Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

388 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:387“US VS. THEM”As articles with direct or allusive antisemitic tones began to appear inthe daily press or in weeklies, the daily Adevărul (The Truth) on July 27-28,1991, for the first time mentioned a poll in which Jews were being scrutinizedas a separate category of national minorities subjected to what theRomanian Institute for Public Opinion Polling (IRSOP) 4 termed to be eithera “press syndrome” (i.e., reports designed to attract readership by exploitingexisting prejudice) or a “social syndrome” (i.e., a reflection of attitudestoward Jews shared by segments of Romanian society). Respondents wereasked to mention whether they agreed or disagreed that the Romanianmedia should carry articles against any of the following ethnic groups, asshown in table 1:TABLE 1DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE THAT THE ROMANIAN MEDIASHOULD WRITE AGAINST . . . 5Agree Disagree Don’t Know/NA(%) (%) (%)Jews 11 78 11Germans 4 86 10Hungarians 24 65 11Romanians 5 89 6Serbs 4 85 11Gypsies 6 41 50 9As this table shows, some two respondents in five condoned the publicationof articles critical of the country’s Gypsy (Roma) minority, whereas4. IRSOP was set up in 1990 as a government institute. Not long after it wasprivatized, it proved to be one of the most successful polling institutes in the country,though it took some time to shed suspicions that it served former president IonIliescu and his different governments.5. The IRSOP poll was based on a representative sample of 2,179 persons,with a margin of error of ±2.1%.6. The word “Gypsy” (ţigan) has a pejorative sense and was officially replacedin the late 1990s by the word “rroma,” which nonetheless is also discriminatory,since the doubling of the first letter is intended to avoid confusion between “Roma”and “Romanian.” While I reproduce the word as used by the different samplers, Iemploy “Roma” (adjective “Romani”) whenever referring to this ethnic group.