page_title: Henric Streitman
section_title: Collaborationism
hierarchical_section_title: Henric Streitman / Biography / Collaborationism
caption_attribution_description: English: Romanian Jews forcefully conscripted as a labor force behind the Eastern Front, in the Baldovineşti suburb of Brăila. Snapshot taken in spring 1944.
context_page_description: Henric Ștefan Streitman was a Romanian journalist, translator and political figure, who traversed the political spectrum from socialism to the far-right. He was a physicist, social commentator and publisher, known for both his polemical stances and his erudition. Often struggling financially, Streitman set up several short-lived periodicals, and involved himself in the cultural and political debates, from 1889 to the time of his death. In his early years, he was a promoter of natural selection ideas, and a translator of Marxist and naturalist literature.
  A Romanian Jew who only preserved loose links with Judaism, Streitman left socialism behind before World War I, moving closer to the National Liberal Party, working alongside Ion G. Duca and Constantin Banu; he returned to public life in the 1920s as an anticommunist. He then affiliated with the People's Party, serving two terms in the Senate of Romania, where he represented Bukovina. He associated with figures on the Romanian far-right, including Octavian Goga and Pamfil Șeicaru, and eventually joined the National Agrarian Party in 1932. However, in the late 1930s, the ascent of antisemitism put his political career on hold.
context_section_description: At an early stage in World War II, under successive fascist regimes, Romania sealed its alliance with Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers, and made antisemitism an official policy. When the Iron Guard imposed its National Legionary State, Streitman found himself included on lists of "Judaic writers" or "Hebrew thistles", who had "nothing in common with the spiritual structure of the Romanian peasant". The Guardists were eventually thrown out by Conducător Ion Antonescu, but this turn of events only increased pressures on the Jewish community. Radu Lecca, the Jewish Affairs Commissioner, began organizing a system of coercion, which was to be supervised in his name by the so-called Central Jewish Office (CE). It was seen by the German envoys as the Romanian answer to a Judenrat, capable of assisting in the enforcement of the "Final Solution".
  Streitman probably owed his appointment to the CE to his good rapport with all sides of the political spectrum, and especially to his friendship with Antonescu's friend, Veturia Goga. According to University of Haifa scholar Bela Vago, he may also have been favored by a special German envoy, Gustav Richter, who also approved of Lazar Halberthal (Streitman's proposal for the Bucharest Jewish Community Presidency, and formerly a Macabi București sportsman). The CE was also afforded some recognition by the underground Union of Romanian Jews, whose leader Wilhelm Filderman allowed colleague David "Dadu" Rosenkranz to head the CE's Section of Professional Reeducation.
  The journalist remained a figurehead, publishing appeals to calm and obedience, and leaving most administrative work to his second-in-command, Nandor Gingold, M. D. Ethnically Jewish, but a lapsed Catholic by religion, Gingold justified his own compliance by noting that obvious resistance to Nazi demands would bring immediate destruction upon the Romanian Jews. Similarly, in the Jewish weekly Gazeta Evreiască, Streitman informed his fellow Jews that the moment required a special kind of reasoning: "with our heads, and not with our nerves, and not with our backbone." Although conflicted due to the religious prohibitions, the CE had to comply with an official order to relocate the Jewish cemetery on Sevastopol Street. Its eviction in May 1942 was overseen by Streitman, Gingold, Halberthal, and a Sephardi delegate, Marco Presente. 
  This attitude made Streitman and adversary of the dissident Jews, who still refused to take Lecca's orders. At some point in 1942, Streitman found himself opposed by the Zionist activist A. L. Zissu, who called him a traitor and a renegade. According to historian Hildrun Glass, Zissu was making himself known as the "intransigent" community leader, and, as result of his conflict with Streitman, was interned at the Târgu Jiu camp for political prisoners. Although they countersigned Lecca's extortion measures, no CE official was ever directly involved in the main criminal actions against the Jews, including the deportations to Transnistria. While providing Jewish labor for Antonescu's regime, Rosenkranz also directed relief efforts for survivors of the Iași pogrom and Vapniarka. Philosopher Iosif Brucăr was asked by Streitman to lead the CE's Education Department, but refused all collaboration. Designated by the Zionist Executive to that same position, Theodor Loewenstein-Lavi used it as a platform for Jewish nationalism. In September 1942, his appointment was reviewed by Richter, who was enraged by Lavi's history as an anti-Nazi; he was dismissed, and the Zionist Executive was outlawed.
  Streitman himself only served in the CE between February and December 1942, being succeeded by Gingold. The new CE executive subsequently included Streitman and Brucăr, alongside banker Aristide Blank, on a list of Jewish hostages; according to Brucăr, this list showed Gingold's priorities: "he was not there to protect the Jews, but to persecute and remove them". His last years brought his return to activism, this time as a Revisionist Zionist, working for a massive Jewish resettlement in British Palestine. King Michael's C
caption: Romanian Jewish labor conscripts, performing menial work in Brăila (spring 1944)
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