Cristian Preda, the dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Bucharest, said on Monday that he asked the UB Senate to withdraw the title of doctor honoris causa granted to Marshal Ion Antonescu in 1941.
Cristian PredaPhoto: AGERPRES
- “I requested the Senate of the University of Bucharest to withdraw, in its next meeting, the title of doctor honoris causa, which it granted in 1941 to Marshal Ion Antonescu.
- The name of the military dictator, participant in the Holocaust against Jews and Roma, must no longer be associated with the name of an institution that respects freedoms,” Preda wrote in a message on Facebook.
Marshal Ion Antonescu’s name appears on the list of personalities who received the title published on the website of the University of Bucharest.
According to the report published in 2004 by the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania led by Elie Wiesel, laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Romanian authorities bear the main responsibility for both the planning and the implementation of the Holocaust.
This includes:
- the systematic deportation and extermination of the majority of Jews from Bessarabia and Bucovina, as well as some Jews from other areas of Romania, in Transnistria;
- the mass killing of Romanian and local Jews in Transnistria;
- the massive executions of the Jews during the Iasi Pogrom;
- the systematic discrimination and degradation to which all Romanian Jews were subjected during the Antonesian administration, including expropriation of property, dismissal from jobs, forced evacuation from rural areas and their concentration in county capitals and camps, as well as the massive use of Jews of male forced labor under the same administration.
At the same time, the Commission concluded that Marshal Ion Antonescu’s responsibility for the killing of the Jews in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria is indisputable, being directly involved in the repressive measures against the Jews.
At the same time, the role of the members of some fascist parties and organizations in promoting the anti-Semitic ideology and in triggering the violence against the Jews before the application of the final solution by Ion Antonescu should not be omitted.
The members of the Christian National Defense League, the Christian National Party, the Legionary Movement (also known at various stages as the Legion of the Archangel Michael or the Iron Guard) made a significant contribution to the climate hostile to the Jews before the start of the Second World War.
The victims of the Holocaust in Romania number in the hundreds of thousands
During the Holocaust, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed or died in Romania and the territories under its control.
Also, approximately 135,000 Romanian Jews who lived in Northern Transylvania, which was under Hungarian rule, perished, as well as 5,000 Romanian Jews who were then in other European countries.
A large part of the deported Roma also died. Of the 25,000 Roma (half of them children) sent to Transnistria, approximately 11,000 perished. Centuries-old nomadic Roma communities have disappeared forever.
In 2002, the Government of Romania adopted Emergency Ordinance 31, regarding the prohibition of organizations, symbols and acts of a fascist, legionary, racist or xenophobic nature and the promotion of the cult of persons guilty of crimes of genocide against humanity and war crimes, so Ion Antonescu, ordinance supplemented by Law 107/2006 and Law 217/2015.
