Abstract
An attempted proto-Romanianization of companies, initiated through the 1887 Law for Stimulating National Industry and continued in the interwar period, failed because of insufficient indigenous capital and professional training, lack of systematic enforcement, and sabotage (through camouflage) by local entrepreneurs.1 This was the opinion of Virgil Madgearu, one of Romania’s leading economists, who emphasized that “a unique opportunity was lost” soon after 1918, when the state could have Romanianized German and Austrian-Hungarian companies using World War I’s reparations system. Instead, the economic role of the defeated Central Powers declined steadily in favor of Entente (especially British, French, and Belgian) investors.2 Madgearu observed that subsequent legislation aiming to protect local industry and national employment — the mining law (1924), the migration law (1925), and the law for the protection of national labor (1930) — failed as well.3
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Notes
Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania, 25–38; Idem, The Economic Destruction, 33–58; Filderman, Memoirs and Diaries, 484–503; Heinen, România, Holocaustul şi logica violenţei, 62–63; Leon Volovici, “The Response of Jewish Leaders and Intellectuals to Antisemitism,” in Rotman and Vago (eds.), The History of the Jews in Romania, 3rd vol., 171–173. According to historian Paul Quinlan, at the end of January 1938 French and British Prime Ministers “threatened to regard the treaties which recognized Romania’s ownership of Transylvania and Bessarabia as being annulled il the Goga Government continued its attacks on the Jews.” Paul Quinlan, Clash over Romania: British and American Policies towards Romania 1938–1947 (Los Angeles: American Romanian Academy of Sciences, 1977), 29.
See articles no. 7–14; according to historian Victor Neumann, law no. 2650 and the subsequent antisemitic laws were especially disadvantageous to the Jews of Banat and Transylvania. These former Habsburg Empire provinces joined Romania in 1918, and the Jews had enjoyed lull political and civil emancipation since 1867. Victor Neumann, Istoria evreilor din România: Studii documentare şi teoretice (Timişoara: Amarcord, 1996), 222–224.
Historian Marius Turda pointed out the racial philosophy used by Minister of Justice Ion Gruia — the author of those antisemitic laws — in the preamble of Law no. 2650. See Marius Turda, Modernism and Eugenics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 110.
According to Radu R Rosetti, the minister of education, Antonescu believed that the Jews chose to convert to Catholicism in order to bypass Romanianization laws. Radu R Rosetti, Pagini de jurnal (Bucureşti: Adevărul, 1993), 190; see also the diplomatic report of Nuncio Andrea Cassulo (from 31 August 1942) in which he informed the Vatican about difficulties he faced during his interventions in favor of baptized Jews “because the government believes that Jews convert to Catholicism to avoid the laws.” Ion Dumitru-Snagov, România în diplomaţia Vaticanului: 1939–1944 (Bucureşti: Editura Garamond, 1991), 158–159; see also the 4 February 1943 government meeting minutes, in Ciucă and Ignat (eds.), Stenogramele, vol. IX, p. 26.
See, for instance, Nicolae Bagdasar, Notaţii autobiografice (Bucureşti: Tritonic, 2004), 277–284; ANR, CER 175/1942; 184/1942; 197/1942; CER 198/1942; CER 203/1942; CER 219/1942; CER 2/1943; CER 3/1943; CER 35/1943; CER 37/1943; CER 38/1943; CER 46/1943; CER 49/1943; CER 52/1943; CER 224/1943; CER 227/1943; MMSOS 609/1943, pp. 132–135; see also the 11 May and 12 June 1945 interrogations of Radu Lecca by SMERSH and the 14 November 1944 interview with Berg Gheorghe Isakovici, Lecca’s Jewish driver during July-August 1944 in Ioanid (ed.), Lotul Antonescu în ancheta Smerş, 374–377, 390–394.
See the memo addressed by the General Jewish Council to the new Sănătescu government on 16 September 1944 in Harry Kuler (ed.), Evreii în România anilor 1944–1949: Evenimente, documente, comentarii (Bucureşti: Hasefer, 2002), 389–394.
Establishing his dictatorship, King Carol II replaced the 1923 Constitution with his own constitution (1938). Both of them, however, stipulated the inviolability of private property and banned any law that would have mentioned the confiscation of such property, allowing only the public utility expropriation with a preliminary and fair compensation. Preparing to abdicate, Carol II suspended the 1938 Constitution and appointed Anto-nescu as prime minister with “full powers to rule the state” on 5 September 1940. See Flavius Baias, Bogdan Dumitrache, and Marian Nicolae (eds.), Regimul juridic al imobilelor preluate abuziv (Bucureşti: Rosetti, 2001), 5–7
Eleodor Focşeneanu, Istoria Constituţională a României: 1859–2003, 3rd edition (Bucureşti, 2007), 124–136; Boia, Capcanele istoriei, 197–199, 345.
