The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust: Historiography and Politics in

The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust: Historiography and Politics in Moldova*

Diana DumitruState Pedagogical University of Moldova

Since the collapse of the USSR the historical profession in Moldova has changed to reflect new political circumstances and interests. This revolution profoundly influences writing about World War II, Romania and the Antonescu dictatorship, the experience of Bessarabia in the 1940s, and the destruction of Romania's Jews and Roma. Certain nationalist histo-rians minimize the crimes of the Antonescu regime and its supporters, while the present Communist Party, its supporters, and others stress them. How the study of the Holocaust fares in this politicized atmosphere forms the subject of the present study.

For centuries history- has been a valued ally to politics. Through their writings historians loyal to their monarchs, regimes, and nations have long legitimized power. Today, honest sen-ants of Clio exert great efforts to keep politics and historical research separate, if not always fully successfully. Topics such as wars, colonialism, or nation-building have an obvious inherent potential to serve political agendas, and yet have received a different kind of attention from scholars in recent decades. The profession has revised understandings in an effort to construct a more balanced kind of history.

During the last twenty to thirty years, however, the history of the Holocaust often has been intertwined with politics, functionalized by groups and indhiduals promoting their own agendas. A "convenient, highly symbolic, and easily recognizable event," as Gavriel Rosenfeld once put it, the Holocaust could be made to serve as an instrument for partisan advantage. Rosenfeld has identified five major forms of exploiting the Holocaust: "dejudaizing," "Americanizing," "stealing," "denying," and "normalizing"; he asserts that "despite their differences, each of these trends was informed by a concrete political agenda and served to reduce the Holocaust's Je\\ish character." "In reaction," Rosenfeld argues, "a number of other scholars have "begun to insist upon the event's uniqueness.""

Western scholarship, with a solid literature on the Holocaust and a large number of students, has confronted the challenges of politicization through scholarly debate and public engagement. Meanwhile, scholars in the former Soviet

doi:10.1093/hgs/dcn002Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 49-73 49

Bloc, who entered the discourse relatively recently and \\ith a significant legacy of "dejudaization" of the subject, have sometimes been more given to appropriations and distortions, or at least have been more easily swayed by them. Moldova exemplifies this tendency, even as it also has seen a distinctive line of Holocaust research in the post-Soviet area.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly created succes-sor states faced a multitude of problems, including economic chaos, ethnic conflict, and the collapse of social structures. Throughout the first decade of Moldova's independence, two issues were exploited by politicians in order to gain and to stay-in power: 1} ideology, mainly nationalistic; and 2) the economy, which was ever-worsening. Initially, as language, history, and identity were passionately debated, historians found their craft occupying a central place. The people of Moldova soon realised, however, that "history and language do not feed you," and the light in which historians basked began to fade.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Moldova's people appeared to be much more interested in economics than in ideology. Tired of poverty, unem-ployment, and hopelessness, in February 2001 the population protested the unsuc-cessful economic policies of the anticommunist parties that had been in power for over a decade by voting overwhelmingly for the (reformed) Communist Party of Moldova (CPM).3 Of course, the party that was swept into office differed greatly from the Communist Party of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, the latter having been an arm of the Communist Party- of the Soviet Union. However, it was the old nomenklatura who rebuilt the party in 1994, The old elite were joined by groups who either felt nostalgic for Soviet times, regretted the loss of privileges, or simply pined for what had been a more secure and simple life: the Slavic minorities, pensioners, and other disappointed citizens.

Between 1994 and 2001 the CPM had been in opposition, vocally proposing its own solutions to the country's problems—essentially a program of carefully con-trolled market economics, a strong welfare state, bilingualism (Romanian and Russian), and on the Transnistrian conflict an approach that relied on a conciliaton approach to Russia. Many Moldovans had to overcome a dislike of ideological elements in the CPM's platform before they could give it a second chance. One should note that the party no longer promoted a genuinely communist ideology, although some members continued to hold communist ideals. The voters' decision in 2001 surprised politicians who had assumed that the mere word "communist" would deter voters. The verdict signaled a clear change in the electoral behavior of both the political class and the broader population: in contrast to the first three elections, now economics rather than ideology- would be key.

Still, the rupture with ideology was not absolute. Debates over history and language have remained among the few that can still mobilize Moldovan society and put the government under pressure.4 Conflicting interests struggle to shape

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Moldova's still inchoate identity. Moldovans still debate whether their country should consider itself part of the West, and, more specifically, whether they them -selves should identify as Romanians, "Romanian-Moldovans," or simply Moldovans. Historians play a significant role in the discussion, and the outcome has serious political ramifications.

Historians educated under the Soviet system worked in an excessively politi -cized profession whose primary purpose was to legitimate Soviet ideology and to foster Soviet identity. Many believed in this work and, correspondingly, their responsibility to the "masses." Unlike their Western counterparts, their model was not that of a neutral and detached analyst, but that of an active builder ol con -sciousness. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the majority of historians abandoned much of the content of their work, but few of these reconsidered their "mission" in society. As a result many Moldovan historians simply chose to serve a new "master": nationalism.

Intoxicated with a feeling of self-importance and authority, some Moldovan historians have become involved in political life, trying to enhance one or another competing program. Some have even opted to trade their academic careers for political ones, winning seats in Parliament or even cabinet positions in the govern-ment. More than 10 percent of parliamentarians elected in 2005 are trained historians.0

It is not surprising that politicization of history has led to the selection of some topics for research and the avoidance or partial avoidance of others. Among the latter topics is the Holocaust.

This article analyzes recent historical writings that have touched on the Holocaust and shows where Moldovan historiography stands today vis-a-vis the Holocaust in Moldova; what the positions of the state administration and society are regarding this issue; and what has marginalized the Holocaust as compared to other historical subjects. The analysis here is restricted to the period between 2000 and 2006.

The reasons for excluding Moldova's first post-independence decade are twofold. First, the years 2000-2006 coincide with more visible Holocaust subject-related activity in Moldovan society. Moreover during these years the issue of the Holocaust underwent an obvious politicization. If before it was a minor theme of little interest to historians, the CPM's return to power turned the Holocaust into a tool with which one could identify a person's loyalty either to the new government or to the opposition. Second, two published articles, one by Vladimir Solonari and one by Igor Ca§u, have surveyed 1990s historiography of the Holocaust in Moldova/' Cas,u's article is the more recent, but he does not cover historical works published after 2002. Nor does he examine the issue of the Holocaust through the prism of opposition between historians and the government—the purpose of the present research.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 51

Ca§u, nevertheless, also sensed a politicizatkm of the issue during the first half of 2002. In the conclusion of his article, he mentions that "the Jewish problem and antisemitism" had become noticeable in political rivalries between the government and the opposition in Chis,inau.' Since the publication of his article, new research has appeared in Moldova, including the first comprehensive book on the Holocaust in Bessarabia and Transnistria. In addition, tensions regarding the subject have increased dramatically in the Moldovan academic community, erupt-ing in various forms. All of this will be explored below.

The destruction of the Jews was one of many themes deliberately ignored by Soviet historiography. The Soviet Union, the state with the second-largest prewar Jewish population and one that witnessed the annihilation on its territory of more than one-fourth of all Jews killed in the Holocaust, decided not to recognize the Holocaust as a special phenomenon. Instead the regime treated it as part of the broader killing of the "Soviet civilian population" (grazhdanskoe naselenie) or "peaceful population" (mirnoe naselenie) of various national backgrounds.

