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Michael Shafir, who played a key role in Holocaust memory in his native Romania, dies at 78
BUCHAREST (JTA) — When Michael Shafir moved to Israel from his native Romania as a teenager in the 1960s, it wasn’t because the Jewish teen was burning with Zionist fervor. Instead, it was the first country that agreed to take him.
“I would have left for wherever there was no communism, because I could no longer live with the feeling that you say one thing outside the house and another at home,” Shafir once said in an interview with Romanian media.
More than four decades later, Shafir would return to the country where he was born, as a professor of international relations. From his post at Babes-Bolyai University, in northwestern Romania, Shafir studied and published extensively on how post-communist right-wing nationalists distorted the past and trivialized or denied the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Shafir, who died Nov. 9 at 78, was known in his work and in his personal life for his straightforward and often humorous presentation of difficult truths.
“He was among the first to see the early emergence of nationalism in the [Romanian] communist regime’s politics,” his friend and colleague Liviu Rotman, an Israeli historian of Romanian Jewry, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Rotman said Shafir’s 2004 book “Between denial and trivialization. Holocaust denial in post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe” represented a “real encyclopedia” of Holocaust denial, as it outlined three forms that Shafir observed in post-communist states — outright, deflective (which “minimizes own-nation participation”) and selective (a combination of the other two). Shafir also took aim at what he called “comparative trivialization” of the Holocaust, or denying its uniqueness by equating it with communist crimes.
“I used to joke with Michael and told him that he produced a Mendeleev Table of Holocaust denial,” Rotman wrote on Facebook after his friend’s death, referring to the formal name for the periodic table that organizes elements according to their characteristics.
Known in Romania for his irreverent sense of humor and his chain smoking, Shafir’s massive figure wearing a trench coat — and occasionally a hat — could often be seen in the threshold of the conferences and events he attended.
“He was a person with an exceptional sense of humor, who always sent his friends jokes, who always found things to laugh about,” Jewish studies scholar Felicia Waldman told JTA.
“He liked to share everything he discovered, everything he thought,” added Waldman, who also recalled Shafir’s “undiplomatic” vehemence. “Sometimes that created problems for him.”
Shafir promoted his ideas in books and scholarly writing and conferences, but also in the Romanian press, where he proved to be a redoubtable polemicist. As a member of the International Commission for the Holocaust in Romania, he worked to make sure that people in his country understood the truth about the Holocaust and Romanian authorities’ collaboration with the Nazi regime. That history was obscured during the communist era and contested after it.
The commission was established by Romanian president Ion Iliescu in 2003 and headed by Romanian-born Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Shafir and his fellow commission members concluded that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered in territories under Romanian control during World War II.
In 2004, their report was officially adopted by the Romanian state, which for the first time acknowledged its participation in the destruction of the European Jews.
“Today’s negationism can no longer have the excuse ‘I’ve not read, I’ve haven’t access to information,’” Shafir said in a podcast by the Wiesel Institute in 2021, in which he warns about the crafty and convoluted nature of most contemporary Holocaust denial.
Shafir was still working with the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania at the time of his death, which the institute and his family members confirmed.
Born in Bucharest in 1944, Shafir managed to move to Israel as a teenager in 1961, during one of the periods when Romania relaxed emigration rules for its Jews. He had run afoul of the Communist regime and sought to escape it.
In Israel, Shafir served in the army before moving to Munich, to work as a researcher on audiences at Radio Free Europe, the U.S.-funded radio station for communist Europe. From then on he balanced journalism with academic work: He then returned to Israel, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and English literature at Hebrew University while directing foreign news at the Kol Israel radio station, a position he held until 1982. He had just earned a political science PhD at Hebrew University after writing a thesis on the Romanian intelligentsia under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Shafir rejoined Radio Free Europe in the mid 1980s and held positions there until well after the fall of the Iron Curtain. His return to Romania and reclamation of his Romanian citizenship in 2005 inspired the country’s progressive left.
“Shafir meant a lot to me; he’s been a reference for his honesty and intellectual courage, and someone capable, like not many others, to review his positions when new data or historical sources asked for it,” Romanian-American software engineer-turned-historian Andrei Ursu told JTA.
Ursu was recently appointed scientific director of the Institute of the Romanian 1989 Revolution, an organization whose mission is to study that year’s Romanian anticommunist revolution. Two of his great-grandparents and a grandfather were killed during the Holocaust.
Ursu — whose father Gheorghe died after being savagely beaten while in politically motivated detention by Romania’s Communist secret police, the infamous Securitate — has been fighting for decades to combat the whitewashing of the Securitate in the country’s public discourse.