S Friedman, Expropriation in International Law (London: Stevens & Sons, 1953)
George Costi, Exproprierea pentru cauză de utilitate publică în România (Arad: Imprimeriile Judeţului Arad, 1940).
See Reinhard Heydrich’s memo sent to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 27 August 1941 in Ottmar Traşcă and Dennis Deletant (eds.), Al III-lea Reich şi Holocaustul din România: 1940–1944. Documente din arhivele germane (Bucureşti: Editura INSHR-EW, 2007), 276–278; see also Heinen, România, Holocaustul şi logica violenţei, 54; Ancei, The History of the Holocaust, 101–102; see also the 11 December 1944 and 12 June 1945 minutes of the interrogation of Radu Lecca by SMERSH in Ioanid (ed.), Lotul Antonescu în ancheta Smerş, 342–343, 371–373, 381–382.
As historian Maria Bucur noted, Romanian eugenicisist Iordache Facaoaru conducted a series of bioanthropometric measurements in Transnistria (in 1942) to establish the “authenticity” of ethnic Romanians living in that area and to identify some “scientific” criteria for weeding out undesirable “others.” Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization, 39, 215, 224. Other scholars participated in the Central Statistics Institute’s expedition into the Soviet territory to identify ethnic Romanians located on the East of Bug river. The Anto-nescu regime wanted to repatriate those “brothers” to Romania, part of a wider population exchange strategy. See Anton Golopenţia, Romanii de la Est de Bug (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2006)
Viorel Achim, “Romanian Population Exchange Project Elaborated by Sabin Manuilă in October 1941,” Annali dell’Instituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento, XXVII (2001): 593–617.
For another case where a Bucharest small-business owner lost his kiosk because local authorities doubted his (Macedonian)-Romanian ethnicity, suspecting him of acquiring his certificates by corrupting pre-Antonescu authorities, see Valeriu Anania, Memorii (Iaşi: Polirom, 2008), 21–22.
See the interview with Constantin Marinescu, in Zoltân Rostâs (ed.), Strada Latină no. 8 (Bucureşti: Curtea Veche, 2009), 196
and with Henri H. Stahl, in Zoltân Rostâs (ed.), Monografia ca utopie: Interviuri cu Henri H. Stahl (Bucureşti: Paideia, 2000), 225.
Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu, Ard malurile Nistrului: Mare reportaj de război din teritoriile dezrobite (Bucureşti, 1941).
Virgil Gheorghiu, Memorii (Bucureşti: Editura 100+1 Gramar, 2003), 540–542. Other witnesses of the era, such as General Bucur Calomfirescu, complained in their postwar memoirs about the pressure on other categories of public employees, such as Army officers, to divorce their Jewish wives. If the officers refused to comply, they were fired.
See Bucur Calomfirescu, Memorii (Bucureşti: Vitruviu, 2008), 121.
For an analysis of the importance of visas, false papers, and other documents allowing Jews to escape Nazi Europe, see Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946 (New York, London: WW Norton & Company, 2009).
For such a case, see the 23 May 1943 entry from the diary of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Revizuiri şi adăugiri: 1943 (Bucureşti: Floarea Darurilor, 2001), 118–119.
ANR, MJ-DJ 116/1942, 24–26; for more details on Romania’s Concordat with the Vatican, see Mariuca Vadan, La Relazioni Diplomatiche Tra la Santa Sede e Romania: 19201948 (Citta di Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001).
For the case of a Bucharest Orthodox priest who converted Jews during the Antonescu regime see, for instance, Gala Galaction, Jurnal, 4th vol. (Bucureşti: Albatros, 2000), 135, 153.
ANR, MJ-DJ, 116/1942, p. 38; for more details on the relation between Romanian modern state and the local Orthodox Church during late 19th and early 20th century, see Lucian N. Leuştean, Orthodoxy and the Cold War: Religion and Political Power in Romania: 1947–1965 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 24–56.
See, for instance, Onişfor Ghibu, Nulitatea Concordatului dintre România şi Sfântul Scaun (Cluj: Institutul de Arte Grafice Ardealul, 1935)
Cristian Vasile, Între Vatican şi Kremlin: Biserica Greco-Catolică în timpul regimului comunist (Bucureşti: Curtea Veche, 2003), 66–74.
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© 2015 Ştefan Cristian Ionescu
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Ionescu, Ş.C. (2015). Romanianization Legislation: Concepts, (Mis)interpretations, and Conflicts. In: Jewish Resistance to “Romanianization,” 1940–44. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137484598_2
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