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“The Mythical Jew”: Antisemitism, Intellectuals, and Democracy in Post-Communist Romania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Denise Rosenthal
Denise Rosenthal*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science at York University, Canada
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Extract

A mentally healthy human being can go insane if suddenly diagnosed with leprosy. Eugen Ionescu finds out that even the “Ionescu” name, an indisputable Romanian father, and the fact of being born Christian can do nothing, nothing, nothing to cover the curse of having Jewish blood in his veins. With resignation and sometimes with I don't know what sad and discouraged pride, we got used to this dear leprosy a long time ago.

With these words, the Romanian–Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian expresses within his private diary some of the darkest moments of a World War II “transfigured” Romania, populated as they are by the gothic characters of legionaries, Nazis, and antisemitism. His death soon followed in 1945, when Romania was at the threshold of fascism and communism. However, with the discovery and the subsequent publishing of Sebastian's diary in 1996, and following 50 years of communist mystification of the Jewish Holocaust, the entire chaotic war atmosphere with the fascist affections of the Romanian intellectual elite was once again brought to light with all the flavor and scent of the dark past. In this entry from Sebastian's diary he speaks of his friend, Eugen Ionescu who, born of a French-related mother and a Romanian father, was living in Bucharest at that time. He would later become known to the world as Eugène Ionesco, the famous French playwright and author of the well-known plays The Bald Soprano and The Rhinoceros. The above quote from Sebastian's journal, predating the international fame of Ionesco, but already marking the end of Sebastian's career under fascism, remains a traumatizing testimony of the Jewish Kafkian torment as “guilt,” a deeply claustrophobic identity that many Eastern European Jewish intellectuals have learned to internalize. Beyond this symbolism, the publishing of Sebastian's diary in Romania unintentionally challenged an existent post-communist tendency of legitimizing inter-war fascist personalities within the framework of a general lack of knowledge about the Jewish Holocaust in both the communist and post-communist periods.

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Nationalities Papers , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 419 - 439
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Copyright © 2001 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Leon Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: A Marginal or Central Issue?,” ACTA (The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism— The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), No. 5, p. 3; “Mit si realitate,” [“Myth and Reality”], Sfera Politicii, No. 32, 1995, p. 4.Google Scholar

2. The concept “antisemitism” follows the policy promoted by the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which argues that since there is no “Semitism” as an ideology, there is no “anti-semitism” as a counter-ideology, but only “antisemitism” as an ideology which, from the beginning, referred to the racial and ethno-religious antagonism toward Jews.Google Scholar

3. Mihail Sebastian, Jurnal 1935–1944, Preface and notes by Leon Volovici, text editor Gabriela Omat (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1996), pp. 316–17. This citation is from 26 March 1941. Unless otherwise stated, all the translations from Romanian are mine.Google Scholar

4. Mihail Sebastian was a playwright and novelist in inter-war Romania. As a dramatist, he authored Jocul de-a vacanta [Playing Holidays], Steaua fara nume [Nameless Star], or Ultima ora [The Last Hour]. The pen name for Joseph Hechter, Sebastian remains a symbol and a testimony of the decay many Jewish intellectuals suffered under the fascist regimes in Eastern Europe—Romania in Sebastian's case. Such themes are expressed in his De doua mii de ani [For Two Thousand Years], with an antisemitic Preface signed by Nae Ionescu (Bucharest: Editura “Nationala—Ciornei” S. A., 1934) and Cum am devenit huligan [How I Became a Hooligan] (Bucharest: Editura “Cultura Nationala,” 1935).Google Scholar

5. Paul Lendvai, Antisemitism without Jews: Communist Eastern Europe (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971) quoted in Michael Shafir, “Radical Politics in East–Central Europe. Part III: X-raying Post-communist ‘Radical Minds.’ C) Conspiracy Theories and Antisemitism,” East European Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2000; Michael Shafir, “Antisemitism Without Jews in Romania,” Report on Eastern Europe, Vol. 2, No. 26, 1991, pp. 20–32.Google Scholar

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12. Tismaneanu, pp. 74–81.Google Scholar

