The film "The Town without Jews" ("Die Stadt ohne Juden"), a prophetic motion picture made in 1924 by Austrian director Karl Breslauer, was projected for the first time in Romania, on October 26, during the Festival of the Yiddish Culture in Iasi. Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer, the film depicts the expulsion of thousands of Jews judged responsible for the economic crisis in a country named Utopia. This event was organized with the support of the Austrian Embassy to Romania.

October 30 was the last day of the "Avram Goldfaden" International Theater Festival, which took place for a week under the title "The first Yiddish theater in the world and the Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe: the traffic of artists and ideas".

On the initiative of the French Cultural Center in Iasi (one of the main organizers of the festival, together with the "Vasile Alecsandri" National Theater and the Ministry for Culture and Cults), this event will become a sequence of a whole series of cultural events, designed to take place until March 2004, which will follow the steps of the Yiddish theater pioneers. The manager of the French Cultural Center, Mr. Paul-Elie Levy, declared to a reporter of the "Adevarul" newspaper: "The city of Iasi proves once again its vocation for multicultural dialogue, as it is a place where pilgrims must watch their step in order not to crush the pollen lying under the asphalt; it is the starting place of a symbolic European tour of the Yiddish Theater, that will build new bridges of communications between the cultures of the West and of the East."

Correspondence from Prague, from Edelina Stoian:

Stranded dogs, dusty sidewalks, a petty cottage. We are in the old part of the city of Constanta, at the headquarters of the Jewish Community (according to the plate at the entrance, near the barred gate). The neighboring facades are decrepit and there are potholes everywhere. Yet, in contrast with the grey blocks of flats that welcome one on entering the city, the old quarter seems almost alluring, beneath the shade of the gnarled trees and the vineyard bowers...

The barred gate opens with a long creak. In the inner courtyard - a few men wearing suits and ties. It's Saturday morning, it's the Jewish New Year. According to tradition, a rabbi should presently commence the religious ceremony. "What rabbi?", says Carol Friedmann, head of the Jewish community in Constanta, shrugging his shoulders. And he explains: "In the entire country, there are only two practicing rabbes, who live in Bucharest and Timisoara; and this is nothing: it's been a while since we don't even have a cantor here in Constanta. So what can we do? We improvise..."

This is happening in a community that counted 2,500 members before 1941. Today, in Constanta, there are only about 60 Jews who take an active part in the life of the community; most of them are too old to pack their things and start a new life in Israel, where many Jews left at the beginning of the 1960's, sold unofficially by the Ceausescu regime for 10,000 dollars each.

After the execution of the dictator, many of those who had left started to travel regularly from Israel to Romania and back. One of them is Benno Wechsler, who was born in Buhusi, and who now spends most of his time in Constanta. He is thought to be a universal genius, as he raises donations, fills in for the rabbi once in a while, teaches Hebrew in an improvised classroom: a small room with a poster with the Hebrew alphabet on the wall.

In the room next door, a modestly furnished office, with blackened planks on the floor, there are 20 persons, crowded before a menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum with two branches missing) and a small, worn-out carpet made of purple velvet, with the star of David in the middle, embroidered with gilded threads.

This is the "synagogue" of the Jewish community in Constanta. Before the Second World War there used to be two synagogues: the Sephardic one, in a gothic-Catalan style, demolished under the Ceausescu regime, and the Ashkenazi synagogue, now abandoned, threatening to crumble at any moment...

Constanta, Romania's largest port to the Black Sea, where Romanians, Greeks, Turks, Roma and Jews have always lived together in peace and understanding now needs a miracle. For, as Israeli Benno Wechsler from Buhusi puts it, unless a miracle happens, there will be no Jew left in Constanta in 10-15 years. (Adaptation after the "Juedische Allgemeine" magazine)

The "Curierul Romanesc" magazine, edited by Silvia Constantinescu in Sweden, published in the issue of July-September 2003, the article "Twisted Jewish-Romanian relations at the end of WW2", signed by dr. Slomo Leibovici Lais, the president of the World Cultural Organization of the Romanian-born Jews (ACMEOR).

The article reproduces for the first time a document that was often quoted in the final period of the second world conflagration. It is the letter that dr. W. Filderman gave to prince Stirbey, whom the Romanian authorities sent to Cairo in order to negotiate with the allied command that the Soviet troops should not be the only allied army to enter the Romanian territory.

"The letter", explains the author of the article, "was requested from the Jewish leader in the circumstances of the defeat of the Romanian army, and of the Axis' powers, when Romania was seeking ways to negotiate with the allied armies. In those hard times, the authorities, who had led an anti-Semitic policy for years, recalled the existence of the 'Jewish Council', the underground leading body during the Holocaust, and appealed to their sense of patriotism. One of the heads of the underground 'Jewish Council', dr. W. Filderman, who was known to have many connections abroad, was asked to hand prince Stirbey a letter of recommendation. I attached this letter to the addenda of my PhD paper and I now publicly present it as a telling document that reflects the situation at that time."

In this letter - reproduced in French, the language in which it was written -, dr. Filderman claimed he was not certain that the prince and himself would see each other again, taking into consideration the allied bombings and the German threats, and spoke of the letter as of a... final will. He wrote that, at a moment like that, he thought about Romania and the Romanian people and showed a number of excuses for Romania's alliance with Germany (it had been deprived of territories that had been acknowledged as Romanian by the allies - Northern Bucovina, Southern Dobruja, Western Transylvania and Bessarabia). Pointing out the evolution of the Romanian foreign policy, dr. Filderman noted that declaring war to the Axis would have meant the occupation of the country and the assassination of the Romanian elite that was loyal to the allies, as well of the 320,000 Jews in Romania. His letter mentioned that, because of the bombings, many Romanians had fled Bucharest and that the Government itself was preparing to do so. Under these circumstances, dr. Filderman stated: "Die is what we will do! If victory requires it, if, without our death, victory would be uncertain or postponed. In this case, not only will we obey, but we will also bless our death, for we will have the comfort of the thought that those who will survive us will be free. But if this is not absolutely necessary... then let the few of us that are left survive."

Speaking of the deportations that caused the death of a part of the deportees, the Jewish leader added: "...fortunately, right after returning from the exile in Transnistria, I fought to obtain the repatriation of the surviving deportees, and my action was a success, for 7,000 of them are already back, 5,000 children are on their way, and Marshal Antonecsu's deputy informed me of the Marshal's decision to repatriate the rest of the deportees..."