Was There a Holocaust in Romania?

Incorect Politic
Ianuarie 10, 2020

Preluat de pe IonCoja:

Nota redacției: Oferim colegilor noștri o traducere în engleză a Declarației semnate de participanții la Simpozionul din iunie 2001, în speranța că se vor găsi printre dînșii persoane care se vor folosi de această traducere pentru a răspândi în lumea largă adevărul privind așa zisul Holocaust din România.

Declaration of the participants in the International Symposium Holocaust in Romania

– Bucharest, June 14-16, 2001

We are addressing the high political, moral and academic authorities from the entire world, capable to take a stand and hold a well documented and argumentative point of view on an extremely important issue for the Romanians: the accusation according to which Romania took part in the Jewish Holocaust in 1941-1945. Figures going up to 800 000 (eight hundred thousand) show the number of Jewish people losing their lives under these circumstances, as victims of a genocide, of a Holocaust provoked and organised by the Romanian authorities. Especially the memorial precincts from Tel Aviv and Washington mention these horrible events, spreading into the whole world the sad fame of a massacre that would have taken place on Romanian land, or under the auspices of the Romanian authorities and the Romanian people.

We see us under the circumstances of mentioning and underlining the fact that the evidence supporting the accusations are extremely precarious and non-convincing compared to the gravity of the accusations.

Contrary to that, it is also well known that very many personalities, including ones of Jewish nationality – among which well reputed historians – have underlined the exceptional situation of the Jews in the 1940-ies Romania, when our country represented for hundreds of thousands of Jews ‘an oasis of tranquillity and peace’ (Malcolm Randolph)… Wilhelm Filderman himself, President of the Union of the Jewish People from Romania between 1940-1945 declared in 1946 that ‘ in no country dominated by the Nazis has survived such a large Jewish population’. The same conclusion was reached during the Congress of the International Institute of Statistics, Stockholm, August 8-15, 1957, in the paper ‘Regional Development of the Jewish Population in Romania’.

And finally convincing t the same purpose is the declaration given by the same Wilhelm Filderman in 1955, for a Swiss Court. Here is the clarifying fragment:

‘I, Wilhelm Filderman, Doctor in Law of the Paris University, ex-President of the Union of the Jewish Communities in Romania and President of the Romanian-Jews Union, at present resident of New York, USA, Almada Hotel, 71 Broadway St., declare the following:

‘[…] During the period of Hitler’s domination in Europe I was in permanent touch with Marshall Antonescu. He did all he could to ease the lives of the Jews exposed to the German-Nazis’ persecutions. I must underline that the Romanian population was not anti-Semite and the misfortunes suffered by the Jews were the work of the German Nazis and the Iron Guard. I was a witness to moving scenes of solidarity and help between Romanian and Jews during the hard times of the Nazi regime in Europe. Marshall Antonescu withstood successfully the Nazi pressure that was imposing hard measures against the Jews. I would mention just a few examples:

Owing to the energetic intervention of Marshall Antonescu, the deportation in Bukovina of more than 20 000 Jews was stopped;
He gave to Hungarian Jews blank passports, thus saving their lives and enabling them to escape the Nazi terror;
Owing to his political strategies, the assets of the Jewish people were placed under a transitory administrative regime, making them appear lost, and ensured their conservation in view of a future restitution;
I declare this in order to underline the fact that the Romanian People, while holding a limited control of their own country, showed feelings of humanity and political moderation’.

We, the authors of the present document, solemnly and categorically contest the reality of a Jewish holocaust ever to have taken place in Romania and we demand, from the part of those supporting the idea, to make public their arguments and proofs, the whole valid and accepted probatory, under juridical and scientific terms, putting them at the disposal of the international public opinion.

We do not exclude the eventuality that – contesting the idea of a Jewish holocaust and genocide in Romania – we might situate ourselves, without our will and knowledge, on a false position over the facts taking place during 1940-1945. This is why we are asking for a public international trial on the matter and we do not impose ourselves as the only supporters of the ultimate truth. Thus, we address those in possession of documents and arguments, be they pro or contrary to the Romanian holocaust idea, asking them to publish them in extenso or put them to the disposal of the interested ones, especially to the world public.

