Emigrarea evreilor din Craiova: o soluție de criză la cumpăna secolelor XIX-XX. Studiu de caz: Crența Aizig și Șvarț
The Emigration of Jews from Craiova: A Solution for the Crisis from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Research Study: Crența Aizig and Șvarț

Summary/Abstract: As part of the history of Jewish emigration from Craiova, caused by the agricultural crisis of 1899, this article analyzes the case of Crenta Aizig Svart who, according to the archives of the Romanian Foreign Office, was issued with an “exit only” emigration passport. The “exist only” passports, which barred return to Romania, were issued on request, exclusively to the Jewish ethnics who did not hold Romanian citizenship. The Jewish population’s complaints as to the consequences of these documents triggered criticisms in the foreign press and prompted the Western diplomacies to intervene with the Romanian authorities for the amelioration of the legal situation. This article shows that the “exist only” passports were one of the controversial legal practices associated with “the Jewish problem” in Romania, initiated by article 7 of the 1866 Constitution, allowing naturalization for Christian emigrants only, backed up by another two hundred anti-Semite laws and pervasive racist cultural attitudes.

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