Holocaust in Romania ?

Holocaust in Romania?

A series of documents and testimonials collected and commented upon by Ion Coja, for the use of parliamentarians and authorities engaged in the elaboration, approval and application of Urgent Order (Ordonanta de Urgenta) no. 31/2002 of the Romanian Government

Kogaion Printing House
2002
“In Romania, the Holocaust did not occur.”
Nicolae Minei–Grünberg

“In this war, spread across the entire surface of the Earth, Jews cannot be shielded from the suffering and harshness and the misery in which almost all of mankind has been placed. If, from lack of nourishment, and because of living in unsanitary conditions, Jewish lives are lost, this means that the relentless laws of war – which we did not provoke – force the Jews as well to pay their tribute of blood. Romanians who fight on the front lines die by the thousands every day.”
Marshall Ion Antonescu

“While the world blithely watched the spectacle of the annihilation of European Jews, Romania was willing to welcome Jewish refugees and was prepared to open her harbors for them. (…) Judaism lost 6 million of its members; the world lost its humanity, as well as Christian love for one’s neighbor. In contrast, the Romanian People strove to preserve their faith in humanity. And we, the Jews, are and remain indebted to the Romanian People for this.”
Moshe Carmilly Weinberger

“It is the biggest mistake and injustice in history to consider Ion Antonescu a fascist, Legionnaire, extremist, a man who led Judaism to extinction in Romania. None of those who lived in Romania, before or during the war, wish to any longer accept the communist theory of a massacre of Jews during the war, particularly the aberrant figures that have been tossed around.”
Barbul Bronstein

“During his entire life and professional career, and especially during the dark days of the war, George Alexianu did so much for the Jewish Community of Romania, from all his heart and without intrigue. He paid terribly and absolutely unjustly at the command of the communists. May all his suffering be cleansed.”
Alexandru Safran

With the support of the following:

