Summary
Romanian Orthodox Patriarch and Prime Minister of a short-lived government appointed by King Carol ii (11 February 1938—March 6, 1939), whose anti-Jewish policies and whose signed anti-partition statement for Niqula Khoury are examined in the Introduction to ‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954) (PDF p.35-37).
Details
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His anti-Jewish ideas were initially rooted in Christian liturgical rejection of Judaism, a marked strand in the Romanian Orthodox church and society, but his political career also shows modern forms of Antisemitism: belief in a Jewish-controlled media, in Jewish-Communist plots against the state, and in Jewish conspiracies to infiltrate a hitherto racially pure national society (PDF p.35-36).
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He resisted the openly Nazi-sympathetic Iron Guard’s rise largely because of its anti-monarchical ideas; German diplomats in Bucharest viewed him, before his death in 1939, as supportive of Hitler and his policies; and it was largely under his prime ministership that c. 225,000 Romanian Jews were stripped of their citizenship, paving the way for mass deportations to the Nazi death camps during the war (PDF p.36).
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Khoury, visiting him on his Balkan journey, kissed his right hand and asked him to “prevent the Judaisation of the Holy Land”, telling him the Arab Orthodox were “left as orphans” with even their religious authority against them; Cristea answered, as Khoury records it, “I give you my word to be a father to you and that Romania will be your mother” (PDF p.36-37).
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Cristea gave Khoury a signed statement — “Palestine should remain Arab for its Arab people” — which Khoury sent to the Arab Higher Committee in Jerusalem, to the Palestinian delegation in Geneva, and to Arab and foreign newspapers and telegraph companies (PDF p.37). The Introduction holds that Khoury, who cannot plausibly have been unaware of Cristea’s policies, was at best ignoring and at worst implicitly declaring support for his legacies (PDF p.36-37).
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The Memoirs §§37-38 give Khoury’s own account of the Bucharest meeting of Monday 13th September 1937: Cristea promised Orthodox schools in Palestine at the Romanian government’s expense, six Palestinian university students a year, a telegram and a memorandum to the League, and letters of recommendation; Khoury kissed his hand — ‘I, in the name of hundred thousand Arab Orthodox in Palestine, kiss this pure hand, asking on their behalf that you would prevent the Judaisation of the Holy Land’ — and Cristea signed the statement ‘Palestine should remain Arab for its Arab people’, called himself a father to the Orthodox orphans with Romania as their mother, offered Khoury the medal of the Holy Cross and named him ‘my agent in the Holy Land’ (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.139-142). Papastathis’s account of a Cristea medal withheld by Timotheos is at PDF p.65.
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Niqula Khoury, Antisemitism, Arab Higher Committee