From What Is a Jew to Who Is a Jew for the Romanian State?
From What Is a Jew to Who Is a Jew for the Romanian State?

Changing Juridical Definitions and Conflicting Identities in Normative Acts (1938-1942)

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims at exploring how the question of Jewish emancipation was managed by the Romanian State. Our analytical quest aims at unveiling the double approach of the Romanian authorities. While the first phase revolved around the question: “What is a Jew for the Romanian State?”, the second phase revolved around a different question: “Who is a Jew for the Romanian State?” Consequently, the paper consists of two parts. First, we are interested to investigate the quest for citizenship up to 1919/1923; second, we are interested to see how the Romanian authorities approached the Jewish minority after naturalization was granted. This second part, corresponding to the years 1923 to 1938, has two complementary facets: revising the citizenship (1924-1938) and legally defining the Jew (1940-1942), in order to introduce a whole range of discriminations. These complementary facets are interlinked, since the legal identification of the Jews was meant, in certain situations, to deprive them of the rights associated with citizenship and, in other situations, to exclude them from society and nationalize their properties. The paper focuses on the legal documents (treaties, constitutional laws, organic laws, and decree-laws) to explore the status ascribed to Jews by the Romanian State and the dynamics of the legal definitions associated to them in the early nineteen-forties.

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