Rumania Adopts Citizenship Law Eliminating Abuses Affecting Jews for Three Decades

The Rumanian parliament today adopted a sweeping citizenship reform law which wipes out thousands of grievances of Rumanian Jews, some of which date back 30 years. The vote on the measure, which was backed by all Jewish organizations in the country, was 188-2.

The new law provides that all persons who have resided in Rumanian territory since 1920 automatically acquire citizenship. This provision even includes persons who failed to register for Rumanian citizenship after World War I. In addition, all persons repatriated from territory seded to the U.S.S.R. or to be repatriated will retain their full citizenship status, provided they were Rumanian residents before June 28, 1940.

The measure also cancels all discriminatory legislation imposed by the Goga and Cuza pro-Nazi governments which deprived tens of thousands of Jews of citizenship rights and made them “stateless.”

Persons who cannot produce documents to prove residence or previous citizenship because they were deportees, internees or lived in bombed areas will be permitted to submit testimony of witnesses to support their claims.

The left-wing daily “Liberal Rumania” today cells on the authorities to take immediate action against Prof. I.V. Gruia, Minister of Justice in the 1940 pro-fascist Gigurtu government, who, it reveals, is now a member of the faculty of the Bucharest Law School. Gruia was one of the foremost thecreticians of Rumanian fascism and racism.

The newspaper recalls that as Minister of Justice, he advocated closer relations with the Axis and also forced Jewish lawyers out of the courts. Later, as legal advisor to Premier Ion Antonescu, he authored the infamous “Legal Statutes for Jewish Inhabitants of Rumania,” which was a scheme for determining ethnic origins similar to the Nazi “Table of Ancestry.” He was also responsible for the promulgation of a law prohibiting the marriage of Jews to non-Jews.