The Use and Abuse of the

Holocaust: Historiography and

Politics in Moldova*
Diana Dumitru
State Pedagogical University of Moldova

Since the collapse of the USSR the historical profession in Moldova has
changed to reflect new political circumstances and interests. This revolu-
tion profoundly influences writing about World War II, Romania and the
Antonescu dictatorship, the experience of Bessarabia in the 1940s, and
the destruction of Romania’s Jews and Roma. Certain nationalist histo-
rians minimize the crimes of the Antonescu regime and its supporters,
while the present Communist Party, its supporters, and others stress
them. How the study of the Holocaust fares in this politicized atmosphere
forms the subject of the present study.

For centuries history has been a valued ally to politics. Through their writings
historians loyal to their monarchs, regimes, and nations have long legitimized
power. Today, honest servants of Clio exert great efforts to keep politics and
historical research separate, if not always fully successfully. Topics such as wars,
colonialism, or nation-building have an obvious inherent potential to serve political
agendas, and yet have received a different kind of attention from scholars in recent
decades. The profession has revised understandings in an effort to construct a more
balanced kind of history.
During the last twenty to thirty years, however, the history of the Holocaust
often has been intertwined with politics, functionalized by groups and individuals
promoting their own agendas. A “convenient, highly symbolic, and easily recogniz-
able event,” as Gavriel Rosenfeld once put it, the Holocaust could be made to
serve as an instrument for partisan advantage.1 Rosenfeld has identified five major
forms of exploiting the Holocaust: “dejudaizing,” “Americanizing,” “stealing,”
“denying,” and “normalizing”; he asserts that “despite their differences, each of
these trends was informed by a concrete political agenda and served to reduce the
Holocaust’s Jewish character.” “In reaction,” Rosenfeld argues, “a number of other
scholars have “begun to insist upon the event’s uniqueness.”2
Western scholarship, with a solid literature on the Holocaust and a large
number of students, has confronted the challenges of politicization through scho-
larly debate and public engagement. Meanwhile, scholars in the former Soviet

doi:10.1093/hgs/dcn002
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 49–73 49
Bloc, who entered the discourse relatively recently and with a significant legacy of
“dejudaization” of the subject, have sometimes been more given to appropriations
and distortions, or at least have been more easily swayed by them. Moldova
exemplifies this tendency, even as it also has seen a distinctive line of Holocaust
research in the post-Soviet area.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly created succes-
sor states faced a multitude of problems, including economic chaos, ethnic conflict,
and the collapse of social structures. Throughout the first decade of Moldova’s
independence, two issues were exploited by politicians in order to gain and to stay
in power: 1) ideology, mainly nationalistic; and 2) the economy, which was ever-
worsening. Initially, as language, history, and identity were passionately debated,
historians found their craft occupying a central place. The people of Moldova soon
realized, however, that “history and language do not feed you,” and the light in
which historians basked began to fade.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Moldova’s people appeared to
be much more interested in economics than in ideology. Tired of poverty, unem-
ployment, and hopelessness, in February 2001 the population protested the unsuc-
cessful economic policies of the anticommunist parties that had been in power for
over a decade by voting overwhelmingly for the (reformed) Communist Party of
Moldova (CPM).3 Of course, the party that was swept into office differed greatly
from the Communist Party of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, the latter
having been an arm of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However, it was
the old nomenklatura who rebuilt the party in 1994. The old elite were joined by
groups who either felt nostalgic for Soviet times, regretted the loss of privileges, or
simply pined for what had been a more secure and simple life: the Slavic
minorities, pensioners, and other disappointed citizens.
Between 1994 and 2001 the CPM had been in opposition, vocally proposing
its own solutions to the country’s problems—essentially a program of carefully con-
trolled market economics, a strong welfare state, bilingualism (Romanian and
Russian), and on the Transnistrian conflict an approach that relied on a conciliatory
approach to Russia. Many Moldovans had to overcome a dislike of ideological
elements in the CPM’s platform before they could give it a second chance. One
should note that the party no longer promoted a genuinely communist ideology,
although some members continued to hold communist ideals. The voters’ decision
in 2001 surprised politicians who had assumed that the mere word “communist”
would deter voters. The verdict signaled a clear change in the electoral behavior of
both the political class and the broader population: in contrast to the first three
elections, now economics rather than ideology would be key.
Still, the rupture with ideology was not absolute. Debates over history and
language have remained among the few that can still mobilize Moldovan society
and put the government under pressure.4 Conflicting interests struggle to shape

50 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Moldova’s still inchoate identity. Moldovans still debate whether their country
should consider itself part of the West, and, more specifically, whether they them-
selves should identify as Romanians, “Romanian-Moldovans,” or simply
Moldovans. Historians play a significant role in the discussion, and the outcome
has serious political ramifications.
Historians educated under the Soviet system worked in an excessively politi-
cized profession whose primary purpose was to legitimate Soviet ideology and to
foster Soviet identity. Many believed in this work and, correspondingly, their
responsibility to the “masses.” Unlike their Western counterparts, their model was
not that of a neutral and detached analyst, but that of an active builder of con-
sciousness. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the majority of historians abandoned
much of the content of their work, but few of these reconsidered their “mission”
in society. As a result many Moldovan historians simply chose to serve a new
“master”: nationalism.
Intoxicated with a feeling of self-importance and authority, some Moldovan
historians have become involved in political life, trying to enhance one or another
competing program. Some have even opted to trade their academic careers for
political ones, winning seats in Parliament or even cabinet positions in the govern-
ment. More than 10 percent of parliamentarians elected in 2005 are trained
historians.5
It is not surprising that politicization of history has led to the selection of
some topics for research and the avoidance or partial avoidance of others. Among
the latter topics is the Holocaust.
This article analyzes recent historical writings that have touched on the
Holocaust and shows where Moldovan historiography stands today vis-à-vis the
Holocaust in Moldova; what the positions of the state administration and society
are regarding this issue; and what has marginalized the Holocaust as compared to
other historical subjects. The analysis here is restricted to the period between 2000
and 2006.
The reasons for excluding Moldova’s first post-independence decade are
twofold. First, the years 2000– 2006 coincide with more visible Holocaust
subject-related activity in Moldovan society. Moreover during these years the issue
of the Holocaust underwent an obvious politicization. If before it was a minor
theme of little interest to historians, the CPM’s return to power turned the
Holocaust into a tool with which one could identify a person’s loyalty either to the
new government or to the opposition. Second, two published articles, one by
Vladimir Solonari and one by Igor Caşu, have surveyed 1990s historiography of the
Holocaust in Moldova.6 Caşu’s article is the more recent, but he does not
cover historical works published after 2002. Nor does he examine the issue of
the Holocaust through the prism of opposition between historians and the
government—the purpose of the present research.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 51