13. These include the Association of the Romanian Christian-Orthodox Students (Asociatia Studentilor Crestin-Ortodocsi Romani) ASCOR, that displays Christian icons in the course halls of the Faculty of Law from the Bucharest University, militates for the setting of a Christian-Orthodox Church within the walls of the same secular state education institution, and holds conferences on Orthodoxy within the same auspices; the embryonic legionary movement interspersed within the Movement for Romania (Miscarea pentru Romania) MPR, founded in 1991 by the then pro-legionary student Marian Munteanu; the defunct Party of the National Right (Partidul Dreptei Nationale) PDN, set by the journalist Radu Sorescu; and the New Christian Romania (Noua Romanie Crestind) NRC, organized in 1992 by the neo-legionary, Serban Suru.Google Scholar

14. These include the ultra-nationalists from the PRM, the Party for Romanian National Unity (Partidul Unitatii Nationale Romane) PUNR, and the extra-parliamentary so-called “cultural movement,” the Romanian Cradle Foundation (Fundatia Vatra Romaneasca) FVR.Google Scholar

15. These include the second rank former communists gathered in PDSR.Google Scholar

16. The liberal nationalism of democratic intellectuals is still a scattered, free-floating, mainly urban segment within the Romanian intellectual community.Google Scholar

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19. These include the PRM, PUNR, PDSR, Socialist Labor Party (Partidul Socialist al Muncii) PSM, and the FVR.Google Scholar

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21. For example, the Securitate, the rumor—at least in Bucharest—during the 1989 December events of Arab students allegedly employed in secret by Ceausescu to shoot the population, or Ceausescu's elite “Division 5.”Google Scholar

22. This refers to the ad-hoc camp of protesters, entitled “Democracy Free Zone,” which was set up for some months in the midst of Bucharest, at the University Square, in 1991; it is the place marking the site where one of the 1989 revolutionary massacres had taken place.Google Scholar

23. Svetlana Boym, “From the Toilet to the Museum: Memory and Metamorphosis of Soviet Trash,” in Adele M. Barker, ed., Consuming Russia. Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 384–85. See also Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

24. Aurel Braun, “The Incomplete Revolutions: The Rise of Extremism in East–Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union,” in Aurel Braun and Stephen Scheinberg, eds, The Extreme Right. Freedom and Security at Risk (Westview Press, 1997), p. 150.Google Scholar

25. For a detailed account of Romanian post-communist extremist publications, see George Voicu, “Teme antisemite in discursul public, II” [“Antisemite Themes in Public Discourse, II”], Sfera Politicii, no. 81, 2000, pp. 52–57.Google Scholar

26. Available 12 February 2001 at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/third-position/index.html.Google Scholar

27. Victor Eskenazy, “Antisemitic Rhetoric and Propaganda on the Web,” Der Fall Antonescu—Cazul Antonescu. Available 14 February 2001 at http://home.t-online.de/home/totok/ion2f.htm.Google Scholar

28. Available 14 February 2001 at http://dbjurnal.hypermart.net.Google Scholar

29. Available 14 February 2001 at http://pages.prodigy.net/nnita/garda.html.Google Scholar

30. Surprisingly, Gazeta de Vest's first legionary website in 1996 and the Bucharest-based extremist virtual “db Journal” were either financed or indirectly supported by George Soros' Open Society Foundation in Romania. See Eskenazy's “Antisemitic Rhetoric and Propaganda on the Web.”Google Scholar

31. See Robert R. King, A History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), particularly the relationship between the RCP and minorities, pp. 33–38.Google Scholar

32. On the post-communist revaluation of Ion Antonescu see Randolph L. Braham, Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts (New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, 1998), pp. 61–70 and Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania. The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).Google Scholar

33. In early December 1997, the Museum of the Romanian Peasant dedicated a homage day to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu during a festivity that was intended to celebrate the 1950s' Romanian anti-communist resistance.Google Scholar

34. Regarding the spiritual and ethico-mystical, rather than political or criminal, affiliation of Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Constantin Noica to the legionary movement, see Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism. The Case of the Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated by Charles Kormos (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), pp. 134–37.Google Scholar

