The Final Report on the Holocaust and the Final Report on the Communist Dictatorship in Romania

In: East European politics and societies: EEPS, Volume 22, Issue 2, p. 270-281

Abstract

On 22 October 2003, with the initiative of Romania's president Ion Iliescu, the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (ICSHR) was set up. Nobel laureate for peace and American writer of Romanian origin Elie Wiesel was appointed as its president. In spring 2006, with the initiative of Romania's president Traian Băsescu, the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (CPADCR) was formed. Vladimir Tismăneanu, the American political scientist of Romanian origin, became its president. Both commissions were established with the purpose of producing a final report on the two forms of totalitarianism in Romania: the extreme right totalitarianism between 1940 and 1944, and the extreme left totalitarianism between 1944 and 1989. Both commissions rested on legal and ethical grounds and they addressed Romanians' expectations and dilemmas linked to their recent traumatic history.