BUCHAREST – On April 28, the European Parliament lifted the immunity of one of its 33 Romanian members, Diana Sosoaca, the controversial leader of the far-right, ultra-nationalist, and antisemitic SOS Romania party, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office in Bucharest.
Sosoaca, a lawyer who last August received the honorary Order of the State of Palestine [the highest civilian order of merit awarded by the State of Palestine] for her support of the Palestinian cause, may now stand trial in Romania for, among other offenses, promoting antisemitism, Holocaust denial, publicly glorifying individuals involved in genocide and war crimes, and promoting fascist, legionary, racist, and xenophobic ideologies.
Sosoaca makes no secret of her visceral hatred of Jews. She regularly spreads antisemitic rhetoric in parliamentary debates and across social media.
In 2020, she was elected to the Senate, the upper house of the Parliament of Romania, as a member of the far-right nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), now the second-largest party in the lower house of Parliament and currently leading in the polls.
However, she was eventually expelled from AUR because even the party considered her positions too extreme. She later joined the far-right political party S.O.S. Romania and was elected to the European Parliament in June 2024.
A few weeks earlier, on May 14, during an event at the Romanian Parliament marking friendship between Romania and Israel, Sosoaca caused a scene when she accused her colleagues of betraying their people and their country’s interests by organizing the event.
She falsely claimed that “Judeo-Bolsheviks” and “Khazars” exterminated 800,000 Romanians under communist rule after World War II, while Romanians had “saved” 400,000 Jews during the Holocaust. “Have we become slaves in our own country?” she shouted.
Sosoaca ran twice in the Romanian presidential elections of autumn 2024 and spring 2025, but when the Romanian Constitutional Court barred her from running, she accused Jews, the United States, and the European Union of conspiring to influence the election results.
In November 2024, during the first presidential election campaign, she participated in a memorial ceremony for Corneliu Codreanu, founder and first leader of the fascist and antisemitic Iron Guard, also known as the Legionary Movement.
Iron Guard members slaughtered thousands of Jews during the Iasi and Bucharest pogroms in 1941, carried out in collaboration with forces loyal to Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu and Nazi Germany. During the commemoration, some participants raised their arms in the Hitler salute.
If Sosoaca is ultimately brought to trial, the case could mark a breakthrough in the fight against rising antisemitism in a European country that today possesses some of the continent’s most advanced legislation against antisemitism and Holocaust denial but has done very little to enforce it.
However, Romania’s unstable political climate, the collapse of yet another government, and the growing possibility of the far right taking control of state institutions may still allow Sosoaca to escape justice and avoid paying any real price for her actions.
The Jewish targets of Sosoaca's antisemitic campaigns
ONE OF the primary targets of Sosoaca’s campaigns of antisemitic incitement is Silviu Vexler, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FCER) and representative of Romania’s small Jewish community – which numbers around 2,500 members, not including Israelis who reside in the country – in the Chamber of Deputies (Parliament’s lower house).
In one of her tirades, she came close to accusing him directly of treason because of legislation he proposed, banning the glorification of those involved in the the Holocaust in Romania, in which between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered, mainly in camps in Transnistria.
“You have a duty to serve us, even if you are also an Israeli citizen,” Sosoaca declared while falsifying facts and history. “I announce to you that as a deputy in the Romanian Parliament, you are a servant of the Romanian people, not their leader. I also announce once again that the Legionary Movement is a historical movement of which we are proud. Corneliu Codreanu was the man who defended you. Marshal Antonescu saved your Jewish asses. You should kiss our hands and feet, we Romanians, that you are still alive. You should kiss the soles of our feet too, not make laws against the Romanian people.”
Despite these vicious attacks, Vexler does not see Sosoaca’s case as the defining test for Romania’s legal system.
“It’s an important case,” he says, “and one has to give a lot of credit to former prosecutor general Alex Florenta for initiating the proceedings in the European Parliament. But what happens next will be very interesting, at least from a legal perspective. This case is special because everything Sosoaca has done is public. She is obsessed with filming herself, so all of her statements exist online. She is a self-publishing and self-promoting antisemite. I would focus more on how the authorities deal in the coming years with less famous but everyday cases of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Vexler now finds himself at the center of a hate campaign called Stop Vexler, run by the new far-right party Conservative Action, founded by former AUR members.
