Naţiunii Române (Party of Romanian Unity) SC State Council Smer– SD Smer– Sociálna Demokracia (Direction– Social Democracy) SNS Slovenská národná strana (Slovak National Party) SNSPA Școala Naţională de Studii Politice şi Administrative (National School of Po liti cal Studies and Public Administration) SRI Serviciul Român de Informaţii (Romanian Intelligence Ser vice) SS Schutzstaffel TpȚ Partidul Totul pentru Țară (Every thing for the Country Party) TVR Televiziunea Română (Romanian Tele vi sion) UEFA Union of Eu ro pean Football Associations Memory under Construction Introductory Remarks This volume concludes a research proj ect on Holocaust memory in post- communist Romania, supported by the Romanian Ministry of National Educa- tion, CNCS– UEFISCDI, under grant number PN- II- ID- PCE-2012-2-4-0620. The proj ect was prompted by what seemed to be a very simple question: how do we explain that seventy years after the end of the Second World War, in Romania the public memory of the Holocaust is still disputed, and approaches that minimize or even deny it have become more dominant in the public sphere? To answer this question we should first examine the clear differences between the prevailing practices in public memory in countries with long- established memorial institutions and those in postcommunist countries. East versus West According to Jacques le Goff, the victim became a subject of public memory after the First World War.1 The subject was more fully developed at the end of the Second World War, when two types of victims were distinguished: on the one hand is the soldier and on the other hand is the civilian, who appears for the first time as the victim of a conflict that reached the limits of dehumanization. The history of the development of these two memorial subjects— soldiers and civilians—is diff er ent in the West and the East. In Western Eu rope, memorials, plaques, busts, and street names remind the public of crucial moments of the Second World War, of military men and xi xii | Introductory Remarks politicians who heroically dedicated their lives to fighting fascism or Nazism. Public spaces also memorialize those who opposed Hitler’s Germany or his allied regimes by taking up arms against them (the Re sis tance Movement), as well as civilians who were exterminated because of their ethnicity or race. Moreover, the memory of the Holocaust as such was institutionalized in the 1970s by public commemoration policies in Western states. Jean- Michel Chaumont, a scholar who analyzed the gradual steps by which Holocaust victims were publicly recognized and commemorated, noted competing public memories of the French and Belgian Re sis tance movements and the exterminated Jews. In The Competition of Victims (1997) he points out that “ until recently, there were no public monuments or text- books to specifically evoke the fate of the Jews.”2 He reminds us that it was several de cades before there were effective public reactions to concealment of the facts of the Holocaust. It was only in 1995 that the word Jew was en- graved on the monument erected in memory of the victims of Auschwitz in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and “in 1968, at the inauguration of the monument in Birkenau, Professor Waitz resigned from the chairmanship of the International Auschwitz Committee as a protest against the fact that Jews were not nominated as a group on commemorative plaques. It was a futile gesture, because the text was corrected only in 1994.”3 The situation was quite similar in Romania, where until two de cades ago, the only victims commemorated on public monuments were anti- fascists who, following the ideology of class strug gle, were sometimes de- scribed as “representatives of the working class.” However, there is an impor tant difference between Romania and France: in Romania, until the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania issued its Final Report in 2004, the perpetrators of the Holocaust had always been cast as members of the “fascist dictatorship.” This was a strategy to deny the Holocaust in Romania by pointing toward another perpetrator rather than the real, his- torical one: the Romanian government led by Ion Antonescu between 1940 and 1944. In Western Eu rope today, public monuments
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