Jews of Romania and The Disgusting Vlad III-Dracula of 15th Century

 Nadene Goldfoot

Bea Etlinger was the life of any party. She was a born entertainer, singing and dancing, getting people to laugh.   She helped my mother make pastry items for my brother's Bar Mitzvah.  Why did her husband, Max, leave Romania?  It's a country outside the Pale of Settlement.  Max was born in Poland but it was his wife, Adele, that was from Romania.  They had 2 sons born in Romania.  They came to the USA and children were born in NY and Oregon.  Bea was born in Austria.  They lived on SW 2nd & Arthur, a neighborhood mainly of Jews and Italians in 1950 near my Bubbe. I was friends with their 2 children, Joel and Joan.    

Research finds that Jews have lived there since the 4th Century.  The city of Roman in 1391 were first settled by Jews.  By the end of the 16th century several Jewish communities existed when Joseph Nasi and Solomon Ashkenazi played a part in the history of this area.

On Netflix is the series on the Ottoman Empire which includes a lot about the Impaler, Vlad III, Dracula of Romania (1428-1476).  He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. Wallachia is  a historical and geographical region of Romania. When it dropped on Netflix back in 2020, Rise Of Empires: Ottoman delivered a concise and interesting account of the Ottoman Empire and Mehmed II’s conquering of the world. 

             Vlad Dracula III  With the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, this second season moves into murky military waters, depicting the war between Mehmed’s Ottoman Empire and Vlad the Impaler’s Wallachian forces. 

 How Romania can consider Vlad Dracula a hero is terrible;  he was the 2nd worst vicious killer in history (Hitler being 1st) , impaling thousands of men and women on stakes.   Vlad III-Dracula,  earned his fearsome nickname for impaling more than 20,000 people and killing as many as 60,000 others during his bloody reign. He was even said to dine among his impaled enemies and dip his bread in their blood.

This region was first dominated by Hungary, but in 1330 it fell under Ottoman influence. A number of Jews expelled from Hungary in the mid-fifteenth century settled on the Wallachian slopes of the Carpathians, and were followed, after 1492, by those expelled from Spain by that country’s Catholic monarchs. Warmly received in regions controlled by the sultan (the Mediterranean shores and the Balkans) and the Wallachian princes, who encouraged trade, Jews in the late fifteenth century nonetheless fell victim to the cruelty of Vlad the Impaler, better known by the name of Dracula. 

Jews suffered greatly from both sides in the various Russo-Turkish (meaning Ottoman Empire)  wars taking place in Romania between 1769 and 1812.  

More than 70,000 Jews left Romania from 1900-1906, most probably coming to USA.  By 1937 when things were so bad for Jews in Germany, Octavian Goga of the National Christian Party led a series of decrees depriving the Jews of citizenship, their Hebrew and Yiddish Press,  and the opportunity to practice their professions.  Then massacres of Jews took place in 1940 because of their own copycat ordinances of the Nuremberg Laws against Jews.  800,000 Jews were affected by 1939.  385,000 were exterminated, slaughtered  before liberation.  That's almost half of their Jewish population.  125,000 left for Israel.  

Romanian Jews who were assembled in a Bessarabian village in September 1941 before deportation to Transnistria.  Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as a part of Moldova.   Bessarabia forms the southwestern corner of 

Ukraine, lying between the Rivers Dniester and Danube, with 

Moldova to the north and Romania to the west. It was ruled 

first by the Ottoman Empire, then by a succession of 

Romanian, Russian, and Soviet overlords.

 Despite Jewish participation in both the war for Romania’s independence and the First World War alongside the Allies (1916-18), civil equality and respect for the minority rights of Jews were not granted until later, by the 1923 constitution. In that era, large Magyar-speaking Jewish populations from Transylvania, German-speaking ones from Bukovina, and Yiddish or Russian-speaking ones from Bessarabia were all united within Greater Romania by the Treaty of Versailles. Fifteen years later, these gains were jeopardized by the anti-Semitic legislation of the Goza-Cuza government. 

Jewish women at forced labor in the process of clearing rubble from the main street. Kishinev, Bessarabia, Romania, August 12, 1941.

The country dismemberment, which began in the summer of 1940, combined with its entrance into war on Hitler’s side against the Soviet Union and then, after defeat, the installation of a hard-line Communist government here, ultimately sounded the death knell for Romanian Judaism.

The largest irony is that Romania was the only East European country that had relations with Israel after the Six Day War of June 1967.  They took on ties with Israel economically and diplomatic.  By 1991, less than 20,000 Jews remained in Romania.  

