Language:
French
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Revue des Etudes Juives
Angaben zur Quelle:
167,1-2 (2008) 209-244
Keywords:
Safran, Alexandre
;
Rabbis
;
Jews History 1933-1945
;
Antisemitism History 20th century
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Rescue
Abstract:
Examines the role of Romanian Chief Rabbi Alexandre Şafran (1910-2006) in the rescue of a large number of the country's ca. 600,000 Jews. The first big pogrom, in the summer of 1941, took place in Iaşi, followed by massacres in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. In the latter areas, ca. 250,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed or deported. The process of annihilation was interrupted in fall 1942, when Şafran, with the aid of Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan of Transylvania and the Apostolic Nuncio Andrea Cassulo, secured the postponement of deportations of Jews from southern Transylvania and the Old Kingdom. States that Şafran embodied the Jewish resistance in Romania, thanks to which 360,000 Jews survived. As head of the illegal Jewish Council, Şafran managed to abolish the obligation to wear a yellow badge, although it remained in effect in the eastern provinces. He organized schools, and even a people's university for Jewish students and teachers who had been barred from public education. He arranged for the return of orphans from Transnistria, with the help of the Queen Mother Elena, and he facilitated emigration to Palestine.
DOI:
10.2143/REJ.167.1.2030860
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink