Institute for Historical Review

Romanians and the Holocaust

• Presented at the 1981 Revisionist Conference.

In the last decade, various stories appeared in books and newspapers relating to the Holocaust in Romania. The authors of these stories pretended that Romanians killed almost half a million Jews in WW II; they arrived at this figure in an awkward manner.

Firstly, long before this campaign, in 1957, two scholars, one Romanian and the other Jew, met together and published a paper on this subject in Rome, Italy, in which the figure was 15,000, but not of Jews exterminated by the Romanians; it related to the Jewish casualties in Romania, which makes a big difference. The title of the paper was Regional Development of the Jewish Population in Romania and the authors were Dr. Sabin Manuila, formerly General Director of the Institute for Statistics of Romania and Dr. W. Filderman, formerly President of the Jewish Community of Romania. In other words, one was a high level specialist in the very field of statistics and census, the other was the head of the minority that pretends today the above stated extermination. Furthermore, both authors had qualifications beyond the level stated above. Manuila was a Corresponding Member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the International Institute of Statistics. Filderman was a Rabbi, former Member of the Romanian Parliament, and President of the "Joint Distribution Committee" for Romania. In other words, both were intellectuals of a higher standard and knowledgeable, by their professions, in the development of the population in Romania. However, despite their scholarship, the figure set after their research work (15,000), was fully stretched in Jewish favor. I shall call this figure Stage I of denigration. They listed the largest figure mentioned in the statistical reports they made use of; for instance, if two reports came from the same village, one informing of 10 casualties and the other of 15, the researchers listed the largest figure, 15. Therefore, the real number of Jews who died in Romania in the war was between 10,000 and 15,000. Anyhow, after the publication of that paper, the two parties were more or less content with that figure, then they forgot about those tragic events, went back to their usual work, and the situation remained calm during almost 20 years.

Then, suddenly, in the mid 70s, the figure rose abruptly to Stage II of denigration: 250,000 killings. Before long it rose again to Stage III: 300,000 killings, and arrived lately to Stage IV: 450,000 Jews killed by Romanians in WW II!

It should be stressed that these new figures have been published by Zionists alone, without any contribution or investigation underwritten by the Romanians. While the documentation for Stage I is available to any researcher and can be checked for accuracy at any time, the figures relating to Stages II, III, and IV, had been set up without any official documentation. If some new evidence to support a figure other than 15,000 had been found somewhere, this new evidence would have been published in some official journal under the aegis of both parties, but nothing of this kind was published by an authorized or specialized organization. In other words, it seems that the authors of the last three stages of denigration have changed the number of the dead by simply crossing out one figure and replacing it with another. According to this method, even the last figure of 450,000 can be changed at any time.

As a former Romanian, I was shocked when I first became aware of the second stage of denigration. This was in the 70's and since then I have looked for whatever proofs they might have gotten. I found nothing but memories of old people, recollections of tragic war events, and declarations made in general terms which, under no circumstances, could be considered as documents in support of such a grave and precise accusation as the one charging the Romanians with the killing of 450,000 Jews.

My secretary was in touch with Dr. Jean Ancel of Yad Vashem Archives. Mr. Ancel became a doctor with a dissertation on this very subject, The Romanian Jewry, in which he ranges himself in the Stage III of denigration. The university which conferred to him a doctoral degree for such a dissertation was the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My secretary sent Dr. Ancel three letters asking for an abstract of his dessertion. and also for any available proof in support of his version of the events. The letters were sent to no avail. Dr. Ancel answered only one letter saying that his figures are only approximate. However, Dr. Ancel is one of the specialists in the field of Romanian Jewry who can understand the importance of a proof when making such a grave statement. He refused to give any proof of his statements.

I With the others who are much under Ancel's level of education, it is useless to start any discussion because they become excited after the first question. In general, they consider that they and they alone possess the truth. Whatever view does not conform to their views is by definition a lie, immoral, anti-Semite, racist, and neo-Nazi. When these people write about those events, their writings are so full of vague and general statements that it is almost impossible for the concerned reader not to suspect them of posing as victims.

