MINELRES: Romania: Ethnic Minorities Briefs no. 11, March 29, 2004

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Original sender: Divers Buletin <edivers_buletin-admin@mediafax.ro>


Divers Bulletin no. 11 (94) / March 29, 2004

News
GOVERNMENT RE-LAUNCHES THE PROGRAMS OF ROMA SOCIAL INTEGRATION 
"ULTIMA SANSA" (LAST CHANCE) CAMPAIGN IN ROMANIA
HOLOCAUST STUDY COURSE AT BABES-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY
ROMANIA�S GYPSY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ANXIOUSLY AWAIT REPARATIONS
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GOVERNMENT RE-LAUNCHES THE PROGRAMS OF ROMA SOCIAL INTEGRATION 

BUCHAREST � Admitting that the amounts alocated in the past nine years
to the social integration programs addressed to Roma ethnics had no
significant effects, the Government announces for this year finance
worth over EUR 6m and increased efforts in this respect. According to
Cristian Jura, president of the Interethnic Relations Department part in
the Government�s Secretariat, the amounts allocated both from the
Government (ROL 64bn), as well as through Phare programs (EUR 4,8m) will
cover infrastructure projects (installation of water, sewerage and
electricity networks in Roma communities), but mostly programs of school
and sanitary education. Starting this year, the amounts will get to
local authorities, and they will invest them only with the approval of
the ethnical community, said Jura. On the other hand, this year�s
priorities of DRI�s Office for Roma Affairs include the identification
of the persons who have no IDs.
Author: DIVERS


"ULTIMA SANSA" (LAST CHANCE) CAMPAIGN IN ROMANIA

IASI � Targum Shlishi Foundation from Florida (US), which backs the
activity of Simon Wiesenthal Center from Israel, decided to grant a USD
10,000 reward for any information which can help in finding, judging,
sentencing and punishing the nazi war criminals, as well as their
collaborators since World War II. The action is part in "Ultima sansa�
(The Last Chance) campaign, started two years ago in Estonia, Lithuania
and Latvia, and was launched on March 23 in Iasi (eastern Romania).
According to dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of Simon Wiesenthal Center,
arrived in Israel for launching this campaign, Iasi was chosen to
organize this campaign because it is here where the largest pogrom
occurred in Romania during June 28 - July 6, 1941, when it is estimated
that 9,000 � 12,000 Jews had been killed.
Author: DIVERS


HOLOCAUST STUDY COURSE AT BABES-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY

CLUJ-NAPOCA � The Hebrew Studies Institute of Babes-Bolyai University
from Cluj-Napoca on March 22 hosted the opening of the study course on
Holocaust, involving pre-academic education teachers of History from the
entire country. The courses will be held by University professors from
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as by experts of Hebrew Institute in
Cluj, and will approach themes referring to anti-Semite traditions, to
the aspects defining the Holocaust in Romania. Throughout the course,
which lasted until Saturday, March 27, meetings with the Holocaust
survivors from Cluj took place, as well as meditation pilgrimages at
monuments of the Jewish communities in Transylvania.
Author: DIVERS


ROMANIA�S GYPSY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ANXIOUSLY AWAIT REPARATIONS

MUNTENI, Romania � Things quickly got out of hand. Dozens of Gypsies
clamored to meet with human rights activists who are helping them win
compensation for being forced into slave labor under Romania's
Nazi-allied regime during World War II, AP reported. Windows broke and
heated words were shouted before the crowd realized a mistake had been
made: The visitors in town were journalists, not lawyers come to
document their claims for compensation. That a rumor could nearly touch
off a riot underscores the tensions simmering in Gypsy communities
across Romania as people wait for money � or at least some news on
whether they qualify. The program, paid for by the German government and
private ind ustry, is the first to compensate Gypsies, or Roma as they
also are known, for their suffering in the Holocaust. Payments are only
now starting to arrive. Those waiting � like Diamanta Stanescu, 77, who
lives in the nearby village of Liesti, 140 miles northeast of the
capital, Bucharest � fear they may remain forgotten. Sitting with 15
other members of her clan in a room in the gloom of a single light bulb
powered by a car battery, she wept at the memory of a youth lost in
wartime concentration camps. Her father, a brother and a sister were
killed � shot by German soldiers near a river in Ukraine. "We left as
beautiful as roses and we came back naked, starving, and full of mud,"
she said. Stanescu was among the 25,000 Gypsies deported by the
Nazi-allied Romanian authorities to what was then the German-occupied
part of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were also
sent to the camps. Most of the deportees died, mainly from hunger and
typhus, but executions and other brutalities also took a heavy toll. The
Gypsies were used as slaves by the Nazis and their allies, forced to
work on farms, fix roads, dig trenches and fell trees behind the front
lines. About 5,900 Romanian Gypsies applied for compensation, says the
International Organization for Migration, which handled applications for
non-Jewish victims in most European countries. Only survivors and heirs
of deportees who died after Feb. 15, 1999, were eligible. A relatively
modest amount by Western standards � under $10,000 in most cases�the
compensation looms huge for impoverished Gypsies living on less than a
few dollars a day. But, while decades had passed, the trauma of the
experience was so pervasive that some survivors feared they could be
persecuted again if they were to be identified by applying for
compensation. "Many of them were afraid," said Viorica Gotu, a social
worker who helped process claims. "They thought we came to make lists to
deport them again." Some didn't apply for the funds. Now that payments
have begun arriving in Gypsy communities, they regret their reticence
and have been trying to make claims. But it's too late, the
International Organization for Migration says. The German law
establishing the program set a 2001 filing deadline, said Marie-Agnes
Heine, a public information officer for IOM's compensation programs in
Geneva, Switzerland. Even though the organization sympathizes with those
left out, "at a certain point of time, you have to close the door," she
said. Rancu Stanescu, 84, who is not related to Diamanta Stanescu, is
one of those anxious to live his remaining days in peace. He was
deported to the camps when he was 22, and worked as a slave for 2?
years. Telling of the beatings and the starvation, his voice dropped and
tears flowed. "Out of hunger, when we saw someone die, we would run over
and cut a piece of meat out of him, and eat it," he said, clutching a
walking stick. He's one of the lucky ones, having received a first
installment of $7,000 toward his compensation. He said he used the money
to buy food. Diamanta Stanescu is just hoping that something comes to
her family before she dies. "This is funeral money, because I am old,"
she said. "Without the money, when I die, no one will help me."
Author: DIVERS


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