 Caşu, nevertheless, also sensed a politicization of the issue during the first
half of 2002. In the conclusion of his article, he mentions that “the Jewish problem
and antisemitism” had become noticeable in political rivalries between the
government and the opposition in Chişinău.7 Since the publication of his article,
new research has appeared in Moldova, including the first comprehensive book on
the Holocaust in Bessarabia and Transnistria.8 In addition, tensions regarding the
subject have increased dramatically in the Moldovan academic community, erupt-
ing in various forms. All of this will be explored below.
The destruction of the Jews was one of many themes deliberately ignored by
Soviet historiography. The Soviet Union, the state with the second-largest prewar
Jewish population9 and one that witnessed the annihilation on its territory of more
than one-fourth of all Jews killed in the Holocaust,10 decided not to recognize the
Holocaust as a special phenomenon. Instead the regime treated it as part of the
broader killing of the “Soviet civilian population” (grazhdanskoe naselenie) or
“peaceful population” (mirnoe naselenie) of various national backgrounds.11
Zvi Gitelman has argued that apart from the simplistic explanation that this
treatment of the Holocaust was the consequence of antisemitism, an important
cause may be the shift in the Soviet “political formula” after the war. Gitelman
suggests that victory in this long and horrendous struggle offered a new source of
legitimacy for the Soviet regime, allowing it to move on from the previous self-
legitimization based on the Revolution.12 In this sense, a narrative of all-Soviet
citizens’ victimhood and common struggle against fascism was more useful than
parallel ethnic narratives. The government feared that recognition of the unique-
ness of the fate of Soviet Jews would diminish this all-Union narrative. Another
significant point made by Gitelman is that knowledge of the Holocaust would raise
Jewish consciousness and retard Jews’ assimilation into Homo sovieticus (Jews
having been one of the groups most eager to assimilate during the prewar
period).13 Finally, and even more perilously, Gitelman pointed out that the
Holocaust would raise “the troublesome question of what the non-Jews were doing
during the mass murder of Jews.”14
As a result, very few Soviet authors wrote about Nazi “Jewish policy” or its
deadly outcome for the Soviet Jewish population.15 Consequently the new gene-
ration grew up with very little awareness of the Jewish catastrophe. It was only
during perestroika that the Holocaust gained attention among historians and other
scholars.
Moldova is one of the territories, along with Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic
republics,16 where the Jewish population suffered most during the occupation.
Before the war Jews accounted for 7.2 percent (204,858 people17) of Bessarabia’s
population.18 In Chişinău, the capital of Moldova, the percentage of Jews in 1930
reached 36.0519 of a total population of 117,016.20 Today Moldova is home to
about 35,000 – 40,000 Jews21; and in Chişinău Jews account for less than 2 percent

52 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

of the estimated 717,000 population.22 About half of the Jewish population in
Moldova perished as a result of the antisemitic policies of the Romanian adminis-
tration.23 The Holocaust should have made a deep mark on Moldovan society, and
presumably once the era of censorship ended the topic should have attracted the
attention of scholars in various disciplines. However, very little has been
undertaken.
As in other former Soviet republics, after independence many historians in
Moldova started to research subjects that could help to legitimize their republic’s
newly achieved sovereignty and consolidate their population’s national identity.
Topics with intense national resonance, typically either political injustice or the
sufferings caused by Moldova’s powerful neighbors, were raised publicly.
Examples of the latter would include the annexations of Bessarabia (first by the
Russian Empire in 1812 and again by USSR after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in
1940); the famine of 1946– 47; the Stalinist deportations; and forced
collectivization.24
Romanian writings have had a considerable impact on historians in Moldova
since its independence. The majority of Moldovan historians, who can be identified
as “pro-Romanian”25 and anti-communist/anti-Soviet/anti-Russian, have accepted
and reiterated ideas and directions initially pioneered by their Romanian col-
leagues. It should be noted that in Moldova the debate over the Holocaust never
reached the intensity of that in neighboring Romania, where during the 1990s
strong contradictory voices were heard from the academic world, the media, public
offices, and the general public. Nor did the fierceness of the debate impede
Romanian authors from undertaking serious research or publishing testimonies of
Holocaust survivors and witnesses.26 This debate also brought the study of the
Holocaust into the Romanian educational curriculum.27 But Moldovan historiogra-
phy, which followed many of the roads paved by its Romanian counterpart, did not
pursue this particular one, instead devoting extremely limited attention to the
problem.
During the 1990s, it was Jewish organizations that primarily supported the
publication of the few books that dealt with the Holocaust.28 None of these publi-
cations garnered much attention among Moldovan historians however, nor did they
provoke much popular interest. The sole exception was an article by Izeaslav Levit
on the Chişinău ghetto.29
The relative silence was broken in 1997 when the leading historian Anatol
Petrencu30 published a book on Bessarabia during World War II.31 In the chapter
entitled “The Dynamic of the Increase and Decrease of the Population of
Bessarabia,” Petrencu wrote about the region’s Jewish population. Despite the fact
that in the introduction Petrencu dissociates himself from xenophobic antisemi-
tism, his text was seen by many as apologetic for the Antonescu regime, which in
fact had organized the destruction of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 53

Transnistria. The text implies that the fate of the Jews was in some way a deserved
punishment for their previous behavior. This left him exposed to much criticism,
provoking sharp comments both inside and outside Moldova.
Many Jewish organizations identified Petrencu as antisemitic and his work as
revisionist. They were outraged by the fact that the Department of History at the
State University of Moldova discussed and recommended such a work for publi-
cation, and that the Moldovan branch of the Soros foundation had subsidized it.
One of the harshest attacks came in 1999 from Levit (by then living in the United
States), who expressed his anger in one of Moldova’s newspapers, characterizing
Petrencu’s work as “support for the Romanian-fascist occupiers.”32 The Moldovan
historical community, however, automatically sided with Petrencu: Levit had had a
long and successful career under the Soviet regime, while Petrencu was one of the
most respected post-independence historians—he had been elected president of
the Association of Historians of Moldova.33
Authoritative works about the destruction of Moldovan Jewry were published,
but outside Moldova. Pathbreaking studies by Jean Ancel,34 Radu Ioanid,35 and
others revealed the shocking ordeal suffered by Jews in ghettos, in transit, and in
the concentration camps of Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Transnistria.
These works also document the full responsibility of the Romanian state under the
Antonescu regime.
In summer 2003 top Romanian officials made Holocaust-denying state-
ments,36 which produced an outcry among Western observers. The lack of broad
knowledge in Romania, and the continued existence of antisemitism, further
motivated this Western reaction and in particular the initiative that led to a decisive
step in October 22, 2003, when, under the auspices of the Romanian Presidency,
an International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania was created. It was
chaired by 1986 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and included Romanian,
Israeli, and American researchers. Among its deputy chairpersons were Dr. Radu
Ioanid, the director of the International Archival Programs Division of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Dr. Tuvia Friling, State Archivist of
Israel. General Mihail Ionescu was the vice-president, and the coordinator of the
secretariat of the commission was Dr. Ioan Scurtu, State Counselor of the
Presidency of Romania. At the end of its activity, in November 2004, the commis-
sion presented a complete report that left no room for doubt that the Holocaust in
Bessarabia and Transnistria is a historical fact and that the Romanian adminis-
tration engineered it.37
In Moldova during the same period, the subject of the Holocaust came
under contradictory influences by state officials and historians. We will first look at
the former, returning to the latter below. The Communist government has shown
more interest in and has handled with more care the Holocaust issue than did
previous governments, in accordance with its pro-ethnic minority policy and its

