RĂZBOAIELE MEMORIEI ÎN TOTALITARISM. POLONIA ȘI MASACRUL DE LA KATYN ÎN PRESA REGIMULUI ION ANTONESCU (APRILIE-MAI 1943)
MEMORY’S WARS IN TOTALITARIANISM. POLAND AND KATYN MASSACRE IN PRESS OF THE ION ANTONESCU REGIME (APRIL-MAY 1943)

Summary/Abstract: In the second half of April 1943, all titles of the censored and controlled Romanian press referred extensively to the discovery of mass graves at Katyn, near the Russian city of Smolensk. Romanian press collected information from Nazi German and Fascist Italian public sources about the progress of forensic investigations, also (printing articles) about legal and military news from the region of the forests of Katyn. First public information about Katyn in Romania of the totalitarian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu appeared simultaneously in newspapers such was „Viața”, edited by the well known writer Liviu Rebreanu, on April 14, 1943, in the most important and longevity Romanian newspaper „Universul”, also on April 14, 1943 and in the most influent regime newspaper „Curentul” on the same day. All the texts of the articles from different newspapers are very similar, which indicates that they could be just releases from Berlin and translated into Romanian. Romanian newspapers were heavily censored, pro-Axis and anti-Semitic in orientation, and produced mediocre editorial content. Most of the information, interviews, and opinions were transmitted from Nazi propaganda or Berlin officials, as it actually happened in the case of other Axis capitals. Romanian editorial content is poor in scale, in journalistic value and also as a documentation effort. Editorials were much more extensive, courageous and critical towards Soviet Union and the murders documented by the discoveries from Katyn. From mid-April to the end of May 1943, a lot of these editorial opinions, also about relations between USSR and Great Britain, United States and Polish Government in exile in London, were formulated by all important Romanian journalists and editors-in-chief of the newspapers

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