Behind the Headlines: Friendly Relations with Israel Belied Romanian Anti-semitism

Despite Romania’s friendly relations with Israel, vicious anti-Semitism was a standard component of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Communist regime, according to a Romanian-born scholar here.

Unlike other Eastern European countries, Romania never broke diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967. But according to Vladimir Tismaneanu, resident scholar at Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, the true nature of the Ceausescu regime was masked by this amicable veneer.

“Ceausescu played and manipulated the nationalist card whenever it was good for him,” Tismaneanu said in an interview.

“He always said he never knew about anti-Semitic statements or writings. But in such a tightly run country as Romania, this would have been impossible. In fact, Ceausescu’s brother Ilie was one of the most vocal proponents of anti-Semitism.”

“The more isolated (Nicolae) Ceausescu became from the true intellectuals in Romania,” Tismaneanu continued, “the more he was held hostage by the worst nationalist and anti-Semitic elements in the country.”

Tismaneanu was one of several Romanian Jewish emigres now living in the Philadelphia area who spoke recently about the massive changes in their native country, expressing optimism for the future of Romanian Jewry.

MILLIONS PAID FOR JEWS

Israel’s relations with the recently deposed and executed Ceausescu have been much in the news recently. According to reports circulated widely in the U.S. media and confirmed by Israeli officials, Israel paid the hard-line Communist dictator millions of dollars for permitting hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews to emigrate.

“Any relationship with a tyrant is a dirty business,” Romanian Jewish emigre Val Breazu-Tannen said, responding to printed reports this week of Israel’s payments.

“But why should Israel feel ashamed of what they did (to save Jewish lives)? Ceausescu was not really a friend of the Jews.”

“What were his motives? They were of the lowest kind. He used Jews. He bought and sold them.

According to Breazu-Tannen, Ceausescu was reported to have said that Romania has three national resources: Germans, Jews and oil.

“He said he would sell all three things and make lots of money,” Breazu-Tannen said. “But he sold only certain Jews. He wouldn’t sell Jews who were opposed to him. He cracked down on them, sent them to jail.”

Breazu-Tannen, who teaches computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, insisted that Israel “must come completely clean with the whole story” about its dealings with Ceausescu.

“If they leave a mystery, people will think there was more going on than there really was,” he said.

Despite Romania’s history of anti-Semitism, Tismaneanu, who left his homeland in 1981, and Breazu-Tannen, who left a year later, are optimistic about the future for Romanian Jewry.

“I have a sister still living in Romania. I’ve spoken to her at length since the collapse of the Ceausescu regime,” Tismaneanu said.

“Anti-Semitism is simply not the case with the younger generation of intellectuals. They are pro-Western, and anti-Semitic rhetoric holds no credence with them.”

But one factor that might prove troublesome for the Jews, Tismaneanu said, is their ties to the Communist past in Romania. Many Jews were active in the party in the 1950s and in the secret police, he said.

‘DREAM AFTER A TERRIBLE NIGHTMARE’

“For intellectuals in Romania,” the scholar said, the Communists of the 1950s “are not representative of the Jewish population. It is understood that they were in the party not as Jews, but as self-hating Jews. Jews have not been seen in Romania as pro-Communist.”

Tismaneanu said that accusations of Jewish ties to communism will be balanced by disclosures about the Communist regime’s anti-Zionism. The scholar spoke of two show trials, one in 1958 and another in the early 1960s, in which Jews were framed and some executed for their relations with Israel.

Tismaneanu, who recently spoke by phone for more than three hours with his sister in Romania, described her mood as “euphoric and ecstatic.”

She applied to go to Israel two years ago, but was told that because of her brother’s anti-Ceausescu activities, she would never leave.

“Now she doesn’t know if she even wants to leave,” Tismaneanu said. “She says it’s like a dream after a terrible nightmare.”

“There’s no reason to be gloomy,” the scholar said. “The gloomy period is behind us, for Romanians and Jews alike.”

Another Romanian exile, Don Stern, manager of technical training for a corporation in New Jersey and a teacher of data communications at Villanova University, left Romania in 1980.

An uncle of Stern’s still lives in Romania and works as an administrator for Chief Rabbi Moshe Rosen.

MANY JEWS IN NEW REGIME

“I spoke with him the very first morning after Ceausescu fled,” Stern said. “He was crying on the phone. I talked with him for 15 minutes. We had to talk in coded speech, but I found out he’s all right.”

Stern, like his fellow Romanian emigres, does not believe that the Romanian people will use Jews as targets. He said most of the 20,000 Jews left in Romania are, like his uncle, elderly.

“There is always a possibility that the remnants of the Communist Party will blame anything they want to on anyone they want,” Stern said. “There are always opportunists. But I don’t think the Romanians will resort to this.”

Stern said he was surprised to learn from news reports that several Jews are in the new government. The new prime minister, Petre Roman, had a Jewish father, but reportedly does not consider himself Jewish.

Stern, like the others, is optimistic about Romania’s future.

“I’m inclined to say that the (political) transformation (in Romania) is 10 times as profound as the others in Eastern Europe. The Romanian people were in a high-pressure cooker. It’s difficult to put the lid back on once it’s off.”