Update 1/29/2023

Resource:

https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/romania/wallachia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

Romanian Jews -Part of Ottoman Empire

.                                                                    

Nadene Goldfoot
Romania, a part of Eastern Europe, had stone age cavemen who were hunters living there in about 8,000 BCE.  That was way before Abraham who was born about 2,000 BCE of the 2nd millennium BCE.  These cave people learned to farm and then to make bronze tools, then finally iron.  In 600 BCE the ancient Greeks traded with these Getae who founded settlements on the coast of Romania.

 The Romans called them Dacians.  Trajan, the Roman Emperor in 101-102 fought against them, By 105-106 they crushed the Dacians.  Afterwards they became a Roman province.  People from other parts of the Roman Empire were brought in to live there and the locals became "Romanized."  They spoke Latin.  By the 3rd century, the cost of defense was too great and Emperor Akurelian removed the Roman soldiers to south of the Danube.
                                                                     

Waves of new immigrants came to Romania.  The 5th century saw the Huns arriving.  The Avars followed in the 6th century and in the 7th were the Slavs.  A feudal order was created.  In the 10th century, the Magyars, a fierce people who were ancestors of the modern Hungarians, arrived in Transylvania, but most of the population were Romanian peasants.  Germans had also been persuaded to live there.  Radu Negru in 1310-1352 united some Romanians and formed Wallachia.   Jews were one of the first to settle in the land to become Romania.  A major wave of Jewish immigrants came upon Wallachia, which is a Romanian principality founded around 1290 after being expelled from Hungary in 1367.  After that they were among the first settlers of the city of Roman in 1391.

Later in the 14th century, Moldavia, another principality, was formed.  The peasants became surfs which were between slaves and freemen, and were ruled by aristocrats called boyars.  The 15th century brought the Turks of the Ottoman Empire.  Both Wallachia and Moldavia fought the Turks and Vlad the Impaler.
                                                                             

Jew of the Ottoman Empire

The 16th century had Transylvania becoming part of the Turkish -Ottoman Empire with a little autonomy of their own.  In 1593, Michael the Brave became ruler of Wallachia and he fought and defeated the Turks in 1595.  Then in 1499 he defeated the Transylvanians and became the prince of Transylvania.  In 1600 he conquered Moldavia and was its prince, also.  Then this brave man was killed in 1601 and the union of the 3 places ended.  There were Jewish communities in several Moldavian towns such as Jassy "Iasi," Botosani, Suceava, and Siret.  After the Chmielnicki massacres in 1648-49 it caused more intensive waves of Jews to enter Romania.  By 1683 the Turks were defeated at Vienna and in 1687 the rulers of Austria, the Hapsburgs, took Transylvania.

During this period, some Jewish refugees from the Spanish Inquisition came to Walachia from the Balkan Peninsula.  A few were physicians and even diplomats at the court of the sovereigns of Walachia.  Walachia just happened to be sitting on the trade routes between Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire.  Many Jewish merchants traveled through Moldavia, the 2nd Romanian principality in the northeast which was founded in the middle of the 1350s.  Some settled there and were favorably received by the rulers of this less populated principality.

During the 1500s Joseph Nasi and Solomon Ashkenazi were important Jews of this era.  It was to be 100 more years when Jews would receive legal status from the princes.
                                                                           
The 17th century brought domination by the Turkish Ottoman Empire to Wallachia and Moldavia.  By the 18th century, they had puppet rulers under Turkish control.  So while the Pale of Settlement was under Russian control, Romania was under the thumb of the Ottoman Empire. Ukraine and Belarus were part of the Pale of Settlement.  The 1700s brought in Moldavian rulers who granted special charters just to attract the Jews. By 1740 there were important Jewish communitires at Bacau, Barland, Galati, and Roman.   While Jews were living in Poland, they were sold a bill of goods about the advantages of living in in Moldavia like exemption from taxes, land for synagogues, ritual baths and cemeteries.  They were invited either to re-establish war-ravaged towns like Suceava in 1761 or to enlarge others like Focsani in 1796. 

Jews suffered a great deal from both sides in the many Russo-Turkish wars taking place in Romania.  between 1769 and 1812.  Large numbers of Jews came from Poland to the region, especially to Moldavia and played an important part in transforming the old feudal system into a modern economy.  From Russian occupation in 1828 to 1916, Jews were subject to discriminatory legislation, violence and arbitrary expulsions.  They were divided into foreign subjects, under protection of a foreign consul, and native born, to whom citizenship was also refused.  There were 200 laws just for Jews that made it difficult for them to earn a livelihood, and there was no unemployment insurance as the USA has.  

1860 to 1806 was a liberal period towards Jews, but anti-Semitism became a part of internal Romanian policy.  Even the Americans noticed this in 1872 when the US representative in Paris  termed the Romanian persecution of the Jews a  disgrace to Christian civilization.  

