History of the J.N.A.V. Hasmonaea in Czernowitz by Adolf Koenig (Tel Aviv): "On July 14, 1891 Hasmonaea was founded in Czernowitz. The founding preceded a meeting of several Jewish academicians. In a small room in the dwelling of Chief Rabbi, Dr. Lazar Igel on Landhausgasse, the so-called Boxwood House, opposite the elementary school, a small group of 10 or 12 students, inspired by the Jewish national spirit meet to form a Jewish academic association. The students were: Mayer Ebner, who already as a high school student was the leader of a group which fought against the ruling stream of assimilation, Isak Schmierer who later was chosen as one of the leaders, Philipp Menczel, Julian Sternberg from Suceava and his brother Adolf, Paul Rieber who already at that time was a deep thinker, Blum, Leonhard Gerbel who later studied medicine, Nachum Feuerstein, later a doctor in Czernowitz, Michael Feuerstein who was later know as a 'man of letters' in Austria, Burstyn, the son of the Siret Rabbi, Reinisch Ebner who became a lawyer, Josef Bierer and Siegmund Neuberger who both became doctors in Czernowitz.
"Description of Bukovina following its previous and existing consistency together with the non-binding proposal on how its state constitution up to now may be improved both politically and economically" from the year 1775 was the first account available on the situation the Austrians encountered after their incorporation into the Empire of the area they called Bukovina.
From H. F. van Drunen's thesis "A Sanguine Bunch" we learn as follows: "The author [Baron Gabriel Splény of Miháldy], a high-ranking military official of Magyar noble descent, born in Kassa153 (now Košice, Slovakia) in 1734, was assigned to Bukovina from 1 September 1774 until 6 September 1778. Previously, he had earned an outstanding reputation in the Austrian army, was promoted major in 1759 and major general in 1773. In that same year, Splény accompanied Emperor Joseph II on a trip to Galicia and his knowledge impressed the Emperor to such extent that he was assigned to supervise the occupation and administrative organisation of northern Moldavia, the later Bukovina. [...] The structure of Splény’s report is traditional: the first part is dedicated to the description of the geographical, economical and social circumstances. In this context this is the most relevant part, especially the third chapter which deals with the population. [...] Although they indicated a predominantly Romanian character of the area (Romanians 11,000 families, Ruthenians 1,261, Jews 526, Gypsies 294 and Armenians 58), other sources claim that the majority was indeed Romanian speaking, but that the census simply qualified every Orthodox as Romanian. The debatable results of Splény’s census in comparison to those of Splény’s successor Enzenberg’s efforts are at times attributed to Splény’s alleged lack of knowledge of the region and its inhabitants. More likely, the puzzling results of Splény’s census are the product of a lack of criteria, definitions and terminology. [...] The merit of Splény’s writing in the light of this study lies in the fact that it is the first written account on the state of affairs at the very beginning of Austrian rule over the territory.
Courtesy: Internet Archive • Bielefeld University
- Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Greek Orthodox Faculty of Theology [121-124]
- Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Faculty of Law and Political Science [124-131]
- Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Faculty of Philosophy [131-133]
Courtesy: Internet Archive
Summary (University of Wisconsin-Madison): "Bucovina was an integral part of Habsburg Empire since 1775. Starting from a pure political construction on the European map of power at the end of 18th century this small area developed into a well integrated Austrian crown land. A crown land, which succeeded to form a certain regional identity - conform to the Habsburg state ideology. Till the outbreak of First World War national rivalries played a certain role for regional politics in the county but were moderate in general. Especially this situation was grounded in a direct liaison of this small province situated on the Eastern slopes of Carpathians with Vienna as imperial centre. A development which aimed towards steadily improving inner consolidation and balance in comparison with the other crown lands of the Empire. Only the outcome of the First World War, as Bucovina became part of the Romanian kingdom, loosing its geo strategic position as a bridge between East and West, showed in its consequences the former importance of this organic exchange with Vienna, shaping the provinces society and cultural landscape. The genesis of Bucovina region at the periphery of a European Empire from the end of 18th up to the beginning of 20th century as well as the structural persistence of the cultural landscape's characteristics is centrally focussed in this study. The analyses of spatial processes as well as their genesis, shaped by a changing geopolitical situation, were of main interest for the research. Since the midst of 19th century a serious and existential national tension within the Bucovina was growing which could only partially be influenced by the province politics itself. A tension in between a search for a distinguished political position, the new idea of nation state and a overall-covering ideology of Commonness, a tension between growing regional identity, of beeing Bucovina and increasing national claims. The study tries to draw a knew, integral and less known picture of this variously shaped cultural landscape - apart from common nationalistic and segmented analyses."
