PETRE MATEI

Abstract
In Romania, Roma deportation had many local specificities and cannot be reduced to a single cause or discourse. These particularities could remain incomprehensible due to the researchers’ tendency to focus almost exclusively on the elites. This obstructs the understanding of a more complex interplay between different actors who contributed to the deportation of the Roma. It is important to bring into discussion the bottom-up perspective of Police as an agency, because: 1) it criminalized the Roma over a long period of time; 2) in 1942, when charged with identifying and deporting the „problem-Gypsies”, Police had a considerable leeway in labelling those who were to be deported. What I intend to do is to analyse how the law enforcement agencies perceived the Roma. Then, against this backdrop, I will compare these interwar perceptions and proposed measures to the measures taken by Antonescu’s regime during WWII, without neglecting the local initiatives.

Keywords: law enforcement agencies, policing, control, labelling, deportations, genocide, Romania, Transnistria.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729437

MARIUS CAZAN

Abstract
Our study aims to review the involvement of the far-right Legionary Movement from workers’ centers in Bucharest, in the pogrom of January 21 to 23, 1941, by using archive materials. The increase in size of the Legionary Workers’ Corps (Corpul Muncitoresc Legionar – CML), enjoyed by the Legion from within the workers’ masses in Bucharest, during the months they govemed the country, meant that, in the confrontation with the army, which was faithful to Antonescu, Legionary workers were a major part of the rebel forces. Also, the perpetrators of looting and murders that took place during the pogrom that doubled the Rebellion, belonged to the Legionary organizations. The article analyzes the involvement, in the events of January 1941, of legionaries who worked at the Bucharest Tramway Company (Societatea de Tramvaie Bucureşti – STB.), the General Gas and Power Company (Societatea Generală de Gaz şi Electricitate – SGGE), the Communal Plants of Bucharest (Uzinele Comunale Bucureşti – UCB), the “Distribution” (“Distribuţia”) Company for the distribution of oil products in Bucharest and the “Dumitru Voina” metallurgical enterprise. Although these were far from being the only centers that had strong Legionary organizations, whose members participated in the Rebellion, their scrutiny can show the organizational dynamics and workers’ involvement strategy used by the Legionary Movement during the time of the National Legionary State, during the Rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom.

Keywords: Legionary rebellion, Bucharest pogrom, Legionary Workers Corps, legionary violence.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729451

ANDREI MURARU

Abstract
During the communist period, the history of the Romanian occupation of Transnistria has been falsified, perverted and distorted. At the same time, in the historiography of Romanian Holocaust, the topic of punishing war crimes has been neglected for a long time. With minor exceptions, even after 1989, the subject did not benefitted from a professional perspective because of the lack of sources and also because of the disputes over the traumatic memory from the period 19401989. The attempt to rehabilitate some important figures of war criminals revealed the contradiction between the competitive martyrology and the professional manner in which history should be written. Over the last decades, in the Western historiography the concept of “political trial” received various interpretations. The organization of the trials of war criminals by totalitarian states or by states where dictatorial regimes were about to come to power gave birth to the idea that a “surgical” approach to each judiciary action could offer a balanced way for approaching the topic. The special courts in Romania – People’s Tribunals – created in 1945, functioned in a complicated context and the collective trials organised under their patronage were accompanied by multiple controversies. Given the fact that Romania administered Transnistria, the special tribunals had to deal with the crimes and atrocities committed, during Romanian occupation, against Romanian deported Jews, Ukrainian Jews and Roma. In the three trials that took place between May and July 1945 and which are being analysed in this article, I tried to thoroughly investigate the manner in which the tribunal administered justice. I tried to examine the trials in detail referring to the way in which judicial actors played their role before the court in order to find the truth about de crimes and abuses committed in the districts of Odessa, Golta, Berezovka, Râbnita, Oceakov, Jugastru. In the end, the goal was to offer a broad picture about Romania and its political justice in the postwar period.

Keywords: Holocaust, Transnistria, Romania, Ion Antonescu, Jews, political trials, war criminals, People’s Tribunal, communism, USSR, Odessa, Golta, Berezovka, Dumanovka, Vapniarka, Balta, Mostovoi, Râbnita.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729454

LEVENTE OLOSZ

Abstract
After the Holocaust there was a desire for reconciliation by the leaders of the Hungarian and the Jewish minorities in Transylvania. In my paper I will examine the collaboration between the two main organizations and their attitude toward each other. Furthermore, I will show why the reconciliation did not work out well, although both organizations were determined for a successful outcome. My main questions are: Why the reconciliation was so important for the two minority’s elites and to what extent was it successful? And the second most important question: why the attempt happened to be failed although both political groups wished for success? I will argue that the two elites originally wanted the reconciliation to make peace between the two minorities for a number of pragmatic reasons and to satisfy the Communist Party request which stated that the ethnic groups in Romania must live peacefully along with each other in the framework of socialism. The reconciliation attempt had an unsuccessful result because they were not able to overcome those issues that they wanted to resolve.

