Final Report of the International Commission on the - Minority Rights ...

adical Right circles.
Beginning to Come to Terms with <strong>the</strong> Past
Romania is just beginning to confront its own past and assume responsibility for it. Unavoidably,
ambiguities persist at this stage, but <strong>the</strong>re are indications that political and intellectual elites are somewhat
more inclined to start coping with <strong>the</strong> country’s darker periods in its past than was <strong>the</strong> case a few years
ago. The setting up <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> for <strong>the</strong> Study <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Holocaust in Romania is pro<strong>of</strong> in itself <strong>of</strong> a
movement in that direction.
While in historiography selective negationism remains an important trait, a number <strong>of</strong> historians
approach <strong>the</strong> Holocaust with pr<strong>of</strong>essionalism and honesty. Şerban Papacostea and Andrei Pippidi stand
out for having reacted very early against attempts to rehabilitate Antonescu. Lucian Boia undertook a
deconstruction <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> myths <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Legion and <strong>of</strong> Antonescu as well as stereotypes about Jews. Dinu C.
Giurescu was <strong>the</strong> first Romanian historian to have dedicated an entire chapter to <strong>the</strong> fate <strong>of</strong> Romanian
Jewry during <strong>the</strong> Holocaust in his 1999 published Romania in <strong>the</strong> Second World War.
Institutes specializing in research on <strong>the</strong> history <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Holocaust have been established. Among <strong>the</strong>se,
special mention should be made <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Center for <strong>the</strong> Study <strong>of</strong> Jewish History in Romania, which acts
under <strong>the</strong> aegis <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> FCER and, as <strong>of</strong> 1990, has pioneered research on <strong>the</strong> Holocaust. Thus far, this
institute has published five volumes <strong>of</strong> documents on this topic.
Scientific colloquia were organized at several research institutes that function within <strong>the</strong> Romanian
Academy. Remarkably, <strong>the</strong> Center for History and Military Theory Research (formerly a bastion <strong>of</strong> pro-
Antonescu negationist historians) has been turned into a respectable research institution. Institutes or
research centers specializing in Jewish history were set up at universities in Cluj, Bucharest and Craiova,
and publications specializing in Jewish history and <strong>the</strong> Holocaust came into being, as well. Pr<strong>of</strong>essional
journals edited at research institutes with an established scholarly tradition started opening <strong>the</strong>ir pages to
<strong>the</strong> publication <strong>of</strong> articles dealing with <strong>the</strong> tragedy <strong>of</strong> Jews and Roma during <strong>the</strong> Second World War.
School textbooks are undergoing a process <strong>of</strong> revision and improvement, though a great deal remains to
be done in this respect, and inaccuracies still abound. Publishing houses are translating a relatively large
number <strong>of</strong> books on Jewish history, though it must be mentioned that <strong>the</strong> bulk <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se volumes are still
put out by <strong>the</strong> FCER publishing house Hasefer. A young generation <strong>of</strong> historians, not yet very visible and
largely concentrating for now on publishing studies on narrow topics, gradually begins to make its
presence felt and to demonstrate that it is capable <strong>of</strong> tackling <strong>the</strong> Holocaust period from new perspectives.
Unfortunately, for now <strong>the</strong>re is no genuine readiness to perceive <strong>the</strong> history <strong>of</strong> Jews in Romania as
part <strong>of</strong> Romania’s own history. This artificial division is a major obstacle on <strong>the</strong> road to a critical
assessment <strong>of</strong> Romania’s national past.
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“The Holocaust was <strong>the</strong> state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation <strong>of</strong> European Jewry
by Nazi Germany, and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were <strong>the</strong> primary victims — six
million were murdered; Gypsies, <strong>the</strong> handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or
decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Soviet prisoners <strong>of</strong> war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death
under Nazi Germany.” www.ushmm.org/museum/council/mission.php.
For example, see Shari J. Cohen, Politics without a Past: The Absence <strong>of</strong> History in Postcommunist
Nationalism, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 85-118, for <strong>the</strong> case <strong>of</strong> Slovakia.
See Deborah Lipstadt, Denying <strong>the</strong> Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New
York: Plume, 1994); Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says <strong>the</strong> Holocaust
Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley: University <strong>of</strong> California Press, 2000). See also