Uniunea Vatra Romaneasca

Liga pentru Combaterea Anti-Romanismului LICAR

Uniunea Verteranilor de Razboi si a Urmasilor Veteranilor

Asociatia Culturala Pro Basarabia si Bucovina

Federatia Romana a Fostilor Detinuti si Luptatori Anticomunisti

Liga Nationala a Luptatorilor din Decembrie ‘89

Fundatia George Manu

Communiqué

The Uniunea Vatra Romaneasca (trans. Romanian Union “Vatra”), Liga Pentru Combaterea Anti-Romanismului (trans. Romanian Anti-Defamation League), Uniunea Veteranilor de Razboi si a Urmasilor Veteranilor (trans. The Union of Veterans of War and Their Descendents), Asociatia Culturala Pro Basarabia si Bucovina (trans. The Pro-Bessarabia and Bukovina Cultural Association), Liga Nationala a Luptatorilor din Decembrie ’89 (trans. The National League of the Warriors of December ’89), Federatia Romana a Fostilor Detinuti si Luptatori Anticomunisti (trans. The Romanian Foundation of Former Detainees and Anticommunist Warriors), and Fundatia George Manu (trans. The George Manu Foundation), express our absolute disapproval with the unjustified and inopportune implication of the Romanian Government in maters that concern the history of the Romanian People and our right, as Romanians, to an accurate public image, conforming to the truth, unaltered by the concurrent interests of some political circles, however influential these groups may be in the international arena. We Romanians do not have any desire to offer excuses or to ask forgiveness from any state, people or nationality for the historical deeds of our parents or ancestors. In contrast, it suits some to present such demands before Almighty God and the Romanian People.
The fact that some Jews, for whom gratitude is a most difficult burden, now attempt to invent some responsibility and guilt on behalf of Romanians, and the Romanian Government for the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered in the so-called “Transnistria Holocaust”, is well known to us as a subject which other Jews, the most respected and responsible of them, have already addressed, in the most decidedly way, appreciating with gracious recognition the tolerant and humane disposition of Romanians during those difficult years of the Second World War, years in which Romanian humanity did not at all contradict itself, except, at the most, through the isolated acts of some irresponsible individuals absolutely unrepresentative of Romanian society, or of Romanians in general.
With this understanding, we would like to quote the testimonials of authentic Jewish personalities, such as MOSHE CARMILLY WEINBERGER, Head Rabbi of Cluj during the war: “Unquestionably, in the areas of Central and Southeastern Europe, there existed a single possibility for Jews to exit the circle of fire of the Nazi terror, a single hope to be saved. Jewish refugees who arrived in Romania from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary – during the years of horrible massacre – had the chance to depart from the harbors of Romania to Palestine. However this state of affairs would be viewed, however the occurrences with Jews in Romania are analyzed, from political, international etc. point of view, there remains something that cannot be denied: the fact that, while the world blithely watched the spectacle of the annihilation of the European Jews, Romania was willing to welcome Jewish refugees and was prepared to open Her harbors for them. Jews came from a Warsaw shattered by bombings, from Austria, from Czechoslovakia, they also came from Hungary. (…) Ion Antonescu was forced to publish an executive order on May 3, 1944, by which Jews who crossed the border clandestinely, as well as those who offered them shelter, were to be condemned to death. With respect to this order, I must mention that I do not know of any single case of the condemnation to death of any Jew for the illegally crossing the Romanian border, during the period of May-September of 1944. (…) Hungary assassinated 80% of its Jews, who were sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Maidanek, while Romania wished to save that which could be saved, and She threw a life buoy to those who found themselves in danger of drowning. Hitler lost the war; Judaism lost 6 million of its members; the world lost its humanity, as well as Christian love of one’s neighbor. In exchange, the Romanian People strove to preserve their faith in humanity. And we, the Jews, are and remain indebted to the Romanian People for this (emphasis added)” (•Declaration given in 1988, published in the magazine “Luceafarul romanesc”, Montreal, November 1997).
