Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] POLLS AND ANTISEMITISM IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA 389only one in ten respondents endorsed similar articles directed at the criticismof Jews. Germans (alongside Serbs) occupied a privileged position,with Hungarians (soon after the infamous Târgu-Mureş [Marosvásárhely]clashes of March 1990) occupying a somewhat less privileged position astargets of criticism, but still considerably safer than the Roma. While subsequentsurveys would show some fluctuations in attitudes toward the Hungarianminority (the general trend being that of improvement) and towardthe German minority (a rather less though still positive attitude), rejectionof the Roma (measured by studies focusing on social representation, socialdistance, or stereotypes) has been and remains the single most consistentaspect in Romania, as indeed in the rest of the former communist countries.7 For example, in a survey conducted by the Bucharest-based Center ofUrban and Regional Sociology (CURS) in December 1997, 52 percent ofthe respondents said they had “favorable” sentiments toward Hungarians(vs. 41% admitting their sentiments were “unfavorable”), but no less thantwo in three respondents (67%) were negatively inclined toward the Romaminority (vs. 27%). Jews, on the other hand, were unfavorably viewed byonly 15 percent, and no less than 69 percent claimed their sentimentsregarding this minority were favorable. 8To what extent, however, do surveys where respondents are straightforwardlyasked to depict their sentiments toward a national minority reflectreality? In a public opinion poll conducted by the Bucharest-based Institutefor Marketing and Polls (IMAS) in June 2009 (table 2), respondents wereasked to indicate, on a 1-5 scale, their perception of three pejorative wordsemployed in reference to Hungarians (bozgor), Jews (jidan 9 ), and Roma(ţigan). By the time the survey was carried out, the first term, bozgor, hadbeen eliminated by the Romanian Academy from its Explicative Dictionaryof the Romanian Language (DEX), 10 but the two other terms still figured in,despite protests stemming from Jewish and Romani NGOs. After initialattempts to justify their presence, the Academy’s Linguistic Institute consentedin 2012 to specify that the latter two terms were pejoratives, but leftthem in the dictionary. 117. See Cercetări cu privire la minoritatea roma, coordinated by IoanMărginean (Bucharest: Ministerul Informaţiei Publice, Oficiul Naţional pentruRomi, 2001), 15, 18.8. See Dan Oprescu, “Despre romi,” Revista 22, No. 6 (February 10-16, 1998).9. Best rendered in English as “kike” or “yid.”10. Cf. Academia Română. Institutul de Lingvistică “Iorgu Iordan,” DEX.Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române, Ediţia a II-a (Bucharest: Universenciclopedic, 1996).11. “Academia Română somată să scoată ‘jidan’ din dicţionar,” Ziua veche(August 8, 2011), http://www.ziuaveche.ro/actualitate-interna/social/academia-