User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/History of the Jews in Romania

Jewish communities existed in Romanian territory in the 2nd century AD. During the reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. The authorities decided in 1650 and 1741 required Jews to wear clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity. The first blood accusation in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made in 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamț were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes´. An anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s. During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions. In the 1860s, there was another riot motivated by blood libel accusations.

Antisemitism was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Brătianu. During his first years in office, Brătianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878. By 1900 there were 250,000 Romanian Jews: 3.3% of the population, 14.6% of the city dwellers, 32% of the Moldavian urban population and 42% of Iași.

Between the establishment of the National Legionary State and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Iron Guard began a massive antisemitic campaign, torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops (see Dorohoi Pogrom), culminating in the failed coup and a pogrom in Bucharest, in which 120 Jews were killed. Antonescu eventually stopped the violence and chaos created by the Iron Guard by brutally suppressing the rebellion, but continued the policy of oppression and massacre of Jews, and, to a lesser extent, of Roma. After Romania entered the war at the start of Operation Barbarossa atrocities against the Jews became common, starting with the Iași pogrom. According to the Wiesel Commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Romania murdered in various forms, between 280,000 to 380,000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bessarabia, Bukovina and in the Transnistria Governorate.