Zvi Gitelman has argued that apart from the simplistic explanation that this treatment of the Holocaust was the consequence of antisemitism, an important cause may be the shift in the Soviet "political formula" after the war. Gitelman suggests that victory in this long and horrendous struggle offered a new source of legitimacy for the Soviet regime, allowing it to move on from the previous self-legitimization based on the Revolution. ~ In this sense, a narrative of all-Soviet citizens' victimhood and common struggle against fascism was more useful than parallel ethnic narratives. The government feared that recognition of the unique-ness of the fate of Soviet Jews would diminish this all-Union narrative. Another significant point made by Gitelman is that knowledge of the Holocaust would raise Jewish consciousness and retard Jews' assimilation into Homo soviet icus (Jews having been one of the groups most eager to assimilate during the prewar period). ' Finally, and even more perilously, Gitelman pointed out that the Holocaust would raise "the troublesome question of what the non-Jews were doing during the mass murder of Jews."1"

As a result, very few Soviet authors wrote about Nazi "Jewish policy" or its deadly outcome for the Soviet Jewish population.1'5 Consequently the new gene-ration grew up with very little awareness of the Jewish catastrophe. It was only during perestroika that the Holocaust gained attention among historians and other scholars.

Moldova is one of the territories, along with Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic republics, 1 where the Jewish population suffered most during the occupation. Before the war Jews accounted for 7.2 percent (204,858 people1') of Bessarabia's population. ' In Chi§inau, the capital of Moldova, the percentage of Jews in 1930 reached 36.0519 of a total population of 117,016.20 Today Moldova is home to about 35,000-40,000 Jews21; and in Chi§inau Jews account for less than 2 percent

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of the estimated 717,000 population." About half of the Jewish population in Moldova perished as a result of the antisemitic policies of the Romanian adminis -tration.2'3 The Holocaust should have made a deep mark on Moldovan society, and presumably once the era of censorship ended the topic should have attracted the attention of scholars in various disciplines. However, very little has been undertaken.

As in other former Soviet republics, after independence many historians in Moldova started to research subjects that could help to legitimize their republic's newly achieved sovereignty and consolidate their population's national identity. Topics with intense national resonance, typically either political injustice or the sufferings caused by Moldova's powerful neighbors, were raised publicly. Examples of the latter would include the annexations of Bessarabia (first by the Russian Empire in 1812 and again by USSR after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1940); the famine of 1946-47; the Stalinist deportations; and forced collectivization."

Romanian writings have had a considerable impact on historians in Moldova since its independence. The majority of Moldovan historians, who can be identified as "pro-Romanian""'5 and anti-communist/anti-Soviet/anti-Russian, have accepted and reiterated ideas and directions initially pioneered by their Romanian col -leagues. It should be noted that in Moldova the debate over the Holocaust never reached the intensity of that in neighboring Romania, where during the 1990s strong contradictory voices were heard from the academic world, the media, public offices, and the general public. Nor did the fierceness of the debate impede Romanian authors from undertaking serious research or publishing testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.2fi This debate also brought the study of the Holocaust into the Romanian educational curriculum."' Rut Moldovan historiogra-phy, which followed many of the roads paved by its Romanian counterpart, did not pursue this particular one, instead devoting extremely limited attention to the problem.

During the 1990s, it was Jewish organizations that primarily supported the publication of the few hooks that dealt with the Holocaust. 28 None of these publi-cations garnered much attention among Moldovan historians however, nor did they provoke much popular interest. The sole exception was an article by Izeaslav Levit on the Chiginau ghetto."'

The; relative silence was broken in 1997 when the leading historian Anatol Petrencu'50 published a book on Bessarabia during World War II. 1 ] In the chapter entitled "The Dynamic of the Increase and Decrease of the Population of Bessarabia," Petrencu wrote about the region's Jewish population. Despite the fact that in the introduction Petrencu dissociates himself from xenophobic antisemi-tism, his text was seen by many as apologetic for the Aiitonescu regime, which in fact had organized the destruction of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and


Transnistria. The text implies that the fate of the Jews was in some way a deserved punishment for their previous behavior. This left him exposed to much criticism, provoking sharp comments both inside and outside Moldova.

Man}' Jewish organizations identified Pctrencu as antisemitic and his work as revisionist. They were outraged by the fact that the Department of History at the State University of Moldova discussed and recommended such a work for publi-cation, and that the Moldovan branch of the Soros foundation had subsidized it. One of the harshest attacks came in 1999 from Levit (by then living in the United States), who expressed his anger in one of Moldova's newspapers, characterizing Petrencu's work as "support for the Romanian-fascist occupiers."'32 The Moldovan historical rommunih, however- automatically sided with Pctrcncu: Lcvil had had a long and successful career under the Soviet regime, while Petrencu was one of the most respected post-independence historians—he had been elected president of the Association of Historians of Moldova. '

Authoritative works about the destruction of Moldovan Jewry were published, but outside Moldova. Pathbreaking studies by Jean Ancel,34 Radu Ioanid,3D and others revealed the shocking ordeal suffered by Jews in ghettos, in transit, and in the concentration camps of Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Transnistria. These works also document the full responsibility of the Romanian state under the Antonescu regime.

In summer 2003 top Romanian officials made Holocaust-denying state -ments, ' which produced an outcry among Western observers. The lack of broad knowledge in Romania, and the continued existence of antisemitism, further motivated this Western reaction and in particular the initiative that led to a decisive step in October 22, 2003, when, under the auspices of the Romanian Presidency, an International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania was created. It was chaired by 1986 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and included Romanian, Israeli, and American researchers. Among its deputy chairpersons were Dr. Radii loanid, the director of the International Archival Programs Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Dr. Tuvia Friling, State Archivist of Israel. General Mihail lonescu was the vice-president, and the coordinator of the secretariat of the commission was Dr. loan Scurtu, State Counselor of the Presidency of Romania. At the end of its activity, in November 2004, the commis-sion presented a complete report that left no room for doubt that the Holocaust in Bessarabia arid Transnistria is a historical fact and that the Romanian adminis -tration engineered it. '

In Moldova during the same period, the subject of the Holocaust came under contradictor)' influences by state officials and historians. We will first look at the former, returning to the latter below. The Communist government has shown more interest in and has handled with more care the Holocaust issue than did previous governments, in accordance with its pro-ethnic minority policy and its

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appreciation of some aspects of Soviet history—in particular the heroism and victimization of "the Soviet people" during World War II.

In addition, in 2003 Moldova's Communist government made a stunning turn westward. Frustrated by the unsuccessful negotiations with Russian and Transnistrian authorities, the relationship between Moldova's President Vladimir Voronin and Russia's President Vladimir Putin deteriorated rapidly. The Moldovan Communist leadership publicly abandoned its traditional gravitation toward Russia ("the East") and instead sought integration into the European Union. As a conse -quence, the Moldovan government displayed more interest in cooperating with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United States, and also signed an "Action Plan for Moldova" with the EU.

These actions prompted the Moldovan Communist leadership to become more circumspect in dealing with "Western" values and "common truths," includ -ing that of the Holocaust. In some situations, as will be shown below, state officials understood that the latter subject could be used publicly as a weapon in their struggle with troublemaking historians over the issue of Moldovan identity.

