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As you can very well see on TV as well, one of the greatest Romanians in history [Great Romanians, TV show on national television about national heroes] is Antonescu [11]. And during the talks, Mr. [Adrian] Cioroianu [Romanian historian and politician from the new generation] had a fair and unbiased approach, but I am sorry that he didn’t insist more. While showing the suffering of the Jews during Antonescu’s regime, he did not highlight more the suffering of the Romanian people who had 600-700,000 dead, not to mention the wounded. He should have highlighted why Antonescu was deemed a war criminal, not just because the Jewish people had to suffer. 270,000 Jews were killed just because they were Jewish, but the entire Romanian people had to suffer because of this leadership.
I spoke about the pogrom in Iasi because I wanted people to know that something like this could happen and that we, first of all as Jews, would want that something like this would never happen again. I welcomed the ‘Elie Wiesel’ committee on the study of the Holocaust that gave the President a document [Final Report, International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania; chairman: Elie Wiesel; authors: Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu; Iasi, Polirom Publishing House, 2005, 423 p.]. These are efforts that prove one thing: looking at what happened during the War, all the measures that were taken against the Jews came from the state leadership. Today, all the measures that protect the Jews come from the state as well. So, quite the opposite, institutions are established, commissions are created, laws are adopted, laws that provide what the justice system should do in situations that fall within its scope.
I spoke about the pogrom in Iasi because I wanted people to know that something like this could happen and that we, first of all as Jews, would want that something like this would never happen again. I welcomed the ‘Elie Wiesel’ committee on the study of the Holocaust that gave the President a document [Final Report, International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania; chairman: Elie Wiesel; authors: Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu; Iasi, Polirom Publishing House, 2005, 423 p.]. These are efforts that prove one thing: looking at what happened during the War, all the measures that were taken against the Jews came from the state leadership. Today, all the measures that protect the Jews come from the state as well. So, quite the opposite, institutions are established, commissions are created, laws are adopted, laws that provide what the justice system should do in situations that fall within its scope.
Period
Location
Romania
Interview
Iancu Tucarman