We address those who formulated the ‘holocaust in Romania’ accusation, respectfully and amiably invite them to publish the documents forming the base of this accusation, a very grave, terrible one. If these proofs have already been published and have been the cause – in time – for contestations and counter-arguments of the idea of Holocaust in Romania, we would like that together with the re-publication of the Holocaust documents to make also public the motifs for having the contestations and objections rejected, and the reasons for maintaining the Jewish Holocaust and genocide in Romania’ accusation.

We also address those who have no direct implication into the matter but who can express their opinion, as a matter of principle, over the gravity of the Holocaust accusation and over the necessity that such an accusation should be based on a serious and undoubted documentation and argumentation.

There is a shocking disproportion between the apocalyptic dimensions of the Holocaust in Romania and the extremely small number of people that were up to the present day accused, incriminated and punished for crimes against humankind, against the Jewish population. At the present moment there are enough people still alive who took place or knew about the events taking place in 1940-1945. It is not too late to have identified and made responsible the individuals who took part in the Holocaust, even as simple executants. For these reasons, we, authors of the present document, express solemnly our belief that for genocide or holocaust there can be no prescription or attenuated circumstances, and that is why we declare our total availability in order to support any action or activity leading to the identification and punishment of those guilty of producing a Jewish or Gypsy holocaust in Romania. If such a holocaust has indeed taken place, then surely there must be alive enough people who participated – one way or another – to the criminal actions of the 1940-1945. These individuals must be identified and punished for their abominable deeds.

But we are mystified over one single fact: why until now the organisations and institutions – dealing world-wide with the identification of those guilty of genocide and holocaust- have never opened an inquiry over the holocaust in Romania? No serious, well-based juridical, scientific and historical research to find those guilty of the assassination of over 800,000 Jews! We can not mention on the subject of the holocaust in Romania even a newspaper inquiry, a paper longer than a few lines!

Unfortunately, this total lack of interest for the evidence and proofs of the holocaust does not prevent certain people or institutions, to keep mourning the hundreds of thousands of victims of an imaginary holocaust, not proven and unrecorded by the historical evidence.

We would especially like to signal the position of the members of the Legionary Movement, a political formation governing Romanian between September 6, 1940 and January 20, 1941, who are blamed for a large number of victims, being currently accused of anti-Semitic pogroms and genocide. As it is well known, at the end of World War II, that the Allies organised an International Court at Nuremberg, searching for all the crimes against humankind committed during World War II. On this occasion, the Legionary Movement was also on trial, but the prosecutors could not find anything to blame it for, as there was no genocide crime committed by the Legionaries. Despite this, under the effect of the Communist propaganda, the accusations of genocide against the Legionary Movement have not ceased. Not even after the fall of Communism, thus proving one more time that Communism is far from being dead.

The Legionary Movement of Romania was the first political movement who had in its political program and in its strategy, as a main objective, to fight communism, considering that ‘the triumph of the communist movement would mean disappearance of Monarchy, Church, Family, individual property and freedom’.

Always accused of the most horrible crimes, the Legionary Movement pretends to be the victim of a vast manipulation of the public opinion, of a media-diversion, trying so far with total success to put on the shoulders of the legionary members the burden of an unprecedented guilt in the history of humankind. For the past years though, more convincing evidence was brought to the defence of the Legionary Movement, brilliantly confirming the Nuremberg verdict. The authors of the present document support and approve the demand to join the members of the movement, in the attempt to put themselves to the disposal of all people and all International Courts, interested in finding the historical truth, in order to give all the explanations connected to the activity of this political formation between 1940-1945, connected to the activity of each member, ready to come in front of justice for their deeds, in conformity to the principle ‘genocide can have no prescription ‘.

We can do nothing but promote and affirm in front of the international public opinion the wish of our legionary compatriots to finally have light and justice made in what their activity; ideology and political practice were concerned. For this we quote a paradox: although thousands and tens of thousands of legionaries went through hardships and sufferings in jails – being condemned to many years of prison between 1941-1964, although thousands of Jewish victims were assumed to have been made by them, no legionary person was ever incriminated and convicted for killing a Jew. Not even after August 23, 1944 when the communist structures incorporated many communist Jews.

