Romanian Institute in New York to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with event discussing Iași Pogrom

The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, together with partners in the "Elie Wiesel" National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the "Heritage for the Community" Association in Iași, are organizing an event on Friday, January 26, dedicated to the history of the Holocaust, discussing a harrowing moment in the history of Romanian Jews, the Iași Pogrom.

The pogrom will be evoked through a documentary exhibition, complemented by a discussion and a book launch, all based on the volume "Ten Stories. The Iași Pogrom", a literary account of the tragedy written by prominent Romanian writers, inspired by archive images from the Wiesel Institute currently exhibited at the Iași Pogrom Museum.

The documentary photography exhibition presents the history of the Iași Pogrom through photographs illustrating the events of June 1941, stories from the volume that gives the exhibition its title, and testimonies from some of the pogrom survivors.

In addition to the exhibition, there will be a discussion featuring writer Alina Nelega, who contributed to the volume with the story "I didnʼt do anything," Dirk Moses, researcher and professor of international relations, and Iulian Pruteanu-Isăcescu, historian and curator at the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Iași.

"In terms of history, past and present, as long as we consider the pogrom and genocide as collective aberrations that excuse us as individuals, we risk repeating them. Only by viewing crime as an act of individual decision can a human being choose not to kill,” said Alina Nelega.

"Ten Stories. The Iași Pogrom,” translated by Mircea Laslo and published by the Literary Museums Publishing House in Iași in its English version in 2023, as part of a FILIT editorial project, contains ten stories written by ten Romanian authors: Adrian Cioroianu, Bogdan Coșa, Florin Irimia, Radu Pavel Gheo, Marin Măiaicu Hondrari, Cătălin Mihuleac, Alina Nelega, Cristian Teodorescu, Tatiana Țîbuleac, and Miruna Vlada.

The texts inspired by documentary photographs from the Iași Pogrom of June 1941 leverage the literary potential of images remaining from the tragedy. Excerpts from this volume will be read by actors Ava Eisenson and Matthew Boston.

The guest of honor at the event is the Romanian-American actor and director Moshe Yassur, born in Iași in 1934, a survivor of the Iași Pogrom. A theater director who emigrated to Israel and trained in France, Moshe Yassur was a child actor in the Iași troupe "Pomul Verde", a Yiddish-language theater company founded by Avram Goldfaden in 1876. He directed numerous theater performances in the United States, France, Israel, Romania, Moldova, and so on. In 2021, the president of Romania awarded him the National Order "Faithful Service" in the rank of Knight.