ROMANIA FROM FASCISM TO COMMUNISM.BBCM

Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London

During the years 1938–1948 Romania went through a series of remarkable changes. From a parliamentary democracy and monarchy to a fascist regime-cum-military dictatorship to a communist satellite of the Soviet Union, Romania was not simply caught between the machinations of the superpowers, as many historians of the country like to put it. Certainly the Romanian decision to ally itself with Nazi Germany — taken before Ion Antonescu came to power — was made out of fear that this represented the only chance of retaining some independence and having the possibility of regaining lands ceded to the USSR (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia) and Hungary (Northern Transylvania) in June and August 1940 respectively. But the fact that the choice was Hitler’s Germany rather than Stalin’s Soviet Union tells something about the country’s political culture: monarchist, nationalist, xenophobic, antisemitic and, despite Bucharest’s interwar cosmopolitanism, by 1938 moving decisively into Germany’s orbit. In short order, the country lost a third of its territory, following which King Carol II, under German pressure, was forced to offer dictatorial powers to General Antonescu and then to abdicate in favour of his son Mihai. At first Antonescu shared power with the Iron Guard, with the Guard’s leader, Horia Sima, appointed Deputy Prime Minister when the ‘National Legionary State’ was declared on 14 September 1940. After a few chaotic months, characterised by Iron Guard violence, culminating in the Bucharest pogrom of January 1941 in which 120 Jews were murdered, Antonescu dissolved the National Legionary State on 14 February and established a new government which offered less wayward rule, a more stable partnership with Germany, and, in Antonescu’s eyes at least, a stronger likelihood of regaining northern Transylvania. ‘The road to northern Transylvania’, writes Dennis Deletant, ‘lay through Russia and allegiance to Hitler’ –

1

Antonescu, soon promoted to Marshall, ruled Romania until, with the Red Army approaching and the conducător remaining indecisive, the young King Mihai intervened and on 23 August 1944 engineered the country’s switch of sides just in time to try and stave off the indignity of Soviet defeat and humiliating terms.Instead the coup bought Mihai about six months before the Soviet or so .

Occupation was being presented as a friendly operation in the final struggle against ‘Hitlerite and Horthyite Fascism’, as Romania swiftly turned into a communist country – now with the humiliation presented as being the will of the Romanian people. This last change was perhaps the most remarkable given that Romania’s indigenous communist party (RCP), outlawed during the war, numbered no more than 1,000 members, some 800 of whom were in prison. ‘Romania’s external position immediately after the coup’, Deletant reminds us, ‘was that of an independent state waging war against its former allies on the side of its former enemies.’3 Or, as Nikita Khrushchev put it, Romania, like Hungary, was one of ‘our involuntary allies’.
incorporation of Romania as part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of interest in Eastern Europe signalled the fact that, as with Poland, Stalin wanted to ensure that a ‘friendly’ regime was in place, first to recognise the border changes that were in effect at the end of the war (the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, the latter of which was to become the Soviet Republic of Moldova5) and, second, to prevent any resurgence of fascism – in other words, to secure Soviet security, which was Stalin’s main aim after World War II. By March 1945, the interim governments of Sănătescu and Rădescu had been replaced by the Soviets’ nominee, Petru Groza. In November 1947 the Social Democratic Party was forcibly merged with the Communist Party to create the Romanian Workers’ Party and in December 1947, with Mihai’s forced abdication, the communist takeover was complete.

These changes were observed by, among many others, the BBC Monitoring Service (BBCMS). Laura Johnson rightly observes that ‘the BBC Monitoring Service archives are a selective record of broadcasting, they are not the media sources themselves’; in other words the role played by the monitors in translating and shaping the material needs to be considered.
allow us to come close to accessing the representation of the events through the words of the Romanian radio service. The shift from fascism to communism is especially striking, as of course is the gulf in just about every report between what the broadcasters claimed – irrespective of which regime was in control – and the facts as they can be discovered from other sources. One can write history on the basis of the BBCMS reports on Romania, but it would be a history that veered widely from an understanding of the same events from the perspective of post- communist, twenty-first century Europe. Before 23 August 1944, the reports describe the unleashing and the end of the war as a result of an international Jewish conspiracy to undermine The rapid even so, the files the Romanian people. After that date, they present ongoing events as the triumph of the

Romanian working people against the fascist oppression unleashed by big business and foreign,especially German and Hungarian, capital. In other words, for historians to use the BBCMS reports in the Romanian context, a good dose of source criticism is necessary, and the broadcasts – in themselves fascinating – need to be placed alongside other documents, even if one’s interest is solely in the self-portrayal or propaganda of fascism or communism. The BBCMS sources are transcripts of sources ‘from above’, i.e. official positions, which are often uniform and ideologically straitjacketed; they need to be supplemented by sources ‘from below’,i.e. testimonies of everyday life in Romania as well as by sources that come from outside observers.

