[Cz-L] romania and the holocaust

The article below appeared in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. The town
mentioned, Popricani, seems to be about 6 miles/10 km from Iasi, where I was
born.

wolfgang schaechter

**********************************
6 Nov 2010 Wall Street Journal
BUCHAREST, Romania-A Holocaust-era mass grave containing the bodies of an
estimated 100 Jews killed by Romanian troops has been discovered in a
forest, researchers said Friday, offering further evidence of the country's
involvement in wartime crimes.

Human remains are seen after archaeologists uncovered a mass grave of Jews
killed by Romanian troops during World War II in a forest area near the
village of Popricani, Romania.
The find in a forest near the town of Popricani, some 350 kilometers
northeast of Bucharest, contains the bodies of men, women and children who
were shot dead in 1941, the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of
the Holocaust in Romania said in a statement.

The find offers evidence of pogroms against Jews in the region, scholars
say-campaigns that were long swept under the carpet in a country whose
official history taught that Germans were the sole perpetrators of the
Holocaust.

Sketchy reports about the possibility of a mass grave in the forest began to
appear in 2002, and local authorities began an investigation, which was
suspended after nothing was found. Experts resumed the investigation at the
site and began interviewing witnesses again in 2009, according to Romanian
historian Adrian Cioflanca.

Some 280,000 Jews and 11,000 Roma, or Gypsies, were killed during the
fascist regime of dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, who was prime minister
from 1940 to 1944 and was executed by communists in 1946. Romania today has
only 6,000 Jews.

Historians have documented several pogroms in Romania during World War II,
including one in June 1941 in the northeastern city of Iasi, where up to
12,000 people are believed to have died as Romanian and German soldiers
swept from house to house, killing Jews. Those who didn't die were
systematically beaten, put in cattle wagons in stifling heat and taken to a
small town, where what happened to them would be concealed. Of the 120
people on the train, just 24 survived.

Romania's role in the Holocaust remains a sensitive and highly charged
topic. During communist times, the country largely ignored the involvement
of Romania's leaders in wartime crimes. The country's role in the Holocaust
and the deportation of Jews were played down by subsequent governments after
communism collapsed in 1989.

In 2004 after a dispute with Israel over comments about the Holocaust,
then-President Ion Iliescu assembled an international panel led by
Nobel-prize winner Elie Wiesel to investigate the Holocaust in Romania.
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Received on 2010-11-08 13:14:40