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Comments (0)Jewish groups criticized Romania’s central bank after it decided not to withdraw from circulation a newly minted coin commemorating an anti-Semitic church leader.
The coin honors the late patriarch Miron Cristea, who as prime minister from 1938 to 1939 stripped about one-third of the Romanian Jews of their citizenship before World War II. Cristea led the Romanian church from 1925 to 1939.
The coin is part of a set commemorating the five patriarchs who have led the Romanian church since 1925.
“We are shocked and disappointed that the National Bank of Romania has decided to honor Miron Cristea, even after consideration of his anti-Semitic actions and statements,” Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a letter to Romanian President Traian Basescu.
“While we emphatically condemn the National Bank’s decision to persist with the Cristea coin, we hope the effort to promote Holocaust education and remembrance among the Romanian people can benefit from the National Bank’s lapse of judgment,” Foxman wrote.
He called on the Romanian president to ensure that the central bank includes an educational pamphlet about Cristea and his treatment of Romania’s Jews with each coin.
“You are honoring the prime minister of a totalitarian regime who persecuted the Jews through denaturalization and anti-Semitic incitements,” wrote B’nai B’rith International’s executive vice-president, Daniel S. Mariaschin, and Rabbi Andrew Baker, American Jewish Committee’s director of international Jewish affairs, in a letter to Gov. Mugur Isarescu of the National Bank of Romania.
“Your actions are in clear contradiction not only with the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania which was endorsed by two Romanian heads of state but also with the progress that Romania made in acknowledging its tragic past,” the letter stated.
Radu Ioanid, director of the International Archival Program at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, asked at the end of July that the coin be withdrawn from circulation, saying the minting of the coin will contradict a law prohibiting the promotion of racist or xenophobic personalities and organizations.
Jews Elected to New Australian Parliament
Three Jews were elected to Australia’s federal parliament in national elections.
Michael Danby, Mark Dreyfus and Joshua Frydenberg—all from Melbourne—emerged victorious in Saturday’s ballot. But neither the incumbent Labor Party nor the opposition Liberal Party managed to muster the 76 seats required for an outright majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, prompting the probability of the first hung parliament in 70 years. Early voting and mail-in votes could yet prove pivotal, according to observers.
Danby, a Labor lawmaker who has been Israel’s most ardent advocate in parliament, served as the only Jewish federal lawmaker between 1996 and 2007, when Dreyfus was first elected, also to Labor.
Frydenberg, a graduate of Bialik College in Melbourne and a former adviser to Liberal lawmaker and one-time prime minister John Howard, on Saturday became the first Jewish Liberal representative in Canberra since Sen. Peter Baume in 1991.
Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said it was “very encouraging” to have three Jewish federal lawmakers. >From 1974-75 there were four Jews in federal parliament.
The election also produced several firsts: Dr. Ken Wyatt is likely to become the first Aboriginal member elected to the lower house; Adam Bandt became the first Greens lawmaker elected to the lower house, and Ed Husic became the first Muslim lawmaker ever elected.
Berenson Ordered Back to Court
Lori Berenson, the Jewish New Yorker arrested in Peru in 1995 for aiding insurgents, was ordered to return to jail after being released on parole in May.
Berenson turned herself in Thursday to Peruvian authorities. She and her 15-month-old son, who was born in jail, were released on parole in May for good behavior after serving 15 years of her 20 year sentence. A panel of judges ruled that Berenson, 40, who was found guilty of collaborating with a guerilla group trying to overthrow the government, should return to jail because police failed to confirm the address in Lima where she would serve out the remainder of her sentence.
If the issue is resolved, she could be freed from jail on the condition she remains in Peru for the rest of her sentence.