Jewish Resistance
Overview
The forum on Jewish Memory Resistance happened in Cluj, on June 28th, as a collaboration between PATRIR and MUZEON. The scope of the event had to do with the types and ways of resistance of the Jewish community during the Second World War. This was chosen as a relevant topic for the Romanian context of memory politics because, in general, the types of actions led by the Jewish community are forgotten, are not widely known to the community and tend to be overshadowed by a much more robust memory of actions by the Romanian community to save members of the Jewish community.
In the specific context of the Romanian event, we looked at the context of Transylvania, which was under Hungarian rule between 1941 and 1945. This particular context makes the topic multifaceted, depending on the region to which historians and memory specialists look. For instance, escaping from Northern Transylvania to Southern Transylvania (under Romanian control) at the time was an important pathway against deportation, but many faced similar dangers in Romania with the prospect of being deported to Transnistria. However, because the politics of memory around the deportations of the Jewish and the Roma communities in Romania were deported to Transnistria at an industrial scale. Daniel Stejaran is the director of the Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania. This is a museum in the synagogue of the town of Simleul Silvaniei. that has been restored and gradually transformed into an exhibition space over the past 20 years. In his intervention, Mr. Stejeran discussed the museum per se and how the curatorial perspective attempts to tackle the issue of resistance.
What becomes evident is that resistance is interpreted, first and foremost, by marking and honouring the presence of the Jewish community in the region. Salvaging, preserving and exhibiting heritage and archives of the community is a crucial step in acknowledging the presence and the rich Jewish history of Transylvania which is often silenced or forgotten because of a systemic lack of public discourse on the matter. Stejeran also presented two cases of survivors from the region who openly spoke about defiance and resistance against abusive actions, both Romanians.
Leave a Reply