After coming to power, the Communist government guaranteed education for Jews in Yiddish and Hebrew.39 The following year saw the passage of a resol-ution prohibiting discrimination on ethnic or linguistic bases. President Voronin condemned antisemitism on various occasions. The judicial branch also started to pay more attention to expressions of antisemitism. In 2003 a citizen from Dubasari asserted at a public meeting that non-Jewish pensioners had not received their pensions (indeed they had riot been paid for several months) because "Jews and the Jewish, authorities have pocketed everything and stolen from old people." After protests from the Jewish community, the regional prosecutor opened a case against the man, whose actions were adjudged an attempt to incite ethnic hatred and who was consequently required to apologize to the Jewish community.

The authorities also started to pay much more attention to Holocaust memo-rialization. With the contributions of Jewish organizations, input from associations of Holocaust survivors, and the help of local administrations, monuments were erected to Holocaust victims in Chis,inau, Bender, Orhei, Bal|;i, Soroca, Tiraspol, Edinet, Ribnija, and elsewhere. In April 2003 the government organized an official commemoration of the 1903 pogrom, and the Moldovan president personally took part in the inauguration of a monument to the victims.41 The Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Moldova and the Institute of Interethnic Research of the Academy of Sciences jointly organized an international conference to commemorate the pogrom, and in this setting the Holocaust was also men-tioned.42 One of the presenters, Anatoly Podolsky (Ukraine), analyzed the develop-ment of Holocaust research and teaching in post-Soviet countries, with an emphasis on their different achievements. ' He highlighted remarkable successes in teaching the Holocaust in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, where optional

Historiography and Politics in Moldova

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courses on the history of the Holocaust had been developed and recommended bv these states for their school systems. With regard to Moldova, he concluded that "they have only begun to touch the teaching of this topic."

More auspicious still was Voronin's decision to transmit copies of all files related to the Holocaust from the domestic Security Service (SIS) to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC. In December 2003 copies of sixty-one files of documents from investigations and pro-secutions of crimes committed mostly against Jews during World War II were con-veyed.4'0 Also significant was President Voronin's \isit to Yad Vashem. the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel in November 2004. During this visit Voronin submitted copies of the same sixty-one files to its Archives Division.

Moldova's Jewish community has publicly applauded the Communist govern-ment's policy. During a 2004 meeting with President Voronin, leaders and members of the Jewish communities and organizations declared that "the Jews from Moldova understand and fully support your energetic actions, intended to recover the integrity of the Moldovan state ... which has no place for the manifes -tation of such condemnable tendencies as separatism, aggressive nationalism, anti-semitism, and xenophobia"; this enlightened perspective was the "only just policy in . . . a multiethnic society."4'

Responding to the administration's friendlier attitude. Jewish organizations intensified their acthity of promoting knowledge about the Holocaust. The Association of the Jewish Communities and Organizations from the Republic of Moldova and ..the Jewish Congress of Moldova next sought to introduce study of the Holocaust into the country's school program. In 2003 the two associations organized for middle-school history teachers a series of seminars on the subject of the genocides of Jews and Romanies during World War II. Moldova's Ministry of Education supported these events and recommended to the schools the Jewish Congress's brochure "The Holocaust: Informative Materials for History Teachers."

The majority of Moldovan historians, on the other hand, refused to endorse their administration's new interest in Jewish affairs and the Holocaust. "Pro-Romanian" historians in Moldova viewed themselves as political adversaries of the Communist Party, and many had pointedly joined political parties that pursued clearly stated anticommunist agendas. l Not even the Communist government's recent re-orientation toward the West and the EU could moderate their antipathy: in Moldova it was common in those quarters to see everything initiated by the communists through a negative lens,49 and Holocaust education was no exception. Moreover, because many of these historians wanted to revive a "natural" sense of Moldovans' belonging to the Romanian ethnos, they did not like the idea of bringing the public's attention to topics that would show the Romanian state and

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government in a negative light. Even without knowing much about the Holocaust in their own country, they understood that further research in this area would reveal the inhuman face of the Romanian regime during World War II.

Communist politicians understood clearly the historians' refusal to cooperate. These politicians worried about the impact that history and historians could have on the national identity of Moldovan citizens. Jealous of the affection—encouraged by historians—that many Moldovans felt toward Romania, government officials worried about the idea expressed by Romania that Moldova was merely another "Romanian state."0 Desirous of securing citizens' clear and undisputable loyalty to Moldova, the Communist government attempted in various ways to impede any-thing it believed could contribute to the tendency of some Moldovans to identify with Romania. The government's decisions to remove a "History of the Romanians" course from the school curriculum, and to introduce mandatory Russian language study, are key measures toward that objective. The Holocaust issue became similarly useful to the Voronin administration, especially before European audiences. In October 2003 the permanent representative of Moldova at the Council of Europe, Alexei Tulbure, declared that "our [Moldovan] xenophobes and antisemites have been inspired by [Romanian textbooks].'" 0 Soon thereafter, the chairman of the Moldovan Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Andrei Negu£a, accused authors of Romanian history textbooks of attempting to "rehabili -tate crimes" committed during World War II and the Holocaust, and of contributing "to the perpetuation of the nationalistic, antisemitie, and xenophobic spirit in Romanian society, a spirit which flagrantly contradicts the values of modern Europe."0' The Council of Ministers of the European Union dismissed Tulbure's allegation, however, and in an official reply claimed that since 2001 the Romanian government had been modernizing history textbooks in accordance with the Committee's recommendations. The Committee further stated that in Romanianschools "since 1999 the issue of the Holocaust has been studied____in the seventhand eighth grades in the context of World War II as wTelI as in the twelfth grade."0'

Vladimir Solonari04 was among the first to assess the research on the Holocaust conducted in Moldova during the first decade following independence. He was also among the first Moldovan scholars to write about the politicization of history in general and of the Holocaust in particular. In 2002, after a careful and detailed investigation, Solonari concluded that Moldovan historians were slowly moving away from silence and toward rationalization of the Holocaust.00 Solonari's conclusions, which were based on a survey of research publications and school text-books, are sobering: "The Holocaust of Ressarabian and Transnistrian Jews is part of the Moldovan national history that contemporary Moldovan society has been unable to come to terms with, because the story does not fit either of the two master narratives within which Moldovan historians have been working:


Communist and nationalist. Both Communists and nationalists had reasons to subvert or distort evidence on the Holocaust in the provinces in question."0

A year later Igor Ca§u (one of the younger historians) approached the same topic. But although both authors set out to review Moldovan historiography on the Holocaust, their conclusions were quite different. Cas.u does not hold the Moldovan historical profession responsible for the lack of interest it manifested in the Holocaust after 1991. The author agrees that the problem of the Holocaust is especially "sensitive" owing to its relatively recent occurrence, the culpability of the perpetrators, and the implicit answerability of their heirs; however, he does not imply that Moldovan historians avoided the subject for political or ideological reasons. Instead he claims that, during the first ten years of post-Soviet historiogra-phy, Moldovan historians were "preoccupied with recovering the pages considered 'taboo' by the Soviet regime."0

It is important to mention Casu's placement of the Holocaust in Moldova in the category of "history of ethnic minorities," the paradigm through which he explains the lack of Holocaust studies. Casu contends that "the research dedicated to the history of ethnic and national minorities played only a marginal role in this period"'5 in Moldova. Although this categorization may be technically correct, it is built on the false assumption that Jewish history in Bessarabia is just one among other ethnic histories: Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gagauz, or Germans. But no other ethnic minority in Moldova faced potential annihilation as did the Jews during World War II. Besides, Ca§u himself is fully conscious of the complexity and uniqueness of the Holocaust as a social phenomenon, and he regards the Holocaust "not only as a simple problem of the recreation of the past, but as a fundamental problem of knowledge."09 It is difficult to believe that Moldovan historians were unaware of the universally recognized importance of this subject, and simply mispereeived it as only one of myriad episodes in the history of ethnic minorities in Moldova.

