TABLE OF CONTENTS. Studii despre Holocaust. Studii despre antisemitism. Istorie şi memorie. Perspective ideologice actuale

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2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Studii despre Holocaust Ana Bărbulescu The Târgu-Jiu Camp: Between History and Memory / 9 Adina Babeş, Alexandru Florian The Beginning of War in the East and Hastening the Approaches Against the Jewish Population / 30 Lya Benjamin Problema evreiască în relaţiile româno-maghiare, / 45 Studii despre antisemitism Yehoshafat Pop A Journey into the Intellectual World of the Romanian Jew Mihail Sebastian and His Testimony during the Fascist Years / 59 George Voicu The Ideal of Emancipation of the Romanian Jews: From the Proclamation of Islaz to the 1866 Constitution / 93 Istorie şi memorie Michael Shafir The Second Nürnberg : Legend vs. Myth in Postcommunism (I) / 109 Alexandru Climescu Post-transitional Injustice. The Acquittal of Holocaust Perpetrators in Post-Communist Romania / 145 Ann M. Hansen The Lessons of Sighet / 158 Perspective ideologice actuale Randolph L. Braham Ungaria: Agresiunea împotriva recunoaşterii istorice a Holocaustului / 181 5

3 Recenzii Cimpoeru (Suciu) Timothy Snyder, Tărâmul morţii. Europa între Hitler şi Stalin / 219 Radu Ciolacu Anna Frank, Jurnalul Annei Frank / 224 Valentin Stoian Rochelle G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp / 226 Eugenia Mihalcea Rózsa Ágnes, Jurnal de lagăr de la Nürnberg / 231 Addenda Raportul de activitate al INSHR EW pe anul 2013 / 235 Index de autori / 247 Errata / 249

4 The Târgu-Jiu Camp: Between History and Memory* ANA BĂRBULESCU Abstract Y.H. Yerushalmi draws attention on the selectiveness that characterizes any mnemonic narrative, emphasizing the fact that certain memories live on, while the rest are winnowed out, repressed, or simply discarded by a process of natural selection which the historian uninvited disturbs and reverse 1. Although I am not a historian, I turn toward the Târgu-Jiu camp from the perspective of these inconsistencies that seem to exist between history and memory, between the way things happened and the way they are remembered. Keywords history, memory, lieu de mémoire, lieu d oubli, Târgu-Jiu camp A survey conducted at the end of 2013 proved that almost 25 years after the fall of communism, 69 percent of the Romanian population still holds Germany responsible for the Holocaust of the Romanian Jews. 2 It seems that the elephant is still in the room and we are making efforts not to acknowledge its presence. How - ever, today, unlike ten years ago, it seems that we are ready to accept that during those years, something unfortunate happened to our Jewish co-citizens. According to the same survey, 75 percent of the respondents accept the reality of the depor - tations to Transnistria, 72 percent accept the reality of the anti-jewish legislation imposed upon the members of the Jewish community, while 66 percent identify the extermination of the Jews as a characteristic of the Romanian Jews Holocaust. * This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of National Education, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE Y.H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1982, p Perceptions and attitudes regarding discrimination, CNCD-IRES, The survey was conducted in October-November 2013 on a national representative sample, maximum sampling error ± 2,65 %. See 9

