Mișu Benvenisti

Mișu Benvenisti, also known as Mishu or Moshe Benvenisti ( he, מישו בנבנישתי; July 1, 1902 – 1977), was a Romanian lawyer, Zionist militant, and leader of the Romanian Jewish community. Born into a family of printers and publishers, he was one of the few Sephardi Jews to reach prominence in political life during the Romanian Kingdom era. His association with Zionism began in his teenage years, and saw him emerging as leader of the Zionist Youth Organization (part of the HeHalutz, HH) in the early 1920s. Benvenisti was then primarily affiliated with the ''Renașterea Noastră'' group in Bucharest, joining the small Jewish National Party by 1930; through these, he participated in the formation of a nation-wide Jewish Party (PER), wherein he was youth organizer and general secretary. After 1936, he was also a member of the Romanian office of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), serving as its lawyer and as a rapporteur on the growth of local antisemitism.

During the late 1930s, Romania drew closer to Nazi Germany and gradually introduced discrimination against Jews; the National Renaissance Front banned the PER, along with all other Romanian political parties, in early 1938. Zionists were allowed to form non-political bodies, which encouraged a wave of emigrations into Mandatory Palestine. As Nazi pressures increased with the arrival in power of Ion Antonescu, Benvenisti considered emigrating, but accepted appointment as chairman of the Zionist Executive. His political line there was one of moderation: he expressed loyalty toward Romania and increased control over the rebellious HH, intervening as a negotiator between the regime and the Jewish community. His stance was criticized by Jews on the right, including A. L. Zissu, as a form of collaborationism, especially due to his contacts with the submissive Central Jewish Office.

Faced with the Holocaust occurring on Romania's borders, Benvenisti also cultivated the Jewish resistance—in particular by helping Hungarian, Slovak and Polish Jews find temporary shelter in Romania, or by assisting survivors of Antonescu's own deportations to Transnistria. Benvenisti and other Jewish leaders persuaded the Antonescu government to relax pressures on the Jews, though the Executive also had to agree to collect large sums as contributions and bribes. The Romanian Zionists' role in sabotaging the Holocaust was documented by the local '' Judenberater'', Gustav Richter. As a result of his investigations, Romanian authorities reluctantly arrested Benvenisti in January 1944. He was released in March, by which time he had lost the confidence of his peers, being replaced at the head of the Executive by his rival Zissu. For the rest of 1944, Benvenisti presided upon his own splinter party, the Zionist Democratic Group Klal.

Antonescu's downfall in August 1944 revived Romania's multi-party regime; consequently, Zissu and Benvenisti returned as factional leaders of the PER, with the former holding the party chairmanship. Benvenisti was moving toward the Jewish left, and embracing cooperation with the Romanian Communist Party and the Jewish Democratic Committee (CDE). In mid 1946, he replaced the anti-comunist Zissu as president of both the WJC chapter and the PER, drawing the latter into an alliance with the CDE before the November elections. With the communists' turn to anti-Zionism, Benvenisti shut down the PER, criticized illegal emigration, and took political advice from CDE cadres such as Bercu Feldman. When the Romanian communist regime took over on the last days of 1947, he ended his Zionist involvement, though he and his wife Suzana still applied for emigration into Israel. Benvenisti was arrested in 1950 by the Securitate, tortured into confessing that he was a spy for Israel, and appeared at a show trial, alongside Zissu, in 1954. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but ultimately freed and allowed to settle in Israel, which became his home for the final two decades of his life.

Biography

Early life and career

The Benvenistis belonged to the Sephardi minority ( ro, evrei sefarzi or ''evrei spanioli'') within the larger Jewish community. They were first noted locally for their contribution in publishing: in 1876, two of its members, Sandu and David, created Frații Benvenisti—a major Jewish printing press, centered on Craiova city. Memoirist Mariu Theodorian-Carada recalled in 1938 that "Benvenisti the elder was the only Craiova Jew to wear a fur-lined ''caftan''". Mișu was born to Simon Benvenisti and Ernestina Schlanger on July 1, 1902. Mișu's father, who lived between 1870 and 1943, had worked for Frații Benvenisti library and then for Editura Alcaly company, until establishing his own editorial imprint, Editura Ancora. He was highly respected in the Romanian literary community, and noted especially for his role in promoting figures such as Eugen Lovinescu, George Bacovia, and Liviu Rebreanu. In 1922, Simon was sponsoring an annual Benvenisti Prize, awarded by the Romanian Writers' Society to debuting poets. His elder son Felix preserved the family tradition as director of Bicurim publishers; born in Bucharest 1900, Felix was working as a clerk during the 1950s. Maternal cousins of Felix and Mișu included Dolfi Urseanu, who worked at the State Opera Theater.

