Romanian Army & Holocaust Claims

[Stefan]

Hello all! First of all I'd like to say this website and forum are absolutely great and contain a wealth of information I could not have found in any other place.

I hope this topic has not already been covered, if so feel free to direct me to the proper thread and close this one.

I recently purchased Robert David Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts" in an effort to improve my knowledge of the Balkans. In his writings about Romania however I have found some intriguing claims about the Romanian involvement in the holocaust. Here are a few excerpts:

"In 1941 and 1942, Antonescu oversaw the deportation of 185,000 Jews from Bessarabaia ... to Transdniestria, where forward units of the Romanian army were setting up the only non-German-run extermination camps in Europe. From late 1941 until the middle of 1942, in this obscure and remote theater of the war, the Romanian army murdered every one of these people, stripping them naked and shooting them in subzero temperatures. On a few occasions, when soldiers were low on bullets they shot only the adults and buried the children alive."

"It was too much even for Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of carrying out the extermination of European Jewry. In early 1942, Eichmann pleaded with Antonescu to halt the killings temporarily so the job could be done more cleanly by Einsatzgruppen ... But the Romanians were in a killing frenzy ...Antonescu ignored Eichmann."

"The historian Raul Hilberg, who documented the Holocaust in Romania in his 1961 book, The Destruction of the European Jews, asserted that in no other country during World War II, except Germany itself, did national character play such a role in the fate of the Jews as in Romania"

Now, I'm not knowledgeable about these events so I would appreciate some more experienced comments on the above claims. They seem quite serious and I'm really not sure if the extent of Romanian involvement in the Holocaust is accurately portrayed or simply if Mr. Kaplan has an axe to grind. The passages in bold struck me as being particularly explicit. Of course, there are other elements that lead me to doubt the accuracy of Mr. Kaplan's research, such as the fact that virtually every other Romanian word in his book is misspelled. Nevertheless, I'd appreciate your take on this issue.

Thanks!

[aerialls]

http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/index_scharf.html

http://www.wiesenthal.com/social/press/pr_...cfm?ItemId=7768

[mabadesc]

My first opinion after reading this:

I've never ever heard of this incident being mentioned. It sounds far-fetched and not at all aligned to Romania's policy during World War II.

Having said that, however, I also think that such terrible accusations should not be dismissed blindly, without researching the subject.

So I hope that other forum members have concrete arguments (pro or con) to bring forward and reach a conclusion.

[aerialls]

si pe teritoriul Romaniei de azi:

quote:

Cartea prof. Zundel nu face insa obiectul articolului nostru. Un lucru ramane insa clar: nimic nu este stabilit odata pentru totdeauna. Traim intr'o epoca a relativismului, in care ceea ce pãrea adevarat ieri este dovedit ca fals astazi. Istoria nu face nici ea exceptie. In cazul Romaniei regula pare inversata. Ceea ce pãrea adevarat ieri se incearca a se dovedi fals astazi. De exemplu, astazi diversele "centre" de studii evreiesti incearca sa acrediteze ideia cã în Romania dinaintea si in timpul celui de-al II-lea Razboi Mondial ar fi existat un holocaust evreiesc [in miniatura cu cel din Germania] ce ar fi consemnat aproximativ 400.000 de evrei dupa unii, 600.000 dupa altii. Cifrele sunt in evidenta contradictie cu datele oficiale ale anchetelor guvernamentale din acele timpuri. Iata ce gasim in "Encyclopedia Iudaica Jerusalem" la pagina 1472: "Garda de Fier tinea conferinte si demonstratii studentesti deseori acompaniate de razmerite anti-evreiesti in care distrugeau sinagoge, magazine si ziare evreiesti ca in Oradea-Mare si Cluj [1922] si in Timisoara [1938] ... In perioada Iunie-Septembrie 1940 Garda de Fier reconciliata cu regele Carol al II-lea, a comis masacre impotriva evreilor in special in Moldova. La 6 Septembrie 1940, Garda de Fier proclama Statul National-Legionar impreuna cu Ion Antonescu. Imediat au fost promulgate legi pentru eliminarea evreilor din viata politica, culturala si economica a Romaniei. Telul final al Garzii de Fier era deportarea tuturor evreilor [N.R. -deportare deci, nu ucidere]. O lupta pentru putere a dus la rebeliunea legionara din 19-20 Ianuarie 1941, in care au fost ucisi 120 de evrei in Bucuresti si cca. 30 de alti evrei in provincie [in special in Ploiesti si Constanta]. Rebeliunea a fost inabusita si Conducatorul miscarii legionare Horia Sima impreuna cu alti lideri legionari s'au refugiat in strainatate. Odata cu izbucnirea razboiului contra Rusiei Sovietice [Iunie 1941], fortele germane impreuna cu politia antonesciana la care s'au alaturat elemente ale Garzii de Feir au comis atacuri impotriva evreilor ca Pogromul de la Iasi [29 Iunie 1941] si "trenurile mortii", si alte atacuri in Moldova soldate cu 7.500-10.000 de victime".

