A magazine’s publication here of a blatantly anti-Semitic article has raised troubling questions about the extent of freedom of the press that should be allowed in former Communist-ruled Romania.
A member of Romania’s Senate, Gelu Voican-Voiculescu, has urged the government to ban the magazine Europa for publishing the article, written by a Romanian army reserve captain, which the senator said was calculated to incite pogroms.
The writer accused Israel of wanting to turn Romania into a “Yid state” and the International Monetary Fund of plotting to make Jews the masters of Romania and turn Romanians into “cesspool cleaners and dustmen.”
He urged the officers corps to “take action.”
Voican-Voiculescu noted that the writer recently visited Libya as the guest of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
The senator also protested what he said were attempts to rehabilitate Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu, who allied the country with Nazi Germany early in World War II. Antonescu is held responsible for the deaths of nearly 300,000 Jews.
Elsewhere, the newspaper Bucovina, in the northeastern city of Suceava, published an attack on Romanian Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, which was signed by the president of the National Peasant Christian and Democratic Party in Radauti. The party’s leadership promptly repudiated the article and expelled its author.
Finally, an article appeared in the magazine Natiunea extolling Transnistria, where 80,000 Jews died of starvation and disease during the war. The article depicts Transnistria in that period as a veritable paradise.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
