Dr. Rázvan Pârâianu

Panel 6 The Jewish Minorities

Abstract

On the 21 January 1938 the newly appointed Romanian government issued a decree on citizenship revision regarding mainly the Jewish population. This was one of the central themes expounded by the National Christian Party (NCP) program entitled “Romania to the Romanians.” According to the National Christian Party leaders, the Romanian Jewish population had dramatically increased after the First World War – partially due to the state’s acquisition of new territories such as Transylvania, Banat, Maramureş, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, partially as the result of a significant Jewish emigration from Galicia. According to these NCP leaders, the Jews were understood as being excluded from the minority treaty the Romanian state signed with the Allied Powers in 1919 as well as other international treaties. Therefore, they could be deprived of their citizen rights, and eventually even be forced to leave the country. This was one of the first measures in a series of anti-Semitic laws and decrees to be legislated in the following years.

This paper sets out to analyse the anti-Jewish laws enacted by the National Christian Party that, although it was in power for a short period of time, was Romania’s first extreme right government. It has frequently been asserted that the NCP was a prelude to the “royal dictatorship” established by the king Carol II shortly thereafter, that the anti-Jewish laws were issued under pressure from Germany, or that A. C. Cuza – the NCP’s honorary president and a prominent anti-Semitic political leader – had inspired the policy. Most of these interpretations though aim to absolve Octavian Goga, the acting president of NCP, from the responsibility for these measures, preferring to highlight his contributions to the classics of Romanian literature instead. However, this paper will present the main elements of his political program “Romania to the Romanians”, from their first public release in 1933, before the union of Goga’s National Agrarian Party with Cuza’s League of National Christian Defense.

Accordingly, this paper attempts to recreate the backdrop for these anti-Semitic laws by challenging the claim they were merely a circumstantial or accidental episode in Goga’s public career, a mere dérapage in his noble struggle for the national idea. This year, the Romanians commemorate the 70th anniversary of Octavian Goga’s death while, at the same time, 70 years have passed since the first Romanian anti-Semitic laws were issued. It poses a moment of reflection when the meaning of this episode shall go beyond a mere contextual interpretation and reach a much more substantial meaning.