After World War I, Romania gained new territories, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia, and sought to develop unity among her newly acquired peoples. Education became a principle means of developing and instilling national pride. However, in an effort to bring ethnic Romanians to the forefront of political and social institutions, the previous cultural and intellectual dominance of minorities was suppressed.
The Baccalaureate
One method of regulating the school system administrating a test, called the baccalaureate, before students would be allowed to enter the university. The year 1926 was the second year the baccalaureate examination was given to students who completed the mandatory eight classes prior to university study.
After a portion of the results were posted in certain provinces, the exam was seen as corrupt. Eighty percent had failed in 1925. Minority students in particular seemed to suffer and the large Jewish community in Bukovina rose in opposition to the examinations. While ethnic Romanian students were admitted into the universities, minority German, Jewish, Ukrainian students were held back by what they felt was unfair and biased grading by the commission, resulting in their poor baccalaureate performance.
Cernauti Examinations
In the fall of 1926 in Cernauti, Bukovina, 182 candidates were present for the baccalaureate. Sources showed that two-thirds of the students failed, in large part due to their performance on the oral section of the exam. From the Jewish students in attendance, eighty percent did not pass. The national average for the number of passing students was higher than in ethnically rich Cernauti; and people could not understand how students who had been successful in their studies could fail.
People gathered in the street to protest the results and government officials stated that two of the instigators were students David Fallik and Benno Schächter. One account held that crowds attacked the baccalaureate commission members. Another source describes hostilities directed toward the history examiner, Diaconescu.
Reports by inspectors and government officials to the ministry of education claimed that the examiners performed their duties responsibly and without anti-Semitic bias. However, the president of the examining commission was among the first academics in 1927 to join the infamous Legion of the Archangel Michael, known for its hatred of Jewish people.
Twenty-five protesters were arrested, including Fallik and Schächter. The protest developed into objections to Bucharest imposing cultural and political dominance in the new regions like Bukovina. Historian Irina Livezeanu writes that “the minority demonstrations in October 1926 protested the baccalaureate, because they felt, it was intended to limit their educational opportunities and, thereby, their social and economic futures.”
The trial of the rebel students began on November 10th and was followed soon after by the assassination of David Fallik by a Romanian student from Iasi, Neculao Totu. Parliament members such as A.C. Cuza and the Minister of the Interior, Octavian Goga, came to Totu’s defense, claiming his act to be equivalent to the actions of the minority students and actually a viable defense against the rebellious students.
Totu was praised for his patriotism and loyalty to Romanian nationalist ideology. He became a national hero. Anyone speaking against him was considered a traitor, thus allowing Cuza and others to force the resignation of Romanian Jewish parliament members.
At Totu’s trial, the jury convened a total of ten minutes before passing their verdict. Fallik’s murderer was acquitted. According to his defense, Totu participated in the protection of Greater Romania. He killed an “enemy of the country.”
The irony is that David Fallik, Benno Schächter, and others, began their protests also in defense of their country. They did not understand why ethnic Romanians felt they could advance economically and culturally only by the suppression and marginalization of the country’s minorities. The Jewish, German, Ukrainian and other minorities continued to suffer at the hands of zealous nationalists.
Source:
Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethic Struggle, 1918-1930. Cornell University Press, 1995.
Iemima Ploscariu - As a recent college graduate of Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, Iemima's writing experience consists of work done for ...
