The practice of compiling “blacklists” has reemerged in Romania. Such lists were used by legionnaires and communists to take out their opponents. The former provoked a spiral of political violence and death.
The far right in interwar Romania and the phenomenon of political violence
After World War I, Romania had not only doubled its territory and population compared to the Old Kingdom, not only had its geographical and demographical outlook changed, but political mechanisms and structures had also undergone significant changes. Universal suffrage now extended to the entire male population. New parties appeared on the political scene. Millions of peasants were now granted land based on the new agrarian reform, while major landowners formed their own political movements. The Conservative Party was dissolved. With the addition of new provinces, the ethnic makeup of Romania showed that ethnic minorities now accounted for 28% of the total population. What was promised as Romania Felix would turn out to be a festering ground for extremism, despite the fact that Romania had been on the victors’ side at the Paris Conference. The traces of the war would have long-lasting consequences at all levels in Europe as well, where violence, shortages, corruption and the hardships of the first interwar years created a favorable environment for extremist movements, against the backdrop of growing xenophobic nationalism. Fascism and communism were merely in their early days, but they would feed each other in the years that followed.
At the time, Romania was not a country where political crime was common practice, as several decades had passed since the assassination of Prime Minister Barbu Catargiu in 1862. From that perspective, the interwar period brought about a profound change. By 1920, a group of communist anarchists had already organized an attack on the Senate, which resulted in the deaths of the Greek Catholic bishop Demetru Radu, the Minister of Justice, Dimitrie Greceanu, and Senator Spirea Gheorghiu. Then, in 1923, a new group was created around Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu, part of the Christian National Defense League, which sought to kill newspaper owners and politicians. Although temporarily averted, the assassinations were eventually carried out later. The most notorious case at the time was the murder of the Prefect of Iași, Constantin Manciu, ordered by Codreanu in October 1924. The problem was that all these radicals would be acquitted, in courtrooms crowded with supporters, with jurors who admired them and judges who, whether they sympathized or feared them, did not oppose them. The path of the radical youth to political crime was not only open, but often enlisted the authorities’ complicity.
The 1930s started against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, at the end of which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In Romania, the number of legionnaires increased from 500 in 1927, to 6,000 at the end of 1930 (according to Armin Heinen). In 1931, after a new assassination attempt, this time targeting Constantin Angelescu, the Undersecretary of State for the Interior and former Minister of Public Instruction, the Iron Guard was outlawed. In December 1933, after signing a new decree dissolving the Iron Guard and preventing this extremist group from ever taking part in the elections, Prime Minister I.G. Duca was killed by three legionnaires on the platform of the Sinaia train station. For the first time in 70 years, a Romanian Prime Minister was the victim of an assassination. Not only did such crimes not alienate young people, on the contrary, they actually encouraged some of them to join the movement. Moreover, young intellectuals themselves did not have moral qualms about joining their ranks. Some of the brightest became members of the Iron Guard, lured by the ideals, speeches and actions of the Captain and the other leaders, including prominent intellectuals. As Zigu Ornea noted in one of the classic works devoted to the far right in Romania, Constantin Noica, before becoming a Legion sympathizer, explained this phenomenon: “In social terms, youth refers to a category of people who have lost their bearing. In academic terms, the youth is or claims to be more scholarly, more specialized than the old world. Ethically speaking, the youth present themselves as unblemished and therefore capable of protesting against the immorality of our public life. Finally, the youth want and claim to be reformers”. Therefore, the numerus clausus used to establish the maximum share of Jews accepted in universities, something students had demanded in the early 1920s, was no longer enough. The new imperative was an unconditional numerus nullus, in other words, the exclusion of Jews from universities.
The first death list announced by the legionnaires: political opponents and the king's mistress
This was the general mood of the Congress of the Christian Students' Union (UNSCR), held over April 3-5, 1936, in Târgu-Mureș, in fact attended by some 2,000 legionnaire proponents. It became clear who these people had a beef with, as some of the participating students traveling to Târgu-Mureș got off the train in Sinaia and urinated on the commemorative plaque dedicated to Prime Minister Duca. Then, the next morning, at the Orthodox Cathedral in downtown Târgu-Mureș, the students attended a Te Deum service officiated by six priests, before departing for the current Palace of Culture. In the Secession Hall, the opening of the Congress started with the royal anthem and the reading of a telegram that was to be submitted to King Carol II, expressing gratitude for helping with the organization of the event with private funds. The main topics were approached in panels such as “Behind the scenes of the nation”, “Romanians abroad”, “Macedo-Romanians”, “Inhabitants of Timoc Valley”, “The Jewish question”, “Destructive social currents”, “Freemasonry”, “The Church and nationalist youth”, while in the evenings conferences were dedicated to “the unity of the Romanian nation” or “the problem of betrayal”. On the last day, Ernest Bernea gave a lecture “On Romanian humanity”.
