FOREWORD TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

World War II has ended, but we still await the signing and stamping of the documents and "papers", and the laying to rest of the war with protocol celebrations. Nevertheless, the weapons have grown silent.

Conceited and criminal megalomania, which has been fighting the combined moral and intellectual powers of mankind for so long, now lies suppressed and in chains. Peace must be guaranteed, peoples yearn for freedom, and laws need to be modified. Life goes on, new events are rapidly unfolding, old ones are forgotten. During the last decade, however, much has happened; people must always be reminded of it, and it must never be forgotten.

The most painful of these is what happened to the Jews of Europe. In this war - apart from the peoples of the Soviet Union - it was the Jews who unselfishly placed themselves, their enthusiasm and their adoration at the disposal of their homeland and her high moral ideals. Theirs was the most moving blood sacrifice of history. We cannot find any other nation in the world who has sacrificed as many of her sons for her homeland, for justice, liberty and humanity as Jews have - even if we consider all the Allied Nations together.

And yet, the time has not come for the complete history of Jewish sufferings between 1933 and 1944 to be written.

[18] Investigations, the gathering of data and research have been carried out throughout the world (the Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow, the Black Book Committee in America, the Jewish World Federation, etc.), but so far no one has been brave enough to create a body of work that could be qualified as an historical piece.

If we quickly browsed through the archives and records of any of the aforementioned organisations (e.g. the Rumanian Division of the Jewish World Federation, which has collected a huge amount of information under the encouragement of Kiva Ornstein, chairman of its Research Committee), we could show how long it would take to compile a genuine scholarly work containing the whole era of persecution and suffering. Only after years of exhaustive research will teams of learned historians working under the leadership of such outstanding personalities as Ilia Ehrenburg, Vasili Grossmann (from the Anti-fascist Committee of Moscow), or Professor Albert Einstein and Shalom Asch (from the American Black Book Committee) be able to present the history of Jewish suffering during the fascist hegemony.

Science is slow. But we, who have experienced all the commotion, struggle and sufferings of this era, need to learn everything that happened so as to be able to form a conception of it which, although not holistic, is still sufficiently lucid and close to the truth.

It is for this reason that I had already decided to write this book when I saw and felt that our cause, which is an organic component of history, will surely win out, since history will turn the scales in our favour, or perish if it fails to do so.

I wrote this book of blood and tears with blood and tears to help my brethren find new incentives and objectives in [19] life by remembering the pains experienced, and blows received, in the hope that they will discover means of self-defence in the future, and so that the anger and disgust created by the events presented herewith should make others acknowledge that they committed a great number of crimes against the members of our community. They must provide comfort for the pain and go a long way towards easing their conscience by accepting responsibility in the eyes of history.

I refrained from creating a work of literature. Do not look for stylistic turns, metaphors, epic descriptions and vehicles for tragic pathos in this book. I even tried to avoid the use of qualifying adjectives.

I also refrained from commending, judging, or defending one point of view over another, and praising virtues or cursing sins. I did not write this book in my capacity as the ex-General Secretary of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities, and neither as the present-day General Secretary of the Union of Rumanian Jews, but as the archivist and cataloguer of Rumanian Jewish suffering. I wrote this book for those who still do not know or do not want to believe what happened, and for those in the habit of forgetting too quickly.

Revenge is not on my mind. I am the son of a nation rich in culture and literature, and proud that the civilisation which we gave mankind - which rocked the cradle of Moses, the prophets, Jesus Christ, Spinoza, Einstein and many more famous people -, extinguished many base emotions inside us. Firstly, the passion for revenge.

I do not wish to take revenge on anyone; not for the sufferings, nor for the abuse which chased my father, whom I will not see again, to faraway places; not for the parents [20] slaughtered at the bank of the Bug, whose two Transnistrian children, my children now, - while not bodies of my body -are definitely souls of my soul. I do not seek revenge for the sufferings of any of my brethren living anywhere in the world.

However, I do want justice. I want holy justice to emerge from the good-will, minds and emotions of all civilised people; I want everybody who tortured and robbed others, or murdered innocent people to be punished. From its suppressed depths, I want to bring the pain of Jews to the surface; the pain which has so far been covered by trivialisation. I want everyone to learn the truth, only the truth, and the whole truth.

For these reasons, I will momentarily lift the shroud which covers more than 400,000 dead bodies, and expose the robbery, which exceeded 1 billion dollars.

I have examined and authenticated every piece of data of the book; every statement is based on proof, most of which are irrefutable. This book consists of the statements, testimonies, and official communiqués of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities and their official copies, which contain the signatures of all the members of the administrative hierarchy (from the Marshal to the lowest-ranking sergeant, or office head). There are photographs and other documents in this book (directives, reports, telexes, sales contracts, announcements reporting suicide, court-room decisions, etc.) as well as reports of investigations. The robberies and other ghastly acts of the Iron Guard were examined before the collapse of the system by two Christian lawyers, forced onto the Union of Jewish Religious Communities by "Iron Guard Aid". These robberies and other crimes during the period of the Iron Guard revolt were [21] recorded by a committee of 30 Jewish lawyers, appointed by the Union of Jewish Religious Communities.

Part of the material on which this book is based, was in the possession of the archives of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities. The only existing documents are the ones I managed to save before the Central Office of Rumanian Jews was founded. The other part of the collection was thrown into a corner of a cellar, where, after August 23, 1945, I could not find anything other than a pile of rotting paper.

Certain directives were checked and completed with the help of the results of an investigation organised by the Rumanian Department of the Investigating Committee of the Jewish World Federation, who also facilitated the publication of this book.

I had intended to organise the material into four volumes as follows:

Volume 1: The Iron Guards and the Iron Guard Revolt

Volume 2: The Antonescu Government and the War

Volume 3: The Transnistrian Tragedy

Volume 4: Northern Transylvania

The original intention was that the book should contain all the documents on which it is based. However, this would require 10-12 volumes, which is not feasible at present. Perhaps, this will be a task for the future.*

*Later the author modified his original plan, and the volumes were published under different titles

 

21

The Black Book of the suffering of Rumanian Jews is exclusively my personal work, and I accept responsibility for its contents. The gathering of data began in June 1940, and I started to organize the material in the spring of 1943 with the help of my only colleague, my wife, with whom I shared the work, the pain and the fear of persecution.


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