NICOLAE MINEI GRÜNBERG, Jewish historian: “In Romania, the Holocaust did not take place (emphasis added), precisely because the executioners with swastikas, with very few and insignificant exceptions, could not enjoy willing complicity offered by personal initiative; but rather, they encountered the rejection of their efforts to recruit accessories, of a private or official nature, to the organization of deportations or other acts of genocide. (…) The deportations across the Dniester, carried out by authorities under Antonescu, did not have the intention, whether explicit or hidden, of the extermination of those in question. The death of a number among them is due to three main causes: abuses committed by certain representatives of the authorities who embezzled funds allocated for the acquisition of foodstuffs (our note: this includes the theft committed by Jewish leaders who portioned funds received from Joint and other Jewish organizations from abroad); criminal excesses of some degenerate elements of protection and observation units; the intervention of Nazi assassins organized in the Einsatzkommando units who, in full retreat from the Eastern Front, penetrated the camps in force, exterminating the detainees. The victims of this category represent an important multiplication of the totals of the other two: Rabnita, for example, was bathed in blood by the Nazis, only two deportees escaping alive. But also in this regard, Romania registered in 1943 and 1944 another unique deed in the annals of the Second World War (emphasis added): the return to the nation of all the survivors, which proceeded without consideration of the furious opposition of the Wermacht, the SS, the Gestapo, or of the immense risks implicit in this defiance of the Nazi disposition, or of the difficulties of transport and provision, etc. (…) At the trial of these gangs of expert mass murderers, Sturmbannführer Heinz Ohlendof, who commanded Einsatzkommando D, ‘assumed personal responsibility for a total of approximately 90,000 victims including those from Yassy, in June of 1941.’(emphasis added) At the same trial it was irrefutably shown that, ‘beginning in the first days of 1941, the initiative in the Jews’ extermination process have been taken completely by the Hitler’s emissaries (Richter, Killinger, et al)’ (see Foreword written by Nicolae Minei for “Blooded Days in Yassy, June 28–30, 1941” by Aurel Karetki and Maria Covaci, Editura politica, 1978, p25–26).
Reports from that period, organized by the International Red Cross, the Swiss Embassy in Bucharest, and the Papal Ambassador to Romania, following detailed preliminary investigations performed in the Transnistria region, in the villages and wards where Jewish deportees were housed, present the same testimony (see Annex I, A Short History of the Holocaust in Romania, from the Chapter What do the Neutral Sources Say?). These reports do not mention any reason to believe the theory that Jews deported in Transnistria were subjected to organized extermination. From this point of view, respect for the truth forces us to totally reconsider the actions of George Alexianu, Governor of Transnistria, as a glorious chapter from the history of Romanian civility!
About professor George Alexianu, Governor of Transnistria between 1941-1944, the Head Rabbi of Geneva, Alexandru Safran, former great rabbi of Romanian Jews between 1939-1945, declared, during his visit to Romania in 1995 and complete with his very own signature: “During his entire life and professional career, and especially during the dark days of the war, George Alexianu did so much from the heart, and without intrigue, for the Jewish Community of Romania. He paid terribly and absolutely unjustly at the command of the communists. May all his sufferings be cleansed.”
In addition, it must be mentioned and emphasized that not only Jews were deported to Transnistria, but also Romanians and Gypsies, with those deported being thus punished by the Antonescu Regime for their openly manifested pro-Soviet and pro-communist sentiments, for the absence of loyalty shown to the Romanian state, or – in the case of the Gypsies – for acts of banditry committed during bombings. The system of deportation was an attempt to isolate those deported and to exclude from them the possibility of participating in acts that would undermine the Romanian state. Succinctly, the Jews deported to the Trans-Dniester were communists, persons who, for various reasons, were suspected of disloyalty, capable at any time of participating in acts aimed at undermining the war effort. Often the system of deportation protected these same individuals from the fury and resentment of the general population who could not accept the acts of betrayal against the Motherland committed by many of the Jews deported in Transnistria.
The wartime practice of agglomerating undesirable, disloyal, undisciplined and uncooperative persons into concentration camps was very widespread during World War Two, as much on one side (the Axis for example) as the other (the Allied Powers). The certain fact is that the living conditions into which those deported to Transnistria were forced were much more tolerant and acceptable than the living conditions in other camps that functioned during the Second World War, whether organized by Germans, the Anglo-American Alliance, or the Russians. The Romanian authorities could be accused of murder (intentional or negligent) and of inhumane treatment only in comparison to the system in which the Japanese, for example, were forced into concentration camps in the U.S.A., or Romanians themselves, deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Soviet Siberia. Through such a comparison we believe that one would arrive at the same conclusion drawn by international investigations made in Transnistria at that time, including that by the International Red Cross, i.e. that the Romanian Government has shown moderation and a humanitarian spirit.