54 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

appreciation of some aspects of Soviet history—in particular the heroism and
victimization of “the Soviet people” during World War II.38
In addition, in 2003 Moldova’s Communist government made a stunning
turn westward. Frustrated by the unsuccessful negotiations with Russian and
Transnistrian authorities, the relationship between Moldova’s President Vladimir
Voronin and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin deteriorated rapidly. The Moldovan
Communist leadership publicly abandoned its traditional gravitation toward Russia
(“the East”) and instead sought integration into the European Union. As a conse-
quence, the Moldovan government displayed more interest in cooperating with the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United States, and also
signed an “Action Plan for Moldova” with the EU.
These actions prompted the Moldovan Communist leadership to become
more circumspect in dealing with “Western” values and “common truths,” includ-
ing that of the Holocaust. In some situations, as will be shown below, state officials
understood that the latter subject could be used publicly as a weapon in their
struggle with troublemaking historians over the issue of Moldovan identity.
After coming to power, the Communist government guaranteed education
for Jews in Yiddish and Hebrew.39 The following year saw the passage of a resol-
ution prohibiting discrimination on ethnic or linguistic bases. President Voronin
condemned antisemitism on various occasions. The judicial branch also started to
pay more attention to expressions of antisemitism. In 2003 a citizen from Dubăsari
asserted at a public meeting that non-Jewish pensioners had not received their
pensions (indeed they had not been paid for several months) because “Jews and
the Jewish authorities have pocketed everything and stolen from old people.”40
After protests from the Jewish community, the regional prosecutor opened a case
against the man, whose actions were adjudged an attempt to incite ethnic hatred
and who was consequently required to apologize to the Jewish community.
The authorities also started to pay much more attention to Holocaust memo-
rialization. With the contributions of Jewish organizations, input from associations
of Holocaust survivors, and the help of local administrations, monuments were
erected to Holocaust victims in Chişinău, Bender, Orhei, Bălţi, Soroca, Tiraspol,
Edineţ, Rı̂bniţa, and elsewhere. In April 2003 the government organized an official
commemoration of the 1903 pogrom, and the Moldovan president personally took
part in the inauguration of a monument to the victims.41 The Association of Jewish
Organizations and Communities of Moldova and the Institute of Interethnic
Research of the Academy of Sciences jointly organized an international conference
to commemorate the pogrom, and in this setting the Holocaust was also men-
tioned.42 One of the presenters, Anatoly Podolsky (Ukraine), analyzed the develop-
ment of Holocaust research and teaching in post-Soviet countries, with an
emphasis on their different achievements.43 He highlighted remarkable successes
in teaching the Holocaust in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, where optional

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 55

courses on the history of the Holocaust had been developed and recommended by
these states for their school systems. With regard to Moldova, he concluded that
“they have only begun to touch the teaching of this topic.”44
More auspicious still was Voronin’s decision to transmit copies of all files
related to the Holocaust from the domestic Security Service (SIS) to the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC. In
December 2003 copies of sixty-one files of documents from investigations and pro-
secutions of crimes committed mostly against Jews during World War II were con-
veyed.45 Also significant was President Voronin’s visit to Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel in November
2004. During this visit Voronin submitted copies of the same sixty-one files to its
Archives Division.
Moldova’s Jewish community has publicly applauded the Communist govern-
ment’s policy. During a 2004 meeting with President Voronin, leaders and
members of the Jewish communities and organizations declared that “the Jews
from Moldova understand and fully support your energetic actions, intended to
recover the integrity of the Moldovan state . . . which has no place for the manifes-
tation of such condemnable tendencies as separatism, aggressive nationalism, anti-
semitism, and xenophobia”; this enlightened perspective was the “only just policy
in . . . a multiethnic society.”46
Responding to the administration’s friendlier attitude, Jewish organizations
intensified their activity of promoting knowledge about the Holocaust. The
Association of the Jewish Communities and Organizations from the Republic of
Moldova and the Jewish Congress of Moldova next sought to introduce study of
the Holocaust into the country’s school program. In 2003 the two associations
organized for middle-school history teachers a series of seminars on the subject of
the genocides of Jews and Romanies during World War II. Moldova’s Ministry of
Education supported these events and recommended to the schools the Jewish
Congress’s brochure “The Holocaust: Informative Materials for History
Teachers.”47
The majority of Moldovan historians, on the other hand, refused to endorse
their administration’s new interest in Jewish affairs and the Holocaust.
“Pro-Romanian” historians in Moldova viewed themselves as political adversaries of
the Communist Party, and many had pointedly joined political parties that pursued
clearly stated anticommunist agendas.48 Not even the Communist government’s
recent re-orientation toward the West and the EU could moderate their antipathy:
in Moldova it was common in those quarters to see everything initiated by the
communists through a negative lens,49 and Holocaust education was no exception.
Moreover, because many of these historians wanted to revive a “natural” sense
of Moldovans’ belonging to the Romanian ethnos, they did not like the idea of
bringing the public’s attention to topics that would show the Romanian state and

56 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

government in a negative light. Even without knowing much about the Holocaust
in their own country, they understood that further research in this area would
reveal the inhuman face of the Romanian regime during World War II.
Communist politicians understood clearly the historians’ refusal to cooperate.
These politicians worried about the impact that history and historians could have
on the national identity of Moldovan citizens. Jealous of the affection—encouraged
by historians—that many Moldovans felt toward Romania, government officials
worried about the idea expressed by Romania that Moldova was merely another
“Romanian state.”50 Desirous of securing citizens’ clear and undisputable loyalty to
Moldova, the Communist government attempted in various ways to impede any-
thing it believed could contribute to the tendency of some Moldovans to identify
with Romania. The government’s decisions to remove a “History of the
Romanians” course from the school curriculum, and to introduce mandatory
Russian language study, are key measures toward that objective. The Holocaust
issue became similarly useful to the Voronin administration, especially before
European audiences. In October 2003 the permanent representative of Moldova at
the Council of Europe, Alexei Tulbure, declared that “our [Moldovan] xenophobes
and antisemites have been inspired by [Romanian textbooks].”51 Soon thereafter,
the chairman of the Moldovan Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Andrei
Neguţa, accused authors of Romanian history textbooks of attempting to “rehabili-
tate crimes” committed during World War II and the Holocaust, and of contribut-
ing “to the perpetuation of the nationalistic, antisemitic, and xenophobic spirit in
Romanian society, a spirit which flagrantly contradicts the values of modern
Europe.”52 The Council of Ministers of the European Union dismissed Tulbure’s
allegation, however, and in an official reply claimed that since 2001 the Romanian
government had been modernizing history textbooks in accordance with the
Committee’s recommendations. The Committee further stated that in Romanian
schools “since 1999 the issue of the Holocaust has been studied.. . . in the seventh
and eighth grades in the context of World War II as well as in the twelfth grade.”53
Vladimir Solonari54 was among the first to assess the research on the
Holocaust conducted in Moldova during the first decade following independence.
He was also among the first Moldovan scholars to write about the politicization of
history in general and of the Holocaust in particular. In 2002, after a careful and
detailed investigation, Solonari concluded that Moldovan historians were slowly
moving away from silence and toward rationalization of the Holocaust.55 Solonari’s
conclusions, which were based on a survey of research publications and school text-
books, are sobering: “The Holocaust of Bessarabian and Transnistrian Jews is part
of the Moldovan national history that contemporary Moldovan society has been
unable to come to terms with, because the story does not fit either of the two
master narratives within which Moldovan historians have been working:

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 57

Communist and nationalist. Both Communists and nationalists had reasons to
subvert or distort evidence on the Holocaust in the provinces in question.”56
A year later Igor Caşu (one of the younger historians) approached the same
topic. But although both authors set out to review Moldovan historiography on the
Holocaust, their conclusions were quite different. Caşu does not hold the
Moldovan historical profession responsible for the lack of interest it manifested in
the Holocaust after 1991. The author agrees that the problem of the Holocaust is
especially “sensitive” owing to its relatively recent occurrence, the culpability of the
perpetrators, and the implicit answerability of their heirs; however, he does not
imply that Moldovan historians avoided the subject for political or ideological
reasons. Instead he claims that, during the first ten years of post-Soviet historiogra-
phy, Moldovan historians were “preoccupied with recovering the pages considered
‘taboo’ by the Soviet regime.”57
It is important to mention Caşu’s placement of the Holocaust in Moldova in
the category of “history of ethnic minorities,” the paradigm through which he
explains the lack of Holocaust studies. Caşu contends that “the research dedicated
to the history of ethnic and national minorities played only a marginal role in this
period”58 in Moldova. Although this categorization may be technically correct, it is
built on the false assumption that Jewish history in Bessarabia is just one among
other ethnic histories: Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gagauz, or Germans. But
no other ethnic minority in Moldova faced potential annihilation as did the Jews
during World War II. Besides, Caşu himself is fully conscious of the complexity
and uniqueness of the Holocaust as a social phenomenon, and he regards the
Holocaust “not only as a simple problem of the recreation of the past, but as a
fundamental problem of knowledge.”59 It is difficult to believe that Moldovan
historians were unaware of the universally recognized importance of this subject,
and simply misperceived it as only one of myriad episodes in the history of ethnic
minorities in Moldova.
In 2004 a book exploring the Holocaust was published in Chişinău. The
author, Pavel Moraru, a Moldovan historian who received his doctorate in 2001
from the University of Bucharest, published his dissertation as the first volume of a
monograph entitled Bukovina under the Antonescu Regime (1941 – 1944).60
Bukovina is a historical region situated on the northern border of the Republic of
Moldova. It has had a troubled political history,61 important for our study because
during World War II it, along with Bessarabia and Transnistria, was under
Romanian administration and experienced the same policy of Jewish deportation
(11 percent of its population was Jewish) and “territorial cleansing.” The table of
contents of volume one, which is subtitled “Administration, Economy, Society,”
does not suggest that the Holocaust is one of the themes. In his discussion of the
Romanian administration in the region, indeed, Moraru includes a section entitled
“Population and the Demographic Evolution in Bukovina,” in which the readers

58 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

find the sub-section “Jews,” among all other nationalities of the region (Romanians,
Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Hungarians, and so on).62 By placing the problem of
the Jewish catastrophe in this specific section, Moraru echoes Petrencu’s section
titled “Dynamic of the Increase and Decrease of the Population of Bessarabia” in
his work on Bessarabia during WWII—an illustration of the tendency in Moldovan
historiography to avoid analyzing directly the destruction of the Jews by the
Antonescu regime and to treat it instead as a part of a “demographic question.”
From the very first pages one notes Moraru’s apparent predisposition to treat
favorably authors who view Antonescu’s period through a positive lens, and to clas-
sify as “Romanophobic” the critical research.63 In his brief overview of the historio-
graphy Moraru mentions the works of A. Stoenescu,64 R. Ioanid,65 M. Carp,66
S. Manuilă, and W. Filderman,67 all of whom refer to the “Jewish Question.”68 But
he avoids any evaluation, despite the fact that he uses information provided by
these authors later on.69 Other clues signal the author’s position. For example,
Moraru is critical of Eduard Mezincescu,70 who exposed Antonescu as “the bloody
dictator of those times.”71 Moraru’s explanation of his mistrust of Mezincescu is
explicit: “since 1932 [Mezincescu] was part of the Romanian anti-fascist movement
(thus communist and pro-Soviet) [and] therefore this work is entirely subjective
and false.”72 His logic is difficult to agree with: antifascist equals communist equals
untruthful. Moraru sides naturally with Gheorghe Buzatu, who called
Mezincescu’s book a “pseudo-narrative about Marshal Ion Antonescu, with false
questions regarding the Holocaust.”73
Explicating Antonescu’s policy of “ethnic purification,” Moraru presents
numerous quotations from official documents offering Antonescu’s personal justifi-
cations. None, in my opinion, are analyzed critically or viewed against other
sources. For example, the reader learns only that the rationale of the racial policy
(as explained by Antonescu) was to “remove and isolate all Jews and other nations’
aliens, whose mood is uncertain, to labor camps [located] in places where they
would not be able to exert their pernicious influence.”74 In addition, the author
states that the “ethnic cleansing” policy “was generated solely by the behavior and
aggressiveness of some representatives of minorities (Jews, Ukrainians, etc.), whose
behavior provoked hatred not only among the authorities, but also among the
population.”75
While recognizing that in transit camps and “at the beginning” the life of
Jews in Transnistria was very difficult, he asserts that their life there was well-
organized, and that “many deported Jews succeeded in opening small manufac-
tories and small shops in the places where they were located, developing a lively
commercial activity.”76 An uninformed reader might get the impression from
Moraru’s account that deportation was “merely” a resettlement, and that life in the
region was not too bad. The vast majority of the published documents and research
on the topics proves the opposite.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 59

 In fact, Transnistria was the place to which approximately 154,000 – 170,000
77
Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and old Romania had to walk hundreds of kilo-
meters, mostly during late fall and winter of 1941. They were allowed to take with
them only limited belongings, and once they arrived in Transnistria were impri-
soned in horrendous conditions (barns, pigsties, woods, open fields) without food,
medical assistance, and other necessities.78 The very few things that the Jews still
possessed—clothes, wedding rings, and the like—were the only source of their
“intense commercial activity.” In November 1943 only 49,927 of those deported
remained alive.79 The rest of the Jews died in Transnistria of hunger, typhus, cold,
exhaustion—or were murdered outright by Romanian soldiers and gendarmes.
Another 150,000– 180,000 local Ukrainian Jews were killed or died due to the
harsh conditions inflicted on them by the newly established authority.80 To
describe this as a “moderate” policy of the Romanian administration, as the author
does,81 is entirely inappropriate.
Elsewhere, Moraru’s phrasing is similarly incredible. For example, the exploi-
tation of Jews in Romania through forced labor appears as “the Jewish population
was assigned to socially useful jobs.”82 Similarly problematic is Moraru’s attempt to
absolve the Christian population of the moral condemnation expressed by Jewish
survivors. The author’s opinion is at once oblivious and trenchant: “Regarding this
affirmation [that Christians did not help the Jews] it should be mentioned that the
association of a significant part of the Jewish population with communist ideals,
which worked against Romanian (and Christian) interests, and orders that prohib-
ited (the Christians) from hiding or protecting Jews (fear of severe punishments),
determined the ‘passivity’ and impossibility for the Christians to protect the Jews
(even more because the population supported government measures that did not
call for extermination), which leads us to consider unjust the accusation brought
against the Christian population of Romania.”83
In April 2005 Sergiu Nazaria, Dmitrie Danu, Alexandru Moraru, and Iurie
Zagorcea published their book Kholokost v Moldove (The Holocaust in Moldova).84
This event was immediately followed by an unprecedented scandal: a clash erupted
between two of the authors, Nazaria and Moraru.85 After the book had been pub-
lished with his name among the four editors, Moraru, a researcher at the National
Archives of Moldova, publicly declared that he had not researched, written, or
edited any of the book’s content. He publicly threatened to sue Nazaria. Moraru
stated that the work was “antinational,” and that it “contradicts my convictions,”
and that “despite the fact that several dozen cases of massacres of Jews from
Bessarabia and the left bank of the Nistru [Dniester] occurred, from a historical
point of view these crimes cannot be qualified as a Holocaust.”86 Moraru con-
tended that in Bessarabia people were not sent to concentration camps based on
nationality.87 In a public statement to the media, Moraru announced that the work
had been ordered by the Association of Jewish Victims of Fascism of the Republic

