Newspaper Page Text
An
‘Americansky’
spends Hanuka
in Romania
era
IRON
S wiss Air 462 from Zurich to Bucharest
lands in the cold and drizzly fog and
winds its way through taxiway mazes
of dormant aircraft, tanks and sentries, to the
terminal "BUCHARESTI —OTOPENI
AEROPORT” the sign says. Armed guards
everywhere. “No pictures" shouts a guard to one
of our group, a rabbi, as we disembark for a bus to
the building. It’s 4:15 in the afternoon and dark
already.
A line forms: Body search—x-rays—customs
and immigration processors with expression
less faces. Baggage claim, where an oversize
suitcase gets stuck on the conveyor and a
guard/baggage handler says in disgust
‘‘Americansky".
“Welcome to Romania," I thought to myself. I
had to because no sign said so, and I suppose we
really were not welcome anyway. Visas are
required to visit Romania, but as invited guests of
the Chief Rabbi we had none—and because of
that, at least, we were different.
Different yesl Our trip was a Hanuka mission
to the Jews of Romania and Hungary, to
celebrate and be with the remnant of what was—
and to tell our story upon our return. To see and
be seen— 13 men, all on the executive committee
of the Young Leadership Cabinet of the United
Jewish Appeal, from eight major cities,
interested and committed laymen, seeking to
gain knowledge so as to facilitate the prime
objective of the cabinet: The creative survival of
the Jewish people
We are here in Romania, where once 850,000
Jews thrived among 22 million Romanians.
Before the war there was a Jewish culture that
impregnated the land; art, music, theater, writing.
Our presence was felt. Now, after 400,000 were
swallowed in the Holocaust and 350,000
emigrated to Israel, only some 34-35,000
remain. Many, 75 to 80 percent are over 65.
Emigration to Israel still trickles, and it's not hard
to see that Romania will soon be Judenrein; a
victim of the Nazis, the Iron guard and time.
We are met at the airport by two Joint
Distribution Committee professionals, Lydia
Askanazi from Greece and a large lovely
Romanian, Mr. Diamond. I think they were the
only smiling faces I saw at the airport. The bus
ride to the city took 30 minutes—dinner at the
kosher canteen and then to sleep. The train in the
morning leaves at 6.
The train station was as I had envisioned, ala
Joseph Cotten on T V.—cold, open, dark, busy,
of potatoes and onions) and his impressions on
news; he listens to Radio Free Europe and to KOL
Yisroel.
He also taught us to count to five in Romanian
and that “biota" was mud. He's amazed that a city
the size of Atlanta doesn't have a Yiddish theater
and that I've never eaten mamaliga. He told us of
folklore and of pogroms, of how they hung Jews
on meat hooks and put signs on the swinging
bodies “kosher meat" and how they slaughtered
12,000 in Jassy in 1941. He says there is no anti-
Semitism in Romania; “It's against the law—but
there are anti-Semites!” He speaks about his
niece who plays the violin in the Chicago
symphony and says he won't move to Israel just
to be a "drain.”
When we left Bucharest there was no snow,
but now at 8:40 as it is beginning to get light, we
see it's snowing and the further north we go the
more it snows. The six hour train ride will take
twelve, but Schwartz, quoting Torah, mishna,
Shakespeare and Bialik into my tape recorder,
makes the hours brighter.
We arrive in Suceava, the old capitol of
Moldavia. Townspeople greet us and help get us
off the train and into our bus. The brief ride in the
bus takes us back at least 150 years. The small
shtetl area of town where the shul is, once was
the heart, but is now the fringes. The
communists moved the heart of town as
they built factories and hl'-rise workers
apartments, complete with communist party
signs on the roof tops.
People have been shifted also. Where once
8,000 Jews lived, 300 remain and are all packed
into the small shul awaiting the arrival of Chief
Rabbi Moses Rosen. As honored guests we are
ushered to the front. The children's choir on the
center bima fidgets in anticipation. It is the
beginning of the annual marathon of Rosen—it’s
December 2nd—in Suceava, Romania—the first
night of Hanuka—and it's my birthday.
Activity—here he comes! Short. Portly. A
bearded man in dark suit and tie. He enters the
room—Baruch Haba, Shalom Aleichem—and
then a seven-year-old lights the first candle—
Maoz Tsur and Mi Yimalel—then the speeches.
Rosen speaks in three languages—Romanian,
English and Yiddish, and then hands out gelt and
presents to all. Fur hats, boots, kids and old
people, kisses and handshaking, choir singing
and townspeople come to us with notes to look
up relatives in the U.S. or Israel who don't write—
and then it’s over. Rosen leaves and so do we.
by
Dr. Steven M.
Baron
smoky, noisy, with hordes of heavily laden
peasants with the earpieces of their hats flapping
as they ran to the trains. We found our car and
began our journey into the past—in Yiddishkeit—
to the steppes of northeastern Romania—
to with in 15 km. of Cernovcy, nee Chernovitz,
where some nine decades before my
grandfather, of blessed memory, was born.
I share a room in the car with five of my
colleagues and the comptroller of Federation of
Romania, a sweet little man of 68, by the name of
Schwartz. He tells us stories of what was and tells
us of what is (the Jews being blamed for the lack
This scene was to be duplicated 12 to 14 times in
the next three days. He passes out toys,
clothing—and hope—and we were to witness
how he controls the most perfectly preserved
Jewish community in eastern Europe today.
The Chief Rabbi—and he insists on the
“chief” correcting those who accidentally slip into
the more familiar "rabbi"—is an ambigious
figure. An absolute enigma. We heard terms to
describe him; Eish Rah—a bad man, hero, fighter
in the underground and close friend of Ceavsesco
(President of Romania); savior of Jewishness
and Judaism in Romania and a light to the entire