The Berlin Treaty of 1878 was created which demanded equal treatment for the Jews.  This was evaded on the pretext that even the native born were not Romanian citizens.  Jews tried but failed to bribe the officials.  Most of the Jews were very religious, Hasidim, and bitterly fought any attempts at modernization.

 The Jews were encouraged by the landowner to found commercial centers, the so-called burgs.  One nice privilege offered was the right to be represented on the local council.  Sometimes the Romanians tried to attract other Jews from over the borders.  When Bukovina was annexed by Austria, their neighbor in 1775 and Bessarabia by Russia in 1812, the Jews from these countries preferred to move to Romanian Moldavia where they were not harassed by the authorities and had both family and business connections.

Jewish merchants exported leather, cattle and corn.  Many of the Jews were craftsmen, such as furriers, tailors, boot makers, tinsmiths and watchmakers.

Cuza brought reforms in Romania including abolishing serfdom.  He was, however, very unpopular with conservatives and in 1866 was overthrown.  Prince Carol replaced him.  Finally, in 1881, Romania became a kingdom with Carol I its first king.                        

Jewish family in the 1880s in Romania

Romanian Jews left for Palestine as told in the book, THE SETTLERS by Meyer Levin, a novel based on facts, where Russian Jews met up with Romanian Jews as neighbors at the turn of the century.  More than 70,000 Jews left Romania from 1900 to 1906.  After WWI, from 1918 to 1919, equal rights were granted to Jews, but anti-Semitism continued anyway.  Aaron Aaronsohn, famous botanist who moved to Palestine in the 1896 at age 20 and came from Bacau, Romania.  He discovered the original mother of  all wheat plant  in Palestine.
                                                                         

1942 and these Romanian children were discovered in Paris and deported to be killed.  

Henric Streitman, Romanian Labor camp where Jews slaved, Spring 1944

 Hitler's effect all over Europe too effect and in 1937 the Octavian Goga of the National Christian party led to a series of anti-Semitic decrees.  Jews could have no citizenship.  They were deprived of their Hebrew and Yiddish press and the opportunity to practice their professions.  Massacres took place after 1940.  This is when ordinances like the Nuremberg Laws were in effect.
                                                                                   

 800,000 Jews were in Romania at the start of WWII.  385,000 had been exterminated before liberation in 1945.  Here in July 1941, the Germans had done their damage and left Balti Jews in the hands of the Romanians when they left.
                                                                               
 There were then 400,000 Jews since some returned from Aushchwitz and Transnistria and 50,000 from Soviet-annexed territory at the end of WWII in 1945.  .
                                                                               

Now abandoned with only 50 Jews remaining after a population of 2500 in 1941, the Grand Synagogue in Constanta, Romania, built in 1911.  

 Communism was another danger that came along by 1946 which led to a liquidation of Jewish organizational life.  From 1948 to 1952, the government stopped emigration.  125,000 had left for Israel.  At first the Romanian government treated the Jews harshly, but as they became independent, their attitude was more relaxed.  The same treatment happened with Israel.  I remember buying Romanian jam in the supermarket, so there was trade going on, a good sign, or it could have been Bulgarian, too.

Romania had become the only eastern European country that maintained relations with Israel after the 6 Day War of 1967.  
                                                     

By 1991, less than 20,000 Jews were still living in Romania.
Update:  4:46pm  Jews were required to keep birth, death and marriage registers in 1831, and many had been doing so voluntarily earlier.  Jewish communities were required to keep such lists in about 1850.  Registers were not required in Transylvania which was part of Hungary until 1895.

References: https://yiddishsong.wordpress.com/tag/romania/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.localhistories.org/rumania.html by Tim Lambert
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/romania.html
Novel, THE SETTLERS by Meyer Levin
Finding Our Fathers-a guidebook to Jewish genealogy by Dan Rottenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Romanian_Jews
http://www.herzl.org/english/Article.aspx?Item=525

How Britain's 1939 White Paper Caused 769 Romanian Jews to Drown on Struma

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Jews were lucky if they were on the last ship out of Germany in 1939 which my uncle had boarded.  The Nazis were taking over Europe.  It was on February 24, 1942 when the ship, Struma was sunk in the Black Sea by the Soviet Navy's torpedoes.   It had been carrying 769-781 Jewish passengers who were refugees from Romania, a country that had been taken over by Germany. The ship had been procured through the Irgun,  the Jewish Underground in Palestine,  and left Romania on December 12, 1941, the last ship to leave Europe.   They were headed for Palestine, a country that was designated in 1917 to be the Jewish National Home.  Britain had been given the Mandate to carry this out and allow Jews to enter.  However, they were going along with the head Arab, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who was connected to the Nazis,  and had issued their White Paper which kept Jews out of Palestine.

