The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FCER) deplores the death of King Mihai, considering that with his departure in eternity one of the brightest personalities in Romania's history has left.
"The death of King Mihai, after a long suffering, has pained the Royal Family of Romania and the whole country, all of us being in national mourning. Along the Romanian people, the members of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, the entire Jewish ethnicity living in these places, have learnt with deep grief that the sovereign, who did not cease to enjoy the affection and respect of his former subjects, even after being forced to abdicate, has joined his illustrious forerunners, who went to eternity a long time ago," says the FCER, in a release issued on Thursday for AGERPRES and signed by the Steering Committee of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania and by Dr. Aurel Vainer, President of the Federation.
According to the FCER, "In the darkest hours of their efforts to survive in the diaspora, during the Holocaust and the Antonescu dictatorship, the Jews in Romania found in the Royal Family, in the person of Queen Mother Elena and King Mihai, the highest-rank protectors", "proof of human kindness and solidarity" that will never be forgotten.
The king's decision for Romania to no longer be Germany's ally, in August 1944, is considered by the FCER "a historic decision". "It is hard to describe the enthusiasm with which the Jews in Romania in 1944 welcomed the decision of His Majesty King Mihai to remove the country from the battle along Hitler's Germany and to engage it in the war on the side of the Allies. For the Jewish community in Romania this historic decision meant the liberation not only from the humiliations in which they had lived for years while the racial laws were in force, but also from the danger of seeing hundreds and thousands of families deported and destroyed in Trans-Dniestr or other places," the release reads.
At the same time, the FCER states that "during communism, King Mihai, who was in exile, managed to stay close to his people, to whom he sent many supportive messages, keeping alive in the souls of the Romanians the hope of regaining liberty and dignity."
"Even in those years when he was far away from his country, not by his will, King Mihai remained, through his dignity and his spiritual warmth, a guiding light for his people, which times of distress subjected them to long suffering. This quality of his, to remain a moral landmark for Romanians, will bring him also as of today the non-oblivion and cherish of the Romanian people, as well as of the Jews who lived or live in Romania. The most sincere condolences to the Royal Family! May God give peaceful rest to King Mihai and, as the Jewish tradition says, may his memory be forever blessed," the FCER release mentions.
AGERPRES .
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