Constantin Karadja

Constantin Karadja (around 1936)

Prince Constantin Jean Lars Anthony Démétrius Karadja (born November 24, 1889 in The Hague , † December 28, 1950 in Bucharest ) was a Romanian diplomat , lawyer , bibliographer, book lover and is an honorary member of the Romanian Academy . Between 1942 and 1944, it enabled a few dozen Jews living in Germany, Italy and Greece, an estimated 600 in France and 51,537 in Hungary to flee the Nazi German regime and saved the latter from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp . Karadja is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations .

family

Constantin Karadja comes from the Greek- Phanariotic noble family of the Caradja , whose origins can be found in the Byzantine Empire and who were princes of Wallachia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries .

Memorial plaque on Karadja's birthplace in The Hague

Karadja was born in The Hague as the third child of the diplomat Prince Jean Karadja Pascha (1835–1894) and the Swede Marie Louise Karadja .

In 1916 Karadja married Princess Marcela Elena Caradja (1896–1971), who was a third cousin. They had two children:

• Prince Jean Aristide Constantin Caradja (1917–1993), married to Minna Frieda Auguste Starke (1911–1992).
• Princess Marie-Marcelle Nadèje Karadja (1919-2006).

School education and study

Karadja received his education in England at Framlingham College and the Inner Temple , which he left with a degree in law as a barrister . His fellow students included u. a. Jawaharlal Nehru .

Due to the customary cosmopolitan upbringing in Phanariotic circles , he was able to speak English, French, German, Romanian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Latin and ancient Greek. He settled in Romania, where he married Marcela Elena Caradja in 1916, received Romanian citizenship and entered the diplomatic service in 1920 . His diplomatic missions took him as consul to Budapest (1921–1922), as consul general to Stockholm (1928–1930) and Berlin (1931–1941). With a solid knowledge of the economic field, he also worked as an advisor to the Romanian Ministry of Finance and took part in the international economic conference in Geneva as head of the Romanian delegation (1927).

Activity as bibliographer, book collector and historian

Output Ambr. Huber, Nuremberg 1499 (formerly Bibl. Karadja)

As a book lover, Karadja created one of the most important collections of old, rare books in Southeastern Europe, some of which can now be found in the National Library and the Romanian Academy of Sciences in Bucharest. Accredited as Consul General in Berlin, he researched incunabula (cradle prints). At that time he published a list of incunabula on Romanian territory. In addition, he made important works on the ancient history of Romania public. In 1934 he published an article in the Gutenberg Yearbook 1934 on "the oldest printed sources on the history of Romania", based on discoveries attributable to the oldest sources in historical Romania. In 1940 he also presented two incunabula from 1454 and 1472 to the Romanian Academy, in which the first mentions of the Dacian and Romanian peoples can be found. More than half of Karadja's scientific articles were published in the works of Nicolae Iorga . On June 3, 1946, Karadja was made an honorary member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences due to his intensive work as a bibliographer and researcher . The membership application was signed by eighteen distinguished academics, including Ion Nistor, Alexandru Lapedatu , Dimitrie Pompeiu , Gheorge Spacu, Emil Racoviță , Iorgu Iordan , Constantin Ion Parhon , Nicolae Bănescu, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru , Ştefan Ciobanu, Radu R. Rosomir and Silviu R. Rosomir . In 1948 Karadja's membership was revoked by the communist government. After the Romanian Revolution in 1989 it was reopened in 1990.

In addition, Karadja wrote a diplomatic and consular textbook from 1941 to August 1944, which was published and published in 2013 by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the editorial assistance of Stelian Obiziuc and Ottmar Traşcă.

Activity as a diplomat

In the office of the Romanian Consul General in Berlin from 1931 to 1941 and as head of the consular department in the Foreign Ministry of Fascist Romania from 1941 to 1944, Prince Constantin Karadja continuously endeavored to rescue Jews of Romanian nationality, especially those settled in Germany, France and Hungary. Karadja always relied on the principles of human rights and international law in his diplomatic efforts .

Consul General in Berlin

Karadja reported continuously to the Romanian government from 1938 to 1939 on the anti-Semitic policies of national-socialist Germany. He reported on the events of the Reichskristallnacht , the sanctions against Jews and the policy of deportation across the German border. He asked that applications from Romanian Jews wishing to enter Romania should be processed without delay and for humanitarian reasons.

He did not want to obey an instruction from the Romanian Foreign Ministry dated March 7, 1941, stating that the word “Jew” should be entered in the passports of Romanian Jews. By a letter of protest to the Romanian Foreign Minister, pointing out the bad situation of Romanian Jews, refusing to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of the Jews in their death, and advising that at the end of the war the US and Great Britain should also support Romania for such methods would be held accountable, he achieved that instead of the word “Jew” only an “X” should be written in the passports, which should only be recognizable to the Romanian authorities as a distinguishing feature for Jewish citizens.

