ROMANIAN FOREIGN POLICY reflected the fluctuating policies of the Romanian fascist leaders toward citizens of Jewish ancestry living abroad. In 1938–1939, the Goga-Cuza government and the royal dictatorship responded to international protests against their anti-Semitic policies with a diplomatic offensive, proposing emigration as the only solution to “the Jewish question.” But the Legionnaire regime established on September 6, 1940, intensified anti-Semitic policy, including that toward Romanian Jews abroad. Passport renewals were denied for a wide range of reasons (not having paid military taxes, for instance), and return to Romania became more difficult. Sometimes Jews were flatly told not to come back, even when they had been expelled from other states, which led to protests by several governments.1 On March 7, 1941, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered Romanian consulates to stamp the word “Jew” on passports held by Romanian Jews.2 At the urging of the Romanian consul general in Berlin, Constantin Karadja (who cited the need to assuage public opinion and “Jewish interests” in Great Britain and the United States), Marshal Antonescu rescinded this order but had the word “Jew” replaced with a special notation Romanian officials would recognize.
To simplify the situation somewhat, one could generalize that Romanian fascist policy on the issue went through two phases: during the first year of Romania’s involvement in the war Romanian diplomats were to refuse to intervene on behalf of Romanian Jewish citizens abroad, including those threatened with being sent to Nazi concentration camps from Germany or countries occupied by or allied with Germany; after it became clear that the Axis countries would not prevail in the war Romanian diplomats were then told to protect Romanian Jews abroad from persecution. The motivations for the move toward extending diplomatic protection to Romanian Jewish citizens in other countries were knowledge that the leaders might be held accountable for their actions after the war was over and the fact that Hungary, Romania’s traditional rival, did protect its Jews living in other countries. From the point of view of Romanian nationalists (and the fascists were in some ways traditional nationalists), why should Romania’s Jews be considered any worse than Hungary’s?
The Foreign Ministry suffered from the legal chaos emerging from the contradictory instructions of Romania’s fascist governments. According to international convention, Romanian consulates were expected to protect Romanian citizens abroad, regardless of their “nationality.” In May 1941, this protection was withdrawn from those Jews whose citizenship had been “revised,” as well as from Jews born in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (then held by the USSR); in the summer of 1942, Romania backtracked and once again treated Jews born in Bessarabia and Bukovina as its citizens.3 The expropriation of Jewish rural holdings, the expropriation of vessels belonging to Jews, and other related matters naturally led to a flurry of diplomatic protests. (A 1941 law stipulating that “foreigners could not dispose of any assets, rights, or interests they own in Romania, except with the prior approval of the Ministry of the Economy” also caused protests.4 On August 29, 1941, this clause also had to be abrogated.)5
On August 31, 1941, the Foreign Ministry complained that while some states (e.g., France and Hungary) had introduced their own anti-Semitic measures, they had demanded that Romanian anti-Semitic measures not be applied to their Jewish citizens residing in Romania.6 On September 23, Mihai Antonescu complained of this to the minister of the interior, writing:
In the course of the last year the minister of foreign affairs received repeated protests concerning the application to Jewish foreign nationals of the laws suspending the civil and political rights of Jews or expropriating some of their property.
After submitting this problem to discussion the Council of Ministers has decided that in applying the laws in question, the status of the foreign nationals should be respected without discrimination, on the basis of the conventions in force and of reciprocity.
Therefore, we ask you to please annul all measures against foreign Jews with respect to their property or their right to settle and exercise their profession—measures that derive from the laws applying to the Jews as such. . . . Please be so kind as not to undertake such measures in the future without prior notification of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.7
Romanian diplomatic offices were soon instructed (in Circular No. 81/557 dated November 11, 1941) to protect “all Romanian citizens abroad without distinction and to report cases in which individuals or their property are subjected to discriminatory measures.”8
Romanian diplomatic problems stemmed not only from “Romanization” of assets belonging to Jews of foreign citizenship but also from cases such as the disappearance of several American citizens during the pogrom of Iaşi and the deportation of other American citizens to Transnistria. In October 1942, the French legation intervened on behalf of Madeleine Wolloch, an eight-year-old French citizen deported to Transnistria while visiting relatives in Bukovina.9
Romania was also in violation of international agreements governing refugee issues. Thus in April 1942, (former) German, Czechoslovakian, or Austrian citizens in the city of Roman were expelled to Transnistria.10 In certain instances Polish Jews who had sought refuge in Romania, as well as the Jews who held Nansen (refugee) or Chilean passports, were forced by local police to cross the border of Bukovina into Transnistria, there to be killed by the Germans.11
On November 30, Wilhelm Filderman interceded with General Vasiliu on behalf of such Polish refugees:
I told him that there were some foreigners who had been deported by mistake: Argentines and Poles, and so forth. He stopped—when I mentioned the Poles—and emphasized that the Jews often crossed the border illegally. I talked to him about the surgeon at Moghilev Hospital who had sought refuge after the collapse of Poland and who had been solicited by our officials to work . . . in a military hospital in Bessarabia, whence he had been deported. He replied that they [the Polish Jews] could be brought back, but they have to be sent across the borders, because Romania can’t take all of them. Let each one meet his own destiny in his own country. . . . Concerning the matter of bringing around seven hundred Romanian Jews from France, he told me that he was opposed to it. I said that they were Romanian citizens with valid passports and that if the Germans wanted to deport them, Romania [had] to welcome them. He replied that he did not agree, because they had left [more than] ten years ago.12
In any event, as of November 14, 1943, there were more than five hundred Jewish refugees in Romania, most of them Polish but some German, Austrian, or Czech.13 Thousands of Jews from Hungary and occupied Transylvania also sought refuge in Romania, especially in 1944. A December 1944 report from the Consular Section of the (postwar) Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that in 1944 the Romanian consulate in Budapest granted 51,537 transit visas (the author of that report could not say how many had actually been used).14
In January 1942, Romanian Jews in Amsterdam had had to declare their assets before the upcoming deportations. The Romanian consulate requested instructions on February 12 and learned that General Vasiliu opposed their repatriation.15 In March Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry in Germany and Austria were forced to wear the yellow star on orders of the Gestapo. This discriminatory measure applied to Croatian and Slovak (not to mention German and Austrian) Jews but not to Hungarian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Italian, or Swiss Jews. Furthermore, Romanian Jews in Berlin had to hand over furs, wool items, typewriters, bicycles, and cameras. The Romanian consulates in Berlin and Vienna, assured by German officials of the existence of an “agreement” between the Romanian and German governments, requested clarification from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in turn requested the same from the German legation in Bucharest.16 While this bureaucratic exchange continued, in occupied Bohemia and Moravia the first Jewish families with Romanian passports were interned at Theresienstadt.17
All these discriminatory measures offended the national pride of Romanian officials, especially since Hungarian Jews in occupied Europe enjoyed a privileged status compared to their Romanian counterparts. This convinced General Secretary Davidescu to telegram the Romanian consulate in Prague: “The Romanian government has never agreed to the adoption of discriminatory measures aimed at Romanian Jews. Please insist that they should be treated as the equals of Jews from Hungary, Switzerland, and so forth. . . . Please require the release of [those] interned or deported, with the exception of common criminals. Demand that sequestered assets be returned.”18 In Berlin legation counselor Văleanu made this point very clearly in a discussion with a German Foreign Office official, Kligenfuss, in July 1942,19 as did Davidescu in a meeting with German legation counselor Steltzer in Bucharest on August 8, when the latter asserted that Ion Antonescu “had agreed with Ambassador von Killinger that Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry in Germany and the occupied territories should be treated in the same fashion as German Jews.”20 However, as early as November 1941, von Killinger had told the Auswärtiges Amt (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) that Antonescu approved of the Reich’s intention to deport Romanian Jews under German jurisdiction to eastern ghettos together with German Jews; the Romanian government “had stated no interest in bringing Romanian Jews back to Romania.”21
In the course of a discussion held on August 10, 1942, among Mihai Antonescu, Radu Lecca (the commissar for Jewish affairs), and Gustav Richter (Eichmann’s representative in the German embassy) in Bucharest, the SS officer alluded to the approval Ion Antonescu had originally given to von Killinger. Mihai Antonescu’s concluding remark was that
we have to realize that Romania has no interest in seeing Romanian Jews who have settled abroad returning. Henceforth, the following instructions should be followed:
1. As regards German Jews living among us, the expired German passports should be canceled and replaced with provisional certificates. It should be made obligatory for real property to be declared and [the documents] kept strictly up to date.
