Laszlo Alexandru

 

HISTORY TAKEN TO COURT



english version by Axel H. Lenn



Among the diverse history-writing techniques that specialists have been preoccupied with, acting as the centerfold of their debates, the Romanian model, currently a few short steps away from receiving an official patent, has once again proven amazingly preposterous. The gap between factual history and interpretative history is resolved briefly by this autochthonous experiment: the past is taken to court.

          To exemplify, I chose Şerban Alexianu’s original attempt to officially rehabilitate his father, Gheorghe Alexianu, who served as Transnistria’s civil governor, position he had been appointed to under marshal Ion Antonescu’s regime. It is a well-known fact that this cursed eastern province constituted the torture camp for hundreds of thousands of Jews and Roma deported there by Romanian officials during 1940-1944 and subjected to the most inhumane living conditions imaginable, with the undeclared aim of their rapid extermination. At the end of the second World War,  the political figures responsible for Romania’s disaster were arrested, trialed and sentenced to either death or to long hard years in prison (where many eventually met their death). The former chief of occupied Transnistria, Gh. Alexianu, was among the people executed following the 1946 sentence, together with marshal Antonescu. Well, so it happens that these days, the son of the man who coordinated the well functioning of the Eastern Inferno operations considers himself entitled to claim damages.

          What initially appeared a hilarious whim, with time turned into a real nightmare, just like a snowball rolling down a slope. On April 28, 1998 a request to revise the criminal sentence issued by the People’s Tribunal was put forward; it took almost 10 years for the magistrates’ area of competences to be established, before the Appeal Court in Bucharest (A.C.B.), judging the facts, reached a mesmerizing verdict. The December 5, 2006 sentence acquitted marshal Ion Antonescu, Horia Sima (Iron Guard chief), as well as other high officials and statesmen, on the ground that their decisions were taken under extreme, warfare conditions. Even Romania’s military aggression towards the East was considered rightfully justified by the state of necessity the country was experiencing at that time. However, the culprits were held partially responsible for having allowed and sustained Hitlerist troops’ intrusion in Romania.

          The A.C.B. sentence was criticized by the Romanian and foreign press, it issued official protest notes from Moldavia’s and Russia’s governments. This sentence was challenged in a higher court by both parties, namely the public prosecutor’s office and Şerban Alexianu. In May 2008, the facts were restored to their initial course by Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice: the sentence issued by the People’s Tribunal at the end of the second World War was confirmed as final, the verdict on the culprits’ guilt pronounced valid and their punishment lawful.

          This is not yet another story about Romania’s judicial system, nor about the original attempts to impose distorted historical facts. There is also a series of graphic details worth mentioning. Among the arguments to reopen the debate was the lack of legitimacy of the so called People’s Tribunal in the years following the war. This institution was created by the occupying soviet regime, it simply enacted the winning forces’ will and it had a primarily political function. Many rather innocent personalities fell victims to this Tribunal for the guilt of having not rushed to embrace the new dictatorial regime. Still, such obvious aspects can’t possibly invalidate from a moral point of view absolutely all the sentences issued by this Tribunal. By the end of the second World War, the whole Europe was eager to punish all the collaborationists responsible for the disaster. Why should we assume that the fascists punished in the West were monsters but those in the East should remain – morally speaking - angelically innocent?

          Another pretext used to relaunch the debate referred to the fact that during the time since postwar sentences had been issued, new historical facts were brought forth: to render one such example, the public disclosure of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact stipulations. Such a detail regarding a confidential political agreement in which two superpowers divide their spheres of geographical influence does not excuse the fact that some Romanian politicians took an active role on the side of the Hitlerist invader. In the same manner, the insistently underlined status Gheorghe Alexianu had, namely as civil and not military governor of Transnistria, can under no circumstances change the real, historical facts. Holocaust is still Holocaust no matter that it was coordinated under a hat or under a cap.

          The hypothesis launched by Gh. Alexianu’s lawyer, claiming the political context of that time would have determined Romania to act in self-defense and invade USSR is so preposterous that it could actually justify any military aggression, no matter the historical moment, based on the self-defense imperative. What were Romanians so legitimately defending at Stalingrad or at the Don Bend?

          Şerban Alexianu’s final lament, according to whom the judges (who put an end to his attempts of rewriting history) have given an erroneous sentence because “they are communist products, the type of prosecutors and jurists who lived under communism, feared communism and used to act on orders from up high”, is pretty arguable. If the Romanian justice is completely dependent upon communism, why did the fascist dignitary’s son go to court in the first place? If things are not as such, why does the man insult Romania’s judicial system so spitefully?

          The real background of this affair is unveiled in the press (see the May 7, 2008, issue of Adevărul). Next to the rehabilitation request, Gheorghe Alexainu’s heirs might have well annexed an action for the recovery of a 124,750.12 square meters property in Colentina, one of Bucharest’s residential districts. The litigious rights have already been sold, before the end of the trial, to Gigi Becali, the controversial businessman, for 750,000 Euros.

          Under one million Euros. Is this the current market value of the historical truth regarding Romania’s part in the second World War?   

 (July 2008)