Deci sã recapitulãm:

In timpul rebeliunii, legionarii au ucis 120 de evrei in Bucuresti si 30 de alti evrei in provincie. Totalul "pogromului" dela Iasi, "trenurile mortii", etc. s'au soldat cu 7.500-10.000 de victme. Adunând ajungem la cifra maxima de 10.150 de evrei, victime ale Holocaustului in Romania. Cifra este data de catre "centrele" evreiesti de studii de atunci.

Dupa cifrele oficiale ale guvernului Antonescu, care nici el nu putea fi banuit de iubire fata de legionari, rebeliunea s'a incheiat cu 416 morti, 370 in Bucuresti si 46 in provincie, din care 120 erau evrei. In perioada 6 Septembrie 1940 si 20 Ianuarie 1941, tot dupa datele guvernului Antonescu, legionarii au facut 73 de victime in majoritate formate de grupul celor detinuti la Jilava pentru crimele comise contra tineretului tãrii. Niciunul nu era evreu. Nu putem decat sa constatam discrepanta chiar in cifrele de atunci maximum 10.150 de evrei, si enorma cifra maxima de 600.000 de evrei prezentata astazi de catre forurile evreiesti mondiale.

[aerialls]

alta versiune:

June 20, 2003/Sivan 20 5763, Vol. 55, No. 43


Romanian Holocaust denial
RAFAEL MEDOFF
The Romanian government's statement that "there was no Holocaust inside Romanian borders between the years 1940-1945" is a shocking and blatant falsehood.

It is also the latest example of a new type of Holocaust-denial.

The fact is that more than 400,000 Jews from Romania were murdered during the Holocaust. Nearly half of them were machine-gunned to death by the German "Einsatzgruppen" squads, assisted by the Romanian army, in 1941. Many of the remainder were murdered in Romanian death camps.

But Romania is not alone in distorting the facts of the Holocaust.

The journalist Christopher Hitchens has adopted a line from Holocaust deniers, claiming it is "now undisputed" that "there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald."

In a similar vein, Arab spokesmen routinely claim that the Palestinian Arabs played no role in the Holocaust. This assertion surfaced among the Israeli Arabs who recently visited Auschwitz. Yossi Klein Halevi, who took part in the visit, reported in The New Republic that as they entered the Auschwitz grounds, one of the Arab participants remarked: "Arabs had nothing to do with this."

Halevi writes that he thought, "What about ... the Mufti, the Palestinian leader who spent the war years as a Nazi propagandist in Berlin?"

The Mufti - Haj Amin el-Husseini, the undisputed religious and political leader of the Palestinian Arabs - also organized Arab sabotage squads that parachuted into the Mideast to attack Allied facilities. He also persuaded the Nazis to reject a prisoner exchange that would have freed 4,000 Jewish children, who were then shipped to Auschwitz.

The Mufti recruited Bosnian Muslims for an all-Muslim unit of the SS called the "Handschar" division; 38 of its officers were tried as war criminals.

Now contrast the Romanian and Arab denials with the actions of the leaders of Austria, Croatia and Poland.

Then-Chancellor Franz Vranitsky of Austria admitted before parliament in 1991 that the Austrians were not "Hitler's first victims," but rather willing participants in Nazism.

Then-president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, publicly apologized in 1994 for a book he had authored in which he whitewashed the Croatian role in the slaughter.

Polish President Aleksander Kwaeniewski last year publicly acknowledged that Polish citizens, not the German occupation forces, were primarily responsible for the massacre of 1,600 Jews in the Polish town of Jedwabne in July 1941.

Whether or not Romanian and Arab leaders acknowledge their roles in the Holocaust remains to be seen. However, their extreme distortions of Holocaust history are nothing less than a new version of Holocaust denial.

Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Visit the Web page, www.WymanInstitute.org.

[aerialls]

....

This post has been edited by aerialls on April 18, 2005 04:33 pm

[Victor]

aerialls, you know the Forum Rules. Please post in English.

Stefan, look here:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=118

[Najroda]

If this is true, it is shocking. And it is in the interest of the Romanian people that the truth is revealed, so that it can deal with it. I repeat if is true.

Germany is again a respected country, because it dealt with it's past. Unfortunately most communist countries never did, they simply did not have the oportunity. This is true for all countries that were morE or less aligned with Nazi Germany: Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia (yes! there was a whole SS division that consisted of 20.000 Bosniaks), Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria.