2. With regard to Romanian Jews in Germany, in the Protectorate, and in the general government, as well as those in the occupied territories, word will be sent to the Berlin legation and the concerned consular offices that the measures to be undertaken have been agreed upon with the Romanian government. The issue that interests us is the real estate of Romanian nationals abroad, the administration of this property, and the various means of liquidating it. The Berlin legation and its subordinate consulate is asked to draw up a register.22
Romanian diplomatic interest had thus shifted to the assets of Romanian Jews living abroad. One week later, on August 17, an internal memorandum from German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Martin Luther cited both Mihai Antonescu’s agreement to the deportation of Jews from Moldavia and Walachia to concentration camps in Poland and the approval of other Romanian officials for inclusion of Romanian Jews abroad in Germany’s anti-Jewish measures.23 Accordingly, on August 21, 1942, Davidescu telegrammed (No. 5120) the Romanian legation in Berlin that as a consequence of the consensus between Marshal Antonescu and Ambassador von Killinger, earlier orders concerning protection of Romanian Jews abroad were being revoked. Romanian diplomats were henceforth forbidden to protest German measures against Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry, their only concern being recovery of their assets.24 The Antonescu-Killinger conversation during which Antonescu agreed to hand over to the Germans Romanian Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe had actually taken place sometime before July 23, 1942, when a ciphered telegram from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned it for the first time, without, however, making it the basis of policy.25 Kligenfuss had also sent Eichmann a communication (on August 20) containing the gist of the discussion before the new policy formally went into effect.26
The direct impact of the agreement, and of Mihai Antonescu’s exchanges with Richter on August 10, 1941, was the deportation of nearly 1,600 Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry living in Germany and Austria (the last statistics, for 1939, indicated 1,760, of whom 618 were in the former Austria);27 of an unknown number from occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Poland, and Holland; and of 3,000 more from France. Most perished in concentration camps.28 According to the September 1942 estimates of the Romanian chargé d’affaires in Berlin, M. Stănescu, most Romanian-Jewish residents of Germany had already been deported.29 On October 15, 1942, all Romanian Jews in Prague were arrested.30 The massive deportation of Romanian Jews from France began in late September 1942. (Deportations of Romanian Jews had taken place before that time as well.)
As mentioned elsewhere, decrees in spring 1941 and again in summer 1942 (we do not know why the bureaucracy had to adopt the same policy twice) deprived Jews from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina who were living abroad of their Romanian citizenship. This perhaps explains why some of the Romanian Jews born in Bessarabia and Bukovina appear as “Russian citizens” in the lists of Jews deported from Drancy, France. Without taking the latter into account and leaving aside “stateless” people born in Romania, more than three thousand Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry were deported between March 27, 1942, when the first convoy with a Romanian Jew left France, and September 25, 1942, when the thirty-seventh convoy left, this time filled mostly with Romanian Jews.
“On September 24, at 10:50 in the morning, the Parisian police arrested 959 Romanian Jews; at 6:45 P.M. it detained 562 men, 829 women, and 183 children, or a total of 1,574 people.”31 Convoy number 37 of 1,000 people included 729 of them. At Kassel 175 of the men were selected for work details, another 40 at Auschwitz upon arrival on September 27 (and given numbers 66,030 through 66,069). Ninety-one women were also selected for work (numbers 20,914 through 21,003), but all the others were gassed. In 1945, only fifteen Jews from convoy number 37 were alive.32 Ninety-eight children—63 bearing French and 35 bearing Romanian nationality—accompanied the 729 Romanian adults from convoy 37, all of the youngsters to be gassed along with most of the adults.33
On September 28, 1942, convoy number 38 carried nine hundred deportees, two-thirds of which left Paris. Among them, 594 were Romanian Jews. “The convoy arrived at Auschwitz on the night of September 29. One hundred twenty-three men were selected for work and received numbers 66,515 to 66,637. Forty-eight women were assigned numbers 21,373 through 21,420. Other men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five who were able to work were selected to do so before reaching Auschwitz. The remainder of the convoy was immediately gassed,34 including sixty-seven children.”35 In 1945, only 18 people had survived from convoy 38.36 The table on page 266 provides summary data pertaining to such deportations.
