Authors

Cristina Stoica¹;  ¹ Western University, Canada

Discussion

According to a 2007 survey, of the 65% of Romanians who heard of the Holocaust, only 28% acknowledged that it had also occurred in Romania. Of these, only 11% claimed the responsibility of the Romanian Holocaust lies on the Antonescu regime, compared to the 79% who place the blame on Nazi perpetrators. From the total number of respondents, only 33% recognized the Roma as targets of persecution, alongside the more-well known mass murder of Jews (INSHR Sondaj 2007).

Romani Holocaust memory in Romania was virtually non-existed prior to 1989 and only came to light in recent years. As a result of strong communist, nationalistic, and xenophobic currents in Romanian society, the silenced history of the persecution of the Roma in Transnistria at the hands of the Romanian government and its actors was prolonged for decades. The national narrative is complicated, arguably even unique, because while Marshall Ion Antonescu issued the deportation of more than 26,000 Roma, his decision to halt deportations in the spring of 1943 ‘saved’ sedentary Roma clans residing in the Old Kingdom. This paper will discuss Holocaust remembrance and commemoration of the Romani genocide in Romania. Emphasis will be placed on selective and deflective negation on behalf of the Romanian government, public (non)acknowledgement, and remembrance and memorialization of the genocide.