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Abstract
This article presents the failure and inability of the emerging Communist regime in post-war Romania to integrate and make the surviving Jewish community of more than 400,000 into a productive participant in the new socialist regime. Ultimately, both leading Communists of Jewish origin and Jewish activists of the Communist Party, acting through the Jewish Democratic Committee, were branded as ‘cosmopolitans’, removed and purged as unfit to enjoy the benefits of living in a new Romania. The paper traces the mutual images between Jews and Communists, the role of the Joint Distribution Committee in becoming the major agent of the Communists to communise the Jewish community and take over its leadership and elements of civil society, only to be disbanded at the end of the Stalinist era with its leaders purged as ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘Zionist agents’. The activities of high-ranking leaders of Jewish origin such as Ana Pauker, and their attitude towards Jewish emigration, are also examined in the light of documents available since 1989. In this context, the paper also examines the growing dilemma of the new regime. On the one hand it supported, based on the guidelines of Soviet foreign policy, the establishment of the State of Israel. At the same time, it tried to avoid mass emigration of Jews from Romania. Later, it would again shift policy according to the Soviet pattern and brand Israel as a ‘Zionist state, supported by US imperialism’. By 1951–52 the Romanian Communists realised several facts – that the Jewish community is largely made up of ‘middle class cosmopolitan’ elements, that the regime should get rid of them, and that high-ranking Communist leaders of Jewish origin, soon to be purged themselves, promoted the idea that Jews were unfit to adapt to the new regime and had better leave.
Notes
1. On the process of the Communist takeover of Jewish life in Romania, see CitationRotman, The History of the Jews in Romania; CitationVago, “The Communization of Jewish Political Life in Romania, 1944–1949”: 49–67.
2. For a very critical appraisal of the CDE reflecting the still mostly prevailing Jewish-Romanian perceptions of the CDE, see CitationLeibovici-Lais, Comitetul Democratic Evreiesc (CDE).
3. For a challenging “revisionist” biography of Ana Pauker, based on the available post-1989 documents, see CitationLevy, Ana Pauker.
4. For an excellent study of the specific conditions in Transylvania, see CitationSzabó Tibori's Citation study based on the Hungarian language edition of the JDC organ, the Egység, published in Cluj, Árnyékos oldal, and his “The Transylvanian Jewry During the Post-War Period, 1944–1948.”
5. See Rotman, The History of the Jews in Romania, especially 52–8. The tragic situation of most of the Holocaust survivors would hardly fit into the emerging Communist propaganda on the “parasitic elements” and “black marketing” Jews.
6. Special Information Services, Counterintelligence synthesis for March 1946.
7. On the attacks on Filderman, see Vago, “The Communization of Jewish Political Life,” 57–61.
8. CitationGitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics, 13–4.
9. See Vago, “The Communization of Jewish Political Life.”
10. Levy, Ana Pauker, 167.
11. Levy, Ana Pauker, 171.
12. Buletinul CDE, no. 3–4 (1947): 13.
13. Unirea, 7 April 1948.
14. Rotman, The History of the Jews in Romania, 133.
15. Levy, Ana Pauker, 172.
16. Romanian Foreign Ministry Archives, Israel File, 1950.
17. Directiunea Securitatii Capitalei, 1 June 1949, Arhiva SRI.
18. Raportul CC CDE, February 1950.
19. Raportul CC CDE, May 1950.
20. Egység, 4 September 1946.
21. CC PCR, 31 August 1959, see also Rotman, The History of the Jews in Romania, 97.
22. CC CDE, 11 May 1950.
23. Rotman, The History of the Jews in Romania, 133.
24. Levy, Ana Pauker, 213–4.
25. CC CDE, Raport de Activitate, January 1953.
26. CC CDE, Raport de Activitate, January 1953.
27. For the last stages of the JDC, see Leibovic-Lais, Comitetul Democratic Evreesc (CDE). The slim volume contains many documents on the JDC's activities, and it portrays it as a willing tool of the Communist masses. Valuable information is also available in CitationSommer, “The Jewish Democratic Committee.” The thesis was based on the available pre-1989 documentation.