Andrei Oisteanu
The Taboo Jew in Communist Romania
During the last years I worked at a study entitled The Image of the Jew in the Romanian Culture. Study of Imagology in Central-East European Context (Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001). The research was carried out under the aegis of The “Vidal Sasoon” International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among the predicaments that I have faced in the process of researching this comparative study of ethnic imagology was one that, although expected, to a degree, I could not have foreseen its proportions. This predicament is due to the unhealable wounds that the communist censorship inflicted upon the corpus literature of the social sciences.
For their great majority, the books, publications and studies devoted to folklore and ethnology in Romania in the period after the Second World War avoid making one single mention of the Jew, because that nomen ethnicum and everything that was connected to him had become, in most circumstances, a taboo. After an excessive popularity – it is true, a negative one – enjoyed in the period between the wars, when the Jew had become the unwitting protagonist of all too many books, studies and articles of an anti-Semitic character, as soon as the communist regime came to power in Romania, in 1945, the Jew became the object of yet another excess: nothing whatsoever was written about him, as if he did not existed. (This went according to a general principle of totalitarian regimes: “Who/what is not talked about, does not exist”). An excess of silence took the place of an excess of noise.
This “timidity” was present at the very top of authority, too, be it Romanian or Jewish. Initially, in order to make the official voice of authority “politically correct,” Ceauşescu would use the famous formula, “irrespective of nationality: Hungarians, Germans, Jews.” Since the middle of the ‘70s, the Jews began to be omitted from the discourse of power and crowded in the more aseptic expression, “and other nationalities.” (The Gypsies, instead, were never mentioned in official discourse.) Some of the authorities of the Jewish community did not count upon remaining behind in this matter. In my opinion, the chief rabbi Moses Rosen, himself a person with an authoritative attitude, was wrong campaigning in the ‘80s for the banning from print of the socio-political writings of Mihai Eminescu, particularly those referring to the Jews. I believe such energy and authority might have found better outlet, namely reclaiming the inclusion, in the respective volumes in the series of Complete Works (vol. IX and X), of an adequate study, which would, correctly in context and with all the appropriate nuances, have explained Eminescu’s anti-Semite discourse. In 1957, Moses Rosen had also been the one to request (and obtain, for a while) the purging of the first page of the novel Baltagul (The Hatchet), where Mihail Sadoveanu had set down an innocent folk legend that explained the fate of several peoples, among which the Jews were included.
In volumes of folklore and ethnology – otherwise worthy of all praise – in anthologies or typologies of carols, of ballads, of legends, of folk anecdotes or folk theatre, etc. – written or edited by otherwise creditable authors – the texts about the Jews were carefully censored and, in the best of cases, marked with dots. In this last case, the omission was at least signaled, and the researcher could search, and, with some luck, even find the integral text in the original. The reasons that justified that political phenomenon were different along the decades, sometimes even antagonistic: at the beginning, in the period of “internationalist communism,” it was from an erroneous understanding of the fight against anti-Semitism (when Jewish activists must have had themselves a say); later, in the “national-communist” epoch, it was out of an excess of nationalism or even anti-Semitism. Commenting upon an album-monograph of Iaşi, printed in the ‘80s – where no mention is made of the history of the old and important community of the Ashkenazim Jews from the town (51% of the population before the Second World War), or of its great economic and cultural achievements – some researchers have called this phenomenon the “elimination of the Jews from the history of the town of Iaşi”.1 The examples of this type are many. For instance, it is difficult to imagine how an author who in 1982 writes a book about merchants, moneylenders, innkeepers, carters and wagoners, about the tradition of the fairs in the Romanian space doesn’t mention the Jews even once.2
