Concerning the History of Romanian Anti-Semitism

Abstract

The present contribution underlines the independent tradition of Romanian anti-Semitism, which can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century, more exactly, to Article 7 of the constitution of 1866, which allows theoretically only those “strangers” to become Romanians who were Christians. There are economic reasons for this: Changing from feudalism to capitalism, the qualities needed for middle-class competition (as represented by the Jews), were absent in the Romanian rural population. The “Jewish question” was therefore always added to the “peasant question” by the intellectual opinion leaders of the time. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first anti-Semitic party was formed by N. Iorga and Al. C. Cuza, which was followed by other protectionist formations after 1918 in “Great Romania”, as were the UNC or the LANC. Against the Jew as a “profiteer” and “communist”, the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary extreme Right (like the Iron Guard) were formed, which in opposition to the National Socialist movement was based on an ethnically defined Christian Orthodoxy. The leading intellectuals of the 1930s were the ones orchestrating this: Octavian Goga, in 1937 briefly chief of the PNC-government, Nichifor Crainic, Nae Ionescu, Mircea Eliade and to a certain extent Emil M. Cioran. The specific tradition which caused the Romanian holocaust was therefore rooted not in a Darwinist ideology, but in an economic rivalry and Christian Orthodoxy.