He described Shafir as “a person with an endless humor” and “without the exaggerated vanity common to many Romanian intellectuals.” Despite his frail health, Ursu said, Shafir agreed to review part of Ursu’s latest editorial project on the 1989 Romanian anti-communist revolution, “The Fall of a Dictator.”
Like other specialists who collaborated with Shafir, Ursu praised his work ethics and the precision of his sourcing and investigative work.
His media comments and public appearances were frequently peppered with jokes and anecdotes. In 2019, while speaking in an interview about the tens of thousands of Jews whom Ceausescu let emigrate in exchange for cash payments from Israel, Shafir told an old Romanian joke that starts with the Romanian dictator visiting a cooperative producing corn.
“How much do you get for a ton of maize?” Ceausescu asked the apparatchik in charge of the cooperative. “Just that? I get more if I sell 10 Jews.” To which the apparatchik retorts: “Then it’d be good if we start sowing Jews.”
In the interview, Shafir also recalled that the Jewish community headquarters in Bucharest used to display a sign warning gentiles desperate to get a visa to Israel and escape communism that “no conversions are accepted.”
“In the end, a conversion is much less dangerous than crossing the Danube swimming,” Shafir observed.
Although Shafir left Israel, he remained close to his family there and invested in the country’s politics. An activist with Peace Now who defined himself as a “critical Zionist,” Shafir rejected characterizations of Israel as an apartheid state but saw the Israeli continued military presence in the Palestinian territories as incompatible with democracy in the long term.
“He was very much worried about our future here in a country that is drifting to the right,” his daughter, Maurit Beeri, wrote on Facebook after her father’s death. She said he had recently spent time in Israel with his family, including his grandchildren.
Shafir’s body lay in state Nov. 13 at one of his university’s buildings in Cluj, Romania, where he lived with his wife, Aneta Feldman-Shafir.
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Trump Plans to Announce Gaza Funding Plan, Troops at First Board of Peace Meeting, US Officials Say
US President Donald Trump speaks during a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
US President Donald Trump will announce a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction plan for Gaza and detail plans for a UN-authorized stabilization force for the Palestinian enclave at the first formal meeting of his Board of Peace next week, two senior US officials said on Thursday.
Delegations from at least 20 countries, including many heads of state, are expected to attend the meeting in Washington, DC, which Trump will chair on Feb. 19, the officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The details on Trump‘s plans for the first meeting of his Board of Peace for Gaza have not been previously reported.
Trump signed documents in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23 establishing the Board of Peace. The board‘s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of Trump‘s Gaza plan.
While regional Middle East powers, including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as major emerging nations such as Indonesia, have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western US allies have been more cautious.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday during his visit to Washington that Israel has joined the board.
Trump has stirred concerns that the Board of Peace might try to resolve other conflicts around the world and compete with the United Nations. The US officials said the meeting next week will focus solely on Gaza.
They said a central part of the meeting will be Trump‘s announcement of a multi-billion-dollar fund for Gaza, which will include monetary contributions from participating board members.
One official called the offers “generous” and said that the United States had not made any explicit requests for donations.
“People have come to us offering,” the official said. “The president will make announcements vis a vis the money raised.”
STABILIZATION FORCE
Deployment of the International Stabilization Force is a key part of the next phase of Trump‘s Gaza plan, announced in September. Under the first phase, a fragile ceasefire in the two-year-old war began on Oct. 10 and Hamas has released hostages while Israel has freed detained Palestinians.
Trump will announce that several countries plan to provide several thousand troops to the stabilization force that is expected to deploy in Gaza in the months ahead, the officials said.
A primary concern for now is disarming Hamas fighters who have refused to give up their weapons. Under Trump‘s Gaza plan, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries, under the plan.
The Board of Peace meetings will also include detailed reports on the work of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which was established to take over the day-to-day civil administration of Gaza Strip from Hamas. The committee announced its members and held its first meeting in January.
Other updates will cover humanitarian aid for Gaza as well as the Gaza police, the officials said.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Says Trump May Be Creating Conditions for Iran Deal
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said he hoped that US President Donald Trump was creating the conditions to reach a deal with Iran that would avoid military action.
Netanyahu, who met Trump for talks in Washington on Wednesday, said he had expressed “general skepticism” and said that if an agreement was reached, “it must include the elements that are vital to Israel.”
They include a halt to Iran‘s nuclear program, limits on its ballistic missiles, and Iran’s proxies, he added.