Here is an example. Ms. Juliana Geran Pilon is a Jew born in Romania. She wrote a book, Notes from the Other Side of the Night, (South Bend, IN.: Regnery Gateway, 1979) in which she states (page 125) that "nearly 300,000 Jews had been killed in Romania before the Germans even got there!" When the Germans got there, Ms. Pilon says further, they killed 150,000 more. Now, in order to understand the absurdity of such an allegation I should bring back to mind what happened in Romania in 1940, the year when the Germans came.

In recalling the history of those days I will use some data from a book written by an outstanding Zionist scholar, Professor Lucy Dawidowicz of Yeshiva University, NY. In her book, The War Against Jews, (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975) Ms. Dawidowicz declares that there were 750,000 Jews. in pre-war Romania, of which 300,000 lived in Bessarabia and 150,000 in Northern Transylvania. These two provinces Bessarabia and Northern Transylvania, had been lost by Romania in August 1940 under the pro-Jewish regime of King Carol II, when organized killing of Jews was impossible. The loss of the national territory put a shameful end to the corrupt regime of King Carol who was obliged to abdicate. He was chased from Romania together with his Jewish lover, Ms. Magda Wolf-Lupescu, his mentor and counselor. In September 1940, King Carol's pro-Jewish regime was replaced with the nationalist regime of General Antonescu. and in November 1940 the German troops entered Romania. This is the period referred to by Ms. Pilon when she writes that Romanians and Germans killed altogether 450,000 Jews. This could only happen under Antonescu, not, of course, under Carol.

Now, by simple subtraction, if we deduct 450,000 (300,000 Jews of Bessarabia plus 150,000 of Northern Transylvania) from the total Jewish population of about 750,00, we can see that nationalist Romania (i.e. Romania from 1940 to the end of the war, 1944) had only 300,000 Jews. It was therefore impossible for the Germans and Romanians to kill 450,000 Jews out of 300,000.

But there is more than that in Ms. Pilon's story.

First, let's see how Romanians could kill 300,000 Jews before the Germans even got there, as Ms. Pilon proclaims. Under King Carol it was impossible to organize any action against the Jews simply because they were at the control of the administration through Ms. Magda Wolf-Lupescu, the king's lover. She had complete dominion over the king because of some unique sexual peculiarities, the description of which would be unfit for this report. In fact, she was the uncrowned queen of Romania and nothing could take place in that country without her permission. In proof of this fact was the wild crushing of a Christian and nationalist movement (the Iron Guard) in 1938, when several thousand youngsters and students had been killed without trial or judicial procedures simply because they rose against the Jewish influence, the corruption, the decay, and the abuses perpetrated in those days in t1rat country. The mass murder of Jews would have only been possible under the nationalist regime of General Antonescu which took over in Romania in September 1940. According to Ms. Pilon, the Romanians killed 300,000 Jews "before the Germans even got there," Le. between September 1940 (advent of the nationalist regime) and November 1940 (German troops enter Romania), that is, in two months. Now, could this be possible? Can one kill 300,000 people and then evaporate the corpses? Of course, not. One has to put the corpses somewhere. One has to dig a grave for them and a grave of this size cannot remain hidden forever. No grave of this size or smaller has yet been discovered in Romania. There are hundreds of Jewish cemeteries in Romania, but all are standard cemeteries, the people buried there died of natural or accidental death.

