History of the Jews in Romania
The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were a target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society from the late-19th century debate over the "Jewish Question" and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out in the lands of Romania as part of the Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.
Not to be confused with Romaniote Jews or Italian Jews.
During the reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579), the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled.[5] The authorities decided in 1650 and 1741 that Jews had to wear clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity.[6] The first blood libel in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made in 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamț were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes.[7] An anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s.[8]
During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774, the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions. In the 1860s, there was another riot motivated by blood libel accusations.[9]
Antisemitism was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Brătianu. During his first years in office (1875) Brătianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878. By 1900 there were 250,000 Romanian Jews: 3.3% of the population, 14.6% of the city dwellers, 32% of the Moldavian urban population and 42% of Iași.[10]
Between the establishment of the National Legionary State (September 1940) and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Romanian fascist movement known as the Iron Guard began a massive antisemitic campaign, torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops (see Dorohoi Pogrom), culminating in the failed coup accompanied by a pogrom in Bucharest, in which 125 Jews were killed.[11] Military dictator Ion Antonescu eventually stopped the violence and chaos created by the Iron Guard by brutally suppressing the rebellion, but continued the policy of oppression and massacre of Jews, and, to a lesser extent, of Roma. After Romania entered the war at the start of Operation Barbarossa, atrocities against Jews became common, starting with the Iași pogrom. According to the Wiesel Commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in Romania and the occupied Soviet territories under Romanian control, among them the Transnistria Governorate. An additional 135,000 Jews living under Hungarian control in Northern Transylvania also were murdered in the Holocaust, as did some 5,000 Romanian Jews in other countries.[12][13][14]
On the current territory of Romania, between 290,000 and 360,000 Romanian Jews survived World War II (355,972 persons, according to statistics from the end of the war).[15] During the communist regime in Romania, there was a mass emigration to Israel, and in 1987, only 23,000 Jews lived in Romania.
Today, the majority of Romanian Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Romania continues to host a modest Jewish population. In the 2011 census, 3,271 people declared themselves to be Jewish.
Early history[edit]
Jewish communities on what would later become Romanian territory were attested as early as the 2nd century AD, at a time when the Roman Empire had established its rule over Dacia. Inscriptions and coins have been found in such places as Sarmizegetusa and Orșova.
The existence of the Crimean Karaites, an ethnic group adherent of Karaite Judaism, suggests that there was a steady Jewish presence around the Black Sea, including in parts of today's Romania, in the trading ports from the mouths of the Danube and the Dniester (see Cumania); they may have been present in some Moldavian fairs by the 16th century or earlier.[16] The earliest Jewish (most likely Sephardi) presence in what would become Moldavia was recorded in Cetatea Albă (1330); in Wallachia, they were first attested in the 1550s, living in Bucharest.[17] During the second half of the 14th century, the future territory of Romania became an important place of refuge for Jews expelled from the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland by King Louis I. In Transylvania, Hungarian Jews were recorded in Saxon citadels around 1492.[18]
Prince Roman I (1391-1394?) exempted the Jews from military service, in exchange for a tax of 3 löwenthaler per person. Also in Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457–1504) treated Jews with consideration. Isaac ben Benjamin Shor of Iași (Isak Bey, originally employed by Uzun Hassan) was appointed stolnic, being subsequently advanced to the rank of logofăt; he continued to hold this office under Bogdan the Blind (1504–1517), the son and successor of Stephen.
At this time both Danubian Principalities came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, and a number of Sephardim living in Istanbul migrated to Wallachia, while Jews from Poland and the Holy Roman Empire settled in Moldavia. Although they took an important part in Ottoman government and formed a large part of a community of foreign creditors and traders,[16] Jews were harassed by the hospodars of the two Principalities. Moldavia's Prince Stephen IV (1522) deprived the Jewish merchants of almost all the rights given to them by his two predecessors; Petru Rareș confiscated Jewish wealth in 1541, after alleging that Jews in the cattle trade had engaged in tax evasion.[16] Alexandru Lăpușneanu (first rule: 1552–61) persecuted the community alongside other social categories, until he was dethroned by Jacob Heraclides, a Greek Lutheran, who was lenient to his Jewish subjects; Lăpușneanu did not renew his persecutions after his return on the throne in 1564. The role of Ottoman and local Jews in financing various princes increased as Ottoman economic demands were mounting after 1550 (in the 1570s, the influential Jewish Duke of the Archipelago, Joseph Nasi, backed both Heraclides and Lăpușneanu to the throne); several violent incidents throughout the period were instigated by princes unable to repay their debts.[19]
During the first short reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled.[5] In 1582, he succeeded in regaining his rule over the country with the help of the Jewish physician Benveniste, who was a friend of the influential Solomon Ashkenazi;[5] the latter then exerted his influence with the Prince in favor of his coreligionists.
In Wallachia, Prince Alexandru II Mircea (1567–1577) engaged as his private secretary and counselor Isaiah ben Joseph, who used his influence on behalf of the Jews. In 1573 Isaiah was dismissed, owing to court intrigues, but he was not harmed any further, and subsequently left for Moldavia (where he entered the service of Muscovy's Grand Prince Ivan the Terrible). Through the efforts of Solomon Ashkenazi, Aron Tiranul was placed on the throne of Moldavia; nevertheless, the new ruler persecuted and executed nineteen Jewish creditors in Iași, who were decapitated without process of law.[5] At around the same time, in Wallachia, the violent repression of creditors peaked under Michael the Brave, who, after killing Turkish creditors in Bucharest (1594), probably engaged in violence against Jews settled south of the Danube during his campaign in Rumelia (while maintaining good relations with Transylvanian Jews).[20]