The Jews had to pay a very large fee to board the ship.  This had been happening all over Germany to Jews trying to get out.  Money had become everything as the ticket to escape.  If you didn't have enough, you were stuck.  The Jews in this case were told they would be sailing on a renovated boat with a short stop in Istanbul, Turkey to collect their Palestinian immigration visas.  The Romanian government of Ion Antonescu had approved the voyage.

Each person was allowed to take 44 lbs of luggage with him.  The Romanian customs officers took many of their valuables and other possessions, even food that they had brought with them.  They weren't allowed to see the ship before the day of the voyage and when they finally did, saw that she was a wreck with only 2 lifeboats. it had turned out to be a very old 180-ton cattle boat that was built in 1867.  It had been re-engined with a 2nd hand diesel engine and was only 148.4 feet long.   Below deck, there were dorms with bunks for 40 to 120 people in each.  The berths were bunks where passengers had to sleep 4 abreast with 2 feet width for each person.

When she was still at anchor, British diplomats and the Turkish officials had a discussion about the fate of these passengers as the British considered the ship as illegal.  Britain was determined to go with their White Paper of 1939 to minimize Jewish immigration to Palestine.  Even though the Jews' fate was death in Romania,, the British diplomats urged the Turkish government of Refik Saydam to prevent the Struma from taking this voyage.  Turkey refused to allow the passengers to get off the ship when they docked.  While the Struma was being detained in Istanbul, they ran short of food.  Soup was only cooked twice a week and supper was an orange and some peanuts for each person.  At night each child was given one serving of milk.                                                                      
Weeks went by.  Finally the British agreed to honor the expired Palestinian visas that a few passengers had and they were allowed to continued onto Palestine by overland.  A few others managed to escape from the ship with the help of some friends.  One woman was taken to an Istanbul hospital after miscarrying.  By February 12th, British officials agreed that children age 11 to 16 would be given Palestinian visas, but there was an argument as to how they would get there because the UK wouldn't sent a ship for them and Turkey wouldn't allow them to travel overland.  Everything was at an impasse.

On the 23rd of February 1942, a small party of the Turkish police tried to board the ship but the refugees wouldn't let them aboard.  That brought out a force of 80 policemen who surrounded Struma with motor boats and finally boarded the ship after 1/2 hour.  The police detached Struma's anchor and attached her to a tug which towed her out into the Black Sea.  The Jewish refugees hung signs overboard that said, "SAVE US." in English and in Hebrew.  The engine wouldn't start and the Turks abandoned the ship in the Black Sea 10 miles north of the Bosphorus, where she drifted helplessly.
                                                                         

Along came a submarine and torpedoed this unprotected enemy vessel.  There was a loud explosion and it sunk.  The sub was the Soviet submarine Skheh-213 that had sunk the Turkish vessel Cankaya the evening before.  The Struma sank quickly and many people were trapped below decks and drowned.  Others aboard survived the sinking and clung to pieces of the wreckage, but for hours no rescue came and all but one died from drowning or hypothermia.  More than 100 were children.  Struma's First Officer,  Lazar Dikof , and a 19 year old refugee, David Stoliar, clung to a cabin door that was floating in the sea.  The Officer died but Turks in a rowboat rescued Stoliar and next day.  He was the only survivor.  Turkey held him in custody for many weeks but released him after Britain gave him papers to go to Palestine.

The Jewish Underground in Palestine were so upset by this murder of so many that they put up wanted posters throughout Palestine accusing Sir Harold MacMichael of the murder.  On June 9th, 1942, Lord Wedgwood opened the debate and urged that  the mandate be turned over  to the USA.  He said, "I hope yet to live to see those who sent the Struma cargo back to the Nazis hung as high as Haman cheek by jowl with their prototype and Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler." A Jewish poet and British soldier, Emanuel Litvinoff, wrote a poem mourning the loss and betrayal of the Struma.  He had volunteered in the British army to fight Nazis but now called the British khaki he wore his "badge of shame."

The Brits displayed obtuseness and insensitivity by locking the gates to Israel to Jewish refugees who needed a haven in the Land of Israel that was due to them.  Throughout the war, nothing was done to stop the annihilation of the Jewish people.

Have the Brits changed their attitude towards the Jews?  The latest news I have seen is that one of their clerks at the airlines refused a gentile man a ticket to Britain because his passport showed he had lived in Israel for a period of time while going to school.  The same attitude is alive and well with  people in Britain.


Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_disaster
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/struma.html
http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?q=node/109966 refused entry to Britain because of passport with Israel on it.