It is unsettling to realize that, instead of expressing their sincere gratitude to the Romanian People and to the Romanian Government, certain Jewish groups, who we may not consider to be representative of the People of Israel, expand the efforts as well as significant funds to spread throughout the world, including via the Holocaust Museum in Washington, the lie about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who would have died due to the system of extermination applied by Romanians against the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina.
On the contrary, history undoubtedly denotes many grave acts of treason and disloyalty committed by Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina who, indoctrinated by Bolshevik propaganda, awaited the Soviet occupation as a salvation. Only upon their deportation to Siberia did many Jews cure themselves of their communist ideas. Unfortunately, today the Holocaust Museum in Washington avoids recording the victims created among Jews by the descendants of those who created the very word pogrom! There exists a plethora of accounts and documents concerning the criminal manner with which the Soviets dealt with Jews, including at Auschwitz in 1945, when Soviet troops liberated the death camp and many Jews, instead of being released, found themselves in other camps, in the Soviet Gulag, where all trace of them was lost. In spite of this, when the “inventory” of anti-Semitic crimes is noted at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and in other Jewish documents, the Soviet “contribution” to the dimensions of Jewish suffering is treated with silence!
We have every reason to believe that Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina who vanished in the abyss of the Soviet Union, are now registered, in a shameful act of opportunism, among the “track records” of the Romanians, so as not to impugn the great and powerful Soviet Union. The cowardice of these enumerations appear absolutely disgusting to us. It also seemed that there was a blackmail of Moscow’s, which in 1945 placed their hands upon the entire archive of Auschwitz and threatened Jews with the publication of these archives. It appears that this archive from Auschwitz does not completely confirm the theory of six million Jews murdered.
With the intention of elucidating the aspects of this most painful and perilous problem for Romanians, but also for the spirit of truth, in whose complete respect international politics must be conceived and prosecuted, we, the Uniunea Vatra Romaneasca in Bucharest and the Liga pentru Combaterea Anti Romanismului, organized last year, between June 14-16 in Bucharest, an international symposium based upon this theme, entitled Holocaust in Romania?
We invited the Jewish Community of Romania, the Embassy of Israel, the other embassies in Bucharest, the Presidency of Romania, the Minister of National Education, and the Romanian Senate to this discussion. Forty scholarly proclamations, from Romanians from within and outside the nation, including veterans of war, anti-communist warriors, former political prisoners, former activists from PCR (the Romanian Communist Party), professors, writers, historians, the young and the elderly. Unanimously they sustained, and in great measure demonstrated, that in Romania there were only isolated anti-Jewish incidents, mostly in the form of suppression, as a vindictive response to the acts and criminal gestures of certain irresponsible communist Jews (Yassy, June 1941 and Odessa, October 1941).
At the symposium Holocaust in Romania?, two principles became clear, i.e. two ideas which deserve the greatest circulation in public consciousness:
1. The accusation, created by some Jews and irresponsible Romanians, i.e. in Romania an anti-Jewish genocide or holocaust took place, is an accusation easily refuted by serious persons, persons of good faith, for the documents and even the material verification that would have been produced by the hecatomb of hundreds of thousands of persons are missing. Unfortunately, the ease with which the theory of a holocaust in Romania can be rejected is of nature to be an argument for those who, as irresponsible as Radu Ioanid and Razvan Teodorescu, deny the commission, under the German authorities’ control, of the anti-Jewish Holocaust during the years 1939–1945. To deny the Holocaust in Romania does not mean, by default, that one denies the Holocaust which incriminates the Nazi German leadership. But the insistence that an anti-Jewish holocaust occurred in Romania is so fragile, so shallow that this belief and especially its refutation, has the effect (unplanned, and undesired by us) of compromising the general credibility of an anti-Jewish Holocaust during the years of the Second World War. We draw attention, therefore, to the peril that, together with the perfectly justified rejection of a Holocaust in Romania, the public opinion will subjectively and emotionally disqualify the arguments and evidence upon which is based the theory of the Holocaust provoked by Nazi Germany. We wish to say that, by long term, the idea of the holocaust in Romania is anti-Semitic, and is serving the real interests of the Judaism, who undermines the moral value of the suffering endured by the victims of the Holocaust. This theory will tear a great chasm between Romanians and Jews, one extremely destructive for one side, as well as for the other.
