Abstract
Among Romania’s non-Jewish ethnic minorities, the Roma were subjected to the harshest persecutory measures during the Antonescu regime: secret administrative decisions, forced registration as “dangerous” and “undesirable” Roma, arrest, seizure of property, and deportation to Transnistria. Antonescu’s radical policies, such as Romanianization, prompted Roma and non-Roma citizens of World War II Romania, including those of Bucharest, to react. Overall, Romanianization targeted part of the Roma community, and a number of Bucharest’s Roma lost their assets, jobs, and freedom when they were deported to Transnistria.1
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Notes
Achim, Ţiganii în istoria României, 135; Bucur, Eugenie şi modernizare, 201–204; Marius Turda, “Controlling the National Body: Ideas of Purification in Romania 1918–1940,” Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta, and Marius Turda (eds.), Health, Hygine and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2011), 325–350; Thorne, Assimilation, Invisibility, and the Eugenic Turn, 181–187.
Thorne, The Anxiety of Proximity, 37–40; see also George Potra, Contribuţiuni la istoricul ţiganilor din România (Bucureşti: Fundaţia Regală Carol I, 1939), 122–123
for more details on Bucharest’s mahalale, see Adrian Majuru, Bucureştii mahalalelor sau periferia ca mod de existenţă (Bucureşti: Editura Compania, 2003).
For Ion Antonescu’s belief that one of the main themes of Hungarian anti-Romanian (revisionist) propaganda was that “Romania was a country of gypsies,” see the 14 April 1946 interrogation of Antonescu at the People’s Tribunal, in Marin Radu Mocanu (ed.), Avram Bunaciu: Documente (Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Libra, 2006), 237
see also Vasile Gh Boghiu, Prizonierîn URSS (Bucureşti: Fundaţia Academia Civică, 2012), 36, 45, 53, 70, 99; the interview with Margareta Oglindă, in Vultur (ed.), Lumi în destine, 122
Vasile Scârneci, Viaţaşi moartea în linia întâi: Jurnal şi însemnări de război: 1916–1918, 1941–1943 (Bucureşti: Editura Militară, 2013), 180, 397; ANR, PCM-SR 38/1944, p. 263.
Viorel Achim, “Atitudinea contemporanilor faţă de deportarea ţiganilor în Transnistria,” in Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi (eds.), România şi Transnistria — Problema Holocaustului: Perspective istorice şi comparative, (Bucureşti: Curtea Veche, 2004), 205.
Michelle Kelso, “Recognizing the Roma: A Study of the Holocaust as Viewed in Romania,” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The University of Michigan, 2010), 41–42.
Theories on hereditary transmission of criminal impulses were based on the works of nineteenth-century criminologists, such as Caesare Lombroso, Richard Dugdale, Raffaele Garofalo, Enrico Ferri, Ernest Hooten, and Henry Goddard. See Freda Adler, Gerhard Mueller, and William Laufer (eds.), Criminology, 2nd edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), 60–67, 70–72, 91. Lombroso, for instance, considered the Roma (“Bohemians”) as “the living image of an entire race of criminals.” Caesare Lombroso, Le Crime: Cause et Remedes (Paris: Librarie Reinauld Schleicher Freres, 1899), 46–49.
See articles 1–80 (especially 1, 22, 25 para 6, and 80) of Romania’s Penal Code during the Antonescu regime, in Constantin Zotta (ed.), Codul penal “Mihai I” (Bucureşti: Cioflec, 1942), 1–25; see also the crucial “legality principle” of the penal law, consecrated through the Latin expressions “nullum crimen sine lege,” and “nullum poena sine lege,” “nullum judicium sine lege.” Vintilă Dongoroz, Drept penal (Bucureşti: “Tirajul” Institutul de Arte Grafice, 1939), 82–85, 577–633.
The crucial contribution of local bureaucrats to the persecution of Roma during World War II was not specific only to Romania. As anthropologist Michael Stewart has argued, keen local officals played a decisive role in the articulation of anti-Roma policy in Nazi Germany. See Michael Stewart, “The Other Genocide,” in Michael Stewart and Marton Rovid (eds.), Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 187–190.
Rudari, an ethnic group considered Roma by most Romanians and persecuted by Antonescu, claimed an alternative prestigious ancestry. Denying they were Roma, Rudari deported from Zimnicea claimed they were the descendants of ancient Daci — a native population living in the area before the Roman conquest in second-century AC — and, thus, the official ancestors of the Romanian nation. Ibid., 326–327; for more details on Rudari’s controversial origin, see Ion Chelcea, Rudarii, Contribuţie la o “enigmă” etnografică (Bucureşti, Casa Şcoalelor, 1944).
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© 2015 Ştefan Cristian Ionescu
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Ionescu, Ş.C. (2015). Deportation and Robbery: The Roma Targets of Romanianization. In: Jewish Resistance to “Romanianization,” 1940–44. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137484598_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137484598_6
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