Romania: Are descendants of Holocaust survivors being treated unjustly?

Romania is renowned for its medieval castles, Carpathian mountain range, Dracula, stuffed cabbage leaves and the 1989 revolution against its Communist dictator. But lurking in the long shadow of the country’s troubled history are laws and procedures that impact descendants of the country’s Jews who were grievously afflicted by the Holocaust.

Characterized by historian Hannah Arendt as “the most antisemitic country in prewar Europe,” Romania collaborated with the Nazis for many years, leading to a death-count of its country’s Jews that was second only to Germany; an estimated 400,000 Jews out of the prewar Jewish population of 760,000 were murdered. Of the post-war Jewish population in Romania, an estimated 117,000 emigrated to Israel; in the 1970s and 80s, tens of thousands more made aliyah. With many of the descendants of Romania’s once-thriving Jewish population now scattered around the world, in Israel, the US, Canada, and elsewhere, it is estimated that less than 9,000 Jews now live in Romania – a community loosely comprised of seniors (including Shoah survivors), Israelis, and families of mixed heritage.

An EU member state since 2007, Romania joined the Schengen region (in part) earlier this year, and expects to soon obtain full membership. But this country’s government and legislature, as  intent as it may be in instituting forward-looking policies, still ignores (or denies) its troubling political past – including the egregious crimes committed by its fascist authorities before and during World War II. As an example of this dismissal, Romanian authorities continue to strictly enforce legislation that results in imposing disproportionately and impossibly heavy burdens on *would-be* citizens of Romanian-Jewish descent who were either murdered or otherwise victimized during the Shoah.

A copy of my father’s birth certificate (1932).

As the daughter of a Jewish-Canadian citizen who was born in Romania in 1932, my repeated attempts to obtain Romanian citizenship through descent have come to naught. The key obstacle, and one that neither the National Authority on Citizenship nor the Romanian judiciary have, to the best of my knowledge, yet to address is this: Descendants of survivors or victims of the Romanian Shoah/Holocaust who wish to apply for citizenship by descent are expected to meet the same strict criteria to which all other ‘regular’ foreign applicants must adhere. But due to the excessive burden that these inflexible criteria imposes on descendants  of Shoah victims, whether murdered, deported or otherwise persecuted, a grave injustice is being perpetuated. Many documents cannot be located, names and dates may have been changed or improperly recorded in countries of arrival, and other gaps in documentation may exist.

My late grandfather, Iuliu Iancu, ran a successful architectural firm for many years with his brother (and avant-garde artist) Marcel Iancu; designing and constructing many modernist projects in the interwar period – up to 50 or more projects in Bucharest and beyond, many of which are still intact and designated historical monuments. Throughout two decades of his career, and up until it was cut short in late 1940, my grandfather contributed meaningfully to Bucharest society, to the Romanian economy, and to the gainful employment of many Romanian citizens.

In 1938, consistent with escalating persecutions and ramping up of racist policies and laws against members of the Jewish community in Romania during the Antonescu regime, legislation was passed that essentially stripped a significant number of Jews in the country of their citizenship. A document from that time establishes that my grandfather went to great lengths to retain his citizenship. However, two years later, he was hunted down in his place of business, beaten up by violent and antisemitic National Legionary Movement extremists, held and tortured in the Legionary headquarters for days against his will, all while his businesses and home were confiscated. All of these grievous crimes were committed against my grandfather (and his family) by the Romanian fascist authorities then in power; and each of these crimes has never been addressed nor redressed.

To be clear, my grandparents, with my 8-year-old father in tow, never voluntarily left or “emigrated” from Romania. After my grandfather’s release from involuntary, degrading and violent detention, in fear of worsening conditions for Jews, he managed to procure, for himself and his small family, an Affidavit in Lieu of a Passport (since his passport had been confiscated) on January 14, 1941.

This frightened family fled by boat on the eve of what would come to be known as the Legionary rebellion of January 21-23, 1941 – but more accurately called the Bucharest pogrom, when synagogues were vandalized, Torah scrolls burned, hundreds of Jews in the city, including my grandfather’s brother-in-law, were pulled from their homes, murdered in front of families and neighbors, and in many cases, hung from hooks in a slaughterhouse. It was only due to my grandfather’s prudence and foresight that they escaped that horrific pogrom, took refuge elsewhere and cobbled together new lives.

