History of the Jews in Romania

Jewish communities on what would later become Romanian territory were attested as early as the 2nd century AD, at a time when the Roman Empire had established its rule over Dacia. Inscriptions and coins have been found in such places as Sarmizegetusa and Orșova. The existence of the Crimean Karaites, an ethnic group adherent of Karaite Judaism, suggests that there was a steady Jewish presence around the Black Sea, including in parts of today's Romania, in the trading ports from the mouths of the Danube and the Dniester (see Cumania); they may have been present in some Moldavian fairs by the 16th century or earlier. The earliest Jewish (most likely Sephardi) presence in what would become Moldavia was recorded in Cetatea Albă (1330); in Wallachia, they were first attested in the 1550s, living in Bucharest. During the second half of the 14th century, the future territory of Romania became an important place of refuge for Jews expelled from the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland by King Louis I. In Transylvania, Hungarian Jews were recorded in Saxon citadels around 1492. Prince Roman I (1391-1394?) exempted the Jews from military service, in exchange for a tax of 3 löwenthaler per person. Also in Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457–1504) treated Jews with consideration. Isaac ben Benjamin Shor of Iași (Isak Bey, originally employed by Uzun Hassan) was appointed stolnic, being subsequently advanced to the rank of logofăt; he continued to hold this office under Bogdan the Blind (1504–1517), the son and successor of Stephen. At this time both Danubian Principalities came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, and a number of Sephardim living in Istanbul migrated to Wallachia, while Jews from Poland and the Holy Roman Empire settled in Moldavia. Although they took an important part in Ottoman government and formed a large part of a community of foreign creditors and traders, During the first short reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. ==Early Modern Age==

In 1623, the Jews in Transylvania were awarded certain privileges by Prince Gabriel Bethlen, who aimed to attract entrepreneurs from Ottoman lands into his country; the grants were curtailed during following decades, when Jews were only allowed to settle in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia). Among the privileges granted was one allowing Jews to wear traditional dress; eventually, the authorities in Gyulafehérvár decided (in 1650 and 1741) to allow Jews to wear only clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity. The latter ruler (1634–1653) treated the Jews with consideration until the appearance of the Cossacks (1648), who marched against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and who, while crossing the region, killed many Jews; the violence led many Ashkenazi Jews from Poland took refuge in Moldavia and Wallachia, establishing small but stable communities. Massacres and forced conversions by the Cossacks occurred in 1652, when the latter came to Iași on the occasion of the Vasile Lupu's daughter marriage to Timush, the son of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and during the rule of Gheorghe Ștefan. According to Anton Maria Del Chiaro, secretary of the Wallachian princes between 1710 and 1716, the Jewish population of Wallachia was required to respect a certain dresscode. Thus, they were prohibited from wearing clothes of other color than black or violet, or to wear yellow or red boots. Nevertheless, the Romanian scholar Andrei Oișteanu argued that such ethnic and religious social stigma was uncommon in Moldavia and Wallachia, as well as throughout the Eastern Orthodox areas of Europe. The first blood accusation in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made April 5, 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamț were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes´. , built c. 1670 Under Constantin Brâncoveanu, Wallachian Jews were recognized as a special guild in Bucharest, led by a starost. Jews in both Wallachia and Moldavia were subject to the Hakham Bashi in Iași, but soon the Bucharest starost assumed several religious duties. Overtaxed and persecuted under Ștefan Cantacuzino (1714–1716), Wallachian Jews obtained valuable privileges during Nicholas Mavrocordatos' rule (1716–1730) in that country (the Prince notably employed the Jewish savant Daniel de Fonseca at his court). Another anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s, and was encouraged by the visit of Ephram II, Patriarch of Jerusalem. The most obvious effects on the condition of the Jewish inhabitants of Moldavia were witnessed during the reign of John Mavrocordatos (1744–1747): a Jewish farmer in the vicinity of Suceava reported the prince to the Porte for allegedly using his house to rape a number of kidnapped Jewish women; Mavrocordatos had his accuser hanged. This act aroused the anger of Mahmud I's kapucu in Moldavia, and the prince paid the penalty with the loss of his throne. ==Russo-Turkish Wars==