Head of the Consular Section in the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bucharest

As head of the consular department in the Romanian Foreign Ministry, Karadja managed to send a letter to the diplomatic missions and consulates of Romania on November 11, 1941, stating that all people with Romanian citizenship were to be protected and about cases of discrimination against people or their property to report.

A passport signed by Karadja, Berlin 1940. The passport holder could have been a Jewish woman.

After an agreement between Germany and Romania that all Jews of Romanian nationality were to be treated equally with Jews of German nationality, the order was lifted by the Romanian government in August 1942. Karadja protested vehemently, claiming that this measure lacks any legal basis.

In April 1943, Karadja suggested that Romanian Jews from Germany, France, Greece and Italy should be allowed to stay in Romania for a limited time until they could find asylum in countries outside of Europe. Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu approved the measure, but on the condition that the Jews were sent to Transnistria for a limited period upon arrival . Because of the approaching Russian front and Germany's defeat, which was already considered relatively certain for the Romanians, Ion Antonescu lifted this condition.

In a letter of November 24, 1943 to the Romanian Foreign Minister, Karadja pointed out that international law, the principles of universal ethics and the fundamental rights of humanity were not taken into account by the German authorities. According to a statement by the Israeli ambassador Govrin in 2005, Karadja "(...) needed great courage to express himself in this way during his time."

In early 1944, the Vichy authorities made it possible for Jewish children of Romanian nationality to emigrate to Romania on condition that they would be accepted into Romania. By pressure on the Romanian authorities, Karadja succeeded in persuading the Foreign Minister to approve the project. There were then trains from Paris via Vienna and Budapest to Romania with an estimated 600 Jewish children.

When the deportation of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps began in 1944, Karadja demanded the possibility of the return of the Romanian Jews living in Hungary . Germany's defeat at war, which was becoming increasingly apparent, Romania's gradual distancing from its ally Germany, and the increasingly unstable domestic political situation in Romania certainly contributed to the final approval of Karadja's application by Foreign Minister Antonescu. In the course of this, between January and May 1944 51,537 Jews were rescued from deportation by the Nazi German regime to the Auschwitz concentration camp . These could be brought to Bucharest by trains. According to the Israeli ambassador, “(…) there is no complete testimony that they [the Jews] were saved from certain death by returning to Romania. But the fact of their rescue is known to the Jewish community in Bucharest, which was set up as their first reception center and e [s] is mentioned in official documents that are in the Romanian archives (…). "

Historical context

While Romania sent thousands of Jews to labor camps in Transnistria in 1941 , the deportation slackened considerably in 1942. Antonescu agreed in principle to the extradition of all Romanian Jews demanded by the Germans, but he kept postponing their extradition until he completely refrained from doing it. With the royal coup on August 23, 1944 by Michael I , the military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu and the military alliance with the German Empire were ended. Romania switched sides and took part in the war on the side of the Allied powers.

Honor post mortem

On September 15, 2005, Prince Constantin Karadja was awarded the title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem . The ceremony took place in the Israeli embassy in Berlin in the presence of the Israeli and Romanian ambassadors. Reference was made there to, among other things, Karadja's numerous documents, letters and notes that can be found in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and the Romanian State Department .

bibliography

• Eugène Rizo Rangabé: Livre d'Or de la Noblesse Phanariote et de Familles Princières de Valachie et de Moldavie. Athens 1892.
• Constantin I. Karadja: Incunabule povestind despre cruzimile lui Vlad Ţepes. Cluj, Cartea Românească 1931, în volumul "Inchinare lui Nicolae Iorga cu prilejul împlinirii vârstei de 60 ani".
• Constantin I. Karadja: Old libraries of the Transylvanian Saxons and their cradle prints. Gutenberg Yearbook, 1941, pp. 196-207.
• Constantin I. Karadja: The oldest printed sources on the history of the Romanians. Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1934, pp. 114-136.
• Constantin I. Karadja: Manual diplomatic și consular. Argonaut, Cluj-Napoca 2013, ISBN 978-973-109-396-3 .
• Joakim Langer, Pelle Berglund: Constantin Karadja - bara ett liv till, Sivart Förlag, Stockholm 2009, ISBN 978-91-85705-22-1 .
• Constantin Ittu: Tainele bibliotecii Brukenthal. Sibiu, 2005, p. 110.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com
2. ↑ Constantin Karadja on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
3. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com
4. ↑ heirsofeurope.blogspot.de
5. ↑ biblacad.ro (PDF).
6. ↑ nad.riksarkivet.se nad.riksarkivet.se
7. ↑ ghika.net (PDF).
8. ↑ ghyka.org (PDF).
9. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com (PDF).
10. ↑ innertemple.org.uk ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ innertemple.org.uk ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
12. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com (PDF).
13. ↑ biblacad.ro (PDF).
14. ↑ geschichtsquellen.de
15. ↑ mae.ro
16. ↑ magazinistoric.ro ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com (PDF).
18. ↑ oldframlinghamian.com (PDF).