(JTA) — Romania’s central bank has set up a commission to determine if a newly minted coin is anti-Semitic.
The panel established last Friday could decide to do away with the coin honoring the late patriarch Miron Cristea, who as prime minister from 1938 to 1939 stripped the Jews of their citizenship before World War II. Cristea led the Romanian church from 1925 to 1939.
A decision is expected in several days.
Radu Ioanid, director of the International Archival Program at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, at the end of July asked that the coin be withdrawn from circulation.
The coin is part of a set commemorating the five patriarchs who have led the Romanian church since 1925, according to the Associated Press, and was not a special coin dedicated solely to Cristea.
