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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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In the Michigan Senate race, Jews should (and will) vote for democracy
Michigan Jews are feeling the ground shifting beneath us. For the first time, the Democratic candidate to represent Michigan in the United States Senate is not an advocate of unconditional support for Israel’s government. And he is one of a growing number of progressive leaders pushing the Democratic establishment to fight for the values it claims to stand on.
Many in our communities hoped for a different outcome in yesterday’s primary and feel destabilized by the shifting political terrain. Others feel hopeful, for the first time, of being represented on the electoral stage. Moving into the general election, when the stakes are so high, I would like to refocus the conversation on our shared values.
When I cast my ballot Tuesday, and when I cast it again in November, I do so with the wisdom of Pirkei Avot 1:18 in mind: on three things does the world stand — on justice, on truth, and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel and others of his generation were building communities out of the rubble of the Temple’s destruction. They asked themselves, as they rebuilt: what are our core principles? What values need to sit at the center of this new order? Out of the wreckage, what new world will we create?
Let those three pillars be our voting guide.
Din — Judgment. Who will fight for fairness? Who is beholden to corporate interests and who will stand for economic equality? A candidate’s record on wages, on housing, on the right to organize — these will show commitment to justice.
Emet — Truth. Who tells us the truth, even when it costs them? In the words of former Rep. Andy Levin, we are looking for “authenticity, bravery, and truth-telling.” Who can help to rebuild trust in our public servants and institutions?
Shalom — Peace. Which candidate will challenge the military-industrial complex? Who will work to reduce war and violence in our world, rather than fund more of it? At home and abroad.
In this election, we have an unusually clear lens for understanding a candidate’s values: immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — is where our society’s authoritarian drift is most visible and most violent. So as we lean on the pillar of Shalom to consider candidates, we can ask a direct question: is this someone who will bakesh shalom v’radfehu — seek peace and pursue it — for the people in ICE’s crosshairs? Or will they support the expansion of a paramilitary force into our schools and neighborhoods?
Justice, Truth and Peace — these are the values upon which “the world stands.” But what does it mean for the world to stand? A classic rabbinic commentary interprets this as the preservation of human society. Which candidate will protect the environment, will put people over profit, will choose the survival of our communities over the balance sheet of the insurance, arms and oil industries? By this measure, the idea that Jews who want unconditional aid for Israel should therefore vote for a candidate who would strip away abortion rights, gut health care, and undermine the basic machinery of democracy is, to use a technical term, cuckoo banana-cakes.
And then there is the issue of antisemitism. My teacher Rabbi Mordechai Liebling explains that on the left, antisemitism is a bug and not a feature — a problem that can be and must be addressed. On the right, antisemitism is a foundational worldview. The real threat to American Jews is the far right. It’s they who promulgate conspiracy theories and it’s they who deploy ICE into our communities to kidnap our neighbors.
I personally think that Dr. El-Sayed is not antisemitic — certainly not any more than the general population. But I don’t need to convince you of that. What I hope you’ll hear is that Abdul is someone with whom we share core values — that he is someone the Jewish community can work with. What I hope you’ll hear is that a liberal-fascist coalition is out of the question, and that a liberal-left coalition is the only path forward. In November, we will elect a politician who will work with the people and not against us. Our loyalty is not to any party, but to the movement for a true democracy — and to the leaders who will work with us to advance it.
The ground doesn’t have to shift beneath us; we can be a part of moving that ground, of redrawing the politics of the possible. May Zechariah’s vision of justice, truth and peace come to pass, speedily and in our days, and may we merit to help make it so.
The post In the Michigan Senate race, Jews should (and will) vote for democracy appeared first on The Forward.
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On El-Sayed, Michigan’s Jewish Democrats aren’t all ready to unite behind nominee
Following Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow win of the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the state’s Jewish Democrats are reflecting on whether the divisions El-Sayed’s candidacy brought to the fore can be bridged before November.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan. But the community had become deeply invested in the race, with Jews both in fierce opposition and fiery support of El-Sayed in an election that had become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Jewish former Michigan congressman Andy Levin, who had endorsed El-Sayed, believes Democrats will get behind the nominee in the interest of defeating Republican Mike Rogers — a race that could determine which party controls the Senate. Pre-primary polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
“Shame on any Jewish Democrat if they’re going to go vote for Mike Rogers and put our democracy at risk because they can’t find their way to supporting Abdul El-Sayed, who is such a brilliant person, just because he doesn’t share their exact beliefs on Israel and Palestine,” Levin told the Forward. “That’s ridiculous.”
Levin lost his Senate seat to Rep. Haley Stevens after heavy spending against him by AIPAC, the campaign fundraising group advocating for unrestricted U.S. aid to Israel. An AIPAC-associated super PAC spent some $32 million in a failed attempt to get Stevens the Senate nomination.
Stevens endorsed El-Sayed for the general election Wednesday morning. But some Jews who voted for Stevens see no possibility for reconciliation. Rabbi Asher Lopatin of the modern Orthodox synagogue Kehillat Etz Chayim in suburban Detroit had endorsed Stevens in the primary, alarmed by El-Sayed’s association with the controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and condemnation of Israel as a genocidal and apartheid state.