60 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

of Moldova, and that initially two volumes were supposed to appear, of which only
the second, a collection of documents, was to have been compiled by him.
Subsequently, the Association abandoned the documentary collection, because,
Moraru implied, not all of the documents he had included were appreciated by
the sponsors. Moraru refused to put his name on the book, implying that Nazaria
had not done the archival work but relied instead on his—Moraru’s—research.
Later in 2005, Nazaria republished the same book, this time under his
name only and in Romanian.88 It is perhaps a positive sign that someone who is
not Jewish finally wrote a comprehensive work about the Holocaust in Moldova.
This work also puts archival material and survivors’ accounts into circulation to
document the fate suffered by the Jews in Bessarabia and Transnistria. Nazaria
succeeded in demonstrating the intentionality of the Romanian fascist authorities
in the Jewish catastrophe.
In general, Moldovan historians received Nazaria’s work with great hostility.
Many doubted his scholarly independence: under the Communists he had held
the post of vice minister of education (2001– 2002), in which capacity he had sup-
ported the Communist administration’s policy mandating Russian language study
in the schools and substituting a new course on the “History of Moldova” for the
existing “History of the Romanians.” Some regarded his blaming of the Romanian
administration for the destruction of Moldovan Jews as reflective of a political
agenda.
In some ways unprofessional, the book itself has made it difficult for
Moldovan historians and other experienced readers to accept Nazaria’s claims. In
Chapter Two Nazaria criticizes the aforementioned work of Petrencu by employing
what some may perceive as personal attacks and mockery.89 Another difficulty is
the author’s tendency to cite to larger rather than smaller estimates of the number
of victims, without offering documentary sources (he quotes only secondary
works). Though he stressed several times the impossibility of knowing the exact
number of victims, Nazaria says he is inclined to agree with Ruben Udler’s esti-
mate90 of a maximum of 550,000– 560,000 Jews in the territory encompassing
Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria.91 The numbers offered by professional
scholars vary from 108,000 (Dinu C. Giurescu)92 to 250,000 (Radu Ioanid)93 to
410,000 (Jean Ancel);94 the range offered by the International Commission on the
Romanian Holocaust is between 280,000 and 380,000.95
Perhaps most disappointing, the book did not elicit an open, objective discus-
sion of the Romanian Holocaust. Instead it became a signal for a more vocal and
intransigent expression of Holocaust denial by Moldovan historians. The
Association of the Historians of Moldova decided to host a symposium entitled
“Ethnic Groups in the History of Romania: A Case Study of the Jews during World
War II.” Historians, representatives of the Jewish community, journalists, ordinary
citizens, and others interested in the topic gathered on June 3, 2005, in Chişinău;

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 61

Nazaria did not attend. The spirited debate at the symposium evolved in a
predictable manner: The Jewish survivors were the only ones who insisted that
genocide had taken place in Transnistria, and they argued on the basis of having
seen it “with their own eyes.” The majority of the historians present refused to
accept their assertion, insisting that “the historical truth cannot simply be falsified
through personal impressions.”96 Admittedly these historians did not deny that the
Jews had been persecuted at all, but they opposed using the term “Holocaust.”
They argue that the Holocaust was the Nazi state’s destruction of Jews in gas
chambers, and that the repression of the Jews in Bessarabia did not result from a
racial policy but from sociopolitical revenge incited by the Jews’ collaboration with
“the Bolsheviks.”97 Many specialists will interpret these arguments as, at a
minimum, downplaying of the Holocaust in Moldova and, at worst, an exercise in
Holocaust denial.
The reality is that the majority of Moldovan historians place themselves in
the nationalist camp and adopt an anti-Russian/anti-Soviet position. They take
pride in not following the lead of the Communist government or its supporters in
any matter. They believe that their task is to advocate the affinity of Moldovan
society with the Romanian nation, culture, and history, while opposing Russophile
currents. Historical writing that presents the Romanian state and its administrators
in an unflattering light is considered damaging to this cause. The symposium illus-
trated Moldovan historians’ tendency to discuss the fate of Jews during World War
II only within the confines of contemporary politics. Moreover, the gathering
demonstrated that historians such as Nazaria who expose the culpability of the
Romanian regime will be castigated by the community for “playing the game of the
Communists.”98
So strong was that aversion that, in spite of the post-independence propensity
for following Romanian historiography (which has made considerable progress in
Holocaust studies), Moldovan historians persistently refused to accept the findings
of their Romanian colleagues, arguing that Romanian historians did not act out of
conviction but were pressured by the international community (especially the EU)
to accept the Romanian state’s responsibility in the Holocaust.99 In some cases the
Moldovan historians are encouraged by specific “authoritative” figures inside
Romania or abroad. One example is Paul Goma, a writer and dissident who could
not be silenced by the Ceauşescu regime. Goma recently published in România
liberă an essay entitled “To Be Bessarabian,”100 which praised the position taken
by historians in Chişinău in response to Nazaria’s book. Goma asked pointedly
when the Romanians will follow the example of the Bessarabians, or whether they
prefer to “enter the European Union—the same way they entered NATO . . .
pulled and pushed by the Americans and the Israelis.” His conclusion is harsh:
“the Romanians still have a long way to go before they will be able to stand on
their own two feet.”101

62 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

 Goma also supported the anti-Holocaust voices in a book he published in
Chişinău, the subject of which is the violence committed by the non-Romanian
populations against the Romanian army as it was withdrawing in 1940.102 He
stresses the hostility of the Jews in particular and maintains that their actions were
the real motive for the ferocity of the Romanian troops toward the Jews after they
reentered Bessarabia in 1941. This book could have a significant influence on its
readers, especially when one takes into account the paucity of Holocaust literature
in Moldova.
Another example is Ion Coja,103 a professor at the University of Bucharest,
considered by many to be an extreme revisionist. Coja came to the symposium in
Chişinău and later gave an interview to the capital’s weekly Jurnal de Chişinău.104
Answering a question about the new Moldovan history textbooks that provided
information regarding the Romanian Holocaust, Coja argued that it was a mistake
to include a “chapter” on the subject. He argued that the topic was controversial,
and that “youngsters should find in textbooks only things that are certain, that will
be with them for their entire lives.” He then launched into a denunciation of the
use of the term “Romanian Holocaust,” maintaining that in fact the Jews on
Romanian territory were saved, for which they should be grateful. Regarding
Transnistria, he stated that he would not accept the Jews’ murder there as truth
unless he were shown the remains of all of them.105
Other authors who oppose the notion of any Holocaust in Moldova have
represented the issue as based either on the testimonies of survivors106 or on
anti-Romanian and pro-Soviet rhetoric. Survivors’ accounts they represent as
emotional, biased sources that cannot replace historical documents. A dozen works
published after 1991 by Jewish survivors either abroad or in Moldova were simply
ignored by these historians; Nazaria’s is the first work to cite survivors’ accounts
extensively. The discrepancy in political views and identity forms a gulf between
many Moldovan historians and Holocaust survivors. The latter see the devil in the
Antonescu regime; meanwhile, for most “pro-Romanian” historians Antonescu is a
Romanian patriot, an anti-Russian, and an anti-communist who worked fervently
for the well-being of his nation. The majority of survivors believe the Red Army
was their liberator and the Soviet Union was the state that defeated fascism; the
historians perceive the Soviets as occupiers and oppressors. The very use of words
shows the split: what for survivors is the “Great Patriotic War” is the
“Soviet-German war” for the historians. The frequent use of the term “Romanians”
(by the survivors) to describe the fascist administration and its structures troubles
the historians, who see it as an assault on the cause of Romanianism.
Irritated by the evolution of political life, historical works, and statements by
leaders of the Popular Christian Democratic Party, some Holocaust survivors have
reacted angrily in their memoirs. A book by Anatoly Kogan indicts Moldovan
society for antisemitism, harshly criticizes editorials in the weekly newspaper