Keywords: Antisemitism, reconciliation, Transylvania, communism.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=730220

MARIA CH. SIDIROPOULOU

Abstract
It is a fact, that the Holocaust of European Jews has marked in various ways the Jewish diaspora and the Jewish presence worldwide.
In the case of the Jews who live in Greece and especially in the city of Thessaloniki, though the Community delayed to break silence about this traumatic historic event, this fact was never let slip from memory. In the public sphere of action, the updating of Holocaust takes place through community actions at first hand and, later, through initiatives from local authorities, by making mnemonic and memorial donations.
For the past seventy-four years, Holocaust inheres as a memory in three post-war Jewish generations in Thessaloniki and seals diversely the identity of the social subjects. This mnemonic event in collaboration with the social and politic developments and turmoils, describes the identity of the Jewish element, both directly and indirectly. The presentation will be focused on qualitative empirical data of fieldwork, from a sociological analysis perspective. More specifically, in this paper it will be explored the way in which, the Holocaust of the Greek Jewry emphasizes on the individual and collective responsibilities and, at the same time, it’s function as a contemporary conservation mechanism of the Jewish identity, a cohesive bond of the Greek-Jewry in Thessaloniki.

Keywords: Greek-Jews, modernity, Holocaust, memory, identity.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729462

KATALIN ESZTER MORGAN

Abstract
Biographical work in the form of often emoţional memory is often set against the factuality of pure history in German scientific discourse. This applies also to how history is taught and learnt in schools. Nevertheless, one of the aims of history education is to consider the uses of historical information for personal or collective orientation in the present and the future. This essay examines qualitatively how some autobiographical video-interviews recorded at former concentration camp memorial site Neuengamme with descendants of Nazi perpetrators could contribute to such an aim. The focus is on the ability of biographies to provide information about how individual and collective talk and discourse about historical process is negotiated from present-day perspectives. What motivated the interviewees to uncover the deeds of their forefathers and what are the costs and benefits of doing so? What do they say about the victims? What emotional challenges do they face and what normative lessons can be learnt from them? Based on the qualitative content analysis, an argument is made for a radicalisation of what counts as (enlightened) knowledge.

Keywords: Nazi perpetrators, descendants, autobiography, memory, truth, knowledge, history education.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729473

ANA BĂRBULESCU

Abstract
The present study aims to reconfigure the symbolic borders Nae Ionescu constructs in order to define Romanianness – What cluster of symbols are declared relevant in order to create the community of belonging? On a second approach, putting the emphasis on the correlative nature of the social world, I will be interested to identify how this symbolic construction conditions the political solution he sustains – How is the individual integrated within the state? What is the relation between citizenship and national community? Finally, as constructing identity means both including what is perceived as similar and excluding what is defined as different, a third emphasis will be put on the antisemitic discourse Ionescu develops and its consonance with the essentialist view he proposes.

Keywords: Nae Ionescu, interwar Romania, antisemitism, Orthodoxism.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=730222

NICOLAE DRĂGUSIN

Abstract
This paper aims at exploring the way in which the official press of the Romanian Orthodox Church presented and discussed some aspects of the National Legionary State (14 September 1940 – 14 February 1941) such as war, Legionary Movement, Jewry (situation of Jews, attempts to address the Jewish Question). It argues that contrary to the tradition of relating to political power and to the important change that occurred on 5-6 September 1940, the official press of the Church remained silent. However, the official press through a series of articles and pastoral letters delivered by the Patriarch Nicodim is quite active in backing up the political ideology of the National Legionary State arguing in favor of ethnical homogeneity, a national Church, a superposition between religious faith and state citizenship. Hence, while completely silent about political events and reform initiatives promoted by the National Legionary State, the official press of the Romanian Orthodox Church uses a public discourse that resembles and sometimes coincides with the state ideology.

Keywords: Holocaust, Jews, Romanian Orthodox Church, Legionary Movement, official press.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729490

ADINA BABEŞ

Abstract
The Council of Europe was established after the ravaging Second World War with the role of strengthening democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in its member states, and with the overarching aim of consolidating the democratic stability in Europe. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) is one of Council of Europe’s ten monitoring bodies and the subject of this research and article. In the next pages I will focus on two of its activities: the General Policy Recommendations and the country reports. I will concentrate on how the forty-seven member states address ECRI’s – GPRs especially on issues like racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance. I will analyse this considering the latest country reports, following the fourth and the fifth monitoring cycles.

Keywords: Council of Europe, European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, General Policy Recommendations, country reports, Antisemitism.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=729492