Preludii ale Holocaustului. Congresele studențești antisemite din anii ’20
Previews of the Holocaust. Student Anti-Semitic Congresses in the ’20s

Summary/Abstract: The study refers to political forms of gathering of young nationalists in 1920’s Romania, reviewing a number of student organizations and congresses that best describe the atmosphere of the first decade after the Great War. Emphasis is placed upon the activity of radical nationalist groups that preached anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-communism and forceful actions. It was from these groups that the Legion of the Archangel Michael, led by Corneliu Codreanu, spun off, in 1927. Nationalist groups grew in the postwar atmosphere – a crisis of identity, a political, social, economic crisis, etc. – in which a radical reconfiguration of the political commitment and a change of generations seemed to be a must. The discourse in favor of national regeneration, of the “new generation”, imagined a series of enemies, among whom Jews occupied a central position. The study focuses on the pogrom in Oradea, in 1927, when thousands of young people came to this town with the support of the authorities in order to take part in a large nationalist rally. They devastated Jewish neighborhoods, vandalizing synagogues, private homes and shops. This act of violence was also the result of the ambivalent attitude of the central and local authorities: they apparently sought to discourage the crimes of the youngsters through the efforts of the police, but, in fact, they tolerated and actually encouraged the violence against the Jews.

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