In 2004 a book exploring the Holocaust was published in Chisinau. The author, Pavel Moraru, a Moldovan historian who received his doctorate in 2001 from the University of Bucharest, published his dissertation as the first volume of a monograph entitled Bukovina under the Antonescu Regime (1941-1944).™ Bukovina is a historical region situated on the northern border of the Republic of Moldova. It has had a troubled political history, important for our study because during World War II it, along with Bessarabia and Transnistria, was under Romanian administration and experienced the same policy of Jewish deportation (11 percent of its population was Jewish) and "territorial cleansing." The table of contents of volume one, which is subtitled "Administration, Economy, Society," does not suggest that the Holocaust is one of the themes. In his discussion of the Romanian administration in the region, indeed, Moraru includes a section entitled "Population and the Demographic Evolution in Bukovina," in which the readers

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find the sub-section "Jews," among all other nationalities of the region (Romanians, Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Hungarians, and so on). fi2 By placing the problem of the Jewish catastrophe in this specific section, Morarn echoes Petrencu's section titled "Dynamic of the Increase and Decrease of the Population of Bessarabia" in his work on Bessarabia during WWII—an illustration of the tendency in Moldovan historiography to avoid analyzing directly the destruction of the Jews by the Antonescu regime and to treat it instead as a part of a "demographic question."

From the very first pages one notes Moraru's apparent predisposition to treat favorably authors who view Antonescu's period through a positive lens, and to clas-sify as "Romanophobic" the critical research. In his brief overview of the historio -graphy Moraru mentions the works of" A. Stoenescu, 14 R. loanid,'" M. Carp,66 S. Manuila, and W. Filderman,6' all of whom refer to the "Jewish Question."68 But he avoids any evaluation, despite the fact that he uses information provided by these authors later on. Other clues signal the author's position. For example, Moraru is critical of Eduard Mezincescu, who exposed Antonescu as "the bloody dictator of those times." Moraru's explanation of his mistrust of Mezincescu is explicit: "since 1932 [Mezincescu] was part of the Romanian anti-fascist movement (thus communist and pro-Soviet) [and] therefore this work is entirely subjective and false."'2 His logic is difficult to agree with: antifascist equals communist equals untruthful. Moraru sides naturally with Gheorghe Buzatu, who called Mezincescu's book a "pseudo-narrative about Marshal Ion Antonescu, with false questions regarding the Holocaust.'"'

Explicating Antonescu's policy of "ethnic purification," Moraru presents numerous quotations from official documents offering Antonescu's personal justifi-cations. 'None, in my opinion, are analyzed critically or viewed against other sources. For example, the reader learns only that the rationale of the racial policy (as explained by Antonescu) was to "remove and isolate ail Jews and other nations' aliens, whose mood is uncertain, to labor camps [located] in places where they would not be able to exert their pernicious influence."' 4 In addition, the author states that the "ethnic cleansing" policy "was generated solely by the behavior and aggressiveness of some representatives of minorities (Jews, Ukrainians, etc.), whose behavior provoked hatred not only among the authorities, but also among the population.'"'

While recognizing that in transit camps and "at the beginning" the life of Jews in Transnistria was very difficult, he asserts that their life there was well-organized, and that "many deported Jews succeeded in opening small manufac -tories and small shops in the places where they were located, developing a lively commercial activity.'"'1 An uninformed reader might get the impression from Moraru's account that deportation was "merely" a resettlement, and that life in the region was not too bad. The vast majority of the published documents and research on the topics proves the opposite.


In fact, Transnistria was the place to which approximately 154,000-170,000 Jews" of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and old Romania had to walk hundreds of kilo-meters, mostly during late fall and winter of 1941. They were allowed to take with them only limited belongings, and once they arrived in Transnistria were impri -soned in horrendous conditions (barns, pigsties, woods, open fields) without food, medical assistance, and other necessities. The very few things that the Jews still possessed—clothes, wedding rings, and the like—were the only source of their "intense commercial activity." In November 1943 only 49,927 of those deported remained alive.'9 The rest of the Jews died in Transnistria of hunger, typhus, cold, exhaustion—or were murdered outright by Romanian soldiers and gendarmes. Another 150,000- 180,000 local Ukrainian Jews were killed or died due to the harsh conditions inflicted on them by the newly established authority. 80 To describe this as a "moderate" policy of the Romanian administration, as the author does, is entirely inappropriate.

Elsewhere, Moraru's phrasing is similarly incredible. For example, the exploi-tation of Jews in Romania through forced labor appears as "the Jewish population was assigned to socially useful jobs." Similarly problematic is Moraru's attempt to absolve the Christian population of the moral condemnation expressed by Jewish survivors. The author's opinion is at once oblivious and trenchant: "Regarding this affirmation [that Christians did not help the Jews] it should be mentioned that the association of a significant part of the Jewish population with communist ideals, which worked against Romanian (and Christian) interests, and orders that prohib-ited (the Christians) from hiding or protecting Jews (fear of severe punishments), determined the 'passivity' and impossibility for the Christians to protect the Jews (even more because the population supported government measures that did not call for extermination), which leads us to consider unjust the accusation brought against the Christian population of Romania."8'

In April 2005 Sergiu Nazaria, Dmitrie Danu, Alexandru Moraru, and lurie Zagorcea published their book Kholokost v Moldove (The Holocaust in Moldova).84

This event was immediately followed by an unprecedented scandal: a clash erupted between two of the authors, Nazaria and Moraru.80 After the book had been pub-lished with his name among the four editors, Moraru, a researcher at the National Archives of Moldova, publicly declared that he had not researched, written, or edited any of the book's content. He publicly threatened to sue Nazaria. Moraru stated that the work was "antinational," and that it "contradicts my convictions," and that "despite the fact that several dozen cases of massacres of Jews from Bessarabia and the left bank of the Nistru [Dniester] occurred, from a historical point of view these crimes cannot be qualified as a Holocaust." Moraru con-tended that in Bessarabia people; were not sent to concentration camps based on nationality. ' In a public statement to the media, Moraru announced that the work had been ordered by the Association of Jewish Victims of Fascism of the Republic


of Moldova, and that initially two volumes were supposed to appear, of which only the second, a collection of documents, was to have been compiled by him. Subsequently, the Association abandoned the documentary collection, because, Moraru implied, not all of the documents he had included were appreciated by the sponsors. Moraru refused to put his name on the book, implying that Nazaria had not done the archival work but relied instead on his—Moraru's—research.

Later in 2005, Nazaria republished the same book, this time under his name only and in Romanian. l It is perhaps a positive sign that someone who is not Jewish finally wrote a comprehensive work about the Holocaust in Moldova. This work also puts archival material and survivors' accounts into circulation to document the fate suffered by the Jews in Bessarabia and Transnistria. Nazaria succeeded in demonstrating the intentionality of the Romanian fascist authorities in the Jewish catastrophe.

In general, Moldovan historians received Nazaria's work with great hostility. Many doubted his scholarly independence: under the Communists he had held the post of vice minister of education (2001—2002), in which capacity he had sup-ported the Communist administration's policy mandating Russian language study in the schools and substituting a new course on the "History of Moldova" for the existing "History of the Romanians." Some regarded his blaming of the Romanian administration for the destruction of Moldovan Jews as reflective of a political agenda.