5 Holocaust Studii şi cercetări The sore spot seems to be responsibility, as when the question is put in an explicit manner: two thirds of those questioned still point, as already said, toward our German allies. Acknowledging this inconsistency that characterizes the public memory of the Holocaust within the Romanian society, I have turned upon the Târgu-Jiu camp, probably the best known camp that was operational during the Antonescu regime. My first question is quite simple: How is the Târgu-Jiu camp remembered in today s Romania? The second will take us to the realm of social constructivism: Is the memory of the Târgu-Jiu camp affected by the mnemonic inconsistency unveiled by the above-mentioned survey? To answer both, I will follow the theoretical model that sees memory as a social construction, looking to identify the discrepancies that could appear between history and memory, between how things happened and how they are remembered. Considering mass-media one of the most important vectors of memory, I will dwell upon the (hi)story of the Târgu-Jiu camp as reconstructed by various media channels operating in today s Romania. The condoned research made me identify 11 items: three TV programs and eight articles. The methodological approach will be a qualitative one. Theoretical Background In what has become a classical approach, Pierre Nora makes his well-known distinction between memory and history. For the French author, the two concepts, far from being synonymous, are in fact in a fundamental opposition. Memory, as Nora understands it, is affective and magical. It is a perpetual and actual phenom - enon, tying communities to an eternal present and shapes itself in gestures, habits, in skills passed down by unspoken traditions 3. Memory, understood as such, is a characteristic of pre-modern societies. Regarding the second concept of his analysis, Nora distinguishes between the lived history and the intellectual operation that renders the former intelligible, in other words between history as a daily routine and the history which became an academic domain. It is this former meaning ascribed by Nora, the one acknowl - edged by the modern societies, where history is nothing more than an intellectual reconstruction of a past which lost all its links with the present. The need for this reconstruction appears only when true memory is dead, when there is no meta - physical connection with the past. Memory makes communities live in a perpetual present, while history is a representation of the past. 4 3 Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, in Representations, No. 26 (Spring 1989), p Ibidem, p

6 The Târgu-Jiu Camp: Between History and Memory Consequently, starting with the modern societies, we moved, according to Nora, from the realm of memory to that of history. This shift in our approach to the past produced what Nora calls lieux de mémoire, sites of memory defined as any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community 5. Museums, archives, cemeteries, festivals, depositions, textbooks, monuments, sanctuaries, treaties are the most common examples used by Nora. These sites of memory, lieux de mémoire, are a product of history, they exist only because there is no spontaneous memory. Modern societies create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills, because such activities no longer occur naturally 6. However, these sites of memory are created by a play of memory and history, the interaction of the two factors resulting from their reciprocal overdetermina - tion 7. What is most interesting is that, with the creation of these sites of memory, and here I go further than Nora does, we return from the realm of history to that of memory and this because we move from the intellectual reconstruction of the past to the symbolic linking with the latter. Nora is right when saying that the most fundamental purpose of any lieu de mémoire is to stop time, to block the work of forgetting, to establish a state of things, to immortalize death, to materialize the immaterial 8. But I would say that, with the creation of these sites of memory, we also regain our organic relation with the past, stepping within the realm of what Halbwachs calls collective memory. 9 A subjective reconstruction that due to its powerful symbolism links, in an organic manner, entire communities to their past. However, as collective memory is a social construction, it is, by its own nature, drastically subjective, the latter being best expressed in its selectiveness. Certain events live on, while the rest are repressed or discarded as false. Further - more, memory is patterned in a highly structured manner that both shapes, and distorts what we actually come to retain from the past 10. Consequently, the mnemonic reconstruction of the past operates following what Zerubavel calls norms of historical focusing that dictate what we should mnemonically attend and what we can largely ignore and thereby forget. 11 In other words, the sites of memory that we 5 Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire, vol. 3, Les France, Paris, Gallimard, 1992, p. 1004, apud Nancy Wood, Vectors of Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe, Oxford & New York, Berg, 1999, p Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, p Ibidem, p Ibidem. 9 See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, The University of Chicago Press, Eviatar Zerubavel, Time-Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past, Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, p Ibidem, p