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, Jews in the Danubian Principalities endured great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. When peace was restored, both princes, Alexander Mavrocordatos of Moldavia and Nicholas Mavrogheni of Wallachia, pledged their special protection to Jews, whose condition remained favorable until 1787, when both Janissaries and the Imperial Russian Army took part in pogroms. The community was also subject to persecutions by the locals. Jewish children were seized and forcibly baptized. Ritual-murder accusations became widespread, with one made at Galați in 1797 leading to exceptionally severe resultswith Jews being attacked by a large mob, driven from their homes, robbed, waylaid on the streets, and many killed on the spot, while some were forced into the Danube and drowned, and others who took refuge in the synagogue were burned to death in the building; a few escaped after being given protection and refuge by a priest. In 1803, shortly before his death, the Wallachian Metropolitan Iacob Stamati instigated attacks on the Bucharest community by publishing his Înfruntarea jidovilor ("Facing the Jews"), which pretended to be the confession of a former rabbi; however, Jews were offered refuge by Stamati's replacement, Veniamin Costachi. A seminal event occurred in 1804, when ruler Constantine Ypsilanti dismissed accusations of ritual murder as "the unfounded opinion" of "stupid people", and ordered that their condemnation be read in churches throughout Wallachia; the allegations no longer surfaced during the following period. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812, the Russian invasion was again accompanied by massacres of Jews. Kalmyk irregular soldiers in Ottoman service, who appeared in Bucharest at the close of the Russo-Turkish War, terrorised the city's Jewish population. At around the same time, a conflict emerged in Wallachia between Jews under foreign protection (sudiți) and local ones (hrisovoliți), after the latter tried to impose a single administration for the community, a matter which was finally settled in favor of the hrisovoliți by Prince Jean Georges Caradja (1813). In Habsburg-ruled Transylvania, the reforms carried out by Joseph II allowed Jews to settle in towns directly subject to the Hungarian Crown. However, pressure placed on the community remained stringent for the following decades. ==Early 19th century==

(c. 1845); two Orthodox Jews are visible to the right (restored after World War II), originally built 1864–1866 By 1825, the Jewish population in Wallachia was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people, almost all Sephardi. Of these, the larger part resided in Bucharest (probably as many as 7,000 in 1839); and at around the same time, Moldavia was home to about 12,000 Jews. In parallel, the Jewish population in Bukovina rose from 526 in 1774 to 11,600 in 1848. In the early 19th century, Jews who sought refuge from Osman Pazvantoğlu's campaign in the Balkans established communities in Wallachian-ruled Oltenia. and over 195,000, or almost 12% of the country's population, in 1859 (with an additional 50,000 passing through to Wallachia between the two estimates). Despite initial interdictions under the Russian occupation of 1829 (when it was first regulated that non-Christians were not to be regarded as citizens), many of the new immigrants became leaseholders of estates and tavern-keepers, serving to increase both the revenue and demands of boyars, and leading in turn to an increase in economic pressures over those working the land or buying products (usual prejudice against Jews accused tavern-keepers of encouraging alcoholism). At the same time, several Jews rose to prominence and high social status, with most families involved in Moldavian banking around the 1850s being of Jewish origin. After 1832, following adoption of the Organic Statute, Jewish children were accepted in schools in the two Principalities only if they wore the same clothing as others. In Moldavia, the 1847 decree of Prince Mihail Sturdza compelled Jews to abandon the traditional dress code. Before the Revolutions of 1848, which found their parallel in the Wallachian revolution, many restrictive laws against Jews were enacted; although they had some destructive effects, they were never strictly enforced. In various ways, Jews took part in the Wallachian revolt; for example, Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, the painter, distinguished himself in the revolutionary cause, and paid for his activity with his life (being tortured to death in Budapest by Austrian authorities). The major document to be codified by the 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries, the Islaz Proclamation, called for "the emancipation of Israelites and political rights for all compatriots of different faiths". After the end of the Crimean War, the struggle for the union of the two principalities began. Both parties, Unionists and anti-Unionists sought support of Jews, with each promising full equality; and proclamations to this effect were issued between 1857 and 1858. In 1857, the community published its first magazine, Israelitul Român, edited by the Romanian radical Iuliu Barasch. This process of gradual integration resulted in the creation of an informal Jewish Romanian identity, while conversion to Christianity, despite encouragement by the authorities, remained confined to exceptional cases. ==Under Alexandru Ioan Cuza==

in Bucharest From the beginning of the reign of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1859–1866), the first ruler (Domnitor) of the united principalities, the Jews became a prominent factor in the politics of the country. This period was, however, inaugurated by another riot motivated by blood libel accusations, begun during Easter 1859 in Galați. Regulations on clothing were confirmed inside Moldavia by two orders of Mihail Kogălniceanu, Minister of Internal Affairs (issues in 1859 and 1860 respectively). Following adoption of the 1859 regulation, soldiers and civilians would walk the streets of Iași and some other Moldavian towns, assaulting Jews, using scissors to shred their clothing, but also to cut their beards or their sidelocks; drastic measures applied by the Army Headquarters put a stop to such turmoil. In 1864, Prince Cuza, owing to difficulties between his government and the general assembly, dissolved the latter and decided to submit a draft of a constitution granting universal suffrage. He proposed creating two chambers (of senators and deputies respectively), to extend the franchise to all citizens, and to emancipate the peasants from forced labor (expecting to nullify the remaining influence of the landownersno longer boyars after the land reform). In the process, Cuza also expected financial support from both the Jews and the Armeniansit appears that he kept the latter demand reduced, asking for only 40,000 Austrian florins (the standard gold coins; about US$ 90,000 at the exchange rate of the time) from the two groups. The Armenians discussed the matter with the Jews, but they were not able to come to a satisfactory agreement in the matter. While Cuza was pressing in his demands, the Jewish community debated the method of assessment. The rich Jews, for unclear reasons, refused to advance the money, and the middle class argued that the sum would not lead to tangible enough results; Religious Jews insisted that such rights would only interfere with the exercise of their religion. Cuza, on being informed that the Jews hesitated to pay their share, inserted in his draft of a constitution a clause excluding from the right of suffrage all who did not profess Christianity. ==1860s and 1870s==

: Jew with Goose (c. 1880)a Romanian Jew holding a petition and a goose for bribery. On December 4, 1864, Jews in Romania were barred from practicing law. When Charles von Hohenzollern succeeded Cuza in 1866 as Carol I of Romania, the first event that confronted him in the capital was a riot against the Jews. A draft of a constitution was then submitted by the government, Article 6 of which declared that "religion is no obstacle to citizenship"; but, "with regard to the Jews, a special law will have to be framed in order to regulate their admission to naturalization and also to civil rights". On June 30, 1866, the Bucharest Synagogue was desecrated and demolished (it was rebuilt in the same year, then restored in 1932 and 1945). Many Jews were beaten, maimed, and robbed. As a result, Article 6 was withdrawn and Article 7 was added to the 1866 Constitution; it read that "only such aliens as are of the Christian faith may obtain citizenship". The French Jewish lawyer Adolphe Crémieux offered to grant a loan of 25 million of gold francs in exchange for Romania to give citizenship to the Jewish, but the Romanian politicians rejected the proposal. For the following decades, the issue of Jewish rights occupied the forefront of the Regat's political scene. With few notable exceptions (including some of Junimea affiliates – Petre P. Carp, George Panu, and I.L. Caragiale), most Romanian intellectuals began professing antisemitism; its most virulent form was the one present with advocates of Liberalism (in contradiction to their 1848 political roots), especially Moldavians, who argued that Jewish immigration had prevented the rise of an ethnic Romanian middle