In some ways unprofessional, the book itself has made it difficult for Moldovan historians and other experienced readers to accept Nazaria's claims. In Chapter Two Nazaria criticizes the aforementioned work of Petrencu by employing what some may perceive as personal attacks and mockery. 89 Another difficulty is the author's tendency to cite to larger rather than smaller estimates of the number of victims, without offering documentary sources (he quotes only secondary works). Though he stressed several times the impossibility of knowing the exact number of victims, Na/aria says he is inclined to agree with Ruben Udler's esti -mate'° of a maximum of 550,000-560,000 Jews in the territoiy encompassing Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria.91 The numbers offered by professional scholars vary from 108,000 (Dinu C. Giurescu)92 to 250,000 (Radii loanid)93 to 410,000 (Jean Ancel); the range offered by the International Commission on the Romanian Holocaust is between 280,000 and 380,000.95

Perhaps most disappointing, the book did not elicit an open, objective discus-sion of the Romanian Holocaust. Instead it became a signal for a more vocal and intransigent expression of Holocaust denial by Moldovan historians. The Association of the Historians of Moldova decided to host a symposium entitled "Ethnic Groups in the History of Romania: A Case Study of the Jews during World War II." Historians, representatives of the Jewish community, journalists, ordinary citizens, and others interested in the topic gathered on June 3, 2005, in Chisinau;


Nazaria did not attend. The spirited debate at the symposium evolved in a predictable manner: The Jewish survivors were the only ones who insisted that genocide had taken place in Transnistria, and they argued on the basis of having seen it "with their own eyes." The majority of the historians present refused to accept their assertion, insisting that "the historical truth cannot simply be falsified through personal impressions." Admittedly these historians did not deny that the Jews had been persecuted at all, but they opposed using the term "Holocaust." They argue that the Holocaust was the Nazi state's destruction of Jews in gas chambers, and that the repression of the Jews in Bessarabia did not result from a racial policy but from sociopolitical revenge incited by the Jews' collaboration with "the Bolsheviks." Many specialists will interpret these arguments as, at a minimum, downplaying of the Holocaust in Moldova and, at worst, an exercise in Holocaust denial.

The reality is that the majority of Moldovan historians place themselves in the nationalist camp and adopt an anti-Russian/anti-Soviet position. They take pride in not following the lead of the Communist government or its supporters in any matter. They believe that their task is to advocate the affinity of Moldovan society with the Romanian nation, culture, and history, while opposing Russophile currents. Historical writing that presents the Romanian state and its administrators in an unflattering light is considered damaging to this cause. The symposium illus-trated Moldovan historians' tendency to discuss the fate of Jews during World War II only within the confines of contemporary politics. Moreover, the gathering demonstrated that historians such as Na/aria who expose the culpability' of the Romanian regime will be castigated by the community for "playing the game of the Communists."

So strong was that aversion that, in spite of the post-independence propensity for following Romanian historiography (which has made considerable progress in Holocaust studies), Moldovan historians persistently refused to accept the findings of their Romanian colleagues, arguing that Romanian historians did not act out of conviction but were pressured by the international community (especially the EU) to accept the Romanian state's responsibility in the Holocaust.99 In some cases the Moldovan historians are encouraged by specific "authoritative" figures inside Romania or abroad. One example is Paul Goma, a writer and dissident who could not be silenced by the Ceausescu regime. Goma recently published in Romania libera an essay entitled "To Be Bessarabian," 10 which praised the position taken by historians in Chisinau in response to Nazaria's book. Goma asked pointedly when the Romanians will follow the example of the Bessarabians, or whether they prefer to "enter the European Union—the same way they entered NATO ... pulled and pushed by the Americans and the Israelis." His conclusion is harsh: "the Romanians still have a. long way to go before they will be able to stand on their own two feet."1

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Goma also supported the anti-Holocaust voices in a book he published in Chisinau, the subject of which is the violence committed by the non-Romanian populations against the Romanian army as it was withdrawing in 1940. 102 He stresses the hostility of the Jews in particular and maintains that their actions were the real motive for the ferocity of the Romanian troops toward the Jews after they reentered Bessarabia in 1941. This book could have a significant influence on its readers, especially when one takes into account the paucity of Holocaust literature in Moldova.

Another example is Ion Coja, a professor at the University of Bucharest, considered by many to be an extreme revisionist. Coja came to the symposium in Chisinau and later gave an interview to the capital's weekly Jurnal de Chisinau. Answering a question about the new Moldovan history textbooks that provided information regarding the Romanian Holocaust, Coja argued that it was a mistake to include a "chapter" on the subject. He argued that the topic was controversial , and that "youngsters should find in textbooks only things that are certain, that will be with them for their entire lives." He then launched into a denunciation of the use of the term "Romanian Holocaust," maintaining that in fact the Jews on Romanian territory were saved, for which they should be grateful. Regarding Transnistria, he stated that he would not accept the Jews' murder there as truth unless he were shown the remains of all of them.10'

Other authors who oppose the notion of any Holocaust in Moldova have represented the issue as based either on the testimonies of survivors10fi or on anti-Romanian and pro-Soviet rhetoric. Survivors' accounts they represent as emotional, biased sources that cannot replace historical documents. A dozen works published after 1991 by Jewish survivors either abroad or in Moldova were simply ignored by these historians; Nazaria's is the first work to cite survivors' accounts extensively. The discrepancy in political views and identity forms a gulf between many Moldovan historians and Holocaust survivors. The latter see the devil in the Antonescu regime; meanwhile, for most "pro-Romanian" historians Antonescu is a Romanian patriot, an anti-Russian, and an anti-communist who worked fervently for the well-being of his nation. The majority of survivors believe the Red Army was their liberator and the Soviet Union was the state that defeated fascism; the historians perceive the Soviets as occupiers and oppressors. The very use of words shows the split: what for survivors is the "Great Patriotic War" is the "Soviet-German war" for the historians. The frequent use of the term "Romanians" (by the survivors) to describe the fascist administration and its structures troubles the historians, who see it as an assault on the cause of Romanianism.

Irritated by the evolution of political life, historical works, and statements by leaders of the Popular Christian Democratic Party, some Holocaust survivors have reacted angrily in their memoirs. A book by Anatoly Kogan indicts Moldovan society for anti-semitism, harshly criticizes editorials in the weekly newspaper

Historiography ;md Politics in Moldova

63

Literatnra si arta, ' and relentlessly attacks right-wing political figures. In the past, historians would not have bothered to react to these writings but, given the current political environment, some have accused researchers who cite publications such as Kogan's as anti-Romanian or pro-Communist.

One of the most professional and balanced memoirs was written by Rubin Udler and published in Pittsburgh and Chisinau in 2003.109 The highly educated author110 skillfully used his own diaries, published documents, and secondary lit -erature to create a richly detailed picture of his life in the ghettoes of Transnistria. Nazaria relied extensively on this work, and one hopes that Udler's contribution will receive the attention from pundits and general public that it deserves.

