The Bucharest pogrom of January 1941 during the Holocaust, as described by sculptor Constantin Antonovici.
Constantin Antonovici, the famed Romanian-American sculptor who had worked closely with Brancusi, interviewed by Andrew Kane and Zev Golan.
Antonovici was arrested by the Romanian Iron Guard on 21 January 1941 during its revolt in Bucharest. In this interview he provides an eyewitness account of the revolt, his own arrest, the murder of prisoners in jail and the pogrom against Jews at the time. He also speaks about the court proceedings against Valerian Trifa.
Summary of the interview: Antonovici was arrested on Jan. 21; what he saw and heard in jail; his transfer to another site, and what he saw outside; most Romanians were opposed to Trifa and the Iron Guard, even most of the students in Trifa's own organization did not participate when he called upon them; Antonovici read about the infamous massacre of Jews in a slaughterhouse, could not believe it and went to the site where he found 80 bodies; in a side comment Antonovici says the fight against Nazism is a "big fight" that is not over but is for "our time," as a number of Romanian and Hungarian war criminals and their supporters moved to the US; then he recounted again the events he witnessed in the Bucharest police station; and noted that even before the pogrom he had heard Trifa call to destroy the Jews.
Not recorded is Antonovici stressing to his interviewers that he is a Christian.
(Note: His accent makes the word “happens” sound like “happiness." The question he recounts he asked a guard is “What happens?”)
