On Thursday, Academy member Constantin Balaceanu-Stolnici, descendant of an aristocratic family and a well-known personality in Romania publicly apologized to the Romanian Jews for the sufferings they went through during the Second World War. Visibly touched, he declared, from the pulpit of the Coral Temple in Bucharest: "On my own behalf, on behalf of my generation and of the Romanian people, I apologize to the Jews." He held this speech at the ceremony dedicated to the memory of the Jews murdered during the pogrom organized by the Legionaries between the 21st and 23rd of January, 1941. During the ceremony, Mr. Victor Opaschi, presidential councilor, read the message sent by Mr. Ion Iliescu, the President of Romania. The message evoked the victims of that "outburst of barbarism and murder that culminated on January 21-23, 1941, in the plundering and massacring of Bucharest’s Jewish population and in the burning of important edifices of cult that belonged to it... The horrors that Jews went through were the most abominable, because their subject was the very people that endowed humanity with the highest conception of the human being, considering this being as a God’s creation, ‘in His image, after His likeness’."

The message also evoked President Iliescu’s first visit to the Coral Temple, on April 18, 1993, when he was welcomed by chief-rabbi Moses Rosen, who told him that "in the six century-long history of the officially recorded Romanian-Jewish cohabitation in this land, this is the first time when a Romanian head of state lays foot in a synagogue. My firm belief – strengthened by the first-hand knowledge of the realities in the State of Israel, as well as by the meetings I had with many citizens who were born here – is that we have to intensely develop really privileged relations between the new Romania that emerged after December 1989 and the State of Israel, born anew after millennia and merging in a brilliant synthesis the spirit of the Old Testament and the illuminations of the Internet age... The almost half a million former fellow-countrymen who are now Israeli citizens, as well as those who stayed among us, have built a great cross-Mediterranean bridge between Romania and Israel, a spiritual bridge that will be consolidated even further..."

In his message, the President also referred to "that unique episode in the contemporary universal history that one has to admit in the sabotage of Hitler’s ‘final solution’ by the Romanian humaneness", and claimed: "I am thinking to institute, after a common agreement, a day in which we would gather like we did today, in a place filled with more serene memories – perhaps the Jewish Theater... in order to periodically draw the line of all the bridges of cooperation between our two peoples."

Other speeches were held by Academy member Razvan Theodorescu (minister for Culture and Cults), Mrs. Rodica Radian-Gordon (Israeli ambassador to Bucharest), counsel Iulian Sorin (secretary of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania), engineer Ben Zvi Guttman from Israel, whose father – rabbi Zvi Guttman – and two brothers – Iancu and Josef – were taken by the Legionaries to the Jilava Woods; the brothers were shot to death, while the father miraculously survived, being covered by the bodies of his sons that had fallen over him.

The ceremony was attended by ministers, members of the Parliament, members of the Jewish community, high representatives of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, other personalities of the Romanian public life, various Israeli personalities.

Some of the national newspapers in Bucharest reported on the commemorative session at the Coral Temple. The "Ziua" published an article signed by Tesu Solomovici (its correspondent from Israel), an article whose title evoked the apology of Academy member Balaceanu-Stolnici. The "Adevarul" published the following note:

"Yesterday, the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania marked the 63rd annual commemoration of the assassination of the Jews in Bucharest during the Legionary pogrom of January 21-23, 1941. During those tragic days, 120 Jews were killed in the Jilava Woods, at the Slaughterhouse or on the streets of the Capital; synagogues were burned and several Jewish shops were plundered.

During yesterday’s ceremony, speeches were held by representatives of the Federation, of the Embassy of Israel, by descendants of those who were murdered during the Legionary rebellion, by the minister for Culture and Cults, Razvan Theodorescu, and by Academy member C. Balaceanu-Stolnici, a witness of those events and one of those who tried to diminish the proportions of the tragedy lived by the Jews more than six decades ago. A message from President Ion Iliescu was read."

In 2003, Academy member Constantin Balaceanu-Stolnici published "Incursiuni in lumea sufletului" ("Forays in the World of the Soul"), Paideia Publishing House. This is how the author described his book: "In this work I have considerably extended my approach, allowing to the spiritual models a development that should fill the gap in my first attempt. Thus, I have followed step-by-step the way in which the human being, and the psychic in particular, were imagined throughout the long way of the history of culture (and science), from the upper Paleolithic period to this day. I did not however approached Asian models (extremely interesting in their turn), but I confined my study to our cultural space, European and circum-Mediterranean."

According to the "Curierul National" newspaper of Saturday, the Romanian National History Museum hosted the opening of an exhibition about the crimes committed by the Nazis and their allies during the Second World War, both in Germany and in Romania, entitled "Holocaust 1933-1945. The Courage to Remember". President Ion Iliescu attended the opening.