The existence of competing categories of victims, so unwelcomed by Soviet historiography, has ironically become a reality today. Moldovans emphasize that they also experienced cataclysms in the twentieth century: Stalinist repressions, World War II, collectivization, the famine of 1946-47. They refuse to accept the "distinctiveness" of the Holocaust or the exclusiveness of Jewish suffering. When common people confront the issue of the Holocaust it is not unusual to hear them ask why older Moldovans do not write about their own cruel destiny, which included expropriation, deportation to Siberia, and famine. Why is it more impor-tant to know about the Jewish Holocaust than about the harsh fate of Moldovans under the Stalinist regime? Moldovan historians agree. Thus they typically treat with great sensitivity and compassion interviews, editorials, and papers commemo-rating Stalinist repressions, but these same historians ignore commemoration of Holocaust victims. For the most part it has been Moldovan officials who have made efforts to memorialize the Holocaust; and it was a January 2006 order from the Ministry of Education that required secondary school teachers to organize activities dedicated to Holocaust remembrance.111 Of course such a competition of victimhoods does not aid the proper location of the Holocaust within the history of Moldova, and unfortunately this circumstance likely will persist for some time. It is difficult to foresee an alternative development unless historians make a conscious decision to stop tailoring their narratives to strategic calculations, It is equally important to educate the new generation in the spirit of general human values and not of ethnocentrism.

One more factor is intertwined in the aforementioned competition of victim-hoods: the peculiarities of the status during World War II of what is now Moldova, which enables contemporary Moldovans to disengage from the issue altogether. At that time Moldova had never existed as a separate state or nation. Moldova was created as a territorial unit for the first time only in 1812, when it was carved from the Principality of Moldavia by the Russian Empire. Until 1991 the territory had belonged to other polities: Russia (1812-1918), Romania (1918-40, 1941-44), and the Soviet Union (1940-41, 1944-91). Moldova was not an occupied state (as were France, Greece, or Belgium); rather, it was retaken in the summer of 1941 by

64 Holocaust and Genocide Stitches

Romania after having been absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1940 under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Accordingly, today Moldovans do not criticize themselves or each other, as do people in other formerly occupied nations, for col -laborationism (because the Romanians were not considered occupiers); and vet neither do Moldovans feel responsible for Romanian policies during World War II, for they were not really participants in Romania's government. It is worth mention -ing in this regard that nearly all published work on the Romanian Holocaust focuses predominantly on the measures of Romanian administrators, soldiers, and police, while almost entirely avoiding the question of the local population's behav -ior. This enables Moldovans to distance themselves from uncomfortable questions by creating a model: "we," the locals, who were not responsible for what happened; and "they," the Romanian administrators sent to implement policy. It would there -fore be important to study the role of the local Bessarabian and Transnistrian populations during the Holocaust, as this could help clarify the choices that indi -viduals faced. Undoubtedly this could be a ticklish enterprise, as it implies ques -tions of responsibility. However, the light shed could help the Moldovan public to get past its indifferent view of the Holocaust, to cease viewing events as exclusively of Romanian causation, and to accept this awful crime as a part of Moldovan history.

In all fairness, the inaccessibility of proper historical sources has helped bias research by Moldovan historians. Most of the documents ended the war in Romanian or Soviet archives; today limited funding for research makes it extremely difficult for Moldovan historians to spend extensive time doing archival research in Bucharest, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, other regional archival sites, or, for that matter, in Washington or Jerusalem.

Despite all of the factors mentioned above, a lack of will remains the main impediment. Until historians leave political advocacy behind there will be little progress in Holocaust studies in the Republic of Moldova. It would require a new sense of responsibility on the part of historians and official authorities to keep their duties separate, and so to contribute to building a society where truth will be as valued as power.

0 T, C

An international conference on "The Fate of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria, 1940-1944" was held in Chisinau on October 16, 2006. The event was organized under the auspices of the Ion Creanga State Pedagogical University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Studv of the Holocaust in Romania. Given the previous clashes arid the fact that this was the first academic conference in Moldova on this subject, the public's attention was aroused. The conference had two goals: to imite repu -table experts from abroad (who would not be perceived as associated with political forces inside Moldova) to present their latest research, and to create a scholarly


65

environment in which specialists holding opposing opinions could initiate a con-structive discussion. With regard to its stated goals, the conference was a great success. One journalist who attended noted the stark contrast between the scandal around Nazaria's book and this conference. It was as if "a huge distance" separated the two, "as if not months but years had passed," given the differences and the "seriousness of the investigations presented for discussion."

Radu loanid, Anatol Petrencu, Sergiu Nazaria, Igor Casu, Paul Shapiro, and other highly regarded specialists addressed various aspects of the; Romanian Holocaust. Participants expressed various criticisms and conflicting interpretations, but no one denied the occurrence of the events. The avalanche of documents and photographs presented by conference speakers left no room for that. In fact at some sessions one could sense slight shifts in some participants' positions. For example, in his presentation Anatol Petrencu modified his definition of the Holocaust: "Until recently, the Holocaust meant the physical destruction of the Jews, but now the Holocaust is deciphered as a repressive policy that includes deportations, camps, et cetera." ' And there was another hopeful note the next day when the national newspaper Flux published a front-page article entitled "Holocaust in Bessarabia?"

Notes* This research was made possible through a Rosenzweig Family Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I am grateful to those who contributed to the improve -ment of this article through their expert advice, including especially Radu loanid, Samuel Aroni, Vladimir Solouari, Donald Raleigh, and the arionymonous referees for Holocaust and Genocide St'udies. Of course, all responsibility for errors or omissions is my own.

1. Gavrie! 1). Rosenfeld, "The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent PolemicalTurn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 13, no. i(1999): 34.

2. Ibid., 33, 35.

3. Election Guide. At http://www.electionguide.org/resultsutn/moldovares2.htm (accessedDecember 18, 2005, but website no longer available).

4. Lucan A. Way, "Authoritarian State Building and the Sources of Regime Competitivenessin the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine," World Politics57 (January 2005): 254.

5. See http://www.alegeri2005.mcl/listofdeputies/, accessed February 14, 2008. In addition,two ministers in the Moldovan government are historians: Victor Tvircun (Education, Youth,and Sport), and Artur Cosma (Culture and Tourism). Another historian, Mark Tcaciuc, hasbeen for a number of years the adviser to the president on domestic affairs.

6. Igor Ca§u, "Probfema exterminarii evreilor in timpul celui de-al doilea ra/boi mondial inistoriografia post-sovietica," Reuista de istorie a Moldovei, 2 (2004): 107. The same articleappeared in Romania §i Tramnistria. Problema Holocaiistulni, ed. Viorel Achim arid

fifi Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Constantin lordachi (Bucharest: Curtea veche, 2004), 95-124. Vladimir Solonari, "From Silence to Justfieation? Moldovan Historians on the Holocaust of Bessarabian and Transnistrian Jews," Nationalities Papery 30, no. 3 (2002): 435-57.

7. Ca§u, "Problema exterminarii evreilor," 121.

8. Sergiu Nazaria, Holocaust: File din istorie (pe teritoriitl Moldovei si in regiunile limitrofeale Ucrainei, 1941-1944) (Chisinau: [n. p.1, 2005).

9. Mordeehai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the jeicish Population of the USSR 1939(Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), 5.

10. Zvi Gitelman, ed., Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1997), 14.

11. It should be noted that the term "Holocaust" was almost never used by Soviet historiography. Instead, the terms "extermination," "destruction," or "mass killing," were employed,and referred usually to the "civilian/peacelul population."

12. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy 28.

13. For more details on Jewish integration into Soviet life see Yuri Slezkine, The JewishCentury (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

14. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, 28-29.

