“I have a moral duty, as a man who suffered a lot as a Jew from fascism, to reveal Mircea Vulcănescu’s courageous and dignified attitude at that time.”[1]

The upheavals and scandals that began in the first days of December 1922 caught me in a seminar of the Sociology Department, whose director was Professor Dimitrie Gusti. He was absent that day, replaced by the lecturer Nicolae Petrescu, a former Rockefeller Foundation fellow and for some time a professor at Wabash University, a lesser-known American university, for which reason the students nicknamed him Uebeșel.

In an article I published a few years ago in memory of my late colleague Dr. Heinrich Igner, I pointed out that in this sociology seminar, where a scientific and humane atmosphere prevailed, there were the most cordial bonds of collegiality between the Jewish students, few in number, all of them “leftist”, and the Christian students, also few in number, almost all of them “rightist”, the exceptions being Alexandru Claudian, a sociologist-democrat, Victor Papacostea, a “liberalist”, and two communist students. The “right” of the seminar was not anti-Semitic and chauvinist, but merely conservative, in the style of the Majorites, who opposed the metaphysical point of view to the dialectical one professed by the “left”.

Missing from the seminar that day were Claudian, the oldest of us and also the one with the greatest intellectual and moral authority, as well as George Silviu, also older, and the two Bulgarians. Of the “left” students, only Heinrich Igner, Solomon Braunstein and I remained. Radu Budișteanu, who much later became one of Istrate Micescu’s followers and, as such, one of the leaders of the Hooligan Bar, was missing from the “right” group. The others were all there, led by Mircea Vulcănescu. When the medical students burst into the room where the seminar was being held and started shouting: “Let the Jews out!”, the Christian colleagues from the “right-wing” group all stood up and surrounded us, shouting that they would not allow anyone to touch us, while asking the intruders to leave the room. After the hooligans from the Faculty of Medicine, intimidated by the firm stance of the Christian colleagues and especially by Mircea Vulcănescu, withdrew, the lecturer Nicolae Petrescu also left the room and called the police, who were patrolling in front of the Faculty. Flanked by Christian colleagues and the police, we managed to escape unharmed.

I have a moral duty, as a man who suffered a lot afterwards, both as a Jew and as a leftist, at the hands of fascism, to reveal Mircea Vulcănescu’s courageous and dignified attitude”.

(Mircea Vulcănescu. Profil spiritual, edited by Marin Diaconu, Editura Eminescu, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 123-124 apud Iancu Reichman-Șomuz – Before and After the End of the Student Uprisings in Romania, in Toladot, year IV, no. 10, July 1975, pp. 13-14).

[1] Although the title of the article is in the form of a paraphrased statement, I have not been able to reproduce the content of the statement in question identically, reducing it because of its length, without altering its meaning.