After two days of debates centered on Romanianism, with anti-Semitic and xenophobic speeches, a eulogy to Adolf Hitler given by the president of the National Union of Christian Students in Romania, Gheorghe Furdui, the reading of a letter addressed to Benito Mussolini, an acclamation to Corneliu Zelea, the fundamental topic of the Congress became obvious: upholding national identity in the face of external threats, in particular, but also internal ones. By far, the enemy on everyone’s lips were Jews, whether it was the Freemasonry, which was said to “tend to suppress the nation and Christianity, knowing that by destroying them, they nourish the Jews’ efforts to achieve world domination”, people claiming that “the Jewish nation tends to infect our soul completely”, that pharmacy students were going to “squeeze money out of Romanian peasants” or that “the Jews buy criminally underpriced land”.
After paying homage to several young people, whom Congress declared national heroes “murdered under orders of the liberal government”, participants sang the anthem of the dead legionnaires and that of the “Nicadori” (the infamous Iron Guard death squads that assassinated I.G.Duca), despite the fact that one prerequisite for the authorization of the Congress had been that no apology for the political assassination be made. To mitigate this defiant gesture towards the authorities who had approved and supported the Congress, Gheorghe Furdui addressed the media, which was tasked with the mission of writing and informing the Intelligence Service that “the Congress made no apology for Duca’s assassination, but rather paid homage to three heroes who saved the future of a nation”.
The enraptured string of violence peaked with the voting of the student motion. Among other things, the document contained two provisions that wound up the entire political class. The first demanded that students who had connections with the Peasant Party (PNȚ) and the Liberal Party (PNL) be expelled from all student societies and that their names be displayed at the headquarters of the organizations. The second provision stipulated the punishment of “scoundrels” and “traitors”. These terms were not used as a general figure of speech, but actually referred to very specific people: Armand Călinescu, Virgil Madgearu, Mihail Stelescu, Gabriel Marinescu, but also Elena Lupescu. To make sure this proposal would not pass as an empty threat, groups of people were assembled, tasked with “restoring honor and washing away shame”. Each of the so-called “death squads” had a leader sworn “by blood” to fulfill the mission. It was the first time when a public document discussed the physical elimination of politicians or people close to the king. Alexandru Cantacuzino would lead the team directed against the “occult”, Elena Lupescu, who was said to “prepare the cyanide for the Captain”. Gheorghe Ioraș was appointed at the helm of the squad that would take out Gabriel Marinescu, Paul Craja was at the head of the squad hunting Armand Călinescu, Gh. Furdui for Mihail Stelescu, Nicolae Crudu for Gheorghe Tăslăuanu, Ștefan Georgescu for Pleșea, and Paul Mărculescu for Virgil Madgearu. Analyzing the targets’ names, we can notice they represented several areas: the king's mistress, members of the government or the monarch’s inner circle, members of democratic parties, but also former legionnaires who were considered traitors.
The death list generated a spiral of political violence
In the days that followed, the consequences of the Congress reflected much that had been declared and promised by the students gathered in Târgu-Mureș. Several of them were detained, but subsequently released. Under these circumstances, it was not surprising that Zizi Cantacuzino-Grănicerul, the president of “Anything for the country” party, said that “in the recent fight that you fought alongside legionnaire students, I hated the fact that it blew over with very few beatings”. Shortly afterwards, the effects of the Congress became transparent: in July 1936, Mihail Stelescu, a former legionnaire, was killed at the Brâncovenesc Hospital, where he was hospitalized. A letter written by the president of the UNSCR stated that “in this case, all the betrayals of the nation were avenged”. Admittedly, the murderers were handed long prison sentences. Soon, Armand Călinescu, Virgil Madgearu and Gabriel Marinescu, whose names were also on the “death lists”, were also killed. Young legionnaires who took part in these actions shared equally gruesome deaths, some of them executed without due trial by the monarchy. Alongside C.Z. Codreanu and the murderers of I.G. Duca (the so-called “Decemviri”), the murderers of Mihail Stelescu were also killed in Tâncăbești. Then, following the assassination of Armand Călinescu in September 1939, other groups of legionnaires were killed in prisons, including Alexandru Cantacuzino, Gheorghe Furdui and Paul Craja. Thus, murder bred murder. An extremist, violent movement collided with an authoritarian state, where justice was served outside courtrooms.
The “death lists” and the idea of punishing “scoundrels” and “traitors” did not die with their authors, they reported a powerful revival during the communist period. After 1989, the interwar period was often looked upon as a model for the fall of communism. Soon enough, however, the violent language and the death lists would also become public knowledge. Although nearly all Jews had left the country, the Jew remained the representative enemy, linked to topics such as “attacks on the nation”, promoting the ideas of cosmopolitanism and “plundering the country”. The death lists were also used to exert pressure on the authorities, on the representatives of the judiciary and on the critical voices of civil society. The lack of state authority in the face of incitement to hatred encouraged the glorification of criminals and political crime. The ceremonies in Tâncăbești, online threats, anonymous or not, as well as lists of journalists, politicians and intellectuals are reminiscent of a fascist past that was never truly condemned.
⁕ The quotes from this article and some of the information can be found in detail at the following link: https://www.academia.edu/64378147/Congresul_studen%C8%9Bilor_de_la_T%C3%A2rgu_Mure%C8%99_3_5_aprilie_1936_Ideologie_propagand%C4%83_%C8%99i_antisemitism
