Collective amnesia of the Jewish Holocaust in Romania and Current narratives of national identity

This article represents a summary of a recent grant proposal submitted to the Romanian Government. The proposal deals with the intergenerational basis of collective amnesia about the Romanian Holocaust and its effects on the current narratives of national identity in Romania. In 1930, Romania was home to seven hundred fifty thousand Jews. By the end of World War II two hundred fifty thousands Jews and nineteen thousands Gypsies are estimated to have been murdered under Romanian jurisdiction (Butnaru, 1992; Ioanid, 2000). The widespread absence of recollections about these events from Romanians' collective memory is the focus of my project.