In contrast, there are thousands of cemeteries of Romanian war heroes. There is even an American hero cemetery near Bucharest, on the same spot with a British hero cemetery. There are thousands of such graves all over Europe, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic Ocean to Stalingrad. In Poland, it is impossible to cross one single district without coming upon a cemetery of Polish heroes. There are cemeteries of Jews, too, and even monuments. There are no such monuments or mausoleums for Jews in Romania, although Romania is the only communist country that has diplomatic relations with Israel. Moreover, Romania depends on the pro-Zionist votes of many American senators to get the Most Favored Nation clause. It would have been very easy for those influential American senators to cause President Ceausescu to erect a Jewish monument in Romania. However, neither American senators, nor Israelis have asked thus far for the erection of such a monument. The rationale? The Jews died in Romania because of various casualties inherent to any war, but not because of atrocities.

When 15,000 Polish officers and soldiers were killed at Katyn, the killers dug a huge grave and put the corpses there. If you went there at the time when the place was open for the public you could see the material proofs of what happened. You could see bones and skeletons and pieces of Polish uniforms and shoes and letters and photographs (damaged by the humidity of the soil) which were found in the pockets of the uniforms and even the bullets used in those killings. It had been impossible to hide 15,000 corpses; it had not been a matter of 15,000 matches or 15,000 pebbles; it had been a matter of 15,000 human bodies whose traces remain year after year after year. How could Romanians kill 300,000 Jews without leaving a trace? How could they hide almost half a million corpses, 30 times more than those of Katyn? Who can believe that Rabbi Dr. W. Filderman, the leader of Romanian Jews in WW II, was so indifferent as to leave unexplored a mass murder of such proportion if the least suspicion ever existed? He was far from being indifferent. He simply never even considered the possibility of a mass murder of Jews in Romania and therefore, being an honest Romanian Jew, signed a paper in which he put the largest number of dead at 15,000.

But let's analyze the second part of Ms. Pilon's assertion, that the Germans killed 150,000 Jews after they entered Romania. This again was impossible simply because at the end of the war the number of the Jews was as high as at the beginning of the war, i.e. in round figures about 300,000. This figure included the natural increase of the Jewish population during the war and of course did not comprise the dead from war casualties and those who emigrated clandestinely.

There were still two possibilities of killing Romanian Jews, one in Bessarabia (occupied by the Soviet Union) and the other in Northern Transylvania (occupied by the Hungarians). Neither one actually happened.

When the Romanian Troops entered Bessarabia in 1941 and reconquered that territory, very few Jews were found there. The majority had been either evacuated by the Soviets or had left by themselves in fear of reprisals. Many Jews had a criminal attitude toward the Romanians in retreat in 1940 when Bessarabia was ceded to Russia; they had gathered in armed bands and killed or disarmed many Romanian soldiers who had orders to retire without shooting. Therefore, in 1941, when the Romanians reconquered that territory, the Jews had already left in fear of reprisals.

As for the Jews of Northern Transylvania (occupied by Hungary) they had been put in camps by the Hungarians and very few returned after the war.

From the 300,000 Jews who were still in Romania after the war, about 130,000 emigrated to Israel (see the Statistical Bulletin of Israel, vol. 3, 1952-53) and about 140,000 to Western Europe and USA. There are still between 35,000 and 50,000 Jews in Romania today.

This is what remains, after analysis, of Ms. Pilon's imaginary charges. She is, however, considered a scholar in the U.S.A. and an expert in interpreting historical events. She has been recently promoted to the post of Assistant to Mr. Burton Pines, the Director of the United Nations Assessment Project, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation of Washington, DC. The purpose of this project is to condemn the United Nations Organization. When this organization was dominated by the Zionists, it was a good organization; but today, after the expulsion of Israel from the U.N.'s International Labor Organization and the condemnation of Israel for her attitude toward Arabs, U.N.O. is a bad organization and should be dissolved.

