Statute of the institute

S T A T U T E

of the

Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

within the

College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences of the Babeş‒Bolyai University

Taking into account the conclusions and recommendations in the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (Wiesel Commission),¹

Having regard to the imperatives contained in the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 31/2002, approved by Law no. 107/2006, as amended and supplemented,

Observing the status and quality of indigenous and international educational programs and research in the field,

Facing the crucial fact that lack of education, research and dissemination of its results lead to the decrease of awareness regarding and the proliferation of: anti-Semitic and xenophobic phenomena, manifestations of ethnic, religious and racial intolerance, denial, relativization or trivialization of the Holocaust as well as of competitive marthyrology and competitive memory, among the new generations, and also

Starting from the reality of loopholes of high-school and university education in this field, and specifically noting that universities in Romania do not have institutes or programs with the primary aim of promoting education and academic research on the Holocaust and other genocides, the Council of the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences of the Babeş-Bolyai University, met in regular session on 26.09.2014,

unanimously decided the establishment

of an institute specialized in Holocaust and genocide studies within the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences of the Babeş‒Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca.

1. The name of the Institute in Romanian will be:

Institutul pentru Studii de Holocaust şi Genocid,

which together with its Hungarian, German and English names, respectively,

Holokauszt- és Genocídiumtanulmányok Intézete (Hungarian)

Institut für Holocaust- und Genozidstudien (German)

Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (English)

are constituting the official name of the institute.

2. The headquarters of the Institute is identical to that of the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, namely: Str. Teodor Moşoiu no. 71, 400132 Cluj-Napoca.

3. Purpose of the Institute

The Purpose of the Institute is the education and research in the field of the Holocaust and genocides. In this regard, the Institute will consider:

– The development and introduction of courses on the Holocaust, genocide studies, studies of denial in all its forms of expression (e.g. distortion, trivialization, minimization, relativization, inversion, aso.) etc. that will address mainly students of political science, public administration, journalism and communication departments of the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, with total openness to bachelor, master and doctoral students from other majors and colleges of the university and other universities in the country and abroad, and will aim to familiarize them with these topics and raise their awareness by filling knowledge gaps accumulated during the years of pre-university training, including inter- and multidisciplinary courses (e.g. with literary, art, film or sociological representation topics)
– The initiation of courses, seminars and conferences for opinion leaders (journalists, political scientists, sociologists, social workers, etc.) and scientific and cultural personalities from across the country, as well as the development of adequate training programs and raising their awareness on Holocaust and genocide related issues,
– The initiation of independent research programs or in cooperation with institutions and organizations in the country and abroad that have similar concerns, research which will not focus on the reproduction of results already achieved, but rather on filling the gaps in the current research state on the Holocaust and genocide (e.g. through special attention accorded to the Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe and regions of the former Soviet Union, where the Hungarian and Romanian governments and military forces of the time played an important role, etc.), attracting in its educational and research programs mainly the bachelor, master and doctoral students, but also staff members of the College and of Babeş‒Bolyai University.

4. Leadership of the Institute

The Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is run and managed by a Board of Directors; this board will decide on the annual budget of revenues and expenditures, approve educational and research projects, issues related to the staff of the institute and will oversee the use of heritage, archives and collections owned by the Institute.

Leading figures in the country and abroad with extensive activity in areas of specific expertise will be invited to join the Scientific Council of the Institute. The Scientific Council will design the main directions of education and research and put forward criticisms of educational and research activities whenever needed.

5. Archives and collections of the Institute

The Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will be able to build up its own archive of documents and manuscripts, as well as its library and collection of objects and artifacts related to its field of activity. These archives and collections may be physically located in a separate enclosure owned by the institute, but legally will be part of the heritage of the faculty or university library.

The College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences commits towards the potential donors and testators to keep in the best condition and transmit to future generations both archive-, library-, and other collections of the Institute and to support their development and future processing.

To achieve these goals as well as for the purpose of fruitful cooperation with similar institutions, the Institute will share archival material and other resources for education and research with other institutions working in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies.

The archives, libraries and collections of the Institute are public, except materials which donors or their testators decided to restrict from public consultation.

