Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

So ci eties and guilds , with few ex cep tions, along with free-lance work ers,dis played their disgusting opportunism; they prof ited enormously fromthe boom cre ated by po lit i cal pros per ity.Di rectly fol low ing the fas cist dictatorship’s sei zure of power in Ro ma nia,almost all pub lic and private bodies which represented any community inwhat ever capacity, pro fes sional, sci en tific, cul tural, or other, at tempted inearnest, be gin ning with the swift expulsion of Jews, to prove their abil ity toadapt to the new re gime. Their num ber is an indication of how the Ro ma -nian in tel li gen tsia be haved on an in sti tu tional level.The only pro fes sional body which still en dorsed the ac tiv i ties of its Jew ishmem bers was the Board of Phy si cians. How ever, Jewish doc tors were laterghettoized fol low ing their ex pul sion from the medical com mu nity. Med i -cal prac tice was also strictly organized along rac ist eth nic lines; Jewish doc -tors were for bid den to treat Christian pa tients and vice versa.The mer chant class , a ma jor ben e fi ciary of the anti-Se mitic regime andnew boom, was at the fore front of the early stages of the persecution.The Iron Guard plun der was al ways shared in a brotherly fash ion betweenmer chants (the instigators hid ing be hind the scenes) and the bandits whocom mit ted the crimes. The first eco nomic mea sures taken againstJews—al ways justified as the nec es sary safe guard ing of Ro ma nian in ter -ests—were always debated and de cided in the witches’ den of Romanianmer chants. Fol low ing each new measure which ex cluded a certain group ofJew ish mer chants from com mer cial life or facilitated the con tin u a tion oftheir ac tiv i ties, bene fac tors appeared of fer ing to pro tect the Jew ish firmswith their Aryan shields. The majority of these bene fac tors, who pros peredat the ex pense of Jews, be haved despicably when the sub ject of returningsome of the goods entrusted to them arose.This was what the ter ror and persecution wreaked against Jews looked likein Romania. It had its be gin nings in the lunatic in stincts of the en e mies ofman kind. It was ini ti ated and ordered by the criminal lead ers of the state,ex e cuted and sup ported by a sec tion of the Ro ma nian nation. Even thoughthis section of so ci ety was not the ma jor ity, if we take into con sid er ationtheir men tal ity and the times they lived in, it was the most typ i cal.52