Romania denies Holocaust

By Shamillia Sivathambu

THE Romanian government issued a blunt denial yesterday that the Holocaust hit the country during the Second World War, defying historical accounts of a campaign of anti-Semitic persecution orchestrated by its pro-Nazi wartime regime.

The statement, issued by the Public Information Ministry, startled Jewish leaders in Romania, where 250,000 Jews were killed or deported to concentration camps under the rule of Marshal Ion Antonescu. "We firmly claim that within the borders of Romania between 1940 and 1945 there was no Holocaust," the ministry said.

The statement came a day after Romanian authorities released wartime archives to the Holocaust War Memorial Museum in Washington. Jewish leaders questioned the assertion and criticised the Romanian government for failing to reflect the truth.

"You cannot say there weren't victims," said Ernest Neuman, a Jewish community leader in Timisoara.

Historians have documented numerous accounts detailing the deportation and execution of Jews in Romania. Most died in camps in the former Soviet Union. But several pogroms spilled Jewish blood on Romanian soil. In June 1941 up to 12,000 people in the north-eastern city of Iasi are believed to have died as Romanian and German soldiers swept from house to house killing Jews.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.

Our dossier on the origins of anti-Semitism

David Irving: a Radical's Diary, describing an exchange with Daniel Goldhagen after his lecture in a New Orleans Synagogue (November 1997):Jews must ask themselves Why they were so hated everywhere, not Who pulled the trigger.