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 63

Literatura şi arta, 107 and relentlessly attacks right-wing political figures.108 In the
past, historians would not have bothered to react to these writings but, given the
current political environment, some have accused researchers who cite publications
such as Kogan’s as anti-Romanian or pro-Communist.
One of the most professional and balanced memoirs was written by Rubin
Udler and published in Pittsburgh and Chişinău in 2003.109 The highly educated
author110 skillfully used his own diaries, published documents, and secondary lit-
erature to create a richly detailed picture of his life in the ghettoes of Transnistria.
Nazaria relied extensively on this work, and one hopes that Udler’s contribution
will receive the attention from pundits and general public that it deserves.
The existence of competing categories of victims, so unwelcomed by Soviet
historiography, has ironically become a reality today. Moldovans emphasize that
they also experienced cataclysms in the twentieth century: Stalinist repressions,
World War II, collectivization, the famine of 1946– 47. They refuse to accept the
“distinctiveness” of the Holocaust or the exclusiveness of Jewish suffering. When
common people confront the issue of the Holocaust it is not unusual to hear them
ask why older Moldovans do not write about their own cruel destiny, which
included expropriation, deportation to Siberia, and famine. Why is it more impor-
tant to know about the Jewish Holocaust than about the harsh fate of Moldovans
under the Stalinist regime? Moldovan historians agree. Thus they typically treat
with great sensitivity and compassion interviews, editorials, and papers commemo-
rating Stalinist repressions, but these same historians ignore commemoration of
Holocaust victims. For the most part it has been Moldovan officials who have
made efforts to memorialize the Holocaust; and it was a January 2006 order from
the Ministry of Education that required secondary school teachers to organize
activities dedicated to Holocaust remembrance.111 Of course such a competition of
victimhoods does not aid the proper location of the Holocaust within the history of
Moldova, and unfortunately this circumstance likely will persist for some time. It is
difficult to foresee an alternative development unless historians make a conscious
decision to stop tailoring their narratives to strategic calculations. It is equally
important to educate the new generation in the spirit of general human values and
not of ethnocentrism.
One more factor is intertwined in the aforementioned competition of victim-
hoods: the peculiarities of the status during World War II of what is now Moldova,
which enables contemporary Moldovans to disengage from the issue altogether. At
that time Moldova had never existed as a separate state or nation. Moldova was
created as a territorial unit for the first time only in 1812, when it was carved from
the Principality of Moldavia by the Russian Empire. Until 1991 the territory had
belonged to other polities: Russia (1812 – 1918), Romania (1918– 40, 1941 – 44),
and the Soviet Union (1940– 41, 1944– 91). Moldova was not an occupied state (as
were France, Greece, or Belgium); rather, it was retaken in the summer of 1941 by

64 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Romania after having been absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1940 under the terms
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Accordingly, today Moldovans do not criticize
themselves or each other, as do people in other formerly occupied nations, for col-
laborationism (because the Romanians were not considered occupiers); and yet
neither do Moldovans feel responsible for Romanian policies during World War II,
for they were not really participants in Romania’s government. It is worth mention-
ing in this regard that nearly all published work on the Romanian Holocaust
focuses predominantly on the measures of Romanian administrators, soldiers, and
police, while almost entirely avoiding the question of the local population’s behav-
ior. This enables Moldovans to distance themselves from uncomfortable questions
by creating a model: “we,” the locals, who were not responsible for what happened;
and “they,” the Romanian administrators sent to implement policy. It would there-
fore be important to study the role of the local Bessarabian and Transnistrian
populations during the Holocaust, as this could help clarify the choices that indi-
viduals faced. Undoubtedly this could be a ticklish enterprise, as it implies ques-
tions of responsibility. However, the light shed could help the Moldovan public to
get past its indifferent view of the Holocaust, to cease viewing events as exclusively
of Romanian causation, and to accept this awful crime as a part of Moldovan
history.
In all fairness, the inaccessibility of proper historical sources has helped bias
research by Moldovan historians. Most of the documents ended the war in
Romanian or Soviet archives; today limited funding for research makes it extremely
difficult for Moldovan historians to spend extensive time doing archival research in
Bucharest, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, other regional archival sites, or, for that matter,
in Washington or Jerusalem.
Despite all of the factors mentioned above, a lack of will remains the main
impediment. Until historians leave political advocacy behind there will be little
progress in Holocaust studies in the Republic of Moldova. It would require a new
sense of responsibility on the part of historians and official authorities to keep their
duties separate, and so to contribute to building a society where truth will be as
valued as power.
***
An international conference on “The Fate of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and
Transnistria, 1940 – 1944” was held in Chişinău on October 16, 2006. The event
was organized under the auspices of the Ion Creanga State Pedagogical University,
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Elie Wiesel National
Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. Given the previous clashes
and the fact that this was the first academic conference in Moldova on this subject,
the public’s attention was aroused. The conference had two goals: to invite repu-
table experts from abroad (who would not be perceived as associated with political
forces inside Moldova) to present their latest research, and to create a scholarly

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 65

environment in which specialists holding opposing opinions could initiate a con-
structive discussion. With regard to its stated goals, the conference was a great
success. One journalist who attended noted the stark contrast between the scandal
around Nazaria’s book and this conference. It was as if “a huge distance” separated
the two, “as if not months but years had passed,” given the differences and the
“seriousness of the investigations presented for discussion.”112
Radu Ioanid, Anatol Petrencu, Sergiu Nazaria, Igor Caşu, Paul Shapiro, and
other highly regarded specialists addressed various aspects of the Romanian
Holocaust. Participants expressed various criticisms and conflicting interpretations,
but no one denied the occurrence of the events. The avalanche of documents and
photographs presented by conference speakers left no room for that. In fact at
some sessions one could sense slight shifts in some participants’ positions. For
example, in his presentation Anatol Petrencu modified his definition of the
Holocaust: “Until recently, the Holocaust meant the physical destruction of the
Jews, but now the Holocaust is deciphered as a repressive policy that includes
deportations, camps, et cetera.”113 And there was another hopeful note the next
day when the national newspaper Flux published a front-page article entitled
“Holocaust in Bessarabia?”114

Notes
* This research was made possible through a Rosenzweig Family Fellowship at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I am grateful to those who contributed to the improve-
ment of this article through their expert advice, including especially Radu Ioanid, Samuel
Aroni, Vladimir Solonari, Donald Raleigh, and the anonymonous referees for Holocaust and
Genocide Studies. Of course, all responsibility for errors or omissions is my own.
1. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, “The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent Polemical
Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 13, no. 1
(1999): 34.

2. Ibid., 33, 35.

3. Election Guide. At http://www.electionguide.org/resultsum/moldovares2.htm (accessed
December 18, 2005, but website no longer available).

4. Lucan A. Way, “Authoritarian State Building and the Sources of Regime Competitiveness
in the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine,” World Politics
57 (January 2005): 254.
5. See http://www.alegeri2005.md/listofdeputies/, accessed February 14, 2008. In addition,
two ministers in the Moldovan government are historians: Victor Ţvircun (Education, Youth,
and Sport), and Artur Cosma (Culture and Tourism). Another historian, Mark Tcaciuc, has
been for a number of years the adviser to the president on domestic affairs.

6. Igor Caşu, “Problema exterminării evreilor ı̂n timpul celui de-al doilea război mondial in
istoriografia post-sovietică,” Revista de istorie a Moldovei, 2 (2004): 107. The same article
appeared in România şi Transnistria. Problema Holocaustului, ed. Viorel Achim and

66 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Constantin Iordachi (Bucharest: Curtea veche, 2004), 95 –124. Vladimir Solonari, “From
Silence to Justfication? Moldovan Historians on the Holocaust of Bessarabian and
Transnistrian Jews,” Nationalities Papers 30, no. 3 (2002): 435–57.

7. Caşu, “Problema exterminarii evreilor,” 121.

8. Sergiu Nazaria, Holocaust: File din istorie ( pe teritoriul Moldovei şi ı̂n regiunile limitrofe
ale Ucrainei, 1941–1944) (Chişinău: [n. p.], 2005).
9. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939
(Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), 5.

