Post by Bozur on Feb 17, 2005 16:39:02 GMT -5
Romanians learn own role in Holocaust
BUCHAREST (AP) - Hundreds of Romanian teachers have been trained in how to teach the Holocaust to Romanian children, the Education Ministry said yesterday.
The ministry said that 100 teachers participated in a program organized by Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, while another 400 teachers were trained in Romania.
The programs were part of efforts to educate Romanians about their country’s role in the Holocaust.
Education Minister Mircea Miclea pledged to speed up the training programs after a meeting Monday with Radu Ioanid, director for International Archival Programs at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The former communist country acknowledged only recently that its wartime leaders were responsible for the deaths of many Jews and Gypsies when Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany during 1941-44.
An international panel of historians set up last year by then President Ion Iliescu said the wartime regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu was responsible for the deaths of 280,000-380,000 Jews and more than 11,000 Gypsies.
The panel urged the government to introduce study of the Holocaust in schools.
The government took responsibility for the actions of Romanian authorities during World War II, and promised to educate the public about the Holocaust.
Under communism, official history taught that Germans were the sole perpetrators of the Holocaust, while Romania’s pro-Nazi ruler Marshal Ion Antonescu was considered a war criminal who merely followed Adolf Hitler.
After communism fell in 1989, Antonescu became a hero to some Romanians who praised him for having gone to war against the Soviet Union after it invaded parts of Romania in 1940.
Romania was home to 760,000 Jews before 1940. About 6,000 Jews live there now.
www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/content.asp?aid=52198