As the second son, Mișu was primarily interested in the legal profession and politics. In 1918 or 1919, soon after hearing about the Balfour Declaration, and influenced by his colleague Carol Singer, he joined a Zionist youth group called Hatalmid. He served as its president in 1919–1920, during which time he was acquainted with more senior Zionist figures, including activist Leon Mizrachi, Mișu Weissman, and Chief Rabbi Jacob Itzhak Niemirower. In 1920, while studying law at the University of Bucharest, he was recruited by the Jewish students' organization, Hașmonea, and, on Mizrachi's proposal, was elected chairman of the Zionist Youth Organization of Romania (1923–1924). This period saw him involved in at least one scuffle with antisemitic colleagues: on January 31, 1923, they tried to prevent Benvenisti and Samuel Steinberg from hearing a lecture by Mircea Djuvara; "other Jewish students arrived in" to assist, after which the two groups fought each other, leaving three Jews and one Romanian slightly injured. His brother, meanwhile, had embraced anti-Zionism, joining the Association of Romanian Jews in Brăila, which declared itself in favor of complete Jewish assimilation.

In 1925, Mișu Benvenisti joined Cornel Iancu's new Zionist lodge, ''Renașterea Noastră'' ("Our Rebirth"), where he remained an active member until the early months of 1944. A hostile A. L. Zissu recalled in 1951: "All that I now when it comes to Benvenisti's political activity in the interwar is that he was a very active member of the Zionist group ''Renașterea'', and very ambitious about rapidly acquiring offices, ahead of those who were older and more committed, that he was extremely conceited about his own political genius, going as far as to imagine himself a predestined leader." Benvenisti graduated in 1924. After completing a one-year mandatory term in the Romanian Land Forces (at Timișoara), he registered with the bar association in Ilfov County. In early 1928, he was providing legal services for ''Renașterea Noastră'', with Moți (Motti) Moscovici as his secretary. Moscovici also recounts that, in 1928–1929, Benvenisti also went on a study trip to Paris, where he intended to become a Doctor of Law: "He was absent for about a year, but never graduated." In July 1929, he and I. Schechter were among the 15 delegates of the Romanian Jewry to the Sixteenth Zionist Congress in Zürich. They were also the only two Romanians to have been elected by "radical" Zionist lodges, against a "centrist" mainstream.

By August 1929, Benvenisti had returned to Bucharest. The Jewish members of Parliament, who had since established an ethnic club, elected him to represent them at a Tomis Hall meeting protesting the anti-Jewish incidents in Mandatory Palestine; by 1930, he was officially the Jewish club secretary. In November, he challenged a clerk, Ștefan Iacobescu, to duel him on Luterană Street (Iacobescu never showed up). Benvenisti's major client as a lawyer was the firm Frații Buhler, a Swiss–Romanian importer of grinding machines. This job initially provided him with "modest revenue" that, from about 1932, he was forced to share with his gravely ill father. Around 1932, he met and fell in love with the seven-years-younger bank clerk Suzana Mărculescu, but could not live with her full-time, as both had to attend to their ailing parents. According to his recollections, she did not share his Zionist ideals, and maintained "irony and regret for the time and energy I spent on matters such as politics". They were only wed under Jewish law in May 1944—making Benvenisti cousins by marriage with composer Ricu Mălineanu and with singer Mara Ianoli-Mălineanu.