6. Incomes and expenditures of the Institute shall be provided in its budget, which will be produced annually.

Revenues of the Institute will come from the following sources:

– Financial resources provided from the state budget or budgetary institutions authorizing credit,
– Resources provided from Babeş‒Bolyai University’s private income sources,
– Resources provided from revenues of the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences,
– Resources from the funding obtained for own educational and research projects or conducted in cooperation with other institutions,
– Resources obtained from institutional donors and individuals at home and abroad, as well as
– Anonymous donations,
– Legacies.

Expenses incurred by the Institute will be for educational and research activities, including expenses stemming from the use of space and other facilities, personnel, travels, as well as materials and services necessary for proper functioning.

Institutions and individuals can make donations to the institute for general purpose, to achieve its objectives and also for dedicated purposes, for specific objectives, mutually agreed upon by the donor and the donee.

The Institute will be able to name certain funds and programs after the donors concerned and with their consent. The Institute will publish the names of institutional and private donors, with their consent, and will grant awards of the largest donors.

7. Considerations and basic principles of the mission of the Institute

The Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is based on the idea that the genocides that history has known usually did not appear out of nowhere or by exclusive control of those in power, but due to the fact that feelings of hatred and exclusion towards certain groups of people had deeply penetrated important parts of the society. The basic reason of genocides was primordially the fact that some minorities were considered obstacles or barriers to the achievement of the vision and / or future projects of the majority societies.

In this framework, the Holocaust is a genocide of unprecedented nature, international in scope and global in intent, designed and carried out from the design phase to the execution by the institutions of the states concerned. The Holocaust was the state-organized, systematic persecution and extermination of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborator allies between 1933 and 1945. Not only Jews were persecuted and killed during this period. Persecution and mass arrests took place against other ethnic groups such as Sinti and Roma, people with disabilities, political opponents, homosexuals and other target groups identified as groups of “different” people, labeled as “others” and excluded from the protection afforded to members of society.²

Having in view the territory of today's Romania, but also the territories under Romanian or Hungarian administration during the Second World War, the primary responsibility for the planning and implementation of the Holocaust bears on:

Romanian authorities of the time, for the extermination of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, Old Romanian Kingdom and Southern Transylvania;
Romanian authorities of the time, for the extermination of the Jews in Transnistria;
Hungarian authorities of the time, for the extermination of the Jewish communities of Northern Transylvania (including the historical Maramureş and Partium);
Hungarian authorities of the time, for the killings organized on the historical Galician territories;
German authorities of the time, for supporting Romania and Hungary in the drive of destruction of local Jewish communities of these countries.

On the territories described above, the number of victims that are falling into the responsibility of Romania amounts to 280-380 thousand,³ and those that are the responsibility of Hungary amount to 150-160 thousand victims.⁴The total number of Jews killed, originating from the territory of today's Romania amounts to 405-515 thousand, plus a number of approx. 11 thousand victims of the Roma and Sinti communities (of about 25,000 deported to Transnistria).

Destruction of the Jewish Community in Romania

A significant proportion of the Jewish community of Romania was destroyed during the Second World War. The Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dorohoi were subjected to systematic killing and deportation. Transnistria, part of occupied Ukraine under Romanian administration, was used as a giant territory for killing Jews. Romanian authorities organized pogroms and other act of mass violence in the Old Romanian Kingdom, the most studied being those in Bucharest, Iaşi, Galaţi, etc. Romanian authorities also considered the mass deportation to Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland (Belzec) of all Jews from the Old Kingdom, which plan fortunately remained unrealized, but research of which is also important.

Romanian authorities bear the main responsibility for both the planning and the implementation of the Holocaust in Romania. This includes:

– Systematic deportation in Transnistria and extermination of the majority of Jews in Bessarabia and Bucovina, as well as some other areas under Romanian rule (Old Kingdom, Southern Transylvania, Banat),
– The mass murder of Romanian Jews and of the Jews of Transnistria,
– Mass executions of Jews during the Iaşi pogrom,
– Systematic discrimination and degradation to which Romanian Jews were subjected during the Antonescu administration, including expropriation of assets, dismissal from employment, forced evacuation of rural areas and concentration in district capitals and in the camps, and
– Massive use of male Jews in forced labor units and camps under the same administration.

