The ideological dimension of aryanization politics in interwar Romania (original) (raw)
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Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in an Independent Romania
Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
The history of antisemitism in Romania is strictly connected to the religious and cultural framework of those territories, as well as to their political integration from the age of emancipation and independence to the establishment of a Greater Romania after World War I. This article aims to analyse the different intersections of this historical process and the continuity between the old forms of anti-judaism and their re-interpretation according to modernist dynamics during the first half of the Twentieth-Century. The Romanian case illustrates the transformation and re-adapting of old religious prejudice in new doctrines of xenophobia, nationalism and antisemitism.
The first part of a two part series, this article explores the confluence of Romanian intellectual culture in the interwar period, with a distinct concentration on the particularity of Romanian identity and its transformation amid the changing rhetoric of plurinationality. Ultimately the process by which a concrete Romanian identity was formed within the rhetoric of intellectuals was the result of elements of differing views of nationality, the Romanian peasantry, and Christian Orthodoxy all of which were salient elements of Romanian society during the rise of extremists groups such as the Iron Guard. This article explores the way numerous Romanian intellectuals understood and defined their own and the nation " s identity by projecting certain elements upon the Jewry through their own work, thus adding a new layer of complexity to the way that we understand the rise of right-wing extremism in Romania in the 1920s and 1930s.
Path to the Holocaust: Fascism and Anti-Semitism in Interwar Romania
S:I.M.O.N. (Shoah: Intervention, Methods, Documentation), 2014
This article outlines the principal directions of my research: It focuses on the interplay of antisemitism and fascism in the ideology of the legionary movement in interwar Romania as well as on the virtual consensus on antisemitism that was established in the 1930s as a result of the support for the movement received from most of the representatives of the ‘new generation’ of Romanian intellectuals. This consensus was pivotal in desensitising the general population towards the plight of Romanian Jews and making it possible for the discriminatory measures to gradually escalate into outright policies of extermination. Thus my research demonstrates the responsibility held by the legionary movement even though they were not directly involved in the Romanian wartime Holocaust perpetrated by the Antonescu regime: The legionary movement nevertheless promoted an antisemitic discourse that was much more extreme than that of all its predecessors and contemporaries, advocating a radical exclusion with genocidal overtones. Moreover, while being as ideological and abstract as its Nazi counterpart, legionary antisemitism posited religion rather than race as the basis for the exclusion of the Jews in line with the ideology of a movement that presented itself as ‘spiritual’ and ‘Christian’. The legionary exclusion based on religion proved as violent and murderous as the one based on race, both before and during the movement‘s time in power. As such, the evidence from the Romanian case study can serve to nuance and even challenge existing interpretations that identify only racist antisemitism as genocidal.
The biopolitics of violence: Instances of anti-semitism in interwar Romania
The primacy of totalitarian ideologies in interwar Europe represents even nowadays a major historiographical challenge due to its multicausal character and various forms of appearance. This paper attempts to analyze the anti-Semitic phenomenon in interwar Romania primarily by taking into account its determinant factors. We assume that the emergence of radical ideologies in Central and Eastern Europe can optimally be understood if both regional and systemic causes are properly highlighted. The regional causes include local societal predispositions, ethno-cultural cleavages and speciÞ c political movements. On the other hand the systemic causes imply predominantly geopolitical factors and the repartition of power in the international system. Moreover we assume that the emergence and manifestations of extremism can be considered a direct result of political disputes between ethno-cultural groups which were systematically exposed to ideological and propaganda pressure.
Both Form and Substance: Romanians and Political Antisemitism in a European Context
Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări. vol. XIII, issue 1(14), 2021, 2021
nineteenth-and twentieth-century romanian public discourse was obsessed with the question of romania's place in Europe. Whereas some elements of romanian culture might have reflected European forms without their substance (forme fără fond), between roughly 1880 and 1944, political antisemitism had both form and substance. romanian anti semites were at the forefront of developments within European antisemitism and saw it as a way of demonstrating their Europeanness. anti-Jewish rhetoric, laws, and violence during this period should thus be discussed as part of a broad transnational story of political antisemitism and not in terms of romanian exceptionalism. This article situates the origins of antisemitic political organising in romania alongside similar developments in austria, Germany, and France, showing that the romanian antisemites were well connected with prominent antisemites abroad. Just as antisemitism entered urban politics during this period, it also shaped rural violence, which was provoked by the sort of propaganda and rumour-mongering seen in the russian pogroms of 1881 and the kishinev pogrom of 1903. In 1922, romanian students protested to limit the number of Jews enrolled at universities, as did nationalist students in austria, czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, latvia, Poland, and elsewhere. romanians corresponded with antisemitic students abroad and employed the same language, repertoires, and frames that were popular elsewhere in Europe.
Aryanization Bureaucrats in Post-Holocaust Romania
Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History, 2023
This article investigates the post-war life trajectories and careers of eight Aryanization (»Romanianization «) bureaucrats who were involved in the persecution and dispossession of Jews during the pro-Nazi Antonescu regime (September 1940– August 1944). While many of them were removed from the civil service, became unemployed, went into hiding, or were arrested, others thrived – at least temporarily – thanks to their skilful navigation of the post-Antonescu transition, their highlevel connections with the political establishment, and the ability to claim certain merits for their behavior before August 1944, either as victims of or by resisting against the Antonescu regime. However, most of these opportunistic bureaucrats were successful only in the short term; eventually their past caught up with them, and they were imprisoned by the communist authorities or had to flee the country to escape arrest. The article shows that the communist revolution was not as radical as the communist leaders liked to boast and that it did not immediately bring a complete transformation of the state, its institutions, and employees holding crucial positions. Especially during the first postwar transitional years, the connections between the two ideologically different authoritarian regimes – fascist and communist – continued on various levels, including the bureaucratic one. Keywords: Aryanization bureaucrats, Holocaust, Romania, transitional justice
STUDIA IUDAICA ARADENSIS, 2017
Paideia -The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden Problema antisemitismului în România nu este una endemică secolului al XX-lea. Termenul "problema evreiască" a fost utilizat şi reinterpretat de partizanii fascismului şi antisemitismului pentru a-i putea include într-o categorie specială pe membrii comunităţii evreieşti din România, făcând mai uşoară ostracizarea acestora. Această tendinţă de stigmatizare a evreilor a fost răspândită în Europa de Est şi a presupus clasificarea politică şi socială a evreilor ca duşmani ai naţiunii, prin crearea şi propagrea miturilor de sorginte naţionalistă. Acest articol creează o legatură de natură istorică între antisemitismul de secol al XIX-lea din Vechiul Regat şi noile forme de antisemitism prevalente în ultimul secol. Cuvinte cheie: antisemitism, istorie politica, fascism, nationalism, mituri istorice. "Antisemitism, a secular nineteenth-century ideologywhich in name, though not in argument, was unknown before the 1870'sand religious Jew-hatred, inspired by the mutually hostile antagonism of two conflicting creeds, are obviously not the same; and even the extent to which the former derives its arguments and emotional appeal from the latter is open to question." (Hannah Arendt 1 )