[B.
Destruction of the Jewish existence in Romania
1929-1939]
5.13. Romania [Codreanu - Tartarescu - Goga]
[Since 1919 and since
1929: Romanian development is like in Poland]
The situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe outside Poland
was similar to that of the Jews inside Poland. Romania was
moving in the same direction as Poland, as far as both the
general and the Jewish situations were concerned.
[The economy of Romania was cut from the markets in Middle
Europe in 1919 when the Austrian empire was cut into
peaces. So there were no developments possible, and added
with the nationalism the minority of the Jews was blamed
for the bad economy, as in Poland...]
[Codreanu - Tartarescu -
Goga]
The Romanian Fascist movement known as the Iron Guard was
growing stronger. Under its leader, Corneliu
Zelea-Codreanu, it embarked on a campaign of (p.209)
violence that led to the assassination of a Liberal party
prime minister by an Iron Guard member in December 1933.
From that moment on, Romanian democracy, never very
strong, was in constant decline.
Until 1937 the Liberals, under Tartarescu, were in power,
but their policy became more and more rightist and
anti-Semitic under the pressure of a right-wing opposition
group that came under the influence of a Fascist leader,
Octavian Goga. A prop of the regime against a rightist
takeover was King Carol, though he also aspired to
dictatorial rule and had in fact attempted -
unsuccessfully - to gain absolute power in May 1934.
The fact that his mistress, Madame Lupescu, was of Jewish
descent increased anti-Semitic tendencies because of the
almost universal distaste with which the king's
extramarital adventure was regarded. Despite all this, a
semblance of parliamentary democracy was maintained until
December 1937, when the defeat of the Liberals brought
about a sharp turn to the Right and the ascent of Goga to
power.
[Jews in Romania:
Figures]
The number of Jews living in Romania was a matter of
dispute. Romanian sources tended to exaggerate their
estimates in order to prove the supposedly inordinate
influence of the Jewish population in the country. In
fact, the census of 1930 showed that there were 728,000
Jews in Romania. An investigation into Jewish citizenship
in 1939 showed that there were 662,244 Jews. Even if we
assume that some Jews managed to escape a census that was
intended to deprive them of their citizenship,
(End note 70: New York Times, 11/26/39 [26 November 1939])
there could not have been many more than 700,000 Jews in
Romania in that year. The figure of 760,000 usually
mentioned in Jewish sources represented the absolute
maximum and was probably an overestimate.
[Supplement: The number of Jews in Romania in general is
dependent from the size of the country. Before 1919
Romania is little, in 1920 Romania becomes a big state
with Transylvania and Bessarabia, in 1941 a part of
Transylvania is added to Hungary, and 1945 Romania becomes
a medium size with Transylvania, but without Bessarabia.
And there is a little border difference with Bulgaria
about a landscape at the Danube delta].
[Structure of the Jewish
communities in Romania - poverty in Transylvania,
Bucovina and Bessarabia]
The Jewish communities throughout the country differed
considerably from one another. While the Jews in Bucharest
and in some parts of Walachia, Moldavia, and central
Transylvania were at least partly westernized and had
abandoned the religious way of life, others were living
well within the sphere of strict Orthodoxy. In northern
Transylvania, around Satu-Mare, Máramarossziget, and
Brasov, there lived a poverty-stricken Jewish population
clamoring (p.210)
for the kind of help JDC could provide.
[Supplement: It can be assumed - it would be only logic -
that the Jews in Hungarian Transylvania had been cut from
their connections to Hungary, so the market for their
products was lost. The same impoverishment happened with
the Germans there, can be assumed].
In Bessarabia, and to a certain extent in Bucovina too, a
similar situation existed. In Bessarabia there was a
fairly large Jewish agricultural population (about 40,000
persons), whose primitive methods of cultivation exposed
it only too often to threats of starvation in years of
drought.
In Romania, as in Poland, JDC was able to increase its
allocations as the 1930s progressed. Of the sums
available, about one-third was spent to feed children in
hunger-stricken districts and to maintain summer camps,
because Kahn believed that such camps constituted a
primary reconstructive task.
