On June 27, the president of the Association of Former Prisoners of
Ghetto and Concentration Camps, Shabs Roif, stated to the Moldovan TV
that “the policies of Ion Antonescu were directed against the Jews of
Bessarabia”. He added that “The Association will appeal to the
European institutions with the protest against the repeated
heroisation of war-time dictator Ion Antonescu” in the media and by
some politicians.
According to the Jewish News Agency, other members of the Jewish
community enthusiastically supported his statement, reminding that in
Moldovan villages and towns “eyewitnesses remembering atrocities
commited by the Romanian fascists on the territory of Bessarabia upon
the orders of Antonescu are still alive.”
The heroisation of dictator Ion Antonescu has been actively used in
the political and media discourses as a tool to promote the idea of a
unification of Moldova and Romania on the basis of close ethnic ties.
According to the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania
led by Elie Wiesel, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered or
died as a result of the policies of the Romanian army during the
Second World War.
In his protest Shabs Roif specifically refered to a new article which
appeared in ‘Capitala’, the official newspaper of the city council of
Chisinau (capital of Moldova) on 24 June. It described Ion Antonescu
in a favourable light stressing positively his policy of unification
of Romania and Moldova. The newspaper is controlled by the mayor of
Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca who is the vice-president of the right-wing
Liberal Party. The Jewish News Agency reports that Chirtoaca has links
with the Romanian neo-fascist organization “Noua Dreapta” (New Right),
which has its branch in Moldova. Among others, he has participated in
Noua Dreapta events in Romania. “Noua Dreapta” is a part of an
umbrella of far-right organizations – European National Front, which
includes the Falange in Spain, the National-Democratic Party in
Germany and the National Rebirth of Poland.
Natalia Sineaeva-Pankowska is a member ofYouth Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly/’Never Again’ Association-Poland
