A memorial plaque on the Jewish cemetery of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, honours the victims of the pogrom of 1941. Between January 20 and 24, 1941, the Iron Guard, until then part of the government, attempted a military coup. A bloody struggle ensued, in the course of which members of the Iron Guard attacked Jews: they murdered at least 120 Jews during the riots.
History
After only five months in power, Marshal Ion Antonescu came into conflict with the fascist Iron Guard - also known as the »legionnaires« - which had been part of the government since September 1940. One of the reasons for the power struggle was the question of how the Romanian Jews were to be expropriated and expelled. In September 1940, the Iron Guard began to mercilessly terrorise the Jews by means of violence, expulsion and expropriation. Antonescu, however, wanted the state to gradually introduce bureaucratic measures against the Jews. Moreover, he was afraid that the Iron Guard and its allies could become to powerful thanks to the looted Jewish property. Antonescu wanted all expropriated Jewish property to be handed over to the state, not to benefit individual organisations. On January 20, 1941, Antonescu dismissed the minister of the interior as well as other office holders from the Iron Guard. This prompted a revolt of the Iron Guard: their supporters armed and entrenched themselves in strategically important buildings in Bucharest, especially in police headquarters. The Iron Guard's propaganda - as previously - was mainly directed against the Jews, whom they blamed for the government crisis. In the following days, the »Legion« used the chaos in Bucharest to brutally attack the Jewish population. Supporters of the Iron Guard beat, abused and murdered Jews. On January 22, the minister of the interior issued an order by which the Jewish quarters of Bucharest were to be attacked. At least 120 Jews were killed during the pogrom. The Romanian army did not intervene. Only on January 23, 1941, did the army launch countermeasures against the Iron Guard, suppressing the revolt on January 24, 1941.
Victims
There were about 102,000 Jews in Bucharest in 1941, among them many refugees from the countryside who hoped they would be safer in the midst of a large Jewish community. At least 120 Jews died in Bucharest during the pogrom which was committed by the Iron Guard during its attempted military coup.
The Kingdom of Romania was politically unstable in the interwar period and threatened by territorial claims from its neighbours. The country sought an alliance with National Socialist Germany but the Nazi leaders in Berlin chose to support Hungary, Bulgaria and their temporary ally, the Soviet Union over the border issue. Romania had to agree to surrender large parts of its territory to these states during 1940. This led to increased radicalisation within the country. King Karl (1893–1953) granted unrestricted authority to General Ion Antonescu (1882–1946) but then had to abdicate to allow his son Michael (1921–2017) to come to the throne. The right-wing extremist »Garda de Fier« (Iron Guard), which was allied with Antonescu, immediately began to persecute the Jews. In 1941 Romania took part in the German attack on the Soviet Union. Romania organised the deportation of up to 155,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma from Bukovina and Bessarabia to the occupied Ukrainian territory of »Transnistria«. Tens of thousands died as a result of mass murder, imprisonment, forced labour, starvation and illness. Meanwhile, the Jews in northern Transylvania (part of Hungary since 1940) were subject to the anti-semitic legislation in this region. However, the majority were spared any violent persecution until the Wehrmacht invaded in 1944. The SS now began to deport Jews to Auschwitz in cooperation with the Hungarian authorities. The total number of murdered Romanian Jews is thus spread over various territories: 50,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina along with 20,000 Jews from central Romania were murdered and around 120,000 Transylvanian Jews died under the Hungarian-German occupation.
In August 1944, the Red Army offensive caused Romania to change sides. Michael I stripped Antonescu of his powers and the country came under Soviet control. The dictator was executed in 1946 and the king abdicated the following year. In the initial post-war period memory focused on liberation by the Red Army. A monument to the fallen Soviet soldiers was built in Bucharest. Romania’s alliance with Germany was ignored. Under Nicolae Ceausescu (1918–1989), who ruled the country with his secret service from 1965, the »liberation from the yoke of fascism« was presented as the achievement of Romanian heroes. With the end of the Ceausescu regime in 1989 many Romanians preferred to adopt a contrary approach: the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 was now more frequently viewed as a campaign against Bolshevism. There was growing admiration for Antonescu. In contrast, for some Romanians the king, now living in exile, became increasingly important as a symbol of democracy as he had toppled the dictator and was later expelled by the communists.
There was no place for the Holocaust in post-war memory. Most survivors had already left the country by the 1950s. Memory was left to the Jewish communities, which established a small research centre in 1977 and a small museum in Bucharest the following year as well as a number of memorials. In 2004 a committee was set up to research the Holocaust and Romanian crimes. The committee was led by Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner. A National Institute has continued the research since 2005. In 2009, a central Holocaust memorial was inaugurated in Bucharest that also honours the Roma who had been deported to Transnistria. However, apart from this sign, there is still little remembrance to the more than 12,500 Romanian Roma murdered during the war.
Remembrance
A memorial plaque on the Sephardic cemetery in the south of Bucharest commemorates the victims of the pogrom of January 20 to 24, 1941. Many of the victims were buried here.
