Language:
English
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust; studii şi cercetări
Angaben zur Quelle:
4,1 (2012) 35-47
Keywords:
Filderman, W.
;
World War, 1939-1945 Deportations from Romania
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The deportations of Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and other areas in Romania to Transnistria, launched by Antonescu's government in fall 1941, were motivated by racism and the wish to cleanse Romania of ethnic minorities, and were only thinly veiled by the pretext of punishment for Jews who had collaborated with the occupying Soviet forces in 1940-41. Wilhelm Filderman, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities (FUCE), sent the Romanian dictator a series of petitions, in which he characterized the deportations as death sentences for thousands of Jews, stressed the harm these deportations would inflict on the provinces' economies, and insisted that only those guilty among the Jews and non-Jews should be punished, while the innocent should be returned to Romania. Antonescu answered Filderman on 21 October 1941, and his answer was published in Romanian newspapers on 26 October. The dictator justified the deportations, blaming and demonizing the Jews, thus contributing to the existing antisemitic atmosphere. Filderman's petitions were deplored by many Jews of the Old Kingdom, who feared repressions and demanded Filderman's resignation. Argues that Filderman's intervention was not in vain, since the authorities afterward abstained from total deportation of the Jews from Bukovina. The FUCE was disbanded by the authorities in December, not as a punishment for the Jewish leader, but following the German demand.
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