Serge Klarsfeld has estimated that about 3,300 Romanian Jews were deported from France to the Nazi extermination camps, 2,958 of whom were still Romanian citizens and the remaining 320 “stateless” Romanian Jews or individuals whose status was “unclear.”37 In 1943, the number of Romanian Jews being deported from France dropped sharply when the Romanian government began extending diplomatic protection to them; by March it was almost nil. An RSHA order dated April 23, 1943, required the German police in Paris, one week later, to put an end to all deportations of Romanian Jews.38 Indeed, in late 1942 (i.e., when Stalingrad made it increasingly clear to Romania’s leaders that Germany could not win the war), German-Romanian relations underwent a cooling period. This frost came at a time, however, when Hitler continued to see in Antonescu a privileged interlocutor and ally, for both military and personal reasons. Hitler’s stance, to a certain extent, inhibited the German Foreign Ministry from strongly expressing disagreements with the Romanians.
During a November 11, 1942, discussion with Richter, Mihai Antonescu (while stressing only his economic anti-Semitism) surprised the German official when he objected to the fact that along the Bug River Jews were being subjected to cruelties at the hands of the Germans. The Romanian said that he opposed these “acts of terror against defenseless people.”39 What worried him most, however, was Romania’s image abroad, for the Hungarians were distributing propaganda about Romanian brutality against the Jews.40 In spite of Lecca’s refusal to allow repatriation of Romanian Jews stranded under German occupation, Romanian diplomats in Berlin, Vienna, and Vichy continued to protest. On April 6, 1943, Mihai Antonescu approved a request from Davidescu and Karadja at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for permission to repatriate Romanian Jews from Germany, France, and other occupied countries, promising to agree to their subsequent deportation to Transnistria. They warned explicitly that, failing this, these Romanian citizens would die: “it is obvious that we are practicing a discriminatory treatment toward our non-Aryan citizens, in contrast with the treatment applied to Hungarian, Swedish, Swiss, and other Jews.”41 This report had been preceded by another, one Karadja signed on March 27, 1943, in which he insisted that in Germany, Hungarian Jews enjoyed preferential status by comparison with Romanian Jews:
In view of this clearly discriminatory treatment of . . . “Romanian Jews” in comparison with Hungarian Jews, I have the honor to ask you if it would be proper to instruct our legation in Berlin to insist that our citizens of the Israelite race be given treatment identical to that of Jews from other countries and, in the first instance, to those of Hungary. If this matter is in our interest, we propose respectfully that it is treated with greatest urgency, promptly; otherwise, it will be too late.42
On March 25, 1943, a sweep of Romanian Jews in Vienna got under way,43 and on April 6, a roundup of Croatian, Slovakian, and Romanian Jews began in Berlin; Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Swedish Jews went untouched.44 With Mihai Antonescu’s approval, the Romanian legation in Berlin began granting entry visas and requesting the German authorities to provide Romanian Jews the same treatment given to Hungarian Jews.45 Moreover, on April 12, the Romanian legation requested that “the concerned German agencies, and especially the Geheime Staatspolizei [the Gestapo],” begin considering the release of non-Aryan Romanians arrested after March 31 and the departure of these individuals for Romania. Political considerations moved the Auswärtiges Amt to comply. On April 15, Lecca finally agreed to the return of Romanian Jews from all territories occupied by Germany, stipulating only that they must be transferred subsequently to Transnistria.46 And on April 30, the Sicherheitsdienst (security service) asked all subordinate units to cease arresting Romanian Jews, though it did not order the release of those already detained.47 Despite all of this, however, a number of Romanian Jews found themselves among two thousand of their coreligionists deported from Mechelen, Belgium.48
But the new approach of the Bucharest regime explains why, at the end of spring 1943, the German occupation authorities in France and Belgium stopped arresting Romanian Jews, twelve of whom were actually repatriated from Belgium.49 In November 1943, the arrests of Romanian Jews in France did resume but only briefly; on November 8, the Romanian ambassador in Vichy affirmed that all arrests had ended, requiring all Romanian Jews to return to Romania by December 31.50 On December 3, the same representative interceded with the German police chief in Lyon to cease interfering with repatriation.51 Jean Ancel estimates that more than four thousand Romanian Jews in France survived as a result of such diplomatic interventions, several hundred being repatriated on a train that crossed Reich territory.52 In fact, even though the repatriated Jews were supposed to be deported to Transnistria, Ion Antonescu consented to their remaining in Romania,53 committing himself formally on July 20.54 However, on November 15, 1943, General Vasiliu informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the Council of Order (in charge of repatriation) had decided not to allow Romanian Jews from Germany and France to return to Romania.55 In a memorandum sent to Mihai Antonescu on November 18, 1943, Karadja (apparently ignoring Ion Antonescu’s decision not to interfere with the Germans’ treatment of Romanian Jews) protested the Council’s “interference in the affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”56 Thus Mihai Antonescu, on December 17, 1943, and on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, instructed the Ministry of the Interior to accept repatriated Romanian Jews from France, Greece, and Italy otherwise threatened with extermination.57 Karadja subsequently gained Mihai Antonescu’s acceptance for his new formulation of policy toward Romanian Jews living abroad:
1. The Jewish problem, one of the most difficult to resolve in Romania, to which the Jews have immigrated, especially after the union of Moldavia and Walachia, coming in compact masses from Poland and Ukraine, has undergone meticulous study by the royal government and will continue to be studied in the future.
