Before our journey through Transylvania, we spent two and a half weeks taking classes in Bucharest. One idea that interested me was Romania’s struggle to create a coherent national identity. For example, Transylvania had a largely Hungarian culture which Bucharest elites sought to “Romanize” when the territory was united with the rest of Romania in 1918. Another key theme was discrimination – along with suppressing Hungarian or Saxon culture, antisemitism and anti-Roma politics were key in integral nationalism. Octavian Goga, a founder of the anti-Jewish National Christian Party, who went on to instate structurally discriminatory policies as Prime Minister, stuck out in my mind as a fascist villain in a bad political era that was part of Romania’s broader story.
Our first stop was in the city of Brașov. As a Jewish New Yorker, I know that the prevalence of Jewish communities and synagogues in New York that I was used to is unusual, so I was excited to see a synagogue from our view atop a tower overlooking Brașov. Our group decided to walk over to take a look at it. Admiring the colorful buildings, charming Old Town, and rolling mountains, the region’s complex history seemed like a distant memory. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the synagogue was beautiful – and felt familiar! I was glad to see that there was some kind of Jewish community that had a home in Transylvania, a region that seems particularly emblematic of the role of othering and xenophobia in the formation of a Romanian identity.
As the trip continued, we visited many churches, and learned about the diversity of Christian religions within Transylvania. In Alba Iulia, we visited the cathedral where King Ferdinand and Queen Marie were crowned as monarchs of Greater Romania in 1922. I found it interesting that the church displayed portraits of political rulers along with religious figures. The inherent link between Orthodoxy and nationalism that we saw there reminded me of the exclusionary and discriminatory policies that Romania had enacted throughout its history, but even standing in this church, those ideologies still felt like distant memories. The next day, we arrived in the city of Sibiu, where we were surprised to notice that our hotel had an “Octavian Goga conference room” – a fact that I brushed off without thinking much about it. Soon after, while walking around the city, I was struck by a moment of familiarity when our tour guide showed us political artwork near the city’s historic center. The art included messages against genocide, domestic violence, Trump, global warming, and so on. Similarly to my feeling at Beth Israel Synagogue, the Romanian history that I’d learned about seemed irrevocably separate from this political speech proudly displayed along a major street. The themes and style of the artwork were comforting and familiar.
Our final stop that day was in the village of Rășinari, the birthplace of Octavian Goga. It was cold, rainy, and quiet. During our walk through the village, we stopped outside Goga’s home, which was marked with a plaque. This wasn’t surprising to me, since he was a key cultural and political figure in interwar Romania. However, I felt a sense of unease when I noticed the name of one of the village’s major streets: Strada Octavian Goga. The fact that this street name existed seemed in conflict with the modern political artwork, or the synagogue in Brașov. These sites were exciting because they were reminiscent of things I’m used to from home, and showed me that much of the upsetting history we’d learned about were truly practices of the past. This does not mean that the country should totally erase its history instead of acknowledging it, but the presence of a Strada Octavian Goga made me think that common discourse and education about Goga centered around the fact that he was a famous poet, rather than also discussing his fascism. This suspicion was confirmed by our tour guide. My sense of uneasiness about the street name is not exactly important – it’s not up to me how Romania names its streets, I know this street name isn’t changing any time soon, if ever. However, it does seem dangerous to commemorate someone like Goga for one aspect of his personhood without acknowledging his full story, which is a key part of Romanian history. The juxtaposition between this street name and the other, more familiar, symbols I’d noticed in Transylvania shows the disconnect between the modern aspects of post-fascist and post- communist Romania on one hand and, on the other hand, the simplification of a problematic, xenophobic past in order to hold on to a national identity. This attachment to the narrative of a coherent Romanian identity seems particularly contentious and complex in the ethnically and religiously diverse region of Transylvania.