The suspicion of mass murders in Romania never existed before the 70's. All the humbug started in the 70's with articles in newspapers and books charging Romanians with the extermination of the Romanian Jewish population, but it was too late in the 70's, 30 years after the end of the war, to organize extermination camps in Romania in proof of mass murders. First, there appeared various attacks in small newspapers charging Romania with the killing of 250,000 Jews. Nobody protested. And then a big article was published by the New York Post, a newspaper of large circulation. A map was distributed by the Anti-Defamation League and the number of the alleged killings rose instantly to 300,000. The article and the map were given out in millions of copies. The map was published on the front page of a pamphlet and showed Europe and her different countries, each one with the amount of Jewish victims. Printed over Germany the accusation figure was 210,000. Over Romania, the figure was 300,000. Always on that map only the Jews were shown as victims. The text accompanying the map read clearly: 6,000,000 Jewish victims in total. No other victims.

However, if one took the time to add up the figures printed on that map, they would have arrived at a total of less than 6,000,000. It was therefore necessary to find somewhere another 150,000 victims to match the total of six million. The missing amount of victims was attributed to Romania. So there appeared the Stage IV of denigration, charging Romania with the killing of 450,000 Jews.

Another newspaper of large circulation, the Spectator of London, published the new figure in 1979. L'Express of Paris, a magazine of even larger circulation, published the same figure. This was because all these major newspapers of the United States, England and France were independent and arrived at the same precise conclusion, 450,000 victims, by mere coincidence.

Meanwhile, a spurious campaign against the Romanian Bishop of the U.S.A., Valerian D. Trifa, began with much noise and excitement and was conducted by Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, a Democrat of Brooklyn. Howard Blum, who was at that time on the staff of the pro-Zionist newspapers Village Voice and New York Times, edited a book aggressively titled Wanted: In Search of Nazis in America, charging Romania with the same figure. Many radio and TV programs were aired at about the same time whose slogan was more or less the same: Romanians murdered 450,000 Jews.

Now, you are entitled to ask-why this sudden campaign against Romania after 30 years of silence? The missing 150,000 from the worldwide publicized figure of 6 million did not justify such a virulent campaign. There must have been some other reason, perhaps monetary. This possibility deserves some attention.

Since the inauguration of the state of Israel in 1948, the German tax-payer has contributed to the welfare of Israel with an expiatory payment of about two billion dollars annually. In the last 30 years, the German contribution has amounted to over 60 billion dollars. During this same period the American taxpayer has contributed with friendly loans and endowments to Israel of a similar or bigger amount. Now, after 30 years of payments to Israel, expiatory or friendly, of about 4 billion dollars yearly, the taxpayer may get suspicious - mainly when we Americans cannot find funds for stringent national or local needs. In New York, for instance, the subway is a mess; the westside highway is closed because of its many potholes; public schools are a mockery because there are no funds to invest in education, and thousands of New-Yorkers are living in incredible conditions because the rent in New York is so high. However, there are always some billions to be sent to Israel for various purposes. But if the American taxpayer becomes aware of these many expenditures abroad, he may ask them to be stopped. It is therefore necessary for the Zionists to find new sources of incoming dollars or at least to preserve the existing ones. A denigration campaign against all European countries could very well serve this purpose; thus Romania was included in the campaign. One never can tell just how and when this inclusion has become fruitful.

It is true that many Jews were killed in Romania in the war; but also many Romanians, and Americans, and Germans, and Russians were killed in Romania at that time, as well as many other peoples. As we all know, what characterizes a war is cruelty and killing; killing not only by weapons, but by diseases too; by hunger, or simply by accidents. Soldiers and civilians, women and children, elders and youngsters, are killed in any war for many, many reasons, good or bad. Would it be fair if I made the chronicle of the war and complained of the tragic fate of one group only?

Let me put things an other way. I saw piles of corpses in that war. I saw a street full of corpses; various parts of bodies were spread over that street after a bombardment- feet, heads, hands and blood. I remember a pile of broken feet and arms on a sidewalk, a horrible pile. Who could tell what part belonged to whom in that pile? Who could tell what foot was Jewish, what arm Romanian, and what part of a body German? Nobody. But it would be an impiety to proclaim today that all those killed on that street were all Romanians and complain of the tragic fate of Romanians only.