class. The first examples of modern prejudice were the Moldavian Fracțiunea liberă și independentă (later blended into the National Liberal Party, PNL) and the Bucharest group formed around Cezar Bolliac. Their discourse saw Jews as non-assimilated and perpetually foreignthis claim was, however, challenged by some contemporary sources, and by the eventual acceptance of all immigrants other than Jews. Antisemitism was carried into the PNL's mainstream, and was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Brătianu. During his first years in office, Brătianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. According to the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia: "A number of such Jews who proved their Romanian birth were forced across the Danube, and when [the Ottoman Empire] refused to receive them, were thrown into the river and drowned. Almost every country in Europe was shocked at these barbarities. The Romanian government was warned by the powers; and Brătianu was subsequently dismissed from office". Cabinets formed by the Conservative Party, although including Junimea's leaders, did not do much to improve the Jews' conditionmainly due to PNL opposition. Nonetheless, during this same era, Romania was the cradle of Yiddish theatre. The Russian-born Abraham Goldfaden started the first professional Yiddish theatre company in Iași in 1876 and for several years, especially during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 Romania was the home of Yiddish theatre. While its center of gravity would move first to Russia, then London, then New York City, both Bucharest and Iași would continue to figure prominently in its history over the next century. ==Treaty of Berlin and aftermath==

pie-maker and his Jewish client in Bucharest, 1880 When Brătianu resumed leadership, Romania faced the emerging conflict in the Balkans, and saw its chance to declare independence from Ottoman suzerainty by dispatching its troops on the Russian side in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), which stipulated (Article 44) that the non-Christians in Romania (including both Jews and Muslims in the newly acquired region of Northern Dobruja) should receive full citizenship. After a prolonged debate at home and diplomatic negotiations abroad, the Romanian government ultimately agreed (1879) to abrogate Article 7 of its constitution. This was, however, reformulated to make procedures very difficult: "the naturalization of aliens not under foreign protection should in every individual case be decided by Parliament" (the action involved, among others, a ten-year term before the applicant was given an evaluation). The gesture was doubled by a show of compliance883 Jews, participants in the war, were naturalized in a body by a vote of both chambers. German banker Gerson von Bleichröder proposed international recognition of Romania's independence only if it granted citizenship to Jews. Various laws were passed until the pursuit of virtually all careers was made dependent on the possession of political rights, which only Romanians could exercise; more than 40% of Jewish working men, including manual labourers, were forced into unemployment by such legislation. Similar laws were passed in regard to Jews exercising liberal professions. In 1893, a piece of legislation was voted to deprive Jewish children of the right to be educated in the public schoolsthey were to be received only if and where children of citizens had been provided for, and their parents were required to pay preferential tuition fees. In 1898, it was passed into law that Jews were to be excluded from secondary schools and the universities. Another notable measure was the expulsion of vocal Jewish activists as "objectionable aliens" (under the provisions of an 1881 law), including those of Moses Gaster and Elias Schwarzfeld. The courts exacted the oath more judaico in its most offensive formit was only abolished in 1904, following criticism in the French press. In 1892, when the United States addressed a note to the signatory powers of the Berlin treaty on the matter, it was attacked by the Romanian press. The Lascăr Catargiu government was, however, concernedthe issue was debated among ministers, and, as a result, the Romanian government issued pamphlets in French, reiterating its accusations against the Jews and maintaining that persecutions were deserved and came as retribution for the community's alleged exploitation of the rural population. ==20th century–present==

