So, now, Romania was really, it's very difficult to rank all the countries according to the strength and history of antisemitism, but my sense is that there no country which surpassed Romania in the antisemitic scale. Now, it's an interesting thing is, why is that? Why is that there is such a contrast between Hungary and Romania? Why is it that the Hungarian Jews came to be, well, at least a large part of the Hungarian Jews came to be, drawn into Hungarian life. And the reason for that is because there were economic opportunities in Hungary, and there were nothing comparable in Romania. In the interwar period, Romania was the poorest state in Europe in terms of any statistical measure, such as life expectancy, such as infant death, and I think that we may hazard that generalization that the more backward the country, the greater the sense of antisemitism and the less emancipated, less acculturated, is the Jewry. Now in the case of Romania, as I say, this does not really quite work in as much as the Transylvanian Jewry, at least a large part of the Transylvanian Jewry had been acculturated, but not to Romania. That is, the difference between the Romanian case and the Hungarian case, is that because of the particular character of the Hungarian social structure and the particular place where Hungary stood In the scale of economic development in the end of 19th century, the Jews regarded themselves as passionate Hungarians, and the political class, the gentry, accepted the Jews as allies. Now as I was saying the last time, this particular alliance lasted only until 1918 and then there was really the sharpest turnaround that one can think of. But Hungary was the only case where the Jews were allies of the nationalists. In Romania, it was the other way around. Every country, almost every country in eastern Europe, had at least a thin layer of liberal tradition. And that, Romania did not have. In the Hungarian case there was a thin residue, not residue, but what am I thinking of? A layer of liberal thinking. There were liberal Hungarians who happily made an effort to bring Jews into Hungarian life. This is completely missing in the case of Romania. Even in the case of Poland, where the Polish nationalists regarded the Jews as enemies, nonetheless, there were outstanding Polish intellectuals who cared about the emancipation of the Jews, and took the side of the Jews in certain circumstances. This is completely missing in Romania. I cannot think of a Romanian intellectual who was not carried away by Romanian nationalism, and that nationalism was antisemitic. So here we are now, in the 1920s and 1930s in the inter war period. And in every eastern European country, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, democracy fails in one form or another. Autocratic governments come into power, really, everywhere, with the exception of Czechoslovakia. And every country in the 1930s in Eastern Europe come under German economic influence. I think I talked about it last time. The issue is that the German economy is the first to revive and consequently these countries need German trade, German economic help and Germany is the rising power. And the Western powers had very quickly, in the course of the 1930s, showed themselves incapable of defending their own interests such as the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the behavior of the Allies concerning the Ethiopian crisis. By the way, this is a generalization also, which you should keep in mind that allies of the Jews everywhere are the liberals. And consequently, the strength of liberal tradition and Jewish well-being are connected. And whenever liberalism is not doing well, the Jews are not doing well. >> Peter, do you mean middle class? >> Well, of course, the middle class is a varied bunch. The middle class, certainly in the case of Germany, among them, of course, there was a liberal movement who were really the best help-mates of the Jews. But also the middle class also includes people who regarded the Jews as competitors, the little shopkeepers, and they were among the most enthusiastic Nazis. >> But I would reverse it and say, is it possible to have a liberal layer without having a middle class? >> Well this somewhat takes us away from our major topic of-- >> But it is an economic... >> Yes, yes. I am thinking of the Hungarian case, where the nobility, a segment of the nobility, could be regarded as liberals, inasmuch as they advocated tolerance and liberal values of all sorts and modernization and Westernization. >> But everywhere else. >> And in the case of Russia also there were not as many as there should have been, and not necessarily the most outstanding characters, but nonetheless, the Jews had some friends. In the Romania, I couldn't think of any.