2. Our traditional policy has always been tolerant. Over the course of the centuries generations of refugees, whether members of the Romanian minority in Hungary and Bulgaria [or] Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Jewish foreigners, have found asylum . . . in Moldavia and Walachia.
3. Having ascertained that Romanian citizens of the Israelite race settled or residing in Central Europe under German occupation are today threatened with the loss of property, freedom, and life in defiance of conventional rights, the royal government considers it only proper to bring them back to our country, whenever necessary and whenever the persons concerned desire it. . . .
4. These unfortunate people will thus find themselves forced, by non-Romanians, to leave their homes where they have long been settled. Having no emotional bonds with our people, and not even knowing the Romanian language, they will find, it is true, only a temporary asylum in Romania, where they will be treated well. Soon they themselves will realize that current conditions in Romania—independent of the wishes of the Romanian government—are hardly favorable for a long stay. [Therefore,] it may be safely predicted that the majority of these Jews will not be capable of making a livelihood and of leading worthy and honest lives in Romania.
5. That said, it would be in the interest of Romania and of those directly concerned that the Romanian Jews who arrive under these conditions be able to find, as soon as possible, a country for their final destination—that is, as far removed from Europe as possible—where they can live in peace by contributing through the qualities peculiar to them to the general progress of humanity.
6. The permanent duty of all Romanian diplomatic and consular agencies is to cooperate in reaching this goal, henceforth exploiting every opportunity to facilitate the emigration of Romanian Jews. . . .
7. The royal government, on the other hand, is entitled to receive more documentation about the Jewish problem than in the past. Diplomatic agents must report not only the cases where Romanian citizens have been injured in their rights or persecuted but also all legislative and administrative measures undertaken by foreign authorities at the expense of the Jews in general—or in their favor, especially when these measures could facilitate the immigration of “Romanian” Jews to the countries concerned.
8. The principles expounded here could also be applied just as they are by the Romanian propaganda abroad, in the event that the vice president of the Council [of Ministers] would agree with this decision and the theme could be developed in accordance with local conditions required by each country.58
Romanian consular initiatives aimed at the release of Romanian Jews already in concentration camps ran up against the unequivocal refusal of German officials. Releases from German concentration camps were extremely rare; in any case, most of the deportees had died a long time ago. The German argument, as the Romanian ambassador in Berlin, General Ion Gheorghe, learned, was that “internment of those specific individuals by German officials took place with the consent of the Romanian government; on that basis, the internment of Jews was considered final.”59 Romanian bureaucrats, not all of whom were diplomats, nevertheless continued to seek the release of Romanian Jews interned in Nazi concentration camps. On April 27, 1944, for instance, even Lecca sent a request to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking that Romanian Jews interned at Bleichauer and Auschwitz be repatriated.60 Needless to say, such attempts were fruitless.
The policy of the Antonescu regime toward the Romanian Jews in occupied Europe was determined by the personal involvement of both Ion and Mihai Antonescu in changing Romanian foreign policy, in particular with regard to the Western powers. Ion and Mihai Antonescu, first and foremost, are directly responsible for the deportation of the Romanian Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe to concentration camps. Mihai Antonescu attempted to use the Romanian Jews as a bargaining chip. Later, especially in 1943 and 1944, this resulted in Romanian consular offices extending protection to surviving Romanian Jews abroad. Reports generated in the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizing that Hungarian Jews in Central and Western Europe were being treated better than Romanian Jews had an almost strangely powerful impact on the decisions of both Antonescus in this regard. In any case, Romanian interventions in favor of Romanian Jews in the Reich and in Nazi-occupied Europe were not motivated by humanitarian concerns but, rather, by opportunistic reasons or considerations of national pride.