This is why – late as it might seem, it is not too late to find out the truth about the legionary guilt towards the Jews in Romania and the entire world. We strongly support the idea that the legionaries found guilty of violence and atrocities against the Jews, of crimes, to pay according to the criminal law, regardless the age of the incriminated. We especially demand the intervention of the world institutions created by the worldwide Jewish community in order to identify people guilty of crimes against the Jews. We are under the situation to mention a fact hard to understand – until today these Jewish institutions and organisations could not establish even for one single Romanian legionary person the implication in criminal anti-Jewish actions. Still, the legionaries, and implicitly the Romanians, suffer the media pressure, produce by the endless re-iteration of the Jewish genocide and holocaust in Romania accusation.

We especially address the memorial museums for the holocaust in Tel Aviv and Washington, to make them see that they have the moral duty to present to the international public, to law specialists, to historians, the evidence based on which Romania had an apocalyptic genocide, a holocaust in the 1940-ies.

We know very well that in those years Romania had a legislation discriminatory to the Jews, but that anti-Semitic legislation imposed to Romania by the international context, had never pushed discrimination as far as crime or genocide. Contrary to that, according to that legislation forbidding the Jews to enter the combatant structures of the Romanian Army, tens of thousands of Jews were saved from death, not taking part in a war that cost the Romanians almost one million lives of young people.

Also, we know that deportation camps for the Jews existed, but only for the Jews that were found guilty of collaborating with the enemy, or of organising behind the front line sabotage actions, thus causing the deaths of thousands of Romanian soldiers and officers. Applying the decisions of the court-martial in such circumstances, even actions of repression – does not constitute genocide or an act of racial persecution.

Those unfortunate Jews fell under the incidence of the criminal law, pushed at times up to the capital punishment, but not because they were Jews but because they were sympathisers or agents of the Soviet Union, of the Bolshevism, found in a military and political conflict with Romania until 1944. During that period of time, together with the Jews suffered – because of their political opinions – many Romanians, who were at their turn deported, incarcerated and even condemned to death. Not because they were Romanians but because they had betrayed their country! Many of such traitors were found among the Jews from the eastern provinces of Romania, Bassarabia and Bukovina.

In this context it is worth remembering that there were many Jews from other European countries (France, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union) that – who risked their lives taking refuge in Romania, because they were threatened in the country they were leaving. There were also Jews – not few – who left Romania during those years. They left it with the agreement and support of the Romanian authorities and all left for the same destination: Palestine. Even the Jews found in the deportation camps in Romania were free to leave for Palestine or other countries. Such a deportation regime could hardly be considered an extermination regime.

Taking into account the events, facts and situations that could make the object of pogroms, genocide or holocaust accusation, we believe it wrong to take into account only those actions and activities who searched, deliberately and with premeditation – to provoke the death of people considered guilty only based on their nationality or religion.

After our knowledge, in the Romanian archives, found after the war under the control of the Allies, there was no paper found that could prove the desire, intention or policy of the Romanian authorities to physically exterminate Jews or Gypsies.

At the present moment though, the largest part of the Romanian archive from the war-years is in Russia, captured after the armistice between Romania and Russia in September 1944. With this we want to oppose the incorrect and non-serious objection that the Romanian authorities from yesterday or today would block the access to the archives, preventing the documentation and finding out of the truth.

The authors of the present document want in the end, to make clear that we have nothing to do with those people and opinions contesting as a whole the occurrence of the Jewish holocaust during World War II. Our relative competence does not go beyond the Romanian people and the history of Romania. But we shall take the liberty to underline the easiness, the non-serious manner of advancing figures and the idea of a holocaust in Romania, figures and ideas easy to contest, as they are based on no evidence.

This playing around with figures and most frightening accusations proves itself guilty towards the innocent Jews, who indeed suffered the consequences of a racist, intolerant genocide policy. They have suffered almost everywhere in the Europe of those years, but not in Romania. Respecting their so real sufferance, we do not wish a discussion on the matter of the Holocaust, but are interested only in finding the truth, no matter which, of how the Jews behaved in Romania in those years (1940-1944) and the way Romanians reacted to the demand of history during the same period. Because as we can see from the testimonies of trustworthy Jews, the Romanian people had in those years a behaviour honouring the human dignity.

For conformity, Ion Coja