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PARTISAN REVIEW
EK: How were you confronted with anti-Semitism in Romania? How
was it possible in a country where official policy, at least after 1946, was
committed to the internationalism of Communist teachings?
NM: It is a tiring subject. I would prefer that non-Jews discuss anti–
Semitism.
My less than amusing "initiation" to Romanian anti-Semitism was
brutal and occurred at an early age. In October] 94
I,
my family, along
with the entire Jewish population of Bukovina, was deported to the
Transnistria camp. When the survivors returned to Romania, the
Antonescu regime had disappeared, the war was over, and racist legis–
lation had been repealed. People had hopes for a new beginning.
With its promise of a multiethnic, egalitarian society, the Communist
regime lured large numbers of Jews into its trap. Since ethnic discrimi–
nation was against the law, anti-Jewish resentment took on more hidden
and encoded forms. Thus, it didn't disappear, but rather became more
subtle, and even found new justification in the hate that many leading
Jewish Stalinists drew upon themselves because they, not unlike their
non-Jewish comrades, were blinded by the supposedly necessary brutal–
ity of their "revolutionary" mission.
Finally, the Party itself began to use and manipulate anti-Semitism as
a popular form of diversion. It eliminated Jews from its leadership and
instead of revolutionary internationalism adopted, as it were, a
nationalist-socialist policy with picturesque, Byzantine coloring. The
Jewish Communists took this sudden break with past ideals and the
common struggle as an affront, since now they no longer shared the
privileges of the new society. I felt rather relieved that they'd been
divested of their complicity in the country's deteriorating situation.
I even thought anti-Semitism would dissipate on its own, since Jews
and non-Jews alike were suffering under the same idiotic dictatorship.
To this day, it hasn't happened. Even now, whenever, for instance, Ana
Pauker is mentioned, we are still reminded that her original name was
Hanna Rabinsohn. As if "Pauker" would sound like "Patrascanu,"
"Gheorghiu-Dej," "Ceausescu," "I1iescu," and so on.
The Party finally found a solution with threefold benefits: the "dis–
posal," like waste, of Jews through emigration, which brought in foreign
currency and a polished image of Romania. In fact, this wasn't exactly a
new tactic; it had already been used by the "bourgeois" prewar parties.
Anti-Semitism did not disappear in Eastern Europe, nor in the West–
ern world. Romania is no exception.