I hasten to add that the phenomenon under discussion is not specifically Romanian, nor is it specifically communist. It rises and grows in any regime that has nationalistic traits, wherever an ethnocentric, if not downright ethno-exclusive, cultural perspective is enforced. Greece may be a good example to that effect, with its alleged “religious and ethnic homogeneity of the Greek population” (98 percent, in official records), and with the authorities refusing to acknowledge the existence of (present and past) national minorities.3 Here is what an intellectual Jewish woman from Thessaloniki declared a few years ago about the present state of culture in that city, where, in 1913, around 51% of the inhabitants belonged to the community of Sephardim Jews: “Today [i.e., October, 1990], at the University of Salonika, there is not a department, not a course, nothing about the Jews or about the Turks or other communities either. There is nothing in the historical institutes. Nothing in the city’s museums. Hardly a book [on this subject] in the Greek bookstores. Nothing. As if we [i.e., the Jews] were never here”.4
Coming back to post-war Romania, I shall give a few examples of censoring Jewish topics in print. In all post-war editions of Alecu Russo, the text Iaşiul şi locuitorii săi în 1840 (The Town of Iaşi and Its Inhabitants in 1840), has the pages referring to the Jews in Iaşi drastically expurgated.5 Letter XX, entitled Ovreii – The Jews –, was omitted by the censors from the post-war editions of the volume Scrisori către V. Alecsandri (Letters to Vasile Alescandri), by Ion Ghica.6 Vasile Alecsandri himself was censured in that epoch, his more or less ‘complete’ works failed to include (with some extremely rare exceptions) the caustic texts directed at the Jews (like Lipitorile satului – The Village Leeches).
Historical sources did not enjoy a treatment at all different. In 1959, Dan Simionescu published Cronica lui Baltasar Walther despre Mihai Viteazul (Baltasar Walther’s Chronicle on Mihai Viteazul), written at the end of the 16th century.7 The literary historian expunged – by replacing it with dots – the following passage, “likewise, [Mihai Viteazul] had all the Jews murdered, who, according to their custom, as they were wont, conducted themselves as traitors of the country”.8 The editors of subsequent volumes of Romanian history and old literature took over the document thus truncated, without even marking the censured passage with the dots. In a recent book, Dan Horia Mazilu absolves both Dan Simionescu and the editors, yet he neglects to mention the real culprits, “It is not late Professor Dan Simionescu who bears responsibility for the elisions,” and “the innocence of the publishing houses seems to me beyond question”.9
A similar treatment was applied by the censors to foreign books. Here are just a few examples. In all Romanian editions of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Prioress’ Tale (written in 1387), which dwells on the Jews and their “lucre of villainye,” and on the accusation of ritual infanticide, was either reduced to an incipient fragment without any relevance, or replaced with a laconic and neutral summary. Even the very recent edition of The Tales does nothing to remedy the situation (528). The well-known book by Lion Feuchtwanger, Die Jâdin von Toledo (The Jewess from Toledo) has been translated into Romanian under the neutral title of Balada spaniolă (The Spanish Ballad).10 Then, the writer who signs the preface to Elias Canetti, Die gerettete Zunge (The saved Language/ Tongue), an autobiographical novel that describes the childhood of the author within the Jewish community in Rusciuc – accomplishes the difficult feat of not mentioning the ethnonym – horrible dictu! – ‘Jew’ even once; when she cannot avoid it, she replaces it with that of “Sephardim:” “besides the Bulgarians, there [i.e., in the town] lived so many other nationalities: Sephardim, Turks, Romanians, Armenians, Russians”.11
In the period August-October 1919, Benjamin Fundoianu published in the magazine that came out in the Jewish language in Romania, Mântuirea (The Deliverance), a series of eleven essays, under the title “Judaism and Hellenism.” In 1980, there has been an attempt to publish this important text in an ample volume that contained all of Fundoianu’s published works.12 In the end, however, the censors ordered the purging of that cycle of essays from the volume. This important philosophic study was reprinted only now, in 1999, 80 years later.13 Also with respect to Fundoianu, in December 1945, in The Magazine of the Royal Foundations, Tudor Arghezi signed a warm article in memory of the “poet assassinated [in Auschwitz] with poisonous fumes.” A passage that mentions Benjamin Fundoianu’s Jewishness was excluded by censorship when the text was reprinted in mid ‘70s.14