This article – which is a shorter version of a much longer piece examining a broader

range of themes – examines the BBC Monitoring reports as they concern two representative

moments: the wartime expropriation of Jews prior to their planned deportation and the war

crimes trials that took place in the wake of Romania’s changing of sides in the war .

Persecution of the Jews

This contrast between the sources and the reality is readily apparent with respect to the treatment of the Jews in Romania. The authorities were by no means shy of advertising their decisions to expropriate Jewish property and, in general, to remove the Jews from Romanian economic and social life. For example, a broadcast of 3 April 1941 reported on measures taken in that vein:

A lengthy explanation was given as to the significance of the Rumanian Decree-Law by which the land property owned by the Jews was expropriated by the Rumanian State. All kinds of factories were by this measure also expropriated by the State and the work of Rumanisation was thus enabled. The Under Secretary of State for Rumanisation takes care that the necessary measures should be carried out in the interest of the state. The Rumanian authorities are careful to prevent any abuses which could occur by the transfer of Jewish property to the ownership of the State.A broadcast one month later added that ‘A National ”Center of Romanisation” has been created which will issue several decrees: the expropriation of Jews, replacing Jews by Rumanians in all establishments etc. This center is also going to control the Economic life and the Finance.’ It also

The next day further detail was added in a broadcast to European countries outside of Romania:

reported in a news flash that a new law had been passed forbidding Jews to trade in cereals.

The decree concerning the expropriation of Jewish property is an important step in the nationalisation policy of the Government. It concerns big and small enterprises, such as mills, bakeries, alcohol distilling plants, refineries, factories of medical drugs, all mining rights and property of mineral resources such as oil, railways, telegraph and telephone companies. All these must be transferred to the state free of debts. An undersecretary of state for Rumanisation and colonisation will be appointed who is to watch over the legal carrying out of the transfer. The Government will pay for the property in form of annuations [sic]. By this measure the skilled workers among the refugees from the ceded territories can be again introduced into the economic

The same broadcast also observed the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ion Constantin

Brătianu, ‘one of the founders of the Rumanian state’. It summed up his achievement thus: ‘He

was the creator of the alliance with Germany and Italy, and succeeded in annulling the demands

of the Berlin Congress for the emancipation of Jews in Rumania.’ This condensation of Brătianu’s

life into a foreshadowing of the Axis aimed to provide the Antonescu regime with a respectable

pedigree and set the attacks on the Jews into a context of long-term nation-building. The

government did indeed establish on 3 May 1941 a National Centre for Romanianisation system,tasked with ‘romanianising economic life’ and paying compensation to Jewish property owners. This compensation, which undervalued property by more than 75%,

But there was more to the measures against the Jews than an attempt to redistribute wealth from the small Romanian middle class (which included many Jews) to the poor Romanian peasantry. If the aim were simply to boost economic development and undertake programmes of ‘modernisation’, then attacking the Jews made no sense – they were already contributing to the Romanian economy, the Jews of the Regat (the ‘Old Kingdom’ of Moldavia and Wallachia)

thought of themselves as Romanian and the Jews of Banat and Transylvania, though often of German or Hungarian speaking backgrounds, could have been regarded by a state with less narrow ethnic aims as net contributors to national life. As Jewish doctor and writer Emil Dorian asked in his diary with respect to his landlord, how has the situation changed ‘if the exorbitant rents go into the pocket of a Gentile rather than a Jewish exploiter?’14 But the fact is that since 1918 and the creation of ‘Greater Romania’ as part of the post-war settlement, the Romanian state had been devoted to a project of national homogenisation of which minorities, especially Germans, Hungarians, Jews and Roma, were the targets. ‘The elimination of the foreign element’, said Antonescu, ‘depends on its replacement by local forces in the spirit of the fullest integrity.’

The Antonescu regime offered a more extreme version of the Romanianisation policy that had

been developing in response to the new constitution of 1923, which had granted Jews civil rights.