35. George Voicu, “Rechizitoriu cu tilc” [“Inquiry with a Twisted Meaning”], Sfera Politicii, No. 32, 1995.Google Scholar

36. Ion Iliescu was in power from December 1989 to 1996 and again through the elections from November to December 2000.Google Scholar

37. Corneliu Vadim Tudor quoted in Voicu, “Rechizitoriu cu tilc,” p. 16.Google Scholar

38. See also the on-line report on antisemitism in the world today published by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. The section on Romania was available on 14 February 2001 at http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/countries/romania/index.html.Google Scholar

39. Andrei Zolotov, “Russia's Patriarch Condemns Communist's Antisemitic Statements,” Ecumenical News International ENI News Service, 11 November 1998.Google Scholar

40. Celestine Bohlen, “Where Russians are Hurting, Racism takes Root,” The New York Times, 15 November 1998.Google Scholar

41. Nichifor Crainic, Ortodoxie si etnocratie [Orthodoxy and Ethnocracy] (Bucharest, 1937).Google Scholar

42. According to the last census from 1992, today there are less than 9,107 Jews, that is 0.3% of the total population. Irina Moroianu-Zlatescu and Ioan Oancea, The Legislative and Institutional Framework for National Minorities from Romania (Bucharest: The Romanian Government—The Council for Ethnic Minorities, 1994).Google Scholar

43. See also Radu Florian, Criza unei lumi in schimbare [The Crisis of a Changing World] (Bucharest: Editura Noua Alternativa, 1994), pp. 118–129.Google Scholar

44. However, one argues that the word “kike” (Jidan in the Romanian derogatory speech) faces today some linguistic erosion in the daily speech, although it has not discarded its antisemitic foundation. The complex process of guilt transfer might also explain this issue, as, if perceived to be unpleasant, anyone can immediately become a “kike” (or, interchangeably, a “Gypsy,” or a “Hungarian”).Google Scholar

45. In an interview with professor and academician, Dr Nicolae Cajal, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities from Romania, he expressed the Federation's preoccupation with introducing the concept of “Real Semitism” as a counter-balance to the existing antisemitism from the press. This new concept seeks to explain the positive contribution of the Jewish minority to the socio-economic and cultural climate of Romania over time (Bucharest: Interview, July 1996).Google Scholar

46. Andrei Oisteanu, “‘Evreul imaginar’ vs. ‘evreul real’” [“The Imaginary Jew vs. The Real Jew”], Sfera Politicii, No. 60, 1998, pp. 34–40 and “The ‘Imaginary Jew’ vs. the ‘Real Jew’ in Romanian Folklore and Mythology,” in Al. Zub, ed., Identitate si alteritate in spatiul cultural romanesc [Identity and Alterity in the Romanian Cultural Space] (Iasi: Editura Universitatii “Alexandru Ioan Cuza,” 1996), pp. 266–92.Google Scholar

47. In the pre-modern, traditional universe of the peasant, those who are not doing hard, physical work are considered “parasites.” The urban environment and its business-persons (such as the Jews, Armenians, Germans, or Greeks) are considered alien to the real peasant ethos.Google Scholar

48. Leon Volovici, “Notes on Latent Antisemitism,” The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Annual Report, 1997, pp. 16—18.Google Scholar

49. Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” pp. 7–8 and “Mit si realitate,” p. 6.Google Scholar

50. Verdery, What Was Socialism.Google Scholar

51. For example, in a 1995 televised documentary on economic issues, the reporter Flori Radulescu developed an investigative report as a result of a field trip to Israel. She showed the Romanian public that the working and living conditions of the Romanian workers in Israel were not different from those of other foreign workers in that country, although not excellent.Google Scholar

52. Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” p. 19.Google Scholar

53. See also Denise Rosenthal, “Les angoisses fin-de-siècle des intellectuels roumains: democratic, conservatism et antisémitisme” [“Fin-de-siècle Anxieties of Romanian Intellectuals: Democracy, Conservatism, and Antisemitism””], translated by Yves Tomic, Balkanologie (Paris), Vol. IV, No.l, 2000, pp. 105–29.Google Scholar