But I would not acquit the allied either. They kne exactly what was going on in the death camps. The aerial photo's are online. Yet they bombed the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but not the incinerators a few kilometers from it. But you hardly ever hear of this...

[Chandernagore]

QUOTE

Germany is again a respected country, because it dealt with it's past.

Absolutely true. Not only is it respected again. It's back in the saddle amongst the greatest in Europe.

Precisely because it dealt with it's past. Not that a choice was given I might add.

QUOTE

But I would not acquit the allied either. They kne exactly what was going on in the death camps. The aerial photo's are online. Yet they bombed the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but not the incinerators a few kilometers from it.

Strange, they should have bombed the concentrations camps to kill the prisoners to prevent them from dying ? I doubt the Western Allies knew what was really going on there before actually walking into the camps. They had doubts, fears, questions but they did not know. The extreme outrage amongst allied soldiers at the discovery of the reality is testament to the shock of those men when first put face to face with the truth of the death camps.

[Najroda]

QUOTE

Strange, they should have bombed the concentrations camps to kill the prisoners to prevent them from dying ?

No, of course not! Only the incinerators! Of course they could be rebuiltm but they could also be bombed again, and without them, the Nazis simply could not have disposed of such a large quantity of bodies. So it would have saved lives. Hard to estimate how many.

QUOTE

I doubt they knew what was really going on there before actually walking into the camps. They had ideas, fears, questions but they did not know. The extreme outrage amongst allied soldiers at the discovery of the reality is testament to the shock of those men when first put face to face with the truth of the death camps.

The men at the ground, sure. But the presidents, ministers and generals knew exactly what was going on there.

[inahurry]

The juicy topic. Same (EDIT: old) lies and same old friendly protection from the powers that be.

The Wiesenthal guy is convinced Columbus was sent in a secret mission to discover a new land for the people of Israel. Didn’t read the book but I’m sure he’s a master with fiction.

I know it’s a public forum but I have the feeling I’m disturbing a friendly (sort of speaking) gathering of likeminded people so I leave you with your problems.

Btw, Victor, why do you struggle so much, it’s already decided we will pay the cash too, after giving them half the country. If I were in the Israelis place I wouldn’t count on those money though even if they’re facing desperate times.

[Alexandru H.]

QUOTE

Btw, Victor, why do you struggle so much, it’s already decided we will pay the cash too, after giving them half the country. If I were in the Israelis place I wouldn’t count on those money though even if they’re facing desperate times.

You worry too much, inahurry.

[Victor]

QUOTE

Btw, Victor, why do you struggle so much, it’s already decided we will pay the cash too, after giving them half the country.

To you it may be a problem of money. To me it is about the truth and preventing others from presenting it in a distorted way (in both extremes).

[Relu]

I cannot believe in any of those Holocaust claims till I don't see pictures of the dead, pictures of the Romanian concentration camps of Transnistria... Where are they? It is well known that a Red Cross International Commission visited some deported Jews in Transnistria, and when the Jews were told if they needed something, they said, no, that's just great, Romanian authorities are respecting us... And also, remember that it was in time of war, and many Jews who were expulsed in Transnistria, were from simple motives of illegal trespassing in Romania. So the idea of Romanian 'concentration camps', as did the Jew Kaplan state, is hillarous! Where are the 185000 corpses? :question: Is it so easy to hide 185000 skeletons :question: ? Remember the Katyn massacre where more than 5000 Poles were shot... And the Soviets, who reconquered Transnistria??? They had all the motives to point out on 'Fascist Romanian brutality', and search for deads... But none of this happened... Instead, we have bizarre photos of the 'death trains' at Iasi, where instead of Romanian gendarmes, you see typicall Soviet policemen (that in 1941!!!!!!!! :loool: ), with Soviet visor caps, you see naked ( :question: :rollroll: ) corpses near the wagons... And you hear absurde stories that 1500 Jews died in trains, on a distance of 20km (Iasi - Podul Iloaiei)!!!! But moron, Romanian prisoners were stuked in cattle wagons the time of two weeks, in Siberian vacation after Stalingrad and after 23 August 1944! And very few of them ever died on the ride!!! And I fail to see how those Soviet wagons were more confortable than the Romanian brand... Cattle wagons cannot kill cattle, as they cannot kill human beings!
Use your logic!
Even Michael Roller, the Jew who re-wrote Romanian history during the early RPR stalinist period, even him, never mentionned of such absurdities! :roll:

[Relu]

Victor, in our days, the historical truth is less important than the profits that we can make of something... Just look at 'Dracula'... :ro: :loool: