“The withdrawal of the candidacy of Lucien Bolcas as a judge on the Romanian Constitutional Court is an important victory for the fight against anti-Semitism in Romania as well as in the struggle for ensuring the accuracy of the historical narrative of World War II and the Holocaust,” Zuroff said Tuesday.The furor over Bolcas comes only days after the government condemned a Romanian television network broadcast featuring a Christmas carol celebrating the Holocaust. Sung by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, the carol featured the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth, only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”Last year, Dan Sova, a Romanian politician who said that Romanians never participated in the persecution of Jews during World War II was appointed minister for parliamentary affairs.On Friday, after opposition to his candidacy first materialized, Bolcas tried to shed his image as an anti-Semite, telling a television audience that he was close friends with Aurel Vainer, the president of the Romanian Jewish Federation.Vainer denied such a relationship, telling Spiegel Online that “of course” he was not friends with Bolcas, but insisting that he had not personally experienced any anti-Semitic harassment from the lawmaker.JTA contributed to this report.