15. In 1946 writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vassily Grossman prepared The Black Book of iheDestruction of Soviet Jeicry, but in 1948 the Propaganda Department of the CentralGommittee of the Gommunist Party ot the Soviet Union ordered all copies destroyed beforethe title could be released. The special fate of the Jews was also approached in YevgenyYevtushenko's .poem Bain Yar and Anatoly Rybakov's novel Tiazhehji pesok (Heavy Sand).Anatoly Kuznetsov's classic documentary novel Bahi Yar was more explicit than the officiallypublished works, but circulated underground until perestroika in the 1980s.

16. For a short summary of the Holocaust in these regions see Ronald Headland, TheFallacy of Race and the Shoah (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1998).

17. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jeics of East Central Europe between the World Wars(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 179. The data derive from the 1930Romanian census; see Dr. Sabin Manuila, Directonil recesamantului general al populate!,Recensamantul general al populafiei Romaniei din 29 deceinbrie 1930, vol. V (Bucharest:Editura Institutului Gentral de Statistics, 1940), xciii.

18. Bessarabia is the historical name of the region located between the Prut and Dniester(Nistru) rivers. "Bessarabia" is conventionally used to refer to this area when it was a part ofTsarist Russia (1812-1918) or Romania (1918-40, 1941-44). "Moldova" (with some slightdifferences on the northern, southern, and eastern borders) is largely coterminous with itand it is conventionally used to describe the same territory when, as the Moldavian S.S.R., itwas a (pseudo-) republic of the Soviet Union, and now is the post-Soviet Republic ofMoldova.

19. Ibid, 178.

20. Enciclopedia Romaniei, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Tmprimeria Nationals, 1938), 599.


21. Miriam Weiner, ed., in cooperation with the Ukrainian State Archives and theMoldovan National Archives, Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past andArchival Inventories (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1999), 21.

22. Ariel Scheib, "The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Moldova," available at http://www.jewishvirtnallibrary.org/jsonrce/vjw/inoldova.html (accessed December 18, 2005).

23. In the summer of 1941 Romania took control of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnisfria."Transnistria" is used in its historical context and corresponds to the term the Romanianadministration (1941-44) applied (basically) to the territory between the Dniester (Nistru)and Bug rivers. Today most of this area belongs to Ukraine. One should not confuse it withthe current pro-Russian would-be breakaway "Transdniester Republic," a much morelimited territory along the eastern banks of the Dniester.

24. L. Bulat, ed., Basarabia—-1940 (Chi§inau: Cartea moldoveneasca, 1991); AnatoliiMikhailovich Taranu et al., Golod v Moldoue, 1946-1947. Sboniik dokttmentov (Chis,inau;S.tiintas 1993); Valerii Ivanovich Pasat, Tnidmjc stranitsij isforii Moldovy, 1940-1950(Moscow; Terra, 1994); Elena §is.canu, Basarabia sub repimul bol§evic (1940-1952)(Bucharest: Semne, 199S).

25. The term "pro-Romanian" is used here to characterize identification with Romanianculture, history, and ethnicity, but not necessarily advocacy of political union: only 8 to 10percent of Moldovans support unification.

26. Lya Benjamin, ed., Evreii din Romania intre anii 1940-194-4 (Bucharest: Hasefer,1993); I. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews (New York: GreenwoodPress, 1992); Alexander §afran, Un fortune smuls flacarilor: Comunitatea evreiasca dinRomania, 1939-1947. Memorii (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996).

27. Since 1999 in Romania, in accordance with an order of the Minister of Education, theHolocaust has. been included in the history curriculum for the seventh, eighth, and twelfthgrades.

28. I. Levit, "Poslednii pogrom: Istoria Kishinevskogo getto," in Kishinevskii pogrom 1903gada, ed. I, Levit (Chisinau: Liga, 1993), 121-44.

29. Ibid.

30. Anatol Petrencu is a professor ol history at the State University of Moldova and thechair of the Association of Historians of Moldova.

31. Anatol Petrencu, Basarabia in al doilea razboi mondial, 1940-1944 (Chiginau: Lyceum,1997).

32. I. Levit, "Advokat rumynsko-fashistskikh okkuparitov," Glasul Moldotei, June 8,September 14, September 21, and October 12, 1999.

33. Even Sergiu Nazaria, one of Petrencu's most vocal academic opponents, called him—albeit ironically—"one of the pillars of Bessarabian democratic historiography": "Holokostglazami ochevidtsa," Nezavisimaia Moldova, October 21, 2003. Levit had been one of theeditors of the official Soviet history of Moldova/Moldavia during WWII, Moldavskaia SSR i;Velikoi Otechestvennoi toine Souetskogo Soiuza 1941-1945 g.; Sbornik dokumentoc i materi-alov (Chiginau: Stiinfa, 1975).


34. Jean Ancel, Contribufii la istoria Ronidniei: Problema evreiasca, 1933-1944, vol. 1, pt. 2(Bucharest: Hasefcr, 2001); idem, Transnistria, 1941-1942: The Romanian Mass MurderCampaigns, 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: The Goldstein Goren Diaspora Research Center, 2003).

35. Radu loanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Detraction of Jews and Gypsies underthe Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).

36. For example, the minister of culture, Razvan Teodorescu. stated that "within theborders of Romania between 1940 and 1945 there was no Holocaust." For more on this, seeDuinitru Blaci, "Romania: Someone's Passing the Buck" Transitions Online, July 14, 2003.Around the same time Romania's President Ion Iliescu stated that the Holocaust was not aunique experience of the Jewish people and that other nations, such as the Poles, had suffered the same fate. For more on Holocaust denial in historiography and public discourse inRomania see Comisia international;! pentru studierea Holocaustului in Romania, Raportfinal, ed. Tuvia Filling, Radu loanid, and Mihail E. lonescn (Ias,i: Polirom, 2005), 339-85. Also see Michael Shafir, Intre negare si tricifllizare prin comparable: Negarea Holocaustului in fiirile postcomuniste din Ettropa Centrala §i de Est (Ias.i: Poh'rom, 2002), 104

37. Comisia Internationala pentru studierea Holocaustului in Romania, Raport Final (Ia§i:Polirom, 2005) (International Committee for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, FinalReport).

38. Moldova's President (and leader of its Communist Part)') Vladimir Voronin's father fellmissing in action while fighting in the Red Army during World War II.

39. "Legea Republicii Moldova eu privire la drepturile persoanelor apartinind minoritajilornationale §i la statutul juridic al organizadilor" no. 382-X\', 19 July 2001.

40. The Steven Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitsm and Racism,http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/cis.html (accessed October 16, 2005; websiteno longer available).

41. Ibid.

42. See Y. Kopanskv, Kishinevskii pogrom 1903 goda: Vzgliad cherez stoletie. Materiahjmczhdiinarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Chiginau: Pontos, 2004).

43. Anatoly Podolsky, "The Teaching of the Holocaust in the Post-Soviet Area: Problemsand Perspectives," in Kishinevskii pogrom 1903 goda, 83.

44. Ibid., 138.

45. "Moldovan Security Service Passes Holocaust Documents to U.S. Ambassador,"December 26, 2003. Available at http://www.azi.md/newsPlD=27262 (accessed November26, 2005).

46. "In ajunul sarbatorii evreiegti 'Rosha-Shana,' Pre§edintele Republicii Moldova \ladimirVoronin i-a primit pe reprezentan^ii Asociajiei organizafiilor si comunitafilor e\Teie^ti dinRepublica Moldova §i ai Congresului evreiesc din Moldova, pe care i-a felicitat cu prilejulAniilui nou 5765, conform calendarului evreiasc," September 15, 2004. Available at http://www.prm.md/press.php (accessed December 18, 2005).


