Romanian Reaction
Right-wing extremism first reared its ugly head in Romania soon after the end of World War I, and was, to a large extent, brought on by the new political entities that came into existence at that time. At a European level, fascism was a form of resistance against the Communist offensive and other revolutionary and anarchist movements. But fascism was more than just a reactive movement - it turned the trauma inflicted on the masses by World War I into a proactive attitude towards the dawn of a new era.
The 1920s in Romania were marked by the emergence of the so-called Legionary Movement, which was to become, in little more than a decade, the most combative fascist movement in Southeastern Europe. Students were among the social categories most fond of and open towards fascism, especially as the new ideology promoted anti-Semitism, and in many Romanian universities the number of Jewish students exceeded that of Romanians. Student organizations were divided into several categories, such as regional organizations based on the students' county of birth, those based on the current school of study, and organizations for students studying abroad. The National Union of Christian Students in Romania brought together all student centers across the country. It is also important to know that these organizations were in no way based on political criteria, and were open to all Christian students, regardless of nationality.
Student radicalism aimed especially at the introduction of a so-called "numerus clausus" policy, in layman's terms demanding that the number of Jews accepted into Romanian universities be proportional to the percentage of Romanian citizens who were of Jewish faith. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, who was later to become leader of the legionaries, was a leader figure at all of the students' strikes. Between the 4th and the 6th of September 1920, the first student congress in Greater Romania took place in the city of Cluj-Napoca. Attending the event, Codreanu demanded publicly that Jews be eliminated from students' organizations. On May 22nd 1922, Corneliu Codreanu founded the Christian Student Association, which gathered on December the 10th of that same year in the great auditorium of the Bucharest School of Medicine. The assembly was followed by riots in the streets of Bucharest. In the city's Jewish Quarter, students clashed with both the Jews and the riot police.
Christian medicial students were the ones who speeded up the radicalization of university students country-wide, and were among the most rabid anti-Semites. In 1917, there was no such thing as a students' organization. The institution was born five years later, in 1922, after a conflict regarding corpses for post-mortem at the School of Medicine in Cluj. In 1922, there were some 800,000 Jews living in Romania, most of whom came from Russia and Poland. Most resided in Maramures or Northern Moldavia, but there was a large number of them living in Bucharest as well. The law at the time stated that the bodies of homeless or poor people with no families were to be taken to medical schools, where students might dissect them. Conflicts arose when the Jewish community started refusing to hand over dead bodies belonging to people of the Jewish faith to schools. At a certain point, Jewish people started claiming Jewish bodies, because there were both kinds there. They said their religion did not allow them to give bodies for dissection. That's when the scandal broke out, because there were very few corpses for autopsy. Christian students said Jewish students were allowed to practice autopsies on corpses belonging to Christians, so why shouldn't it work the other way around as well? So the scandal started from there.
Without a doubt, medical students played a crucial part in the strike of 1922. In 1922, students across the country went on a general strike, and the National Union of Christian Students was born, with branches spreading out to all of the country's university centres. The Union's headquarters were located in a building founded by medical students themselves, with the aid of several doctors, right across the street from the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest. The students' strike of 1922 had no immediate impact, as their demands were not met.
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