Wednesday’s meeting was the seventh between Trump and Netanyahu since Trump returned to office last year. Netanyahu – whose visit was more muted than usual and closed to the press – was looking to influence the next round of US discussions with Iran following nuclear negotiations held in Oman last Friday.
“I think that the conditions he is creating, combined with the fact that they surely understand they made a mistake last time by not reaching an agreement, may create the circumstances for achieving a good deal,” Netanyahu said.
The two leaders spoke behind closed doors for more than two-and-a-half hours in what Trump described as a “very good meeting.”
But the US president said no major decisions were made and stopped short of publicly accepting Netanyahu‘s entreaties.
“We share a very close, very genuine, and very candid connection,” Netanyahu said, noting the discussions focused on several issues, but primarily on the negotiations with Iran, and Trump wanted to “hear my opinion.”
“The president believes that the Iranians have already learned who they are dealing with,” he said, referring to Israel’s 12-day conflict with Iran that culminated with US air attacks on Iran‘s nuclear sites.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if no agreement is reached, while Tehran has vowed to retaliate, stoking fears of a wider war as the US amasses forces in the Middle East. He has repeatedly voiced support for a secure Israel.
Trump earlier this week said he believed Iran wants a deal.
Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions but has ruled out linking the issue to missiles.
Netanyahu also said the talks with Trump also touched on Gaza, where there is a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the entire region, and other general matters.
“It was another conversation with a great friend of the State of Israel, the likes of whom we have never had,” Netanyahu said.
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US Pulls Out of Strategic Syria Base and Hands It Over to Damascus
A satellite image shows the al-Tanf Base, in Syria, in this image taken July 20, 2025. Photo: 2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via REUTERS
The US military said it completed a withdrawal from a strategic base in Syria on Thursday, handing it over to Syrian forces, in the latest sign of strengthening US-Syrian ties that could enable an even larger American drawdown.
The al-Tanf garrison is positioned at the tri-border confluence of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
Established during Syria‘s civil war in 2014, the United States initially relied on it as a hub for operations by the US-led coalition against Islamic State terrorists who once controlled a vast swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria before being defeated in 2019.
But the base became a key foothold in a battle against Iranian influence due to its strategic position along roadways linking Damascus to Tehran. Although Washington long saw keeping the base as worthwhile, the Trump administration recalculated when relations fundamentally shifted after longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024.
Syria joined the coalition battling the remnants of Islamic State last November when President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander, visited the White House for talks with President Donald Trump.
David Adesnik at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank in Washington questioned Syrian forces’ ability to pick up the slack following the US departure.
“And the Syrian army has incorporated thousands of ex-jihadists,” Adesnik said.
“The mission at Tanf also served as an obstacle to the operations of Iran and its proxies, who ship weapons across Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is an own goal.”
US RESOLVED TO PREVENT ISLAMIC STATE REVIVAL
Syria‘s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that government forces had taken control of al-Tanf following coordination between Syrian and US authorities.
The US military’s Central Command confirmed al-Tanf’s handover in a statement and noted that the Pentagon announced plans to consolidate basing locations in Syria last year.
“US forces remain poised to respond to any ISIS threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts to prevent the terrorist network’s resurgence,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Reuters, citing two sources, reported on Wednesday that US troops from al-Tanf were relocating to Jordan.
The US pullout from al-Tanf follows a Washington-brokered deal to integrate the Syrian Democratic Forces – a Kurdish-led autonomy-minded group backed by the US for a decade in the fight against IS – into central Syrian institutions.
Trump has long expressed a desire to withdraw US troops from Syria, going back to 2019 during his first term in office. Prior to the US pullout from al-Tanf, US officials had estimated there were about 1,000 troops in Syria.
One person familiar with the matter said the withdrawal from Tanf could be a milestone toward a bigger pullout. The US is also winding down one of its biggest commitments on the ground in Syria – helping ensure US-backed forces guard prisons holding Islamic State prisoners captured during the conflict.
The roughly one dozen prisons had been guarded by the SDF, but U.S. forces since last month have been transferring high-level Islamic State detainees out of Syria to Iraq as control of the facilities shifts to government forces.
Daniel Shapiro, a former senior Pentagon official for Middle East issues, said it appeared Trump’s goal was to end the role of US forces in Syria and the withdrawal from al-Tanf was a bet on the Syrian government’s ability to counter ISIS.
“It’s probably the right gamble … [but] it’s still somewhat unknown if they actually live up to that responsibility,” Shapiro, now with the Atlantic Council, said.