47. Council of Europe, Second Report Submitted by Moldova Pursuant to Article 25,Paragraph 1 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, May14, 2004.

48. One recent example is the foundation of "Mi§carea Ac{iunea Europeans" in January2006. From the start the organization declared itself anticommunist and liberal. Its presidentis the historian Anatol Petrencu.

49. A relevant example is historians' concerted resistance to the government's effort toreplace the existing course "History of the Romanians" with the more neutrally titled"Integrated History" of Moldova.

50. See more on the relations between Moldova and Romania in Robert Werner, "TheForeign Policy of the Voronin Administration," Demokratizatsiia 12, no. 4 (Fall 2004); 541-56.

51. George Coman, "Chis.inaul incearca disperat sa provoace Romania," Ziita, October 16.2003.

53. Council of Ministers of the European Union, document CM/AS(2004)Quest435finalE/,January 23,. 2004.

54. Vladimir Solonari is a historian who taught at the State University of Moldova and whowas also a member of the Moldovan Parliament during the 1990s; today he teaches in theHistory Department at the University of Centra! Florida.

55. Solonari, "From Silence to Justification?" 435-57.

56. Ibid., 449.

57. Ca§u, "Problema exterminarii," 107.

58. Ibid., 108.

59. Ibid., 96.

60. Pavel Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu (1941-1944), vol. 1: Administratie.Economic. Societate (Chisinau: Editura Prut International, 2004).

61. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Bukovina was under the OttomanEmpire's suzerainty. In 1774 it became a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in 1918joined Romania. Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in 1940 the USSR absorbed thenorthern part of Bukovina, losing it to Romania in June 1941 but re-absorbing it in 1944Today Northern Bukovina remains a part of Ukraine, Southern Bukovina a part of Romania.

62. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 108-24.

63. One should bear in mind that the majority of works written in Moldova from an"anti-Antonescu" position have been written by Soviet/Russian authors, who often employvirulently anti-Romanian language.

64. Alex Mihai Stoenescu, Annata, maregahtl si evreii: Cazurile Dorohoi, Bucure§ti, Ia§i,Odesa (Bucharest: RAO International, 1998).


65. loanid, The Holocaust in Romania.

66. Matatias Carp, Cartea neagra: Stiferinfele evreilor din Romania. 1940-1944, 3 vols.(Bucharest: Atelierele graficc Socec, 1946-48).

67. Sabin Manuila and Wilhelm Filderman, Popula}ia evreiasca din Romania in timpul celuide-al doilea razboi mondial (lagi: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1994).

68. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 17.

69. Ibid., e.sp. 111-15.

70. Eduard Mezincescu, Marc§ahd Antonescu si catasfrofa Romaniei (Bucharest: Artemis,1993).


72. Ibid., 29nl08.

73. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu., 20.

74. Ibid, 101.

75. Ibid., 102.

76. Ibid., 112-13, 118.

77. Coinisia intenia£ionala, Ra port final, 176.

78. For a detailed description of Jewish life in Transnistria between 1941 and 1944, seeAncel, Transnistria.

79. Comisia internationala, Raport final, 177.

80. Ibid., 178.


82. Ibid.. 120.

83. Ibid., 124.

84. Chis.inau: Institutul de Stat de Reltifii Internationale, 2005.

85. Ina Prisacaru, "Un istoric neaga ca a scris 'IlolocaustuI in Basarabia,'" Timpul, April 29,2005.

86. Alexandru Moraru, "Aparuta recent cartea 'Holocauscul in Basarabia' este un egec,"Flux, April 27; 2005.

87. Ibid.

88. Sergiu Nazaria, Holocaust: File de istorie (pe teritoriul Moldovei si in regiunile limitrofeale Ucminei, 1941-1944) (Chlginau: Institutul de Stat de Relajii Internationale; Asoc:ia^iaevreilor din Moldova—fo§ti di£nu£i in lagarele de coricentrare in ghetonrile fasciste;Universitatea Slavonica din Republica Moldova, 2005).

89. Ibid., 58-62.


90. Godij bedstvii: Vospominaniia uznika getto (Pittsburgh; Chiginau: Rubin Udler, 2005),194.

91. Ibid.. 210.

92. Giurescu provides only tlie number of Romanian Jews who died in Transnistria, ignoringthe number of victims among Ukrainian Jews of Tnmsnistria. See Dinu C. Giurescu,Romania in al doilea razboi mondial (Bucharest: All Educational, 1999), 70-91.

93. Radu loanid, "The Antonescu Era," in The Tragedy of Romanian Jeicnj, ed. RandolphL. Braham (New York: Columbia Universit)' Press, 1994), 164.

94. Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 531.

95. Comisia intern ationala, Raport final, 178.

96. See the account on this meeting in Gheorghe Marinescu, "Afacerea 'Holocaustulevreiesc in Moldova.' Toate episoadele," June 16, 2005. Available at www.mdn.md/liistorical.php?mbr=1243 (accessed November 21, 2005).

97. Ibid.

98. These opinions were expressed by colleagues of the author at the World HistoryDepartment. Interviews at the State Pedagogical University, June 2005.

99. Alexandra Olivotto, "Moldova 151 rescrie istoria terorizata de Romania," Catidianul, July19, 2006.

100. Paul Goina, "A fi basarabean," Romania libera, November 17, 2005.

101. Ibid.

102. Paul Goma, Saptamina rosin 28 iunie-3 iulie 1940 sail Basarabia si evreii (Chiginau:Editura Museum, 2003).

103. Ion Coja is the president of the League for the Struggle against Anti-Romanianism(LIGAR) and president of "Vatra Romaneasca," its Bucharest branch.

104. Ion Goja, "Noi cerem dovezi, iar dovezile nu exista," Jurnal de Chisinau, June 17,2005.

105. Ibid.

106. See Anatoly Kogan, Krasnaia pena: Bessarahskii genotsid (Chis.inau: Tip. A.S.M, 2001);Avigdor Shachan. Burning Ice: The Ghettos of Tramnistria (Boulder, CO: East EuropeanMonographs, 1996); Joil Alpern, No One Awaiting Me: Two Brothers Defy Death during theHolocaust in Romania (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001); Samuel Aroni, Memoriesof the Holocaust: Kishinev (Chi§inau), 1941-1944 (Los Angeles: University of California,Los Angeles, International Studies and Overseas Programs, 1995); Udler, Godij bedstvii.

107. Literatura §i arta is considered by many Moldovan intellectuals one of the most reputable Romanian-language periodicals. It gained enormous respect during the perestroikayears, when it became the voice of criticism of the communist system and the exponent ofpro-Romanian nationalist values.

108. Kogan, Krasuaia pena, esp. chapter "Iskupitel'naia zhertva."


109. Udler, Cody bedstvii.

110. Udler is a doctor of philological sciences and a corresponding member of the Academyof Sciences of Moldova.

111. Author's discussions with high school history teachers at a workshop in March 2006.

112. Miroslava Luldanchikova, '"Sud'ba evreev Bessarabii, Bukoviny i Transnistrii v 1940-1944 gg.'; Reportazh s mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii," Istoki zhizni, no 2 (October 2006}: 10.

113. Ibid., 10-11.

114. Liudmila Moraru, "Holocaust in Bessarabia?" Flux, October 17, 2006.