Courtesy: Böhlau OpenAccess
Michael Shafir: "In the main trial - the sixteenth in the series staged by the People’s Tribunal in Bucharest - thirteen of the twenty-four defendants received death sentences, but six of the sentences (including those of Iron Guard commander Horia Sima and Iron Guard Ministers Mihai Sturdza, Ioan Protopopescu, Corneliu Georgescu, Constantin Papanace and Victor Iasinschi) were pronounced in absentia and never carried out. Marshal Antonescu and his foreign minister, Mihai Antonescu, General Inspector of the Gendarmerie Constantin Z. (Piki) Vasiliu and Transnistria Governor Gheorghe Alexianu were executed on June 1 1946.
Crimes committed against Jews occupied a relatively small place in both the indictment act (some 12 out of 125 pages) and the debates at the trial. While admitting that between 150,000 and 170,000 Jews had been deported to Transnistria, Marshal Antonescu claimed in a memorandum refuting the indictment that this act had been intended to save allegedly pro-Communist Jews from the population’s wrath and thath the Iron Guardists were preparing 'a St. Bartholomew' against them in cooperation with the Germans. Unfortunately, he claimed, implementation of the deportation order had been 'destabilized' by the 'then dominant spirit.' By 'destabilization' Antonescu was referring euphemistically to the mass executions, death marches and starvation inflicted by the Romanian police and army while carrying out his orders. The harsh early winter conditions, 'which also claimed many victims among the belligerent armies,' he maintained, had added to the number of casualties among the deported, but 'this was also the reason why the Germans lost the Moscow battle.' The blame for the Jewish casualties, he said, lay with those who were executing orders. He had personally ordered an inquiry 'and the result was known. A general staff colonel and a captain was [sic] demoted and sent to the front line as a private soldier, where he met a heroic death.' Antonescu thus placed responsibility for the crimes on the Germans, as well as on fanatical or terrorist elements in the Iron Guard; but he also blamed his subordinates, as indeed he would attempt to do when the Odessa massacres were discussed during the trial. In the memorandum he wrote that as chief of state he assumed 'responsibility for everything that went wrong' under his governance 'except for abuses and crimes.' He could not 'endorse crimes' and 'I respectfully bow before the victim’s shadows and am begging the pardon of those who had to suffer because of them [sic].' Antonescu further claimed in the memorandum that 'the number of dead from among the population deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria and from the country [i.e., Romania proper], as well as their treatment, is exaggerated … The region ws healthy, picturesque, and very rich. Many of them did not wish to return.'
If Antonescu (and the others accused with him) sought to minimize the dimensions of their crimes, the prosecution itself strove to deflect the focus from Jews to crimes committed against the Romanian nation as a whole. The indictment thus spoke of 'hundreds and thousands of anti-fascists' and of 'political suspects' interned in prisons and suffering 'torture and terrible terror'. This was a clear attempt to exculpate collaborationism. Ostensibly, in countries that had been occupied or in those that collaborated with the Germans both in the West and in the East, the indictments were individual; in practice, the frame of reference in both was politically inspired or condoned collective self-defense. The Romanian indictment act reflected this quite clearly by emphasizing (against all recent memory and evicende) that 'in fact, the country had been under German occupation' and that 'Romanian public opinion received with indignation the German armies' which had entered the country under the September 15, 1940 agreement signed by Berlin and Bucharest. However, no evidence of this alleged indignation was produced. Under a decree passed in early 1950, those convicted of war crimes who had 'demonstrated good behavior, performed their tasks conscientiously, and proved that they had become fit for social cohabitation during their imprisonment' were made eligible for immediate release, irrespective of the severity of the sentence passed. Among those 'socially rehabilitated' were several condemned to life imprisonment for crimes against the Jews. Many of those liberated joined the Communist Party (PCR). Others, however, would have to await amnesties granted between 1962 and 1964, when the regime’s National Communist policies were being implemented and the PCR needed the support of nationalist-minded political prisoners, and in particular the intellectuals among them."
