| Romania marks Holocaust Day
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(L) Nicholas Taubmann, US Ambassador, Aurel Vainer, President of the Jewish Federation of Romania and Menachem Hakohen, Romania Chief Rabbi
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The Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania (FEDROM) organised a double commemoration in Bucharest on 25 January. Organisers not only wanted to remind Romanians of the Iron Guard Rebellion that took place in 1941, but also commemorated Holocaust victims across Europe.
Jews and non-Jews gathered in Bucharest’s Great Synagogue to light the candle of remembrance for the victims of the Iron Guard rebellion that took place on 21 and 22 January 1941.
The ceremony was led by FEDROM’s president, Dr. Aurel Vainer, and Romania’s Chief Rabbi, Menachem Hakohen.
Nicholas Taubman, the US ambassador to Romania and Rodica Radian-Gordon, the Israeli ambassador, also paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
Also, Romania’s former royal family expressed solidarity with the country’s Holocaust victims.
Diverse audience
Bucharest’s mayor, Adriean Videanu, and presidential adviser, Claudiu Saftoiu, emphasised the importance of remembering the Holocaust for all of Romanian Romanian society, before lighting candles in memory of the victims.
Among the participants, there were important intellectuals from Bucharest, representatives of different faiths and churches and representatives of the main Romanian political parties.
The ceremony was introduced by FEDROM vice-president Paul Schwartz, who underlined “the importance of such memorials, never organised so sincerely during the years of communism”.
Other remembrance ceremonies took place this week at the National Holocaust Research Centre, Romania’s Holocaust Memorial and in local Jewish communities.
Iron Guard murders
The rebellion of the Iron Guard in January 1941 began as an attack against the established state order, but its main result was the killing of more than 120 Jews, hundreds of wounded, destroyed synagogues and dozens of vandalised Jewish stores all over the Romanian Capital.
The Iron Guard was also responsible for the brutal murder of Romanian leaders, including prime ministers Ion Duca and Armand Calinescu, historian and former prime minister Nicolae Iorga, minister Virgil Madgearu, and many others.
The Iron Guard was initially led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. When he was murdered in 1938, the organization was taken over by Horia Sima.
During the Holocaust, the leader of Romanian government was Marshal Ion Antonescu. Even if in the beginning he led the state together with the Iron Guard, they later became enemies.
Antonescu decided that the Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Northern Moldavia were an “enemy population," and thus were to be deported to Transnistria.
Jammed into freight trains, without food or water, many deportees died on the way to Transnistria. Tens of thousands of prisoners died from starvation or typhus, since none of their basic needs were provided for. Thousands of Jews were also murdered in the pogroms from Iasi, Dorohoi, Targu Frumos and also in the “death trains”, which transported them for days until most of them died.
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