2. It constitutes a crime against humanity if one murders even a single solitary person for the “crime” of being Jewish, Gypsy, Armenian, etc. But it is also a crime against humanity to accuse innocent individuals and peoples of genocide or other crimes against humanity. We consider the indictment of an innocent person for a crime, which one knows either did not occur or that the accused person did not commit, to be one of the most villainous of deeds. Such an act is more abhorrent than the invoked crime itself! We also believe that those who insist that Romanians provoked the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews have filled their conscience with this reprehensibility! And our own officials, by the urgent order which they themselves have given, have now adopted this infamous defamation, thereby shaming and humiliating themselves. In other words, the supporters of the idea of an anti-Jewish holocaust directed by Romanians provides us the lamentable occasion to proclaim the existence of something more criminal than genocide or holocaust itself: the accusation of genocide against the Romanian People by individuals who know that neither the Romanians nor their leader have ever committed such an odious crime!
We are shocked to see that the leaders of the Jewish communities have not realized that the solidity and gravity of the accusation of holocaust weaken and collapse each time we observe how some individuals are altering the figures of the Holocaust, inflating them with clear understanding of the falsehood committed. Thus, Jews murdered during the pogrom at Yassy in June of 1941, for example, are attributed either to the Germans (at the trials of Cernauti and Tel Aviv) or to the Romanians (the Trial of Bucharest) according to the desires of the accuser. To willingly exaggerate the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust must be considered a crime absolutely comparable to the crime of genocide, or the Holocaust itself.
As a conclusion of those discussed at the symposium Holocaust in Romania?, the participants agreed in principle to a draft law that would defend Romanians from defamation via the accusation of genocide without any evidence (see Annex IV).
Regardless what shall occur with our proposed law and even if the Romanian Parliament shall legalize the order by which the Romanian Government accepts, without any rational verification, the accusation of holocaust aimed to the Ion Antonescu regime and, implicitly, to the Romanian People, the signatories of the present communiqué solemnly declare that they will continue their efforts to uncover and demand the truth in reference to the history of the Romanian People. This objective is also written in the functional statutes of these non-governmental organizations. We know well that there is the desire, not of Judaism, but of certain deceitful Jews (removed from the minimal conditions of humanity and Judaism), as well as of certain non-Jewish circles, the properly-named revisionists, to include Romania on the list of nations and peoples guilty of genocide. We know very well who, and why it does not suit these persons to corroborate the truth, the exceptional fact that Romania did not participate in the anti-Jewish genocide, and that Romanians in general, during the entire course of their history, have never lost their humanity and Christian tolerance towards other races and religions.
We also keep in mind the Hungarian chauvinists, who have always collaborated magnificently with the COMINTERN Jews against the most legitimate and judicious Romanian interests. With the understanding that, for those knowledgeable, the specific and unmistakable differences between Romanians and Hungarians clearly explains the vastly different conduct of these two respective peoples toward defenseless Jews during the Second World War, the anti-Romanian circles in Hungary are most desirous and interested that the lie, the falsehood, the deception known as the “anti-Jewish holocaust in Romania”, shall obtain international circulation and notoriety, and receive acceptance! These particular groups are the main beneficiaries of the lie referring to the hundreds of thousands of Jews victimized by an invented Romanian anti-Semitism.
We also understand that, between the Romanian and Israeli states, there exist to some degree secrets, among which, it appears, is an agreement concerning the admission in Romania of 300,000 Jews refuges from Israel should a catastrophe result from the situation in the Middle East. Our organizations are in absolute agreement with such an accord, which would conform to the well-known Romanian tradition of hospitality. However, we consider such a gesture on the part of Romanians to be incompatible with the lack of concern which honest, serious Jews (including the government of Israel) have shown toward the lies which some Jews propagate with the pretense of implicating Romanians in the creation and even the inception of holocaust. It appears that some gamble on a psychological calculation, imagining that, via the culpability of Romanians, they will obtain a “smaller price” for the solicited refuge. It must be said that such a calculation is not only dishonorable, it is also mistaken, erroneous, because in this way, through the invention of non-existent crimes or, in the “best” case, the accusation of other crimes not committed by Romanians, the partisans of the holocaust in Romania risk the irrevocable deterioration of relations between Romanians and Jews, as well as between Romania and Israel.