Before and after World War I (built 1901)The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878; numbers rose and fell, with a major wave of Bessarabian Jews after the Kishinev pogrom in Imperial Russia (1905). The Jewish Encyclopedia wrote in 1905, shortly before the pogrom, "It is admitted that at least 70 per cent would leave the country at any time if the necessary traveling expenses were furnished". There are no official statistics of emigration; but it is safe to place the minimum number of Jewish emigrants from 1898 to 1904 at 70,000. By 1900 there were 250,000 Romanian Jews: 3.3% of the population, 14.6% of the city dwellers, 32% of the Moldavian urban population and 42% of Iași. During the same period, the anti-Jewish message first expanded beyond its National Liberal base (where it was soon an insignificant attitude), to cover the succession of more radical and Moldavian-based organizations founded by A.C. Cuza (his Democratic Nationalist Party, created in 1910, had the first antisemitic program in Romanian political history). No longer present in the PNL's ideology by the 1920s, antisemitism also tended to surface in on the left-wing of the political spectrum, in currents originating in Poporanismwhich favoured the claim that peasants were being systematically exploited by Jews. World War I, during which 882 Jewish soldiers died defending Romania (825 were decorated), brought about the creation of Greater Romania after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and subsequent treaties. The enlarged state had an increased Jewish population, corresponding with the addition of communities in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania. On signing the treaties, Romania agreed to change its policy towards the Jews, promising to award them both citizenship and minority rights, the effective emancipation of Jews. the land reform carried out by the Ion I. C. Brătianu cabinet also settled problems connected with land tenancy. During the interwar period, thousands of Jewish refugees from the USSR migrated to Romania. Political representation for the Jewish community in the inter-war period was divided between the Jewish Party and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania (the latter was re-established after 1989). During the same period, a division in ritual became apparent between Reform Jews in Transylvania and usually Orthodox ones in the rest of the country (while Bessarabia was the most open to Zionism and especially the socialist Labor Zionism). , according to the Wiesel Commission report, pp. 81, which counted 728,115 Jews by ethnicity and 756,930 Jews by religion , in 1924 The popularity of anti-Jewish messages was, nevertheless, on the rise, and merged itself with the appeal of fascism in the late 1920sboth contributed to the creation and success of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Iron Guard and the appearance of new types of anti-Semitic discourses (Trăirism and Gândirism). The idea of a Jewish quota in higher education became highly popular among Romanian students and teachers. According to Andrei Oișteanu's analysis, a relevant number of right-wing intellectuals refused to adopt overt anti-Semitism, which was ill-reputed through its association with A. C. Cuza's violent discourse; nevertheless, a few years later, such cautions were cast aside, and anti-Semitism became displayed as "spiritual health". The first motion to exclude Jews from professional associations came on May 16, 1937, when the Confederation of the Associations of Professional Intellectuals (Confederația Asociațiilor de Profesioniști Intelectuali din România) voted to exclude all Jewish members from its affiliated bodies, calling for the state to withdraw their licenses and reassess their citizenship. Although illegal, the measure was popular and it was commented that, in its case, legality had been supplanted by a "heroic decision". adopt racial discrimination as the norm. In the recent election, over 25% of the electorate had voted for explicitly antisemitic groups (either the Goga-Cuza alliance (9%) or the Iron Guard's political mouthpiece, TPT(16.5%)), and as a result, Carol was forced to let one of the two into his cabinet- he instantly chose the Goga-Cuza alliance over the rabid fascism of the Iron Guard (according to modern historian of the Balkans, Misha Glenny, he also thought that this would "take the sting out of the Guard's tail"). On January 21, 1938, Carol's executive (led by Cuza and Octavian Goga) passed a law aimed at reviewing criteria for citizenship (after it cast allegations that previous cabinets had allowed Ukrainian Jews to obtain it illegally), However, Carol II himself was highly hostile to antisemitism . His lover, Elena Lupescu, was Jewish , as were a number of his friends in government , and he soon reverted to his original policies (that is, fiercely opposing the antisemites and fascists), but with a newly violent sting. On February 12, 1938, he used the rising violence between political groups as context to seize absolute power (a move which was tacitly supported by the liberals who had come to view him as a lesser evil in