10. Zvi Gitelman, ed., Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1997), 14.

11. It should be noted that the term “Holocaust” was almost never used by Soviet historio-
graphy. Instead, the terms “extermination,” “destruction,” or “mass killing,” were employed,
and referred usually to the “civilian/peaceful population.”

12. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy 28.

13. For more details on Jewish integration into Soviet life see Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish
Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
14. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, 28–29.

15. In 1946 writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vassily Grossman prepared The Black Book of the
Destruction of Soviet Jewry, but in 1948 the Propaganda Department of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ordered all copies destroyed before
the title could be released. The special fate of the Jews was also approached in Yevgeny
Yevtushenko’s poem Babi Yar and Anatoly Rybakov’s novel Tiazhelyi pesok (Heavy Sand).
Anatoly Kuznetsov’s classic documentary novel Babi Yar was more explicit than the officially
published works, but circulated underground until perestroika in the 1980s.
16. For a short summary of the Holocaust in these regions see Ronald Headland, The
Fallacy of Race and the Shoah (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1998).
17. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 179. The data derive from the 1930
Romanian census; see Dr. Sabin Manuilă, Directorul recesământului general al populaţiei,
Recensamântul general al populaţiei României din 29 decembrie 1930, vol. V (Bucharest:
Editura Institutului Central de Statistică, 1940), xciii.

18. Bessarabia is the historical name of the region located between the Prut and Dniester
(Nistru) rivers. “Bessarabia” is conventionally used to refer to this area when it was a part of
Tsarist Russia (1812–1918) or Romania (1918–40, 1941–44). “Moldova” (with some slight
differences on the northern, southern, and eastern borders) is largely coterminous with it
and it is conventionally used to describe the same territory when, as the Moldavian S.S.R., it
was a ( pseudo-) republic of the Soviet Union, and now is the post-Soviet Republic of
Moldova.
19. Ibid, 178.

20. Enciclopedia României, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Imprimeria Naţională, 1938), 599.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 67

21. Miriam Weiner, ed., in cooperation with the Ukrainian State Archives and the
Moldovan National Archives, Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and
Archival Inventories (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1999), 21.

22. Ariel Scheib, “The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Moldova,” available at http://www.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/moldova.html (accessed December 18, 2005).

23. In the summer of 1941 Romania took control of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria.
“Transnistria” is used in its historical context and corresponds to the term the Romanian
administration (1941–44) applied (basically) to the territory between the Dniester (Nistru)
and Bug rivers. Today most of this area belongs to Ukraine. One should not confuse it with
the current pro-Russian would-be breakaway “Transdniester Republic,” a much more
limited territory along the eastern banks of the Dniester.

24. L. Bulat, ed., Basarabia—1940 (Chişinău: Cartea moldovenească, 1991); Anatolii

Mikhailovich Ţăranu et al., Golod v Moldove, 1946– 1947. Sbornik dokumentov (Chişinău:
Ştiinţa, 1993); Valerii Ivanovich Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy, 1940–1950
(Moscow: Terra, 1994); Elena Şişcanu, Basarabia sub regimul bolşevic (1940–1952)
(Bucharest: Semne, 1998).

25. The term “pro-Romanian” is used here to characterize identification with Romanian
culture, history, and ethnicity, but not necessarily advocacy of political union: only 8 to 10
percent of Moldovans support unification.

26. Lya Benjamin, ed., Evreii din România ı̂ntre anii 1940–1944 (Bucharest: Hasefer,
1993); I. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1992); Alexander Şafran, Un tăciune smuls flăcărilor: Comunitatea evreiasca din
România, 1939–1947. Memorii (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996).
27. Since 1999 in Romania, in accordance with an order of the Minister of Education, the
Holocaust has been included in the history curriculum for the seventh, eighth, and twelfth
grades.
28. I. Levit, “Poslednii pogrom: Istoria Kishinevskogo getto,” in Kishinevskii pogrom 1903
goda, ed. I. Levit (Chişinău: Liga, 1993), 121 –44.
29. Ibid.

30. Anatol Petrencu is a professor of history at the State University of Moldova and the
chair of the Association of Historians of Moldova.

31. Anatol Petrencu, Basarabia ı̂n al doilea război mondial, 1940–1944 (Chişinău: Lyceum,
1997).
32. I. Levit, “Advokat rumynsko-fashistskikh okkupantov,” Glasul Moldovei, June 8,
September 14, September 21, and October 12, 1999.
33. Even Sergiu Nazaria, one of Petrencu’s most vocal academic opponents, called him—
albeit ironically—“one of the pillars of Bessarabian democratic historiography”: “Holokost
glazami ochevidtsa,” Nezavisimaia Moldova, October 21, 2003. Levit had been one of the
editors of the official Soviet history of Moldova/Moldavia during WWII, Moldavskaia SSR v
Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941–1945 g.: Sbornik dokumentov i materi-
alov (Chişinău: Ştiinţa, 1975).

68 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

34. Jean Ancel, Contribuţii la istoria României: Problema evreiasca, 1933–1944, vol. 1, pt. 2
(Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); idem, Transnistria, 1941–1942: The Romanian Mass Murder
Campaigns, 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: The Goldstein Goren Diaspora Research Center, 2003).

35. Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under
the Antonescu Regime, 1940 –1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).

36. For example, the minister of culture, Răzvan Teodorescu, stated that “within the
borders of Romania between 1940 and 1945 there was no Holocaust.” For more on this, see
Dumitru Blaci, “Romania: Someone’s Passing the Buck” Transitions Online, July 14, 2003.
Around the same time Romania’s President Ion Iliescu stated that the Holocaust was not a
unique experience of the Jewish people and that other nations, such as the Poles, had suf-
fered the same fate. For more on Holocaust denial in historiography and public discourse in
Romania see Comisia internaţională pentru studierea Holocaustului ı̂n România, Raport
final, ed. Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihail E. Ionescu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2005), 339–85.
Also see Michael Shafir, Între negare şi trivializare prin comparaţie: Negarea Holocaustului
ı̂n ţările postcomuniste din Europa Centrala şi de Est (Iaşi: Polirom, 2002), 104
37. Comisia Internatională pentru studierea Holocaustului ı̂n Romaniâ, Raport Final (Iaşi:
Polirom, 2005) (International Committee for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, Final
Report).

38. Moldova’s President (and leader of its Communist Party) Vladimir Voronin’s father fell
missing in action while fighting in the Red Army during World War II.
39. “Legea Republicii Moldova cu privire la drepturile persoanelor apartinı̂nd minorităţilor
nationale şi la statutul juridic al organizaţiilor” no. 382-XV, 19 July 2001.
40. The Steven Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitsm and Racism,
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/cis.html (accessed October 16, 2005; website
no longer available).
41. Ibid.

42. See Y. Kopansky, Kishinevskii pogrom 1903 goda: Vzgliad cherez stoletie. Materialy
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Chişinău: Pontos, 2004).

43. Anatoly Podolsky, “The Teaching of the Holocaust in the Post-Soviet Area: Problems
and Perspectives,” in Kishinevskii pogrom 1903 goda, 83.

44. Ibid., 138.

45. “Moldovan Security Service Passes Holocaust Documents to U.S. Ambassador,”
December 26, 2003. Available at http://www.azi.md/news?ID=27262 (accessed November
26, 2005).
46. “În ajunul sărbătorii evreieşti ‘Rosha-Shana,’ Preşedintele Republicii Moldova Vladimir
Voronin i-a primit pe reprezentanţii Asociaţiei organizaţiilor şi comunităţilor evreieşti din
Republica Moldova şi ai Congresului evreiesc din Moldova, pe care i-a felicitat cu prilejul
Anului nou 5765, conform calendarului evreiasc,” September 15, 2004. Available at http://
www.prm.md/press.php (accessed December 18, 2005).

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 69

47. Council of Europe, Second Report Submitted by Moldova Pursuant to Article 25,
Paragraph 1 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, May
14, 2004.

48. One recent example is the foundation of “Mişcarea Acţiunea Europeană” in January
2006. From the start the organization declared itself anticommunist and liberal. Its president
is the historian Anatol Petrencu.

49. A relevant example is historians’ concerted resistance to the government’s effort to

replace the existing course “History of the Romanians” with the more neutrally titled
“Integrated History” of Moldova.
50. See more on the relations between Moldova and Romania in Robert Weiner, “The
Foreign Policy of the Voronin Administration,” Demokratizatsiia 12, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 541–
56.
51. George Coman, “Chişinăul ı̂ncearcă disperat să provoace România,” Ziua, October 16,
2003.
52. Ibid.

53. Council of Ministers of the European Union, document CM/AS(2004)Quest435finalE/,

January 23, 2004.
54. Vladimir Solonari is a historian who taught at the State University of Moldova and who
was also a member of the Moldovan Parliament during the 1990s; today he teaches in the
History Department at the University of Central Florida.

55. Solonari, “From Silence to Justification?” 435 –57.

56. Ibid., 449.

57. Caşu, “Problema exterminării,” 107.

58. Ibid., 108.

59. Ibid., 96.

60. Pavel Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu (1941–1944), vol. 1: Administratie.
Economie. Societate (Chişinău: Editura Prut International, 2004).

61. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Bukovina was under the Ottoman
Empire’s suzerainty. In 1774 it became a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in 1918
joined Romania. Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in 1940 the USSR absorbed the
northern part of Bukovina, losing it to Romania in June 1941 but re-absorbing it in 1944
Today Northern Bukovina remains a part of Ukraine, Southern Bukovina a part of Romania.

62. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 108–24.

63. One should bear in mind that the majority of works written in Moldova from an
“anti-Antonescu” position have been written by Soviet/Russian authors, who often employ
virulently anti-Romanian language.
64. Alex Mihai Stoenescu, Armata, mareşalul si evreii: Cazurile Dorohoi, Bucureşti, Iaşi,
Odesa (Bucharest: RAO International, 1998).

70 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

65. Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania.
66. Matatias Carp, Cartea neagră: Suferinţele evreilor din România. 1940–1944, 3 vols.
(Bucharest: Atelierele grafice Socec, 1946–48).

67. Sabin Manuilă and Wilhelm Filderman, Populaţia evreiască din România ı̂n timpul celui
de-al doilea război mondial (Iaşi: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1994).

68. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 17.

69. Ibid., esp. 111 –15.

70. Eduard Mezincescu, Mareşalul Antonescu si catastrofa României (Bucharest: Artemis,

1993).

71. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 20.

72. Ibid., 29n108.

73. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 20.

74. Ibid., 101.

75. Ibid., 102.

76. Ibid., 112 –13, 118.

77. Comisia internaţională, Raport final, 176.

78. For a detailed description of Jewish life in Transnistria between 1941 and 1944, see
Ancel, Transnistria.

79. Comisia internatională, Raport final, 177.

80. Ibid., 178.

81. Moraru, Bucovina sub regimul Antonescu, 110.

82. Ibid., 120.

83. Ibid., 124.

84. Chişinău: Institutul de Stat de Relaţii Internaţionale, 2005.

85. Ina Prisăcaru, “Un istoric neagă că a scris ‘Holocaustul in Basarabia,’” Timpul, April 29,
2005.

86. Alexandru Moraru, “Aparută recent cartea ‘Holocaustul in Basarabia’ este un eşec,”
Flux, April 27, 2005.

87. Ibid.
88. Sergiu Nazaria, Holocaust: File de istorie ( pe teritoriul Moldovei şi ı̂n regiunile limitrofe
ale Ucrainei, 1941 –1944) (Chişinău: Institutul de Stat de Relaţii Internaţionale; Asociaţia
evreilor din Moldova—foşti diţnuţi ı̂n lagărele de concentrare in ghetourile fasciste;
Universitatea Slavonică din Republica Moldova, 2005).

89. Ibid., 58 –62.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 71

90. Gody bedstvii: Vospominaniia uznika getto (Pittsburgh; Chişinău: Rubin Udler, 2005),
194.
91. Ibid., 210.

92. Giurescu provides only the number of Romanian Jews who died in Transnistria, ignoring
the number of victims among Ukrainian Jews of Transnistria. See Dinu C. Giurescu,
România ı̂n al doilea război mondial (Bucharest: All Educational, 1999), 70– 91.
93. Radu Ioanid, “The Antonescu Era,” in The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Randolph
L. Braham (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 164.

94. Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 531.

95. Comisia internatională, Raport final, 178.

96. See the account on this meeting in Gheorghe Marinescu, “Afacerea ‘Holocaustul
evreiesc ı̂n Moldova.’ Toate episoadele,” June 16, 2005. Available at www.mdn.md/historical.
php?rubr=1243 (accessed November 21, 2005).
97. Ibid.

98. These opinions were expressed by colleagues of the author at the World History
Department. Interviews at the State Pedagogical University, June 2005.
99. Alexandra Olivotto, “Moldova ı̂şi rescrie istoria terorizată de România,” Cotidianul, July
19, 2006.
100. Paul Goma, “A fi basarabean,” România liberă, November 17, 2005.

101. Ibid.
102. Paul Goma, Săptamı̂na roşie 28 iunie –3 iulie 1940 sau Basarabia si evreii (Chişinău:
Editura Museum, 2003).
103. Ion Coja is the president of the League for the Struggle against Anti-Romanianism
(LICAR) and president of “Vatra Românească,” its Bucharest branch.

104. Ion Coja, “Noi cerem dovezi, iar dovezile nu există,” Jurnal de Chişinău, June 17,
2005.

105. Ibid.
106. See Anatoly Kogan, Krasnaia pena: Bessarabskii genotsid (Chişinău: Tip. A.S.M, 2001);
Avigdor Shachan. Burning Ice: The Ghettos of Transnistria (Boulder, CO: East European
Monographs, 1996); Joil Alpern, No One Awaiting Me: Two Brothers Defy Death during the
Holocaust in Romania (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001); Samuel Aroni, Memories
of the Holocaust: Kishinev (Chişinău), 1941–1944 (Los Angeles: University of California,
Los Angeles, International Studies and Overseas Programs, 1995); Udler, Gody bedstvii.
107. Literatura şi arta is considered by many Moldovan intellectuals one of the most repu-
table Romanian-language periodicals. It gained enormous respect during the perestroika
years, when it became the voice of criticism of the communist system and the exponent of
pro-Romanian nationalist values.

108. Kogan, Krasnaia pena, esp. chapter “Iskupitel’naia zhertva.”

72 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

109. Udler, Gody bedstvii.
110. Udler is a doctor of philological sciences and a corresponding member of the Academy
of Sciences of Moldova.

111. Author’s discussions with high school history teachers at a workshop in March 2006.
112. Miroslava Lukianchikova, “‘Sud’ba evreev Bessarabii, Bukoviny i Transnistrii v 1940 –
1944 gg.’: Reportazh s mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii,” Istoki zhizni, no 2 (October 2006): 10.
113. Ibid., 10–11.

114. Liudmila Moraru, “Holocaust in Bessarabia?” Flux, October 17, 2006.

Historiography and Politics in Moldova 73