54. The essence of this debate can be found in an article signed by George Voicu and entitled “Reactia de prestigiu. Reflectii pe marginea unei polemici” [“The Prestige Reaction. Reflections on the Borders of a Polemic”], Sfera Politicii, No. 63, 1998.Google Scholar

55. Published in Romanian by ALMA TIP Publishing House, in 1998. The postscript signed by George Danescu is equally antisemitic.Google Scholar

56. Translated into Romanian and published by Humanitas in 1998 and containing an Addenda regarding Romanian communism and anti-communist protests.Google Scholar

57. For this debate see some of the daily press: Nicolae Manolescu, “Holocaust si gulag” [“Holocaust and Gulag”], Romania Literara, No. 9, 1998; “Rosu si negru” [“Red and Black”], Romania literara, Nos 23–24, 1998; Gabriela Adamesteanu and Rodica Palade, “Fascism si comunism” [“Fascism and Communism”], 22, No. 7, 1998; Andrei Cornea, “Accident sau simptom” [“Accident or Symptom”], 22, No. 25, 1998; Zigu Ornea, “Polemici si revizuiri” [“Polemics and Revisions”], 22, No. 17, 1998; Michael Shafir, “O tragicomedie in desfasurare?” [“A Developing Tragicomedy”], Sfera Politicii, No. 61, 1998, pp. 5–16; Victor Neumann, “Despre holocaust si gulag” [“On the Gulag and the Holocaust”], Sfera Politicii, No. 61, 1998, pp. 2–4.Google Scholar

58. For this debate, see the daily press: Gabriel Liiceanu, “Sebastien, mon frère” [“Sebastian, My Brother”], 22, No. 19, 1997, translated by Serban Cristovici and published within a wider article by Mihnea Berindei and François Gèze entitled “Gabriel Liiceanu et l'antisémitisme en Roumanie, une mauvaise querelle,” Esprit, No. 265, July 2000, pp. 190–202; Shafir, “O tragicomedie in defasurare;” Zigu Ornea, “Opintiri importiva Jurnalului lui Sebastian” [“Thriving against Sebastian's Journal”], Dilema, No. 226, 1997 and “Unde duc inversunarea si excesul de zel’ [“Where Are Ambition and Excess Zeal Leading”], Dilema, No. 228, 1998; Matei Calinescu, “How Can One Be What One Is?': Cioran and Romania”, in Al. Zub, ed., Identitate si Alteritate, pp. 21–44; Norman Manea, “Incompatibilitatile” [“The Incompatibilities”], 22, No. 23, 1998, originally published in The New York Republic, 20 April 1998; Daniel Bell, “A Rediscovered Writer Opens Wounds of the Past,” Newsletter. Committee on Intellectual Correspondence, No. 3, Winter 1998/1999.Google Scholar

59. On Emil Cioran's public regrets regarding his youth “transfiguration,” see Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism and Matei Calinescu, “Ionesco and ‘Rhinoceros:’ Personal and Political Backgrounds,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1995, pp. 393–432.Google Scholar

60. For a subtle analysis of Eliade's approach to the legionary movement, correctly doubting the alleged “right” character of Eliade's conception of myths, see Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism, pp. 145–46.Google Scholar

61. Rhinocéros refers to French–Romanian author Eugène Ionesco's internationally acclaimed play bearing the same title and published in 1957. As was also revealed by Mihail Sebastian's journal, Ionesco makes indirect, metaphoric remarks on his own Romanian experiences with the rise of the legionary movement and the way many famous Romanian intellectuals would succumb to it. He termed the process “rhinoceritis.” Thus, in his The Rhinoceros, Ionesco shows influences from his past in inter-war Romania, as well as Denis de Rougemont's witnessing a Hitlerite adulating mob in his Journal d'une époque; Kafka's human–insect metamorphosis; Gustave le Bon's ideas of mental contagion, return to instincts, gregarious spirit, and renunciation in front of desires and dreams; and Romanian authors Urmuz and Caragiale. See Emmanuel Jacquart, Commente Rhinocéros d'Eugène Ionesco (Paris: Gallimard–Foliothèque 1995), pp. 21–33 and Matei Calinescu, “Ionesco and ‘Rhinoceros’.”Google Scholar