Moreover, if I recall those times, what difference does it make whether 10,000 Russians were killed in an airstrike in Kiev, a city of Ukraine, or 10,000 Jews were killed in Transnistria because of typhus or hunger? What is the difference between 100,000 Germans killed at Stalingrad because of the freezing winter and hunger and 1,000 Russian Jews hanged in Odessa as guerillas? What difference is there between several hundreds of thousands of Romanian soldiers killed in Russia in the war and several thousands of Jews killed in Iasi, a city of Romania, because they shot to death Romanian soldiers? War is a madness in itself because the intelligent people of both sides cannot find other ways to settle their disputes. However, when the war and its horrors arrive at an end, a peace treaty is signed, debts are paid, borders are changed, and then we forget about it. Otherwise we would never finish a war. Not so with the Zionists. After 30 years they start another war-a war of words, and libels, and revenge, implying the Jews were the sole victims of the last war.

The social life in prewar Romania under the pro4ewish regime of King Carol was much like the social life in this country, almost the same decay. Pornography, adultery, blasphemy and all kinds of wicked attacks against Christianity were flourishing all over Romania. It happened that the two most influential newspapers, Adeverul and Dimineata, were under Jewish management and were the advocates of communism, the agents of demoralization among the youth, and the most powerful fighters against nationalism. Many Jews were law-abiding citizens, but it happened that the mistress of the king was a beautiful but vicious Jewish woman, Magda Wolf-Lupescu. Many political killings were perpetrated in Romania because of her bad influence upon the king. Of course, she never signed the actual order to kill, but the fact was that all nationalist activities and mainly those directed against the social decay, against the literature of filth, and against the strong Jewish influence in politics were prohibited and even punished. A youth movement against atheists, pornographers, and corrupt politicians emerged (called the Iron Guard) and it wanted to defend national values against the intruders and the agents of deception. In fact, the Iron Guard was fighting against all the agents of decay, whoever they might be. Many Jews were decent citizens and contributed to the advancement of culture, but some were the agents of decay; so, those students who fought against the latter were believed to fight against all Jews and the press ostracized them.

Some students who belonged to the Iron Guard in Iasi decided to build a student home, a Christian house for themselves, apart from the atheist student homes which existed at that time in Iasi. Well, the police of Iasi received the order to stop the building and all the Zionist newspapers began a vicious campaign against the Christian students. The charge was the same as today in this country: "they wanted to destroy the pluralism of Romania, they threatened to kill those who disagreed with their authoritarian position, they wanted to deny values in the name of Christianity, they were racists and assumed the right to divide the country in the name of patriotism."

In the opinion of many at that time, the Christian students had the same right to build their Christian house as the other students to have profane homes. However, the government was of another opinion. The government decided the students did not have that right and the chief of the police was sent on the spot to stop the building and disperse the students. Many students were harassed, some were arrested and some were summoned to court for the crime of trying to build a Christian home.

It was like today in this country: if some youngsters adhere to a Christian movement, they are considered sick, they must be deprogrammed and bills are sent to the legislators to curb them. Prayer is outlawed from schools and replaced with sex education. Christmas carols are considered disturbing by certain minorities. In contrast, the use of drugs, pornography and incest, sodomy and atheism, are presented by the influential mass media as acceptable standards of our culture, and all deceiving movements are free to spread in universities. Why? Because a depraved youth can be easily maneuvered. Depraved students today mean depraved leaders tomorrow; thus, a better opportunity for those who pull the strings today to take over tomorrow.

The same situation was in Romania and the agents who provoked that vicious situation in prewar Romania were the same as here. The students who wanted to stop the decay in Romania were sent to Court, the walls of their homes demolished, their families harassed-the newspapers cursed them. Many of those innocent students were barred from universities, sent to jail and their lives were spoiled forever. Years later, when the pro-Jewish regime of King Carol was replaced with a nationalist one, the students took revenge on those who spoiled their lives and killed them.