In a TV interview Wednesday, El-Sayed used the term “bloodthirsty” to describe Israel.
“To have so many people vote for someone who is so hurtful to the Jewish community, the things that the Jewish community values — I think it’s depressing,” Lopatin told the Forward.
Lopatin has made up his mind that he will not vote for El-Sayed in the general election, but he also isn’t yet sold on Rogers, the Republican nominee.
“I have to study him more,” Lopatin said. “But I will not vote for Abdul El-Sayed, definitely, and I would tell people they should not.”
Lopatin said he wishes Stevens would condemn El-Sayed rather than endorse him.
Still, others see El-Sayed as the best candidate to face Rogers in the general — and don’t want him to pull back on the issues that won him the nomination. Barbara Weinberg Barefield, a photographer outside Detroit who helped organize the group Jews for Abdul, said she has confidence El-Sayed will win the general — attributing the close primary race partly to the influence of outside money supporting Stevens.
“He was able to win this election in the face of close to $70 million of outside funding going to bolster his opponent,” Weinberg Barefield said. “This election is showing us, and elections around the country are showing us, that elections are not to be bought — they’re to be earned.”
Roslyn Schindler, a retired professor who taught Holocaust studies at Wayne State University, was also among El-Sayed’s Jewish supporters, even as she disagreed with him on his lack of support for a two-state solution. She stressed the importance of beating Rogers in November irrespective of disagreements on Israel.
“My motto is and will be: vote blue, no matter who,” Schindler told the Forward. “I am hoping that all Democrats realize that to do otherwise will be self-destructive and just plain wrong.”
Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Decky Alexander, chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus — which endorsed Stevens in the primary — isn’t issuing an endorsement in the general election yet.
She said the close margin El-Sayed won by, about 15,000 votes, gives her hope that El-Sayed will see the need to unify his party. A start, she said, would be focusing less on AIPAC during his general election campaign.
“There’s a lot of opportunity on Abdul’s side to be a better bridge maker versus kind of a bridge burner,” Alexander told the Forward. “The cards are his. It’s his responsibility to initiate.”
In his election night speech, El-Sayed didn’t mention AIPAC by name, instead speaking more generally about getting money out of politics.
On Wednesday, he addressed Jewish Michiganders directly: “I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.”
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‘The Yiddish Teacher’ (Poem)
One thing about the late Forverts staff writer and critic Miriam Hoffman — she cooked a heavenly eggplant in tomato sauce.
And why do I know this about one of our writers? Hoffman, a veritable lexicon-caldron of Yiddish sayings and terms she’d archived from her own mother’s distinct poylish dialect, was many things: A distinguished long-term professor of Yiddish at Columbia University; a theater critic turned playwright who turned the New York Public Theatre’s founding director Joseph Papp into a serious supporter of Yiddish culture; a child survivor of Siberian exile, and so much more.
As she encountered immigrant American life in da Bronx, the tiny dynamo that was Hoffman delighted in becoming American, freely advising everyone on the best consumer goods this country had to offer. A country that was a home and refuge to her, her parents, her husband and so many in her vast circle of Yiddishist friends, students, fellow writers, educators and chosen family. And then, once upon a time, she welcomed me into her Florida home for an overnight stay, so that I could record her jaw-dropping tales of how she and her beloved mameloshn Yiddish both survived the khurbn, the Holocaust. And talk into the video camera she did.
But first, there was lunch.
Rest in all your ferocious deliciousness, Miriam Hoffman, and thank you. For the eggplant, the advice on the best toothpaste, the stories — and for doing everything, everything, everything possible, to transmit your Yiddish to another generation.
The Yiddish Teacher
The Yiddish teacher bending saying:
In my book you’ll learn
the alefbeys through pictograms like so:
The gimel is a camel
The beys a house
You see?
The Yiddish teacher has an archive
in her bedroom closet
The folding doors open revealing:
shoeboxes filled with
stories and
poems and
songs she
wrote as a child
in the displaced persons camp
on paper donated to Jewish refugees
The Yiddish teacher was once
seated in back
of a transport truck
with all the other refugees
Trying to go over the Swiss Alps
to Mandate Palestine
The Yiddish teacher was born
in a Siberian prison camp
“people were starving, sure,
but there was sex”
The Yiddish teacher was the only
woman writer on staff
at the Forverts Yiddish newspaper
The Yiddish teacher remembers
the first time her family ate
Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti and
meatballs
from a can
in the Bronx
We go shopping together
The Yiddish teacher loves Rao’s tomato sauce
“it’s the best”
The Yiddish teacher recommends
“Mavis Toothpaste”
It’s the best
The Yiddish teacher loves to
go fly fishing
The Yiddish teacher is short and slim
and round
I think
if I cup my hands together
I can
carry her around always
— Chana Pollack
The post ‘The Yiddish Teacher’ (Poem) appeared first on The Forward.