Courtesy: istoriaromaneasca.wordpress.com
Death to the War Criminals [10.05.1945, p. 3]
In Front of People's Jurisdiction [13.05.1945, p. 1]
The Bill of Indictment Against the First Lot of War Criminals [13.05.1945, p. 5]
The Bill of Indictment [14.05.1945, p. 1]
The Bill of Indictment Against the First Lot of War Criminals [14.05.1945, p. 3]
The Trial Begins [15.05.1945, p. 1]
The Bill of Indictment Against the First Lot of War Criminals [15.05.1945, p. 2, 3]
The People's Tribunal Will Impose Law [15.05.1945, p. 3]
The First Trial Against the War Criminals was Initiated by the People’s Tribunal [16.05.1945, p. 1]
The Nation Does Not Pardon! [16.05.1945, p. 5]
The War Criminals in Front of People’s Jurisdiction [17.05.1945, p. 1, 5]
Revenge for Innocent Blood! [18.05.1945, p. 1]
The Criminals in Front of People’s Judges [18.05.1945, p. 1]
The Debates During the Trial Against the War Criminals [18.05.1945, p. 2]
A Sadistic War Criminal Investigated by the Public Prosecutors [18.05.1945, p. 3]
The Parade of the War Criminals in Front of the People’s Tribunal [18.05.1945, p. 5]
The Enlightening of Humanity [19.05.1945, p. 1]
The Atrocities of the Murderers in the Cage Dis closed by Eyewitnesses in Front of the People’s Tribunal [19.05.1945, p. 1]
The People Demand Justice [19.05.1945, p. 1]
The Disclosure of the War Atrocities in Front of the People’s Tribunal [19.05.1945, p. 2]
The Workers of the Capital Demand Deserved Sentences to the War Criminals [19.05.1945, p. 3]
The Port of Galati Dock Workers Demand Harsh Sentences to the War Criminals [19.05.1945, p. 3]
The Citizens of Brăila Demand Harsh Sentences to the War Criminals [19.05.1945, p. 3]
The Citizens of Constanța Demand the Death Penalty for the War Criminals [19.05.1945, p. 3]
The Debates During the Trial Against the War Criminals [19.05.1945, p. 5]
The Atrocities and Murders Visualized by the Eyewitnesses [20.05.1945, p. 1]
The Citizens of the Capital Demand the Death Penalty for the War Criminals [20.05.1945, p. 1]
The Dislosure of the Atrocities in Front of the People’s Tribunal [20.05.1945, p. 2]
A New Listing of War Criminals [20.05.1945, p. 4]
The Citizens of the Capital Demand the Death Penalty for the War Criminals [20.05.1945, p. 4]
The Debates During the Trial Against the War Criminals [20.05.1945, p. 4]
The Summation of the People [21.05.1945, p. 1]
Since Nine Months the Nation is Waiting for this Day of Justice [21.05.1945, p. 1]
The Overwhelming Summation by the Chief Prosecutor A. Bunaciu [21.05.1945, p. 2]
The Whole Nation Demands a Harsh Conviction for the War Criminals [21.05.1945, p. 3]
The War Criminals Pursued by the People’s Tribunal [21.05.1945, p. 3]
The Debates During the Trial Against the War Criminals [21.05.1945, p. 4]
The Summation in the Trial Against the War Criminals [21.05.1945, p. 5]
Death to the War Criminals [21.05.1945, p. 5]
People’s Conviction [24.05.1945, p. 1]
The Sentence in the First Trial Against the War Criminals [24.05.1945, p. 1, 2]
Soldiers and Commanders Notice with Satisfaction the Just Sentence to the War Criminals [26.05.1945, p. 1]
The War Criminals and the Military Uniform [26.05.1945, p. 3]
The Appeal Trial Against the War Criminals [30.05.1945, p. 1]
The Grounds of Appeal Raised by the First Lot of War Criminals Were Rejected by the High Court of Cassation [31.05.1945, p. 1]
The High Court of Cassation has Rejected the Appeals of the War Criminals [02.06.1945, p. 1]
The Maximum Sentence to the Main Culprits [03.06.1945, p. 1]
Michael Shafir: "Based on the Nuremberg model, People's Tribunals were set up in Romania by a decree issued by King Michael I on April 21, 1945. [...] There were two tribunals, one in Bucharest and the other in Cluj. The Bucharest tribunal sentenced only 187 people, the rest were dealt with by the Cluj one, set up on June 22, 1945, which in general pronounced harsher sentences (thirty people condemned to death and fifty-two to hard labor for life). [...] The first trial held by the Bucharest People's Tribunal ended on May 22, 1945. General Nicolae Macici and Constantin Trestorianu as well as Corneliu Calotescu and others, were found guilty of the massacres perpetrated in occupied Odessa and in nearby Dalnic on October 21-22, 1941 and sentenced to death; other members of the Romanian forces received varying prison sentences. On July 1, 1945, King Michael commuted Macici's sentence to life imprisonment; Macici would eventually die in Aiud prison in 1950. [General Corneliu Calotescu, formerly plenipotentiary Governor of Bukovina, was among this group of 29 officers sentenced to death for war crimes on 22 May 1945. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but he was released in an amnesty in 1955.] Altogether, fourty-eight death sentences were pronounced by 'Old Kingdom' and southern Transylvania-based People's Tribunal, but only four were actually carried out, the others being either commuted to hard labor for life or decreed in absentia. None of the sentences handed down in northern Transylvania were implemented, and the leading people charged there had anyway left the region together with the Hungarian authorities. Although the People's Tribunals were liquidated in 1946, trials associated with 'crimes against peace' and other war-related charges would continue in the following years on the basis of law No. 291 of 1947, which stipulated sentences of between fifteen years and life imprisonment for such offences."
[Michael Shafir “Romania’s Tortuous Road to Facing Collaboration”, in Roni Stauber (ed.), Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse After the Holocaust, London and New York, Routledge, 2011, pp. 245 -278.6]
Courtesy: Biblioteca Digitală a Bucureștilor