Jews were subjected to degradation simply because they were Jews; consequently they lost state protection and became victims. Some of the Roma population in Romania was also subject to deportation and killed in Transnistria.⁵

Destruction of the Jewish communities of Northern Transylvania

Four-fifths of the approx. 165,000 Jews who lived in Northern Transylvania (annexed by Hungary on August 30, 1940) were the victims of the Holocaust in Hungary. Their death is the responsibility of the Hungarian authorities of the time. Miklós Horthy's autocratic regime was one of an extremely powerful anti-Semitism and nationalism. As early as the 1930s, the propaganda of this regime created the premises of the destruction of the Hungarian Jewish communities, including those of Northern Transylvania.

Extermination of the Jews of Northern Transylvania was done in several steps, including:

– Non-systematic deportations of Szekler counties (October-December 1940)
– Deportations and exterminations by bullets in the territories of Galicia (1941-1942),
– Forced labor for men (1942-1944),
– Mass deportations to death camps in German occupied Poland (May-June 1944), mainly the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

A large part of the Jews of Northern Transylvania who took refuge in Budapest before the mass deportations of the 1944 spring, shared the fate of the Jews of Budapest: ending up in different ghettos, various death marches, or being exterminated by the Horthy regime and later by the Szálasi (or Nyilas) regimes.

Given these facts, the Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies clearly delineates the study and research of the Holocaust – considered a special, unique genocide of the human history, the repetition of which the Institute, through its efforts, endeavors to avoid– from the study and research of various other genocides that mankind has known and knows nowadays, and against the production and proliferation of which the institute also takes a firm position.

At the same time, the Institute will be involved in the research and study of the Holocaust occurred in other European countries, as well as in the study and research of other genocides that took place in Europe or on other continents. Special attention will be given to the study, research, analysis and documentation of European local and regional genocides of the 20th century (e.g. genocide committed by Turkey against Armenians; Gulag phenomenon in communist countries; mass killings for ethnic cleansing purposes from the former Yugoslavia and other).

8. Core programs of the Institute

A. Educational programs of the Institute will focus on the following themes:

– History of the Holocaust and its historiographical approach,
– Holocaust denial in the aftermath of the Second World War, including the post-communist period,
– Studies of various specific aspects of the Holocaust,
– Studies of genocide, including the following:
- a) Case studies and comparative genocide studies (for example, the Armenian genocide, genocide in Rwanda, the genocide in Timor ‒ resemblances and differences to the Holocaust);
- b) Genocide and crimes against humanity;
- c) Genocide and “ethnic cleansing” (the former Yugoslavia);
- d) Genocidal denial;
- e) Prosecution of genocide perpetrators (Nuremberg tribunals, International criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda);
- f) Prosecution on local levels;
- g) Aspects of genocide prevention.
– Studies of competitive martyrology and competitive memory.

B. Research programs of the Institute will be complementary and not duplicative to other institutions in the country and abroad, trying to fill gaps in current knowledge about the Holocaust and genocide and will focus on the following main areas:

– Research designed to identify known and accessible major archives on the Holocaust in Romania, respectively in Northern Transylvania,
– Research aimed at identifying sources of news on the Holocaust in Romania, respectively in Northern Transylvania, with their subsequent processing,
– Compiling and publishing collections of archival documents and media, basic or specific, on the Holocaust in Romania, and Northern Transylvania,
– Identification of victims of the Holocaust and, if possible, the establishment of a complete record of them,
– Identification, gathering and research of materials and documents (original or copy) in the possession of individuals, their digitization and publication,
– Research and identification of relevant human sources and interviewing them (oral history), with processing and subsequent publication of the results,
– Research regarding the role of different parties, organizations and religious groups in the escalation of anti-Semitism and the destruction of Jews during the Holocaust, and in organizing and conducting other genocides,
– Research of the different genocides, especially in Europe, but also those of other countries from different continents,
– Sponsorship of fellowships for bachelor, master and doctoral students, as well as for young postdoctoral researchers, in the early stages of their research on issues of Holocaust and genocide studies,
– Organizing workshops and research symposia at national, regional and international levels in order to explore challenging issues and other current topics in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies.