Under King Carol’s dictatorship of 1938, Octavian Goga’s government reversed many of the

Jews’ rights, and Goga’s successor Ion Gigurtu introduced Nuremberg-style laws in 1940, just

before Antonescu took power with the Iron Guard. Not only did Antonescu’s regime take radical

measures to steal property from Jews, leaving them destitute, but it murdered them too. The

Romanian army was the third largest in the Axis (after the Wehrmacht and the Italian army).

Following the occupation of the part of western Ukraine between the Dniester and Bug rivers, the

Germans and Romanians agreed at Tiraspol (17 August 1941) and Tighina (30 August) to name

the area Transnistria, run by the Romanians from Odessa but allowing the Germans control of

major railway lines and the port of Odessa. Jews were deported there from Bukovina and

Bessarabia. Together with the local Jews, including the Jews of Odessa, they were killed there in

large numbers or were left to starve or freeze to death in the inhospitable environment. The

largest single massacre occurred at Bogdanovka in Golta county, when in December 1941 some

4,000–5,000 Jews were burned alive in a stable block and a further 43,000 shot in a local

Although Antonescu is not regarded by historians as having been as radical as Hitler and the leading Nazis, he nevertheless held a world view which regarded Jews as Bolsheviks and as an existential threat to the Romanian nation. In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, for example, Antonescu explained that the largest problem facing Goga in 1938 had been the ‘Jewish problem’. Explaining that Jews controlled the Romanian economy, Antonescu proposed to resolve the ‘Jewish problem in the course of the reorganisation of the state, substituting Jews with Romanians step by step, and in the first instance with legionaries who will in the meantime prepare themselves. The Jews’ property will for the most part be expropriated in exchange for compensation. ... Jews will be able to live in but will not be able to be beneficiaries of the resources and wealth of this country. In Romania, Romanians have to live and be valued above all: the others, if there is space left, come after them.’17 Antonescu shared with Hitler a paranoid

fear of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ and stated that ‘Satan is the Jew’.

pragmatic in his attitude towards the Jews than Hitler, who never wavered from his chiliastic vision of the Jews as the poisoners of the Aryan race, Antonescu’s fear of Jewish treachery and economic exploitation nevertheless made Romania responsible for killing somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 Jews as it sought to solve its ‘Jewish question’ in ‘the Romanian way’ until Antonescu changed his mind in October 1942, abandoning plans to deport Jews from the Regat,i.e. the failure of plans to ‘Romanianise’ the economy in the way envisaged by the regime – was Banat and Transylvania.

Among the reasons contributing to this decision, the economic one –

Romania Changes Sides

These occurrences suddenly took on new meanings with the change of regime after August 1944, and their reflection in the Romanian broadcasts gives us an insight into how the new governments wanted to portray themselves to the Romanian people, to the Soviets and to the rest of the world. They indicate what was regarded as important enough to broadcast, how post- Antonescu Romania was to be conceived and, vitally, they indicate what the new regime did not want to talk about.

One illustration of how the communists triumphed is found in the BBCMS’s recording of the trials of war criminals in Romania. Like in the rest of what would soon become the region east of the ‘Iron Curtain’, war crimes trials in Romania served a dual purpose: convicting fascist criminals and reorganising society, eliminating ‘kulaks’, large landowners, and entrepreneurs – in short, the middle class and bourgeoisie. Even though the Peoples Tribunal’s followed the indictments set out in the Nuremberg International Charter (8 August 1945), the social context, legal framework of the court, and the vocabulary of the prosecution made it clear that the crimes were to be understood in terms of a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of class struggle.out in the Nuremberg International Charter (8 August 1945), the social context, legal framework of the court, and the vocabulary of the prosecution made it clear that the crimes were to be understood in terms of a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of class struggle.

For example, with respect to the trial of those in charge at the aforementioned massacre in Bogdanovka, the guilt of the accused was presupposed through the use of evocative (and typically communist) terms such as ‘hangman’ and ‘assassins’ and through painting a picture of a united public, shocked and dismayed at the actions of the criminals amongst them:

The interrogation of the war criminals at the People’s Court continues. The President questioned Popescu, the Bogdanovka Camp hangman, who said he had taken the deportees' valuables to prevent profiteers from dealing in them. He admitted the deportees were given nothing in return. Asked whether he had organised the massacre of 48,000 people in the camp, Popescu cynically replied that the number was certainly not above 15,000. At this the public voiced its resentment and indignation. Questioned further he explained that typhus had broken out and to prevent a worse disaster, this massacre was decided upon.

Sub-Prefect Aristide Padure was questioned next and admitted sending deportees to camps where slow death awaited them.