I do not approve of their actions even if I understand why they lost their heads and killed. My religion and theirs does not approve any murder, even if it is done in revenge. Were the students guilty of the killings? Of course, they were; but, at the same time, those who persecuted them were guilty as well.

However, the chroniclers of those events speak of the guilt of the students only, making the reader believe the persecutors were not guilty, and the same events take place in almost the same way in our days as half a century ago in Romania. There is nonsense in concealing the real meaning of the social movements and prevent people from drawing conclusions. History repeats itself whether we like it or not. This is in essence a very broad description of some thousand killings perpetrated in Romania in 1940-41. Other killings were due to other causes.

I was a high school student at that time. My father was a lawyer, and in 1941 he had to go to Iasi for some legal affairs. He took me with him to show me the city. It was a city of -- portance in Romanian history and a visit there was considereo. part of a boy's education. It was soon after the beginning of the hostilities between Romania and communist Russia. We took a room at a hotel in Iasi. I remember very well that on the street facing the window of our room there marched long columns of soldiers, carts with horses, trucks with military equipment going to the war front. The street was narrow and the columns very long. It was soon after sunset. My father and I were preparing for dinner when suddenly we heard explosions down in the street. We went cautiously to the window and looked outside. We saw people in the building across the street shooting at the soldiers; some others were throwing grenades from the roof. It was a crazy act in those days and what happened then was hell. An officer ordered the march to stop and the soldiers to surround the block. In a short while, the whole block was in flames and under the fire of submachine guns. Then the march resumed and continued through midnight. We learned that those who fired at the soldiers from the other building were Romanian Jews acting as communist guerillas. Several hundred people were killed that evening, Romanian soldiers as well as Jewish guerillas, together with innocent people who lived in that block. Who was guilty of those killings? We were at war and there was no time to sit down and decide who was and who was not guilty.

Something similar happened a few months ago, in July 1981, when Israeli planes killed 300 people in Beirut; among those killed were a few PLO guerrillas, but the majority were civilians. Similar things happened several times in Iasi in those days of war when the Romanian Jews decided not to allow the Romanian army to go against their beloved Soviet Union. They were Romanian citizens, but many were communist first and then Romanian.

When my father finished his work in Iasi, we tried to go back to Bucharest, but we couldn't because the railway station had been bombed. In that bombing many people were killed, Romanians as well as Jews. Should I say that the pilot who dropped the bombs was anti-Semitic because he killed some Jews?

We stayed in Iasi several days until the station was fixed. During our sojourn there we learned of some other events. Jewish groups had organized underground communist cell structures, accumulated weapons and ammunition, fought as guerillas, and attacked the army of their country, Romania. They fought against the Romanian army not only in Iasi, but in many other cities. If reprisals were initiated against them, were the Romanians guilty?

A quarter of the city of Iasi was Jewish and the Jews lived in an area called "the Ghetto." They installed red electric bulbs in the chimneys of their houses, thus signaling to Russian planes when the blackout was on. From the street, the red light of the bulbs was invisible, but it was perfectly visible from above. So, when Soviet planes came at night, they knew where the city was and what area of the city to bomb. The Ghetto was never bombed, a miraculous thing until the police discovered the trick. Reprisals against the Jews were carried out again, and the question again arises: were the Romanian police guilty of the reprisals?

Dr. W. Filderman mentions in his Memoirs a letter dated 18 September 1940 (a few weeks after the nationalist regime took over in Bucharest) from General Antonescu in which the chief of state wrote: "... be assured, Mr. Filderman, (...) that, if your co-religionists will not sabotage openly Or furtively my regime on political or economic grounds, the Jewish population will have nothing to suffer (...). But the Jews-and I call your attention seriously to this matter without threatening you-the Jews must give up the methods they've used thus far (because this was the way of the former regime) of keeping down our economy, sapping our national identity, and exploiting our poverty."

