Tag #122843 - Interview #89853 (Iancu Tucarman)

In general they would not talk about the Holocaust during communism. They talked about it at annual commemorations organized by former Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen [10] within the community. But never publicly! People say that Rabbi Moses Rosen was once asked by a good friend of his that was not Jewish: ‘Why do you need to hold this commemoration every year for the Iasi pogrom, for the Holocaust of the 6 million Jews? Why every year?’ And he answered: ‘Look, I’ll answer this. First of all, we have this custom to annually commemorate the dead, those who have died just because they were Jews. Secondly, we want to keep the attention of the world alive so that nothing like this could happen anywhere. And thirdly, mind my words, if a Holocaust happens, then it will not concern the Jews alone any longer’.

I am a member of the Romanian Jewish Holocaust Survivors’ Association and I have been the chairman of this association for a while. Because I am a survivor, I went to schools to tell about what happened to us. The students asked really interesting questions and proved to be interested to learn and surprised that something like this could happen. Some of them are shocked and wonder how come that something like this could happen. I wonder how come that I am still alive.