6
THE ROMANIAN PEASANT REVOLT OF 1907 ........................................131
6.1 The background to the revolt.................................................................131
6.2 The Peasant Revolt — responses and evaluations..............................137
6.3 Anglo-Jewish diplomacy in the aftermath of the revolt ....................147
7
THE CONJOINT COMMITTEE
CAMPAIGN ON BEHALF OF
ROMANIAN
JEWS,
1908-1909........................................................................151
7.1 A renewed Anglo-Jewish campaign in early 1908..............................151
7.2 The Romanian Jewish question at the time of the Balkan crisis .......154
8
THE ROMANIAN JEWISH PROBLEM DURING THE BALKAN
WARS,
1912-1913 ..............................................................................................165
8.1 The Union of Native Jews.......................................................................165
8.2 Jewish concerns relating to the First Balkan War ...............................168
8.3 The international Jewish campaign on behalf of South
Dobrudjan
Jews........................................................................................172
8.4 The Second Balkan War and the question of Jewish citizenship......177
9
ROMANIAN JEWS, JEWISH DIPLOMACY, AND MINORITY RIGHTS
ON THE EVE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR...............................................185
9.1 The Treaty of Bucharest ..........................................................................185
9.2 The International Committee for the Defence of Religious
Liberty .......................................................................................................191
9.3 Minority rights in the Balkans ...............................................................195
9.4 Towards a new era ..................................................................................203
10 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................208
FINNISH SUMMARY................................................................................................215
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................222
APPENDIX
INDEX
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The scene
At the turn of the millennium, the number of Jews
in Eastern Europe and the
Balkans is small. If we look back one hundred years or so, however, the picture
was very different. Jews were found in large numbers in many countries of the
region. The circumstances of Jews in Eastern Europe compared to Western
Europe became markedly different during the late nineteenth century and the
early twentieth century. The Jews of Western Europe were moving towards
emancipation and acculturation, while the Jews of Eastern Europe, primarily in
Russia
and Romania, lacked political rights and their lives were restricted and
regulated by a complex system of anti-Jewish legislation.
1
The Jewish population in Eastern Europe increased rapidly during the
nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, there were more than five
million Jews in the Russian Empire. The number of Jews in Romanian by 1899
was approximately 270,000, or 4.5 per cent of the total population.
2
Comparison
to the present-day number of Jews in Romania is striking: estimates today range
from 6,000 to 11,000.
According to the Romanian Constitution of 1866, Jews were treated as
foreigners on the grounds of their non-Christianity, and they were increasingly
discriminated against under subsequent legislation. The legislation stemmed
from the twin issues of a fear of Jewish economic
domination and an urge to
preserve the Romanian national character in the newly-established nation state.
The matter was also linked to the intensification of anti-Semitism in Europe
during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Romanian government
argued against any improvement of the Jewish legal position, while most of the
Western Powers and all major international Jewish organisations wished to end
1
For the Russian Jews, see, for example, Gartner 2001, 162-165.
2
RG 1899, xliv-xlvi.
10
Jewish disabilities. The Jewish situation in Romania was perceived as a ‘Jewish
problem’ or a ‘Jewish question’.
From an international legal viewpoint, the
situation of Jews in Romania
differed fundamentally from the situation of Jews in Russia, who otherwise
lived in comparable circumstances. No formal international protection was
awarded to Russian Jews, partly due to the Russia’s position as a great power.
The Western Powers, on the other hand, with Britain on the frontline, were keen
to control newly-established and relatively weak states such as Romania; by
regulating
the rights of minorities, for example, Britain could minimise conflicts
and impose ‘Western’ standards of society. Consequently, the Romanian Jews
and other Balkan Jewries were among the first minorities to be protected by
means of international conventions and treaties.
In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the
condition of East European Jewish minorities was widely publicised in Western
and Central Europe, as well as in the United States. The role of emancipated
Western Jewries became imperative in contemporary
discourse over Jewish
rights. The East European Jews had active co-religionists in the West, who were
eager to right any wrongs that had been committed against Jews in less
developed countries. The activities of emancipated Jewish political and
economic elites on behalf of Jewish communities in oppressive or backward
countries can be called ‘Jewish diplomacy’.
3
One of the major proponents of
Jewish diplomacy was the Anglo-Jewish community.
1.2 Research on Romanian Jews
Three main chronological themes can be distinguished in research relating to
Romanian Jews. The first line of research discusses the situation of Romanian
Jews
before the First World War, the second examines the interwar era, and the
third addresses the fate of the Romanian Jewry during the Second World War.
The latter two directions are sometimes very closely linked, as those studies
tend to emphasise developments that led to the mass destruction of Romanian
Jews in the Second World War. The history of the Romanian Jews prior to the
First World War is, as a rule, analysed separately. It is precisely the research on
this earlier period that is relevant to the topic discussed in my study. It has to be
pointed out that discussion on the fate of Romanian
Jews in the Holocaust and
previous research on the
Holocaust itself are not addressed in the present work.
As well as these chronological themes, Romanian Jews have also been
discussed from various perspectives in historical research. Perhaps the most
popular approach has been to address the question as it is — that is without
linking the issue to any particular theoretical framework or to any wider
contexts. Several historians have attempted to discuss the Romanian Jewish
question by collecting ‘facts’. A number of monographs and articles provide the
3
Gutwein 1991, 23-24.