They have organized petitions, demonstrations, graffiti campaigns, and mass rallies against the “traitor Vexler,” accusing him of trying to erase Romanian national and cultural identity through what opponents call the “Vexler Law.”
“Toward the end of 2024, an official review was ordered by the former prosecutor general and his office into all antisemitic and Holocaust-related cases in Romania over the past three decades,” Vexler explains. “The objective was to analyze why there had been no successful prosecutions. The legislation was failing in dealing with antisemitism and Holocaust denial.”
He points to a notorious example: “A man was put on trial for publishing a book titled The Holocaust: The Diabolical Money-Making Machine of the Jews. Romania has had a law against Holocaust denial for 20 years. During the trial, however, he used a very clever trick. He said he was not denying the Holocaust itself, only denying that it took place in Romania, and he walked free.”
Another loophole meant that promoting Adolf Hitler was technically legal in Romania because the original legislation only prohibited glorifying convicted war criminals. Hitler himself was never convicted, nor were several of the principal perpetrators of the Holocaust in Romania, who died before the end of the war.
“There were many gaps in the legislation,” Vexler says. “So, in 2025, I pushed through a law, in coordination with the prosecutor general and other institutions, to close all those loopholes, make the legislation bulletproof, and ensure that it could be enforced without interpretation.”
The legislation coincided with Romania’s chaotic presidential elections of 2024, which were annulled by the Constitutional Court after independent nationalist and pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu unexpectedly emerged as the front-runner in the first round.
The court based its decision on intelligence reports indicating Russian interference in the election.
PROF. FELICIA WALDMAN, coordinator of the Center for Hebrew Studies at the University of Bucharest and deputy head of Romania’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), believes that the election campaign unleashed the antisemitic tsunami now sweeping Romania.
“Strangely enough, the antisemitic wave in Romania did not begin with October 7 and the international developments that followed,” Waldman says. “It started with the presidential elections of October 2024. One far-right candidate was using rhetoric and historical figures from the Second World War. That created momentum, and suddenly everyone started using this rhetoric, especially those who had always been antisemites but previously exercised some restraint because of the existing laws.
“The first law against antisemitism was adopted back in 1996 and has been updated several times since,” she continues. “As a result, people were afraid to express their views openly and mainly did so anonymously online. But once these ideas became part of mainstream political discourse during the presidential elections, people started speaking freely and openly. It became normalized. People are now openly antisemitic.”
Waldman stresses that the increase in rhetoric is even greater than the increase in the number of antisemites themselves.
“We don’t lack antisemites, but antisemites are not a majority,” she says. “However, because they are such a vocal minority, there is a risk that more people will join because they now think it is acceptable. For 30 years, the authorities did nothing to enforce the laws. Only in October 2024 did they begin to realize how serious the situation had become.
“You still hear blood libels and classic prejudices, that Jews rule the world, or that all Jews are rich and should be expropriated,” Waldman says. “Interestingly enough, this antisemitism has not even been updated. In the West, you have new expressions of old antisemitic ideas. Here, it is still the old version.”
She notes that anti-Israel rhetoric remains less dominant among ordinary Romanians and is more common among intellectuals. “The anti-Israel discourse is more prevalent among intellectual circles. Others still cling to the old antisemitic tropes. But anti-Israel positions imported from the West are becoming fashionable,” says Waldman.
She further points to protests surrounding an exhibition in Bucharest featuring artwork created by female victims of the October 7 attacks. “After the exhibition opened, several hundred artists, many of whom nobody had ever heard of, signed a public letter asking why the museum was not also showing the suffering of Palestinian women,” she says. “Some genuinely believed what they signed. But others simply wanted to become fashionable and accepted within what they perceive as the Western artistic world.
“That is even more dangerous,” she warns. “Antisemites express convictions. These people have no convictions at all. They just follow trends. They want to belong to a group they see as important. We often speak about this phenomenon when discussing the Holocaust. Not everyone involved in the persecution and extermination of Jews was ideologically antisemitic. Many merely wanted to do their jobs and fit in. The most dangerous people are those who have no agenda and go with the trend. If tomorrow the West says, ‘Kill the Jews,’ they will kill the Jews, even though they may personally have nothing against Jews.”
MARCO MAXIMILIAN KATZ, founding director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania (MCA), says pro-Palestinian demonstrations are a relatively new phenomenon in Romania that emerged after October 7, particularly among left-wing activists and younger people eager to emulate trends in Western Europe.