comparison to Codreanu's fascist movement). As an authentic Romanian nationalist (albeit, one who had a view of a Westernized, forcefully industrialized Romania at the expense of the peasants whom he viewed with disdain; making him completely the antithesis of the views of Codreanu ), Carol was determined that Romania should not fall into the near-absolute economic and political control that many of its neighbors already had, and moved to theatrical resistance against Nazi ideology. The King then arrested the entire leadership of the Iron Guard, on the grounds that they were in the pay of the Nazis, and began using the same accusation against various political opponents, both to solidify his absolute control of the country as well as negatively stigmatize Germany. In November, the fourteen most important fascist leaders (the first of which being Codreanu) were "rinsed" in acid. However, Carol's policy was doomed by the reluctance of France and Britain to fight wars with the totalitarian powers of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union attacked Romania and declared the annexation of Bukovina and Bessarabia (which was to be renamed Moldova), and when Carol turned to the only possible hopethat is, assistance from the former "eternal foe", Nazi Germanyhe was angrily rejected by Hitler personally, who did not have to try hard to remember how Carol had previously humiliated the cause of his ideology. Carol was forced to acknowledge the annexation, leading directly to his overthrow in a coup led by Ion Antonescu. In 1940, the Ion Gigurtu cabinet adopted Romania's equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws, forbidding Jewish-Christian intermarriage, and defining Jews after racial criteria (a person was Jewish if he or she had a Jewish grandparent on one side of the family). Politics • Union of Romanian Jews • Jewish Party of Romania • Jewish National People's Party • General Jewish Labour Bund in Romania The Holocaust Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1944. Under the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, 380,000–400,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in Romanian-controlled areas such as Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria. The Iron Guard Between the establishment of the National Legionary State and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Iron Guard began a massive antisemitic campaign, culminating in the failed coup and a pogrom in Bucharest, during which Jews were tortured and beaten, their shops looted, and 120 Jews were killed. However, on local initiative, the badge was still worn especially in the towns of Moldavia, Bessarabia and Bukovina (Bacău, Iași, Câmpulung, Botoșani, Cernăuți, etc.). In 1941, following the advancing Romanian Army during Operation Barbarossa, and, according to Antonescu propaganda, alleged attacks by Jews, who were considered en masse "Communist agents" by the official propaganda, Antonescu ordered the deportation to Transnistria, of all Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina. "Deportation" however was a euphemism, as part of the process involved mass killing of Jews before deporting the rest in the "trains of death" (in reality long exhausting marches on foot) to the East. It is estimated that from July-September 1941, the Romanian Army and Gendarmerie, in cooperation with the Wehrmacht and the Einsatzgruppen, murdered between 45,000 and 60,000 Jewish civilians in Bukovina and Bessarabia alone.) in collaboration with the German Einsatzkommando, the SS squads of local Ukrainian Germans (Sonderkommando Russland and Selbstschutz), and the Ukrainian militia targeted the local Jewish population that the Romanian Army managed to round up when occupying Transnistria. Over one hundred thousand of these were killed in massacres staged in such places as Odessa (see Odessa massacre), Bogdanovka, Akmechetka, Pechora in 1941 and 1942. Antonescu's government also made plans for mass deportations of Romanian Jews from the rest of the country (the Regat and southern Transylvania), numbering 292,149 people (according to a May 1942 census), to Transnistria region, or, in collaboration with the German government, to the Belzec extermination camp, but these had never been carried out. as he began to seek peace with the Allies, although at the same time he levied heavy taxes and forced labor on the remaining Jewish communities. Also, sometimes with the encouragement of Antonescu's regime, thirteen boats left Romania for the British Mandate of Palestine during the war, carrying 13,000 Jews (two of these ships were sunk by the Soviets (see Struma disaster), and the effort was discontinued after German pressure was applied). Discussions regarding the repatriation of deported Jews followed, and in January 1943, the leader of the Romanian-Jewish