Fleeing first to Palestine (later an established Israel), then emigrating to Canada 12 years later, meant not only that they had uprooted themselves and escaped under traumatizing conditions, but that they were forced to adapt overnight to a new landscape, language and laws: A quick transition to a society in flux (first under British Mandate, then a new state of Israel) meant learning a completely new language, adjusting to an unfamiliar society and norms, and a decidedly different climate – both environmentally and politically. Part of this monumental and involuntary shift in their lives required that their original Romanian documents and names be changed – from Romanian to Hebrew and then to English; which, not surprisingly, led to unintended errors in translation and spelling. These successive cultural and linguistic adaptations created a hodgepodge of documents with names that may, at first glance, seem arbitrarily different than the originals – although they are not.

As if the tragedies that befell my father and grandparents weren’t enough, as if all the persecutions, beatings, detention, confiscations hadn’t so deeply impacted and completely changed the course of my grandfather’s life many times over. I’m repeatedly told – by lawyers, consultants, civil status officers and other government authorities that I consult in seeking citizenship – that I must submit documents that either do not exist or cannot be found. Moreover, here is what I have been told: I must obtain a criminal record clearance – when the Legionnaires committed heinous crimes against my grandfather (and hundreds of thousands of other Jews), for which they have never been brought to justice. I must pay the current government of Romania – heirs to an indisputably and brutally antisemitic regime whose policies and laws ensured that my father could not live in his country of birth – a huge sum, and wait for years, if at all, the granting of citizenship is discretionary. And I must meet each one of these requirements in full, without exception, in order to legally obtain what should be mine by birthright.

Had my grandfather not been persecuted, threatened and beaten, he most likely would have lived out the rest of his days in Bucharest with his wife, son and large extended family, while contributing even more to the flourishing architectural landscape and legacy of this country. He would not have been condemned to flee the country of his birth. Whether or not I, personally, would have been born, it is almost certain that my grandfather’s descendants would still be living in Romania today.

Is it reasonable to demand that I take an oath of allegiance to a country that less than a century ago committed heinous crimes against my family for which nobody has been brought to justice? Shouldn’t Romania apologize for and redress its country’s historical injustices towards the members of its Jewish community through acts of reconciliation? Descendants of victims and/or survivors who seek to establish or regain the citizenship that their ancestors may have lost during the Shoah should be treated as a separate class of applicants similar to certain foreign persons who are by Romanian law granted considerably leniency and latitude. The terms of meeting the requirements for citizenship “… can be reduced up to half in the following situations:

1. The applicant is an internationally recognized personality;
2. The application is a citizen of a member state of the European Union;
3. The applicant has acquired refugee status according to the legal provisions in force;
4. The applicant has invested in Romania sums exceeding 1,000,000 euros.

While it is reassuring that the government continues to expedite citizenship applications for Ukrainian refugees, how can citizenship be preferentially granted to celebrities and investors while descendants of victims or survivors of the Shoah, who suffered under the brutal dictatorship of the Iron Guard and National Legionary Movement, are held to a higher and more stringent standard when they cannot produce the precise evidentiary criteria required by Romanian authorities? Why are survivors or their descendants being re-victimized rather than being recognized for their equally distinct status?

Despite the establishment of a Holocaust memorial in Bucharest and the introduction of a Holocaust curriculum in schools, Romania has not taken any measurable steps to redress its own heinous role in Nazi-era persecutions, confiscations, deportations, and exterminations. In order to rectify this inexcusable and overdue omission, I submit that another category should be added to the National Authority of Citizenship’s list of applicants entitled to more lax terms and an accelerated process:

5. The applicant or his/her direct descendants, Jewish or not, are survivors or victims of the Romanian Shoah, or descendants thereof; on a balance of probability – taking into account whatever documentation is available, and favoring at all times the statements and proof (written or oral history) provided by the survivor or descendants themselves. This *expedited* process, a gesture intended to redress historical grievances, would obviate the need for satisfying criteria such as civil status documentation that meets strict exigencies required of ‘regular’ foreign applicants, as well as proof (or loss) of citizenship, clarification of legal status in Romania, knowledge of Romanian, swearing an oath of allegiance, payment of fees (other than administrative).

To publicly signal a meaningful and substantive reckoning with its antisemitic past in at least this regard, the courts and citizenship authorities of Romania should proactively institute measures to greatly ease the citizenship application process for descendants, as other European countries have done.