The subject matter “History of the Jews. The Holocaust” will be introduced in Romanian high schools and vocational schools, reported Agerpres on Thursday. The curriculum, textbooks, teaching materials and methodologies will be developed by the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania “Elie Wiesel” and experts of the Ministry of Education.
The law introducing the new curriculum, adopted by Parliament and proposed by the government, was met with heavy criticism, often with an anti-Semitic undertone. Some comments suggest that the measure is adopted by Romanian politicians under external pressure — from the US-Hungarian billionaire of Jewish origin George Soros, Israel or “the Jews”.
In the past Romanian authorities adopted measures to combat anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial as a result of external criticism or to brush up Romania’s image internationally. For example, Holocaust denial in Romania, which was a long-time ally of Nazi Germany during World War II, was first made illegal in an emergency decree in 2002. The 2002 emergency law preceded international outrage over statements by then Romanian President Ion Iliescu and the minister of culture in July 2003. The President and his minister minimised the Holocaust and officially declared that no genocide had occurred in Romania. In response to the outrage, Iliescu set up an international committee of historians headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.
The committee’s report, which appeared in late 2004, was a milestone. The history of the Holocaust in Romania had been suppressed during communism and few Romanians were aware of the level of involvement in the Holocaust of dictator Ion Antonescu and many others in the military, government and society. According to the international committee of historians led by Wiesel, himself a Romanian-born Jew, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and 11,000 Roma died in Romania and the areas under its control during the period 1940-1944. Current President Klaus Iohannis signed legislation in 2015 that criminalises public denial of the systematic murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, along with a number of other crimes, with up to three years in prison. In February, a former Romanian intelligence officer was sentenced to 13 months in prison for Holocaust denial in the first-ever conviction under the 2002 law.