“They want to be Europeans, so they behave accordingly,” Katz says. “The number of demonstrations and participants continues to grow. These are almost entirely Romanians who know very little about Israel or Palestine but who use the demonstrations as a legitimate outlet for expressing antisemitism.”
Katz says authorities have prohibited slogans such as “From the river to the sea,” but many people now see such restrictions as censorship and an attack on free speech, much like the laws against antisemitism and Holocaust denial themselves. “There is also support for Iran, which derives from anti-Israelism that is deeply connected to antisemitism and the old prejudice that Jews control everything worldwide.
“In recent years, we have seen a tsunami of antisemitism that keeps growing,” Katz says. “The authorities admit there is a problem, but they pretend to control it. Romania presents itself internationally as a leader in Holocaust remembrance. But keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive is not the same as combating antisemitism.”
He recalls being summoned to a police station after filing a complaint against the author of one of the most antisemitic books he had seen in decades. “The policeman asked me what personal damage the book caused me,” Katz recalls. “Did I lose money? Did I lose my job? I had to explain that the book harmed my existence, my family, the memory of my parents, and the memory of the Holocaust itself. He still could not understand. The case was eventually closed without action.”
THE SEEMING return of far-right antisemitism and the lack of implementation of existing hate laws are of rising and great concern.
“Romania is witnessing the dangerous return of old-fashioned antisemitism in some of its ugliest historic forms,” says Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, the representative organization of European Jewish communities. “The language of conspiracy, blood libels, glorification of fascist movements, and the rehabilitation of figures associated with the Holocaust are no longer confined to the political fringes. They are increasingly entering mainstream public discourse in Romania.
“Europe knows from its own history where this path can lead. When antisemitism once again becomes socially fashionable, tolerated, or politically useful, it threatens not only Jewish communities but the very foundations of democratic society. Romania today stands at a critical crossroads, and the consistent enforcement of its laws against antisemitism and Holocaust denial will be an important test of whether it has truly learned the lessons of its past.”
Surprisingly, one of the strongest opponents of Vexler’s reforms of antisemitic laws was Romania’s current president, Nicusor Dan, who had been elected largely to block the far right from taking power.
“The president refused to sign the law and challenged it,” Vexler says. “The Constitutional Court rejected every claim unanimously and ruled that the law was not only clear but necessary and enforceable. I still do not understand why the president chose to oppose it, but his actions had a very negative impact.”
Waldman believes Dan’s political calculations may explain his position. “He comes from a region with a strong legionary and antisemitic tradition,” she says. “It clearly influenced his cultural background. At the same time, because he is politically vulnerable and only became president because voters feared the far right more, he may feel he cannot afford to alienate extremist voters who could later move against him.”
Vexler warns that what happened recently in Romania has damaged more than 30 years of efforts by governments and Jewish communities to preserve and strengthen Jewish life here. “One must also give credit to the security agencies, which have done exceptional work in preventing physical attacks against Jewish communities. Jewish life in Romania still continues.
“Our current political situation resembles the final days of the Weimar Republic,” he adds. “If Romania is eventually governed by AUR, it will be disastrous for the entire society, and naturally for the Jewish community as well.”
AT THE Choral Temple, Bucharest’s main synagogue, which was devastated by fascist legionaries and later rebuilt, 53-year-old choir member Gilbert Saim says his family’s roots in Romania go back as far as the synagogue’s old benches. His grandparents were sent to forced labor camps, and his father was born during deportation, “the common reality of Romanian Jews, not any exception,” he says.
Saim argues that both the fascist and communist eras erased much of Romania’s Jewish history, leaving many Romanians unaware of the country’s past or unwilling to confront it. While antisemitism is illegal, he says it often manifests in passive-aggressive ways, from online abuse and graffiti to cemetery desecration. “People may dislike us or hate us, but they won’t always say it openly,” he explains.
Antisemitism in Romania today, says Saim, is visible in far-right demonstrations, extremist political movements, and hostile rhetoric in parts of the media. He also sees anti-Israel sentiment as inseparable from antisemitism. “For me it’s the same thing,” he states, arguing that many Romanians do not associate secular Israelis with their traditional image of Jews.
Although he notes that Israelis and visibly religious Jews often walk openly in Romania without fear of physical violence, he says that outsiders who conclude there is “no antisemitism” are missing the deeper and more complicated reality.