7 Holocaust Studii şi cercetări should acknowledge are places on which our memory should focus, events that are to become part of the mnemonic heritage of any given community. Here, Nora s distinction between lieux de mémoire, lieux d histoire and lieux d oubli is quite helpful in understanding the role selective memorialization has in the process of reconstructing the past of a given community. For a lieu de mémoire to exist, says Nora, there must be a will to remember, because without the intention to remember, lieux de mémoire would be indistinguishable from lieux d histoire. These sites of memory are those historical sites which, following the norms of historical focusing conceptualized by Zerubavel, were found worth to be remem - bered by a community becoming, in this way, part of the latter s symbolic heritage. Lieux d oubli are those sites that public memory has expressly voided, because of the disturbing affect that their evocation is capable of arousing. 12 Lieu d histoire is the objective category between the two, it is bound to become a lieu de mémoire, when counted among those worth to be remembered or a lieu d oubli, when counted among those that need to be forgotten. Consequently, the way we remember our past is equally conditioned by the lieux d histoire that we allow to become lieux de mémoire and those that we turn into lieux d oubli. More so, as I. Irwin-Zarecka puts it, when an event is selected among those worth to be remembered, it is the meaning, given to the event, rather than the event itself which may create a community of memory. 13 Going further, Irwin-Zarecka explains that, most of the time, when we speak of forgetting, in other words of the transformation of a lieu d histoire into a lieu d oubli, we are in fact speaking of a displacement (or replacement) of one version of the past by another 14. Acknowledging this theoretical approach, I will turn toward the Târgu-Jiu camp, searching to identify the way the history of the latter is reconstructed in the Romanian media. It has become a lieu de mémoire or a lieu d oubli? And if the former were the case, what is actually remembered through its singularization as a lieu de mémoire? Is there a sole version of the past remembered through the Târgu-Jiu camp? And if there are many, which past is the one reinforced by the displacement operated by each of the analyzed mnemonic reconstructions? To answer these questions, I will first dwell upon the Târgu-Jiu camp from a historical perspective, while in the second stage of the research I will turn upon the mnemonic reconstruction proposed in the Romanian mass-media. 12 Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, p Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory, London, Transactions Publishers, 2009, p Ibidem, p

8 The Târgu-Jiu Camp: Between History and Memory In the Realm of History In the fall of 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, several thousand Polish refugees crossed the border into Romania. Some 6,000 of them were accommodated near Târgu-Jiu, a place that would shortly come to be known as the camp for Polish refugees. The refugees were civilian and military alike. After the instauration of the national-legionary state in September 1940, they lost their privileged status as refugees of war of an allied country and started to constantly flee to Western Europe. The camp of the Polish refugees in Târgu-Jiu was formerly closed in February 1941 and re-opened in a new form. From that moment on, on the front gate of the camp one would read: Lagărul de deţinuţi politici Târgu-Jiu ( the Târgu-Jiu camp for political detainees ), an inscription that allows us to reconstruct the definition of the camp as given by the Romanian authorities of the time. Theoretically, this front gate inscription should tell us the story of the camp. But was this the case? The shortest definition available for political detainee is a person imprisoned for his/her political beliefs and/or actions. Consequently, to answer the question and see whether the official definition and the reality of the camp overlapped, I will further revise the categories of those interned in Târgu-Jiu and see if all these categories could be circumscribed to that of political detainees. The main category of the camp detainees was given by the Decree-Law no from 12 November According to this document, all those participating in political activities that contravened the Decree-Law no from September 1940 would be interned in camps or condemned to house arrest. When those falling under that Decree had any other than Romanian nationality, their punishment would be doubled. Within this group, the best-known categories of Târgu-Jiu internees could be found: the communists, legionnaires, and those with democratic affiliations and/or sympathies. According to Decree-Law no. 236 from 5 February 1941, all those spreading false news or who, through their attitude, disturbed the public order were sentenced from six months to one year internment in a camp or to house arrest. For those of non-romanian ethnic origins, the punishment was again doubled. Another category of camp internees was stipulated by Decree-Law no. 552 of 2 March According to the document, all those found guilty of infringing the legal norms stipulated against speculation and sabotage were interned for six 15 Lya Benjamin (ed.), Evreii din România între anii , vol. I, Legislaţia antievreiască, Hasefer Publishing, Bucharest, 1993, doc. 20, p Ibidem, doc. 9, pp Ibidem, doc. 74, pp

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