Yes indeed. I have two topics. I'm going to spend a bunch of my time talking about the Romanian Holocaust. And then I want to talk about the end phase. The death marches, the closing down of the extermination camps. But before I start to talk about Romania, I would like to remind you about our whole concept of this course. And you will recall, at the outset I argued that for the Holocaust to happen, it was necessary to have modern anti-Semitism. And that modern anti-Semitism meant that the Jews had to be successful in order to be feared. In order to construct a worldview that the Jews represented badly danger, and this is something new. The second requirement for the Holocaust to succeed was that a lunatic group had to take control of the machinery of the modern state. The kind of mass murder which occurred could have occurred only in a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism was a precondition of this particular mass murder. By totalitarianism I simply mean that no contrasting worldviews, political views, are allowed to be articulated. And then, when such an attempt is made, which by and large almost never happened, then there is a high price to pay. That is, indeed, it is really striking how few people spoke up, and those who did speak up paid a very heavy price. And then the third requirement was the war. I cannot imagine the kind of mass murder which occurred to take place unless in the background there was a war. Life was cheap. After all, the Nazis came to power in 1933 and the real mass murder started in 1941, not 1939, 1941. Now for the third part, when I talk about the war, what interests me is that why is that in some countries the mass extermination was more successful than in others. How can we correlate this to other factors? I mean the obvious thing that we would want to correlate is the strength, tradition, and history of anti-Semitism. And that, to a large extent, works, in as much as the real horror of the Holocaust occurred in Eastern Europe. Which had a much robust tradition of anti-Semitism, if I may say so, than in Western Europe. But still the correlation is not that great. You recall I talked about Western Europe and the results were surprising. Now, in Eastern Europe, this is the place of the real horrors. You may recall that Poland had over 3 million Jews, and today, Poland has about 5,000 Jews. Romania had, let's say, 6, 700 Jews. And Romania, again, has approximately 5,000 Jews. We use the number 5,000 because we have no clear knowledge, but perhaps there aren't that many. So, as Murray emphasizes, the Nazi's, to a considerable extent, succeeded. I mean, the place of Jewish life was in Eastern Europe and that is no more. So, if that's the essence of the story, then yes, the post-Holocaust world is different. Well, why am I speaking about Romania in particular? It seems to me that Romania is a special story. I mean, you can say that every story is a special story. The Estonians are a special story because they were the first to kill every one of them. Estonia had the distinction of being the first Judenrat state. However, there we talk about very few Jews and very small Jewish community. And, after all, what is true about Estonia is true about the rest. Namely, Estonia after all, came under German occupation. And that is a major generalization I want to stress again and again. Everywhere the Germans went they found collaborators. Now the degree of collaboration varied, and that's also an interesting question. Why and how, and as we know there is this heartwarming story. The Danes, which we all love so much, and I love it as much as anybody, on one hand. One generalization is, everywhere the Germans went they found collaborators. And the other side of the coin is, wherever the Germans did not go, the Jews were not sent to extermination camp. And therefore I always find it surprising when people make such a big deal about how the Bulgarian Jews survived. Well, the Bulgarian Jews survived because Bulgaria did not have to be occupied by the German army. The Hungarian Jews survived up to March 19th, 1944, because that was the time when Hungary came under German occupation. Now he strength and depth of Hungarian anti-Semitism was second to none. And yet, no matter how Hitler attempted to persuade Horthy, and they had several meetings, and put pressure on the Hungarians to send their Jews to extermination camps, Horthy said no. In this, as I say, I mean, he was not wrong. All right, now we come to the Romanians. And my argument is that the Romanian case is special, because this was the only country where the Jews were exterminated, and it was not occupied by the German army. That is, the Romanians did it on their own. There is a Romanian genocide, as there is, really no other country did what it did and the Romanian case therefore, is special. Well let me stop here for a moment to allow you to make observations of what I am saying. What I've been saying. >> Tell us where Romania is. >> [LAUGH] Where Romania is. Romania is there. >> [LAUGH] >> That's Romania. >> But it's, tell them where it's between. >> Well let's, well now, really comrades, I mean, really, I mean, don't embarrass me. I mean, after all, I mean, isn't this the University of California? Well, even though the Romanians did it with a lack of organization, but great enthusiasm, only half of the Jews were killed, and that is the other interesting aspect to this story, to which I will be getting to later. They stopped, they changed their minds. As early as late 1942, the Romanians realized that this is not the way to go. But I will come to that. Well, I don't know everybody's thinking that the, well, I don't know. There is the Soviet Union, there is Hungary. I mean surely, all of you could enumerate what countries border Romania, no? Well, now Romanian Jews. Romania in some sense was the creation of Versailles. In as, well, Romania came into existence in the In the 1850s put together by two provinces, Valahia and Moldova. However, it acquired so much territories in 1918, mostly Transylvania, which was an enormously valuable real estate. Which had been part of Hungary. Acquired territories from the Bulgarians. And acquired which had been part of the Russian empire. Now this is very relevant for us, inasmuch as the territories which came together in 1918 consisted of extremely different Jewries. And consequently one cannot even talk about the Romanian Jewry, there was no Romanian Jewry. There were a number of very different kind of Jews. Those Jews who lived in Transylvania, you remember Sighet. There had been much talk about, in northern Transylvania, of this, of a central point of Orthodoxy. We are talking about northern Transylvania, you cannot, but up in the north there's Satmar you see, Satmar, there is Sighet, you see Sighet too, that's the really, the central of modern Hasidism and Orthodoxy. Many of them moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and so on and so forth. The other part of Transylvania, close to the Hungarian border, is Hungarian speaking Jewry. Very much more Integrated and very much more, I never use the word assimilated, but acculturated, and that was the case up in the north. But the remarkable thing is that the entire Transylvanian Jewry regarded themselves as Hungarian Jews. Now to get ahead of the story a little bit, when the Hungarians succeeded regaining the Northern part of Transylvania in 1940, the Hungarians did not reward the Jews for being good Hungarians. But the point is that from the Romanian point of view, the Jewry was doubly suspect. Inasmuch as they owed no allegiance to the Romanian state. Now they did not owe allegiance to the Romanian state inasmuch as Romania up to 1918 did not emancipate the Jews. Meaning, emancipation meaning that laws apply to everybody who is a citizen of the state. And so the Jews were not citizens of Romania before 1914, before 1918. Now, under the pressure of the League of Nations, the Romanians made an attempt to give citizenship at least to some of the Jews. Which then, in the 1930s, such an attempt was abrogated.
