Holocaust Education in Post-Communist Romania

As Israeli historian Leon Volovici noted in a recent article, Romania today is  marked by the concurrent presence of a prolific nationalistic media with strong anti-Semitic accents and a swell of events dedicated to the history of its Jews. This remarkable paradox is perhaps just one more example of the originality of Romania’s post-communist transition, the more so since the object of both trends is becoming less and less numerous every day: there are only about 9,000, mostly elderly Jews living in contemporary Romania. After 45 years of “relative silence” imposed by the communists and eight more years of “relevant silence” imposed by the neo-communists, as of 1998 the Holocaust is finally mentioned and discussed, but “in the third person”, as it were: it’s true, it happened, but not in Romania! (By the author)