Praetor (?Bodei) who, when tens of thousands of internees were starving at the Bogdanovka Camp, ran a bakery producing only 100 loaves a day, and Sgt. (Melinescu?) were also questioned. The latter admitted he had ordered gendarmes.

to beat inmates. His testimony is valuable because he saw the massacre. He told the President that about 14,000 people were killed, and more were dying every day. The Public Prosecutor asked: ‘Does the accused know that the old, sick and children were shot and their bodies burned in front of the living?’ after a minute’s reflection the Sergeant replied: ‘Such things happened after festivities.’

These then are the assassins and their misdeeds. The proceedings of the People’s

Another broadcast, two days later, followed up with the somewhat implausible claim that all of the war criminals had been indicted and once again making a clear separation between these ‘bad apples’ and the general public:

Prof. P. Constantinescu-Iasi, Minister of Propaganda, interviewed by the ‘Victoria’ correspondent, said that public opinion was satisfied that all war criminals responsible for Rumania’s disaster have now been committed for trial. It was the duty of all conscientious citizens to condemn those responsible for the horrors committed, the massacres of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and the ruin of provinces. By expressing their desire for the severe punishment of war criminals, the people of Rumania must dissociate themselves from the Fascist

The authorities insisted that the 44 meetings organised by the Patriotic Union in Bucharest indicated that ‘Thousands of civilians, representing all social strata, showed their hostility towards those who committed the basest brutalities and atrocities, and demanded their punishment.’ There was, said Minister Prof. Vladescu-Racoasa, ‘no excuse for war criminals wearing uniforms and attempting to plead that they only carried out orders, because military regulations forbid looting and murder.’24 Here, indeed, the Romanians anticipated the Nuremberg defence and its dismissal by the tribunal.

Nevertheless, the broadcasts were overall highly misleading. The fact is that the Bucharest Tribunal sentenced a mere 187 people. Of those, 48 were sentenced to death but only four were actually executed, with the rest having their sentences commuted to hard labour or being sentenced in absentia. In the Cluj Tribunal, the sentences were harsher, a fact which reflected the region’s occupation by the Hungarians. As Michael Shafir notes, the claim that the Hungarians and not the Romanians were responsible for the Holocaust, a position which

dominated communist-era historiography, derives from the period of the trials.
1950, many war criminals were released and joined the RCP. The Jews were depicted as victims of the Germans and the Hungarians and the returnees were denied justice. Indeed, RCP Secretary Vasile Luca stated in October 1945 that ‘There are almost no deportees left in misery. They have become multimillionaires.

Conclusion

The BBC Monitoring reports only recorded what the international press wanted to broadcast; it is no criticism of BBCMS to say that its transcripts paint a very partial understanding of the events they describe. When placed in context, the broadcasts remain a highly revealing and useful set of sources, for they speak to the self-understanding and self-presentation of the regimes that sent them out into the world. In the specific case of Romania, we see with both the fascist and communist regimes that there is often an enormous gulf between the claims made in the broadcasts and what we know from other sources. Nevertheless, it is still possible to be surprised by the frankness and stirring rhetoric that one sometimes encounters. In November 1945, the Russian writer, Ilya Ehrenburg, co-author with Vasily Grossman of the Black Book of Soviet Jewry, a 1946 report on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union which was suppressed two years later, gave a lecture in Budapest which was reported in the Romanians’ Hungarian- language service. It is important to be cynical in the face of these sort of humanitarian claims from Soviet authors; at the same time, it is hard not to be moved and it is even harder to believe that a man such as Ehrenburg could have said these words without meaning them. It is easy to imagine the BBCM monitors recording such statements many times over as they listened to broadcasts from the Soviet Union and its new satellites in eastern Europe. That does not detract from the fact that the message is one that remains meaningful:

Ehrenburg said Budapest reminded him of the Russian towns devastated by the Germans and pointed to the price Russia paid for victory. ‘But this victory is not only ours, it is also that of Europe and mankind. Europe was devastated by the racial idea. and in the name of German superiority, they wiped out cities and killed millions of people. Victory is won, but it is not enough to wipe out the Fascists on the battlefield. Our soldiers have done their duty; now it is up to the intellectuals to banish German darkness. Today it is not the underground Fascist organisations which constitute a danger but the prejudice remaining in the people’s hearts. It is the intelligentsia’s task to eliminate this danger. We must be on guard for mankind cannot survive another Oswiecim and Majdanek.