62. For this debate see the daily press: Tita Chiper in dialogue with Alexandru Paleologu, “Imaginile successive” [‘The Successive Images’'], Dilema, No. 265, 1998; Razvan Radulescu, “Eminescu vazut de departe” [“Eminescu Seen From Afar”], Dilema, No. 265, 1998; T. O. Bobe, “Poezie, haine grele” [“Poetry, Heavy Clothes”], Dilema, No. 265, 1998; Zigu Ornea, “Poetul national’ [“‘The National Poet”], Dilema, No. 265, 1998; Cristian Teodorescu, “Judecarea lui Eminescu” [“The Trial of Eminescu”], Romania literara, No. 11, 1998; George Munteanu, “‘Cine, de ce si cum’ se desparte de Eminescu” [‘“Who, Why, and How’ Is Leaving Eminescu”], Adevarul literar si artistic, 16 iunie 1998.Google Scholar

63. On Eminescu's general anti-foreignness and economic, rather than genuine antisemitism, see Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism and Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel Fascist Ideology in Romania, translated by Peter Heinegg (New York: East European monographs, 1990).Google Scholar

64. For a chronology of the initiatives to raise Ion Antonescu's bust in various cities from Romania since early 1990s, such as Slobozia, Tirgu-Mures, Piatra Neamt, or the Lugoj military garrison, together with debates from the press and governmental and judicial resolutions, see Voicu, “Rechizitoriu cu tilc,” pp. 18–21; Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” pp. 12–14; Randolph L. Braham, Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust.Google Scholar

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66. Edgar Reichmann, “Contre les purificateurs de l'Histoire en Hongrie et en Roumanie,” Le Monde, 15 January 2000; Gabriel Liiceanu, “l'Antisemitisme en Roumanie,” Le Monde, 15 February 2000.Google Scholar

67. Randolph L. Braham's “Offensive contre l'Histoire: les nationalists hongrois et la Shoah” and George Voicu's French translation of his “Reactia de prestigiu” as “l'honneur national roumain en question,” translated by Sandra Dumitrescu, Les Temps Modernes, No. 606, November–December 1999, pp. 123–52.Google Scholar

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74. The translation of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is signed by Ioan Mota and was published by the Samizdat Publishing House, in 1999.Google Scholar

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77. However, significant changes mark the new alternative history textbooks, some of which devote texts and pictures to the Holocaust and even quotations from Sebastian's journal. See, for example, the alternative history textbooks for the seventh grade published in 1999 by Humanitas, Nemira, and Corint publishing houses.Google Scholar

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80. For a similar use of the Rortian paradigm in the Russian case, see Theresa Chabonis-Chafee, “Communism as Kitsch: Soviet Symbols in Post-Soviet Society,” in Adele M. Barker, ed., Consuming Russia. Popular Culture, Sex, and Society Since Gorbachev (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 362–82.Google Scholar

81. Such a “final vocabulary” can be compared with the Romanian communist limba de lemn [wooden language] and its underlying symbolic system.Google Scholar

82. Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation.Google Scholar

83. G. M. Tamás makes a similar point regarding the connection between the duplicitous silence of the Romanian democratic intellectuals with regards to intolerant, nationalist discourses, both before and after 1989, and the rise to power of C. V. Tudor and PRM. See, G. M. Tamás, “Scrisoare catre prietenii mei romani” [“Letter to My Romanian Friends”], Dilema, No. 416, 2001, originally published in Elet es Irodalom, 15 December 2000.Google Scholar

84. Lavinia Stan, “Do Ut Des: Political Clientelism and Corruption in the Balkans” (mimeo).Google Scholar

85. James P. Niessen, “Romanian Nationalism: An Ideology of Integration and Mobilization,” in Peter F. Sugar, ed., Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Washington: The American University Press, 1995), pp. 273–304.Google Scholar

86. Shafir, “But What About 2004?”Google Scholar