C. Programs dissemination of research results

The Institute will work to disseminate the results obtained from research programs by publishing a series of books and an e-mail newsletter and will eventually publish a scientific journal of its own, or will work towards a partnership with the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and other universities in the country to further develop the journal Holocaust ‒ Studii şi cercetări, thereby creating a strong journal of international stature together with its accreditation in relevant international databases. The Institute will create its own web site.

The institute will organize regular conferences, seminars and roundtables with experts, opinion makers, scientific and cultural personalities in which it will disseminate the results of its educational and scientific activity.

D. Conservation programs of documentation and testimonial evidence

The Institute will initiate the creation, and work together with other interested institutions in the country and abroad to carry out a program aimed at digitizing all documents and testimonial evidence on the Holocaust in Romania and Northern Transylvania and seek national and international funding for this program. Digitized material will be made publicly available by publishing them on the internet.

9. Relations with other institutions in the field

The Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will work with a number of institutions in the country and abroad, aiming at studying, researching and preserving the historical truth of the Holocaust and other genocides.

A. Institutions in the country:

– National Institute for Holocaust Studies “Elie Wiesel”, Bucharest,
– Other major state universities of the country, especially the University of Bucharest, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, and the West University of Timişoara,
– National Archives of Romania and county departments of this institution,
– National Council for Study of Securitate Archives,
– Center for Jewish Studies “Goldstein Goren” of the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest,
– Center for Jewish History of the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi,
– Holocaust Memorial Museum of Northern Transylvania, Şimleu Silvaniei
– Museum of Jewish Culture of Maramureş – Elie Wiesel Memorial House, Sighet,
– Center for the Study of Jewish History in Romania, Bucharest and
– Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania.

B. Institutions abroad:

– United States Holocaust Memorial Museum / Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Washington DC, USA
– The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies / Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York, NY, USA,
– Yad Vashem – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, Israel,
– USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education / University of Southern California, CA, USA,
– Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Miejsce Pamieci the Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau), Oswiecim, Poland,
– Shoah Memorial (Mémorial de la Shoah), Paris, France
– Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, New York, USA
– International Tracing Service (Internationaler Suchdienst), Bad Arolsen, Germany,
– International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), Berlin, Germany
– The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (Wiener Wiesenthal Institute für Holocaust-Studien), Vienna, Austria
– NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Instituut voor NIOD Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies), Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
– European Holocaust Research Infrastructure / King's College, London, UK,
– Institute for War & Peace Reporting, London, UK,
– Center for Holocaust Studies, Kiev, Ukraine
– Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center (Holokauszt Dokumentációs Központ és Emlékhely), Budapest, Hungary
– Hungarian Jewish Archives (Magyar Zsidó Levéltár), Budapest, Hungary
– Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors), Berlin, Germany
– Center for the Study of the History and Sociology of World War II / National Research University Higher School for Economics, Moscow, Russia
– Center for Holocaust Research (Institut für Zeitgeschichte), Munich, Germany,
– Other organizations and institutions involved in activities related to the fields of Holocaust and genocide studies.

Cluj-Napoca, September 26, 2014

Dr. Zoltán TIBORI SZABÓ

Associate Professor

Notes

Comisia Internaţională pentru Studierea Holocaustului în România. Raport final. Preşedinte comisie: Elie Wiesel. Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu (eds.). Polirom, Iaşi, 2005. See also: http://www.inshr-ew.ro/raportul-wiesel; accessed: July 15, 2014 (Hereafter: Raport final)
Raport final, 388.
Raport final, 178.
Tibori Szabó, Zoltán: Erdélyi zsidó sors a holokauszt után [The Fate of Transylvanian Jewry After the Holocaust]. In: Braham, Randolph L.–Tibori Szabó, Zoltán (eds.): Az észak-erdélyi holokauszt földrajzi enciklopédiája [Geographical Enciclopedia of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania]. Park Kiadó–Koinonia, Budapest–Kolozsvár [Cluj-Napoca], 2008, 470.
Raport final, 387.

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