A volume of Romanian miniatures and texts written around the year 1840 by the church attendant Picu Pătruţ were published in 1985. The Jews [jidovi] in The Legend of St John the New were expurgated from the book, in spite of their being main characters: according to tradition, they had been the ones who beheaded the saint.15 I had to search for and consult the manuscript when it came to filling up the gap that the censor’s ‘scissors’ had left. In an anthology of studies on The Legend of Master Manole, published in 1980, Lazăr Şăineanu’s study was censored to the same effect – the mention about the sacrifice of a “Turk or a Jew” was replaced with dots.16 In another anthology of studies signed by Vasile Bogrea, published in 1971, the editors eliminated the ethnonym “jidani” from the text of a legend recorded by Sim. Fl. Marian.17 In a monographic study on another essential motif of Romanian popular mythology, Mioriţa, Adrian Fochi enumerates the “Armenian”, the “Gypsy”, even the “Austrian” among the foreign shepherds that crop up in different variants of the poem18, but not the Jew [“jâdan”] from a version recorded in the region of Vrancea in 1926 and published in 1930: “Lo, flocks of sheep three, / Are acoming down / With handsome lads three: / One is Transylvanian, / One is a Moldavian, / And the other is a Jew [jâdan]”.19 As he comments today upon this regrettable omission, the linguist Stelian Dumistrăcel reminds the reader of the younger generation of the “politic bashfulness” (an ironic euphemism is used) “that characterized the moment [1964] at the moment the quoted monograph was drafted”.20
Finally, the most conspicuous case is related to the attempted publication, in 1972, of the volume signed by an ethnologist from Iaşi, Petru Caraman, entitled Descolindatul, în orientul şi sud-estul Europei (Negative Carolling in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe). The direction of Minerva Publishing House conditioned the author the publishing of the volume on the removal of the chapters on the Jews and the Gypsies. The request of the editors appears so much stranger today as the ethnic groups under discussion were described with sympathy and humor. The ethnologist did not agree to the compromise required of him and the book was eventually withdrawn. It could only come out recently, in 1997, after 25 years.21 “The study could not be published at Minerva Publishing House [in 1972],” writes the editor, Iordan Datcu, “because of censorship growing harsher, as it is well-known that in 1971 a famous, in its anti-cultural consequences, ideological plenum of the only [i.e., communist] party had taken place”.22
As can be seen, the Gypsies as well the Jews were subject to the same regime of interdiction. It is interesting that, after 1990, the Gypsies themselves demanded the ethnonym ţigan (Gypsy) to be banned, as overloaded with disparaging connotations. Coming back to the national-communist epoch, I remember that, in 1979, Romulus Vulcănescu complained to me that the censors expurgated the entire heading of ziganologie (Gypsy studies), which he had drafted for the Dictionary of Ethnology in preparation at Albatros Publishing House. The author replaced the mentioned term with gipsologie, and the text of the article could be printed in the book.23 This may be a ridiculous story, yet it is symptomatic. It demonstrates that the general degradation of communist society had even reached the activity of censorship, which began to be undermined by an inept formalism. An instrument of degradation (censorship) was itself degraded. Thus, the agents of Ceauşescu’s censorship had come to be more frightened by terms, than by ideas. This happened at a time when the catalogue of taboo-terms (a list as long as it was inane) was sure to contain certain ethnonyms, such as those – nomina odiosa – of ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’
I have dwelt longer on this issue not merely to emphasize the difficulties of research that I have faced, but also because this political phenomenon is an aspect that can by itself round out ‘the image of the Jew in Romanian culture.’
Notes
1. Leon Volovici, “On Several Concepts and Stereotypes in the Historiography dedicated to the Jews”, in “Studia Judaica”, vol. VII, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj, 1998, p. 89-98.
2. Ion Faiter, Trecător prin târguri şi iarmaroace [Traveler through fairs], Editura Sport-Turism, Bucureti, 1982.
3. Daniel Perdurant, Antisemitism in Contemporary Greek Society, The Hebrew University, The Vidal Sasoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, ACTA, No.7, Jerusalem, 1995.
4. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts. A Journey Through History, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1993, p. 237.
5. Alecu Russo, Iassy et ses habitants en 1840; cf. Alecu Russo, Opere complete [Opera Omnia], Cugetarea Publishing House, Bucharest, 1942, p. 103-134.
6. Ion Ghica, Scrisori către V. Alecsandri [Letters to V. Alecsandri], Socec & Comp. Publishing House, Bucharest, 1887.
7. Dan Simonescu, Studii şi materiale de istorie medie [Studies and Documents of Medieval History], The Romanian Academy Press, Bucharest, 1959, vol. III, p. 65.
8. Al. Papiu Ilarian, Tesaur de monumente istorice pentru România [Thesaurus of Historical Monuments for Romania], Bucharest, 1862, vol. I, p. 13.
9. Dan Horia Mazilu, Noi despre ceilalţi. Fals tratat de imagologie [We About the Others. False Treaty of Imagology], Polirom, Iassy, 1999, p. 167.
10. Lion Feuchtwanger, Balada spaniolă (in original, Die Jâdin von Toledo), Univers Publishing House, Bucharest, 1973.
11. Elias Canetti, Limba salvată. Istoria unei tinereţi [The Saved Language/Tongue. The History of a Youth], Dacia Publishing House, Cluj, 1984, [first edition, Die gerettete Zunge. Geschichte einer Jugend, Carl Hanser Verlag, Mnchen, 1977].
12. B. Fundoianu, Imagini şi cărţi [Images and Books], Minerva Publishing House, Bucharest, 1980.
13. B. Fundoianu, Iudaism şi elenism [Judaism and Hellenism], edited by Leon Volovici and Remus Zăstroiu, Hasefer Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999.
14. Tudor Arghezi, Scrieri [Writings], vol. 27, Minerva Publishing House, Bucharest, 1975.
15. Picu Pătruţ, Miniaturi şi poezie [Miniatures and Poetry], Bucharest, 1985, p. 124. As the text in this volume has been censored, I have completed the missing lines resorting to Picu Pătruţ’s manuscript, Stihos adecă Viers [Verse], p. 729-735, which is in the possession of Mr. Mihai Ghibu, to whom I hereby express my thanks.
16. Meşterul Manole [Master Manole], anthology of studies co-ordinated by Maria Cordoveanu, Eminescu Publishing House, Bucharest, 1980.
17. Vasile Bogrea, Pagini istorico-filologice [Historical and Philological Pages], Dacia Publishing House, Cluj, 1971, p.450.
18. Adrian Fochi, Mioriţa. Tipologie, circulaţie, geneză, texte [Mioriza. Typology, Circulation, Origins, Texts], Editura Academiei Române [Romanian Academy Press], Bucharest, 1964, p.232.
19. Ion Diaconu, Ţinutul Vrancei [The County of Vrancea], Bucharest, 1930, p.116.
20. Stelian Dumistrăcel, Dicţionar. Expresii romneşti [Dictionary. Romanian Idioms], Institutul European [The European Institute], Jassy, 1997, p.116.
21. Petru Caraman, Descolindatul, în orientul şi sud-estul Europei. Studiu de folclor comparat [Negative Carolling in Eastern and South-eastern Europe. A Study of Comparative Folklore], edited by Ion H. Ciubotaru, “Al.I. Cuza” University Press, Jassy 1997.
22. Iordan Datcu, “Petru Caraman. Epistolar”, in Petru Caraman, Studii de folclor [Folkloric Studies], vol 3, edited by Iordan Datcu and Viorica Svulescu, Minerva, Bucharest, 1995, p.278. See also Ion H. Ciubotaru, Valea Şomuzului Mare. Monografie folclorică [The Valley of omuzu Mare. A Folkloric Monography], Caietele Arhivei de Folclor [The Folklore Archive of Moldavia and Bucovina], vol. X1, Jassy, 1991, p. 179.
23. Romulus Vulcănescu, Dicţionar de etnologie [Dictionary of Ethnology], Albatros, Bucharest, 1979, p. 150.