community Wilhelm Filderman began talks with the Romanian government in order to start repatriating Romanian Jews deported to Transnistria. On November 15, 1943, an official report of the Romanian government indicated that 49,927 Romanian Jews were alive in Transnistria (of which 6,425 were originally from the Regat). In December 1943, partial repatriation began, and in March 1944, Antonescu government ordered general repatriation for all Romanian Jews deportees from Transnistria. Between December 20, 1943, and March 30, 1944, almost 11,000 people (including orphans) were repatriated from different camps and ghettos in Transnistria. However, the decision came too late to organize the repatriation of the last large number of deportees, and the fate of tens of thousands of deportees remaining in Transnistria became unknown. The Romanian government has recognized that a Holocaust took place on its territory and held its first Holocaust Day in 2004. In memory of the victims of the Holocaust and particularly to reflecting on Romania's role in the Holocaust, the Romanian government decided to make October 9 the National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust. Holocaust denial in Romania Decades after the Holocaust, especially during the Communist era in Romania, educating and learning about the Holocaust was considered taboo. Textbooks did mention the Holocaust in passing, but it failed to acknowledge the role of the Romanian government in the systematic murder of the Jewish and Romani people. Holocaust denial is still prevalent in Romanian society. During the Communist era from 1945 to 1989, the government influenced every part of society, including history education. When World War Two was mentioned, textbooks said that Romania was fighting against Hitler, and when the textbooks mentioned that Romania collaborated with the Nazis, it says that Romania actually lost their national independence and was occupied by Germany not that they willingly helped the Nazis and supported them. When the textbooks mentioned the killings of the Jewish people, which was not common during the time since any mention of the Holocaust was ignored and omitted, they were glossed, diminished, or distorted. When the Holocaust was mentioned, it was painted as just another broader casualty of the War in short passing and hid any responsibility of the nation while mentioning Romania's exceptional standing in Europe. Instead, the textbooks painted the Communists as the main victim of the Nazis. Holocaust education took a long time to be implemented in post-Communist Romania. Democratization in Romania started in December 1989, but it took 10 years, until 1999, for Holocaust education to be raised as an issue and for a law to pass. Although Holocaust education was accepted in 1999, it took months for the government to solidify their curriculum to show the atrocities of the Holocaust and their role in it. As of 2021, Romania has made strides to rid itself from the past of Holocaust denial. It has joined the International Holocaust Remembrance alliance in 2004, and took over chairmanship in 2016, as well as constantly organizing and sponsoring events surrounding Holocaust education. In 2021, the first sentence over Holocaust denial was made in the country. The accused was Vasile Zărnescu, a former Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) member who published several articles and a book against the veracity of the Holocaust. Post-War According to the Wiesel Commission, "... at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived". Howard M. Sachar estimated that 360,000 Romanian Jews were still alive at the end of World War II. According to statistics from the end of the war, 355,972 Romanian Jews lived on the territory of Romania. By December 1951, about 115,000 Romanian Jews had emigrated to Israel. During the period of transition towards a communist regime in Romania, following Soviet occupation (see Soviet occupation of Romania), Jewish society and culture were subject to the same increasingly tight control by the authorities. The community leader Wilhelm Filderman had been arrested already in 1945 and had to flee the country in 1948. Antonescu, after a brief detention in the Soviet Union, was shot in June 1946 for war crimes. On April 22, 1946, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej attended a meeting of Jewish organizations and called for the creation of a new body, the Jewish Democratic Committee, which was in reality a section of the Romanian Communist Party PCR. After the proclamation of the People's Republic of Romania on December 30, 1947, the government formed by the PCR outlawed all Jewish organizations at a meeting on June 10–June 11, 1948, stating that "the party must take a stand on every question concerning the Jews of Romania and fight