The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

fascist Iron Guard), did have an effect: the dismissal of Goga by the King and his
replacement by the Patriarch Christea who initially planned to carry out his predecessor’s
anti-Semitic program. 183 However, on February 22 King Carol announced a new
constitution and the creation of a “royal dictatorship,” termed the “National
Concentration Government,” which granted the monarch autocratic powers with which
he pledged to guarantee “equality before the law to all people of other races which have
lived for centuries on Rumanian soil.” 184
Cristea, who earlier had advocated anti-
Semitism, then promised the Jewish community the restoration of “spiritual peace, unity
and brotherhood.” 185 In addition, the King took steps to suppress the anti-Semitic Fascist
Iron Guard and arrested its leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. 186
Despite outward
appearances journalist Dorothy Thompson claimed that King Carol did “not make a
secret of his conviction that there are too many Jews in Rumania and that the world
should help him get rid of at least a few hundred thousand of them.” 187
The Jews of Hungary also faced an increasingly precarious existence. Stimulated
by the anti-Semitic actions of the Reich many non-Jewish Hungarians called for the
limitation or the total exclusion of Jews from many professions and other occupations
183 “Rumania Hohenzollern Dictator,” Time, February 21, 1938, 28.
184 “Rumanian King Sets Up Royal Dictatorship,” Tampa Tribune, February 21, 1938, 1. Following the
announcement of a new government and constitution King Carol held elections in which 5,413 voted orally
that they were opposed to the changes (and their names were recorded by officials) and 4,283,395 voted in
support. The Interior Minister Armand Calinescu announced that “by a majority of 99.8% the people of
Rumania overwhelmingly approved the personal dictatorship of King Carol II.” Time, March 7, 1938.
185 Schneiderman, ed., American Jewish Yearbook Review of the Year 5698, 297.
186 Ibid., 298.
187 Thompson, Refugees, 65.
116