Wiesel Commission
Wiesel Commission is the common name for the International Commission for Research into the Holocaust in Romania , which was founded by the then Romanian President Ion Iliescu in October 2003.
It took on the task of preparing a report on the Holocaust in Romania on the basis of the latest historical knowledge and developing specific recommendations for public relations work in this sector. The commission headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel presented its final report at the end of 2004. The Romanian government recognized the results of the final report and admitted that Romania deliberately participated in the Holocaust during the Second World War under the regime of Ion Antonescu . The report concludes that under the responsibility and as a result of the premeditated policies of the Romanian military and civil authorities, 280,000 to 300,000 Jews were murdered or died. Over 11,000 Roma have also been killed. The report of the Wiesel Commission documents u. a. also the widespread anti-Semitism in Romania before World War II, a time when Romania's Jewish population was among the most numerous in Europe. The members of the 29-member commission included Rabbi Menachem Hacohen , diplomat Meir Rosenne , Israeli MP Colette Avital and historian Jean Ancel .
The report was seen as a milestone on the road to coming to terms with the Holocaust in Romania because the truth about the Holocaust was suppressed in Romania during the communist period, and few Romanians were aware of the extent to which Ion Antonescu and many others in the military , Government and society contributed to the Holocaust. In fact, the Wiesel Commission was only founded after the Romanian President Ion Iliescu and the then Romanian Minister of Culture trivialized the Holocaust in their statements in July 2003, thus nurturing the official belief that the Holocaust did not take place in Romania. Iliescu founded the Wiesel Commission after the international outcry over this falsification of history.
In 2004 Romania celebrated its first National Holocaust Remembrance Day, which - by resolution of parliament - takes place every year on or around October 9th. This special date commemorates the deportations of Romanian Jews to ghettos and forced labor camps in 1941 . The creation of the day of remembrance was only one of the recommendations of the final report of the Wiesel Commission. Further recommendations related to the establishment of an institute for the research of the Holocaust in Romania (took place in 2005), the explicit inclusion of the history of the Holocaust in the curricula of public schools and the construction of a national monument for the Romanian victims of the Holocaust. All of these recommendations are currently being implemented by the Romanian government. Since 2006, Holocaust studies have been part of the 10th grade curriculum in grammar schools, and designs for a national memorial to Romanian Holocaust victims have been finalized. On October 9, 2006 (the National Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania) the foundation stone for this memorial was laid by the Romanian President Traian Băsescu .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ BBC NEWS: Romania holds first Holocaust Day , October 12, 2004. (Eng.)