*

Since the accusation of an anti-Jewish holocaust produced in Romania inevitably invokes the name of the Legionnaires and Marshall Ion Antonescu, we will illustrate several less known facts, practically hidden with the full knowledge (and bad faith) of the detractors of the Romanian People.
About the Legionnaires, the fact that:
– the literary text Take, Ianke si Kadir, probably the most generous and tolerant in respect to Jews in the entire world’s literature, is the work of a Legionnaire: Victor Ion Popa;
– under the rule of the Legionnaires, through the labors of the poet and minister Radu Gyr, he himself a Legionnaire, the Jewish Theater was established in Bucharest, in the Yiddish Language, as an institution without an equivalent in all of Europe;
– invited to Germany in 1936 to participate in a worldwide congress of anti-Semitic parties, the Legionnaires declined this “honor” because they did not consider themselves anti-Semitic;
– under the rule of the Legionnaires, a part of the anti-Semitic, racial laws, introduced by King Carol II, under the pressure of the “European Community” of the day, laws practically never set in function integrally on Romanian soil, were nevertheless abrogated.
Concerning Marshall Ion Antonescu, the declaration given in 1955 by WILHELM FILDERMAN, former President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania in the 1940’s:
“I, Wilhelm Filderman, Doctor of Law at the University of Paris, former President of the Union of Jewish Communities in Romania and President of the Union of Romanian Jews, with residence in New York, U.S.A., at the Alameda Hotel on Broadway at 71st Street, hereby declare the following:
“(…) During the period of Nazi dominance in Europe, I was in sustained contact with Marshall Antonescu. This man did all that he could in order to ease the fate of Jews exposed to the Nazi German Persecution. (emphasis added) I must underline that the Romanian population is not anti-Semitic, but the offenses suffered by Jews have been the work of Nazi Germany and the Iron Guard. I have been witness to moving scenes of solidarity and assistance between Romanians and Jews in moments of great hardship during the days of the infernal Nazi in Europe. Marshall Antonescu successfully resisted Nazi pressure, which imposed tough measures against the Jews. I recite but a few examples:
– Due to the energetic intervention of Marshall Antonescu, the deportation of more than 20,000 Jews from Bukovina was prevented;
– He issued unrestricted passports, in order to spare the Hungarian Jews – whose lives were in great danger – from the Nazi terror;
– Thanks to his politics, the goods in property of Jews were placed under a transitory administrative system which, making them appear to be lost, assured their conservation with the idea of restitution at an opportune moment.
I mention these in order to emphasize the fact that the Romanian People, as much as they had, even in a limited measure, control of their nation, demonstrated their humanitarian and moderate political sentiments.”
This text, called by some The Testament of Filderman, is ignored, hidden and treated with silence by all of the so-called “holocaust historians”, who have made a career from sustaining the idea of a holocaust in Romania, basing themselves on the principle “believe and do not question!”
These “historians” systematically refuse to discuss the theories, documents and sources that substantively contradict them. For the same reasons, the Memories of Wilhelm Filderman, which the legatees of that great Jew desired to publish in Romania, but were hindered in order to prevent the unveiling of the truth about how Jews actually lived in the Romania governed by Marshall Ion Antonescu, as well as about the actual relations, excellent under those conditions, between the government of Marshall Antonescu and the Jewish Community of Romania, have been suppressed.
Only the good relations between the Jewish Community and the Ion Antonescu regime can explain the circumstance, exceptional by its eloquence, otherwise inexplicable. For example: in the summer of 1944, confronted by the specter of a Soviet invasion, Romanian leaders, through Mihai Antonescu, appealed to the patriotism of Romanian Jews, keeping in mind that, “in exchange for the treatment which Romanian Jews enjoyed under the Antonescu regime, world Judaism has the obligation to intervene alongside the Anglo-American Powers, so that a communist regime is not installed in Romania.” Mihai Antonescu formulated this appeal during a secret discussion with Misu Benvenisti, the leader of Zionist Jews in Romania, to whom he proposed a mission outside the country: through the international Jewish institutions, to lobby the governments of USA and Great Britain in order to convince them to land forces in Romania before, or at the same time as, the Russians, thereby hindering the Sovietization of Romania. And Misu Benvenisti, to his credit and the credit of Zionist Jews, accepted this patriotic duty, a gesture which, ultimately, he would have to explain in face of communist Jewish inquisitors from the Romanian Securitate (secret police)! (see Teodor Wexler, and Mihaela Popov, Anchete si procese uitate (“Forgotten Enquires and Trials”), from the collection “Antievreismul communist”, Vol. I, p.296). We wonder if such relations between Antonescu and the Jewish leadership would have been possible if Antonescu was a certified war criminal, if he and his government were guilty of the murder of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Jews. Such excellent cooperation between the Jewish leaders in Romania and the Antonescu government troubled only the communist Jews!