A young woman dressed in a smart beige coat with a toddler in her arms was among a group of sympathizers who made the Nazi salute to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the fascist interwar leader who’s been commemorated annually since the late 90s.
The unknown woman was one of about 70 people of all ages who gathered in a forest north of Bucharest at the weekend to commemorate the fascist interwar leader whose organization killed Jews and Roma and carried out political assassinations,Scena 9 reported.
The religious service in the village of Tâncăbești on Saturday was on the eve of parliamentary elections where the far-right made historic gains in Romania’s parliament. It marked the 86th anniversary of the death of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Legionary Movement, known for its fascism, and for violent attacks against Jews, Roma, and political assassinations.
Far-right presidential hopeful Calin Georgescu who reached the December 8 runoff calls Codreanu and Nazi-allied leader Marshal Ion Antonescu, “martyrs” of the Romanian people, who “also did good deeds”.
The annual commemoration of Codreanu in the Tâncăbești forest where he was executed in 1938 started in the ’90s, when Codreanu’s nephew himself took part. It’s currently organized by the leaders of the “Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu” Foundation, named after a former member of the Brotherhood of the Cross, the youth organization of the legionaries, who were political prisoners of Antonescu’s regime.
At the edge of the forest in Tâncăbești on November 30, dozens gathered around the troika which stands on the very spot where the extremist leader was executed on the orders of King Carol II, along with 13 other party colleagues who were responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Ion .G. Duca (killed by the Iron Guard at Sinaia railway station in 1933).
Participants of all ages attended Saturday’s commemoration, from teenagers to retirees. Two teenagers in colorful clothes stood out from the crowd which was dressed in black or green shirts, in the style of the Legionnaires, Venera Dimulescu reported. Photos were taken by the experienced news photographer Andrei Pungovschi.
The chairman of the “Identity Community”, Codrin Goia, took part in the commemoration. Goia was a former member of the extremist New Right party, and interrupted a performance of the Cluj Opera in 2017 , together with an extremist with visibility, Călin Mărincuș, on the grounds that the actors were singing in Arabic.
Next to the altar, there books about Codreanu and the Legionary Movement and badges with the Iron Guard and Archangel Michael were laid out. A 2002 law forbids the public display of badges with legionary insignia.
The Legionary Movement, the Legion of the Archangel Michael or the Iron Guard was an extremist political organization, with nationalist and mystical-religious, anti-Semitic convictions which functioned in Romania between 1927 and 1941. It was created along the lines of the SA and SS Nazi organizations and Zelea Codreanu was its founder.
The Legionnaires promoted anti-Semitism and a cult of violence. Under the government of Marshal Antonescu and the Legionary Movement, almost 300,000 Romanian Jewswere taken to extermination camps in Transnistria (outside Romania) in 1941, where they were executed or died in inhumane conditions. There were pogroms in Bucharest and Jilava, a village south of Bucharest where Legionnaires killed at least 120 Jews from Bucharest. They also carried out pogroms in the northeast city of Iasi.