It was a dialogue between the chief of state and the president of the Jewish communities soon after the inauguration of the nationalist regime in which the chief of state expressed his willingness to help the Jews, under the curcumstances, and asked the Jews to hold back from any acts of sabotage and diversion in order to avoid restrictive measures against them. However, the instructions to sabotage, spy, and divert came from far above Dr. Filderman's sphere: moreover, not all the Jews who populated Romania at that time were under Dr. Filderman's authority. The confrontation in World War II was of such a high level that the lives of some thousands of Jews and Romanians did not count. As a consequence, the Jews spied and the administration deported them to Transnistria. There were no hospitals there, food was scarce, the cities were in ruins, and many Jews who had been deported there died of different diseases and perhaps of hunger, much like today's Arabs who are chased into the desert from Palestine. The Russians who lived in Transnistria had the same fate, but I cannot confirm that they died because of Romanian anti-Russianism. Food and medicine were scarce everywhere in those days. Tens of thousands of Germans died at Stalingrad because of hunger and frost. In Bucharest we had no food, no gas, no medicine, and the casualties were numerous. All minorities as well as Romanians themselves suffered heavy casualties. We all took the situation as it was and buried the dead, even the Jews. However, after several decades, only the Jews recollect those events and complain to the world for their sufferings.

General Antonescu not only maintained a dialogue with the Jewish community, he even dismissed his Secretary of Cults, who closed some synagogues. This fact is also mentioned in Dr. Filderman's Memoirs. However, General Antonescu was labeled an anti-Semite and executed after the war.

Many feel happy to label Romanians as anti-Semites. Ms. Nicolette Frank, for instance, a Swiss newspaperwoman who was born in Romania as Nicolette Apotecker, edited a book in French, in 1977, La Roumanie dans Fengrenage (Romania in the Gearing). To the ordinary libel against her former country, Ms. Frank adds another which has the double advantage of striking at Romanians as well as at Christianity: she says that the Romanian Orthodox Church is the ferment of nationalism and anti-Semitism in Romania. However, she has the decency to mention something true: Adolph Eichman complained at one time of his difficulties in Romania because of General Antonescu's independent policies. Acting upon their own lines is indeed characteristic of Romanians and explains why their alliances have always been limited to needs. Hitler's Germany was very powerful in WW II. However, General Antonescu did not accept German interferrence in Romanian affairs. Today the Zionists are very powerful too, but few Romanians can accept their libel. One of these libels is that Romanians imitated Hitler's policies. In fact, Romanians curbed Jewish activities during the war not to imitate German policies, but because the Jews were more communist than Romanian at a time when Romania was at war with the Soviet Union.

To curb the Jews, Romania did the same thing that the United States did against her Japanese: she put them in camps. While in camps, the Jews had to work. In winter, they had to shovel the snow off of the streets. Sometimes they were sent to clean buildings or to remove debris. At night, they went home and stayed with their families until the next day. Our bread, meat butter and coffee were rationed. The Jews had no ration cards, so they organized their own food system using the free and black markets. They had to pay higher prices for food, it was true, but it was to their advantage: it was better to live that way than to die on the war front. They thus saved their fives at a time when hundreds of thousands of Romanians lost their lives in Russia.

As I mentioned before, I was a high school boy at the beginning of the war. One day, the boulevard in front of my school was full of Jews who shoveled the snow away. It was cold and they had slight means of warming themselves. Many shops on that boulevard were closed and those which were open were almost empty of food. But soon some wives and girls came over with thermos flasks of hot coffee, tea and snacks and nobody prevented them from distributing the food among the workers. They stopped their work, ate and drank, and then began their work again. When I finished my school that day and went home, there were no Jews on that boulevard; they went home, too. This was a so-called labor camp for Jews that I saw with my own eyes.

There were probably other camps where the work was harsher, but the Zionists speak today about the latter only, and never about the former. This is why their complaints appear doubtful to the concerned reader. If they were sincere, they would mention all aspects of their tribulations, good or bad, not only those which can be bargained for dollars.