vigorously against reactionary nationalist Jewish currents (that is, Zionism)". Between 1952 and 1953 the Stalinist antisemitic charges of "rootless cosmopolitanism" brought about the purging of the party's own leadership (including Jewish ex-premier and foreign minister Ana Pauker); the charges were then inflicted upon the larger part of the Jewish community, beginning with a trial engineered by Iosif Chișinevschi. Jews who were perceived as Zionists were given harsh labour sentences in communist prisons such as Pitești (where they were subject to torture and brainwashing experiments; a few of them died in detention). During the Cold War, Romania was the only communist country not to break its diplomatic relations with Israel. Throughout the period of Communist rule, Romania allowed limited numbers of Jews to emigrate to Israel, in exchange for much-needed Israeli economic aid. By 1965, Israel was funding agricultural and industrial projects throughout Romania, and in exchange, Romania allowed a trickle of Jewish emigration to Israel. When Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power in 1965, he initially ended the trade in deference to the Eastern bloc's Arab allies. However, Romania was the only Warsaw Pact nation not to break diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967, As a result of aliyah, the Romanian-Jewish community was gradually depleted. By 1987, just 23,000 Jews were left in Romania, half of whom were over 65 years old. Romanian Jews became in the 1980s Israel's second largest ethnic community, outnumbered only by the Moroccans. With the fall of communism in Romania, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has been undergoing a revival. Acts of antisemitism, such destruction of cemetery gravestones, continue to take place, but they are very rare. In 2016, the Romanian Jewish population was estimated as ranging between 9,300 and 17,000. There are also 3,000 Israeli-born people living in Romania. In Romania there is also a small number of Jewish immigrants from the other parts of the world. Every year, tens of Romanian Jewish families from Israel return to their native country. Hasidic Judaism and Haredi Judaism are also present in the country. Chabad has the Yeshua Tova Synagogue, a kosher restaurant, a Jewish kindergarten, a Jewish school and a youth organization, all of them located in Bucharest. The group also has 2 community centers: one in Voluntari and one in Cluj. Satmar also has plans to build a community in Romania. In 2021, a synagogue was inaugurated in Sighetu Marmației; a hotel, a kosher restaurant and a Jewish school are under construction in Sighetu Marmației, all of them under Aaron Teitelbaum's organization. As of 2021, there is also a project to build a rabbinical seminary in Oradea. The Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania Party has one seat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Romanian Parliament. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, 140 Jewish orphans have fled from Ukraine to Romania and Republic of Moldova. On January 29, 2024, two women who converted to Islam vandalized the fence of the Satmar synagogue in Sighetu Marmației, writing "free Palestine" in English and Romanian. ==Historical population==

The historical Jewish population in Romania can be seen below. The 1930 census was the only one to cover Greater Romania. Censuses in 1948, 1956, 1966, 1977, 1992, 2002 and 2011 covered Romania's present-day territory. All but the 1948 census, which asked about mother tongue, had a question on ethnicity. Moldavia and Wallachia each held a census in 1859. The Romanian Old Kingdom (Regat) conducted statistical estimates in 1884, 1889 and 1894, and held censuses in 1899 and 1912. Ion Antonescu's regime also held two: a general one in April 1941, and one for those with "Jewish blood" in May 1942. YIVO provides somewhat different population figures for Romania's Jewish population, specifically 400,000 in 1945, 280,000 in 1951, 200,000 in 1960, 70,000 in 1970, 33,000 in 1980, 17,000 in 1990, and 11,000 in 2000. ==Hasidic dynasties originating in today's Romania==

Major groups • Satmar, originating from Satu Mare, one of the world's largest groups • Klausenburg, originating from Cluj-Napoca, the world's 9th largest group • Spinks, originating from Săpânța – 10th • Temishvar originating from Timișoara 3rd largest in the world Other groups • Bohush, from Buhuși • Botoshan, from Botoșani • Bucharest, from Bucharest • Deyzh, from Dej • Faltichan, from Fălticeni • Margareten, from Marghita • Nasod, from Năsăud • Pashkan, from Pașcani • Roman, from Roman • Sasregen, from Reghin • Seret, from Siret • Shotz, from Suceava • Shtefanesht, from Ștefănești • Siget, from Sighetu-Marmației • Temishvar, originating from Timișoara • Vasloi, originating from Vaslui ==See also==