Romanian writer Paul Goma accused of anti-Semitism nominated for Nobel

Critics claim Romanian writer Paul Goma has practiced Holocaust denial. “Paul Goma’s claims to fame is only by denying the Holocaust, falsifying historical facts and anti-Semitic attacks,” Iosif Belous, vice president of the East European Association of Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps, is quoted as saying on Enews.md, a news site from Moldova.

Belous was reacting to the Union of Moldovan Authors’ nomination of Goma – a Romanian nationalist – to the Nobel Prize in Literature, according to Adevarul, a Bucharest-based daily. Marco Maximillian Katz, director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania, has written that Goma expressed “ferocious and hateful anti-Semitism” that suggests “Jews are guilty of the Holocaust.” According to Katz’s analysis of writings by Goma, the Romanian author suggested in the publication Vatra Review in 2002 that the 1940 massacre in Dorohoi in which 53 people were murdered was a retaliation by Romanian troops against Jews and “an answer to aggression, an eye for an eye.” (JTA/Times of Israel)

"Goma’s writings have been branded antisemitic, not least because they identify Jews as the “real” oppressors; culpable for bringing communist rule to Romania. Indeed, the author of a report on the extent of antisemitism in the country published in 2002 commented: “I do not think that there exists, in the production of the cultural post-communist elite, any writings that could be compared with the tireless hate of this former dissident”. Despite such pronouncements Goma has been awarded several civic accolades including honorary citizenship of the town of Timisoara in the west of the country." (REWRITING HISTORY: Holocaust revisionism today, by David Williams)