The exhibition reflects aspects of the policy of persecution and racial discrimination led by the Nazis and the allies of the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945 that culminated in the extermination of more than six million Jews, of whom around one million were children. The central hall of the Romanian National History Museum displays photographs, panels with texts telling what happened to the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, and copies of documents proving that a systematic killing of the Jews did take place on the Romanian territory. Until now, the exhibition has been present in 50 countries on five continents.

The documents referring to the killing of the Jews in Bessarabia, Bucovina, Southern Transylvania, or during the pogroms in Bucharest and in Iasi were provided by Lya Beniamin and Irina Cajal-Marin.

The exhibition holds two symbolic objects for those who had to suffer during the persecutions: a train door (to remind of the deportation methods) and a cart (one of those that were used by the guards of the concentration camps to gather the dead).

According to the same newspaper, President Ion Iliescu declared that this exhibition is a way to prevent such events from repeating themselves. The President recalled his living, in 1941, next to the Bucharest slaughterhouse (a location where several Jews were killed), as well as the burning of the synagogues, shops and dwellings of the Jews. "These are facts of history that must always remain present in our memory, so that we may cut what generated these anti-human facts from its roots and not allow their repetition", concluded Iliescu. Efraim Zuroff, manager of the "Simon Wiesenthal" Center, one of the organizers of the exhibition, underlined the fact that politicians must admit the existence of the Holocaust (when it is the case) and that those who took an active part in putting it into practice must be exposed and punished. "We mustn’t fool ourselves. The Holocaust did not happen on another planet, it happened here, in this very country, in this very city where we are now", said Efraim Zuroff.

At the press conference that took place before the official opening, Zuroff announced that he had sent to Romania’s district attorney a letter containing the names of two colonels who took an active part in the killing of the Jews in Bessarabia and Bucovina, in 1941. The two colonels, Radu Dinulescu and George Petrescu, were rehabilitated by the Romanian State through a decision of the Supreme Court of Justice. The representative of the "Simon Wiesenthal" now expects that district attorney Ilie Botos will have the rehabilitation annulled and the two colonels punished.

The exhibition was put up in cooperation with the Ministry for Culture and Cults, the Romanian National History Museum, the "Simon Wisenthal" Center from Israel and the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania. The event was also attended by the Israeli ambassador, Rodica Radian Gordon, the minister for Culture and Cults, Razvan Theodorescu, members of the diplomatic corps. The exhibition will be open until March this year.

The Romanian Government has reasserted its support for the organization in Bucharest of the first part of the International Convention of the Romanian-born Jews, in the fall of 2004 (the second part is to be held in Jerusalem). This support has been reasserted on the occasion of the meeting that recently took place in Bucharest between gen. (res.) Moshe Nativ, president of the Unitary Organization of the Romanian-born Jews (AMIR), and Mr. Eugen Bejinariu, minister in the Ministry for the Coordination of the General Secretariat of the Romanian Government.

This meeting was evoked in the reunion of AMIR’s leadership of January 10, in Tel Aviv. The participants were reminded that, in October 2003, Adrian Nastase, prime-minister of Romania, received Mr. Moshe Nativ, who presented him AMIR’s projects to organize a History Museum of the Romanian Jews and the International Convention. The prime-minister had then saluted these projects and had promised the support of the Romanian authorities.

It was in the follow-up on this dialogue that gen. (res.) Moshe Nativ met with Mr. Eugen Bejenariu, with whom he discussed the preparation of the convention’s proceedings. The date, the location and other technical details for the Bucharest section of the convention are yet to be decided upon. One of the propositions made by AMIR involves organizing an action that would feature the transformations experienced by the Romanian society after the Revolution of December 1989 and how the situation of the Romanian Jewish population evolved during this period.

The meeting in Bucharest was also attended by dr. Irina Cajal, daughter of Academy member Nicolae Cajal (president of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania), and representative of AMIR in Bucharest, Mr. Iulian Sorin, secretary general of the Federation, as well as Mr. Florin Vasiliu, diplomatic councilor of the minister.

During his visit to Bucharest, Moshe Nativ discussed the issue of the retrocession of the Jewish community’s assets confiscated by the Romanian authorities during Antonescu’s regime and the communist dictatorship. Another topic that was approached was the one of the two hospital buildings in Bucharest and Timisoara that were retroceded to the Federation. Since the Federation has no wish to alter the destination of the two buildings (serving the healthcare system), a solution is being sought so that, in exchange, the Federation may receive other appropriate buildings.

The reunion of AMIR’s leadership was attended (apart from the president) by: Moshe Nagor (vicepresident), Zvi Ben Dov (secretary general), Bercu Krigler (financial trustee), Baruch Tercatin, Iehoshua Zontag.