By March 1930, Benvenisti and Sami Stern had joined a Bucharest-based Jewish National Party, inspired by the views of Adolphe Stern. In speeches he made at the time, he noted that the group's existence was not directed "against the Romanian parties, but against all organizations which trample upon the Jewish population's needs." In August, shortly after the Sighet Jewish Temple had been set ablaze, the "General Council of Romanian Jews" delegated him to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he demanded details on the investigation. The same month, with local elections held in Bucharest, he submitted his candidacy on the "Jewish group" list for Bucharest Sector II (Black), second on that list after Sami Stern.

Benvenisti subsequently affiliated with Tivadar Fischer's nationwide Jewish Party (PER). In the parliamentary election of June 1931, he unsuccessfully contested two seats in the Assembly of Deputies—holding the last place on the PER's Ilfov list, and the first place in Tutova County. He was voted in as leader of the Sector II chapter on September 8, 1932. Benvenisti set up the PER youth branch (''Tineretul Partidului Evreiesc'') in 1934; the same year, he was also appointed the general secretary of the party at large. He was seconded at the youth section by Sami Iakerkaner, and had Jean Cohen among his subordinates. Moscovici nominates him as the PER's major electoral agent and propagandist. Historian Valeriu-Alexandru Moraru notes that Benvenisti and Cohen were the only two Sephardi men to be active in the PER; according to Moraru, the two, alongside M. Leon of the rival Union of Romanian Jews (UER), were also the only three Sephardim active in Romanian Jewish politics at any level.

Fighting antisemitism

Benvenisti was reportedly a perennial candidate for parliamentary seats throughout the interwar. During the general elections of December 1933, he ran in two Bessarabian constituencies—Bălți and Orhei. The lists, respectively headlined by Rahmil Ioffe and Michel Landau, only took small percentages of the vote—6% in Bălți, and 1% in Orhei. He also ran second after Mayer Ebner in Suceava County, sharing in the 3.7% result; and third, after Tivadar Fischer and Alexandru Nobel, on the list for Rădăuți County, which took 3.8%. As part of his efforts, Benvenisti also went on national conference tours, and, while in Turnu Severin, met a future Zionist doctrinaire, Theodor Loewenstein-Lavi. Those years brought him into contact with the World Zionist Organization (WZO), allowing him to greet Nahum Goldmann and Nahum Sokolow on their respective visits to Romania. Benvenisti notes that the WZO's Romanian delegate Sami Singer, who was following the Nazi takeover in Weimar Germany, asked him to become a rapporteur on Romania's own "antisemitic currents". On May 7, 1935, he spoke at the Sephardi Community House in Bucharest about the plight of Jews under the Nazi regime.

On January 29, 1936, Benvenisti was one of five party representatives who signed into existence the PER–UER alliance. Called Central Council of Romanian Jews, it existed for the "defence of all rights and liberties of a general character of the Jews who are Roumanian citizens or subjects, within the framework of the Constitution and of the Laws of the Country." In May of that year, ''Renașterea Noastră''s eponymous newspaper carried an article by Benvenisti which made him an official enemy of Germany, for celebrating the boycott of Nazi business and for condemning German rearmament. In late 1936 or early 1937, both Cohen and Benvenisti were recruited by the Romanian Committee of World Jewish Congress (WJC), serving under Sami Singer and Sami Stern. His was a salaried position, and included acting as WJC corporate lawyer.

Benvenisti was elected the PER's vice president in 1936. During the parliamentary election of December 1937, the PER ran as an informal ally of the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), despite the latter having a non-aggression pact with the fascist Iron Guard. The arrangements were made by Tivadar Fischer but approved by other PER men. They included Benvenisti, who later reflected on his contribution as having been a "great mistake." He and Francisc Jambor headlined the PER list for the Assembly in Roman County, which only took 2% of the vote; Benvenisti also had an eligible second position in Hotin County (3% of the vote) and Soroca County (4%), as well as the third position in Storojineț (5%).

The advent of antisemitism after the election marginalized both assimilated and Zionist Jews. On March 30, 1938, a dictatorial regime formed around King Carol II banned the PER, later setting up its single official party, or National Renaissance Front (FRN). Carol still allowed Jews to organize for emigration into Palestine (''Aliyah Bet''). In 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, Benvenisti was again called under arms, serving to 1940 as a Sublieutenant and regimental paymaster. As part of its expansion of antisemitic laws, the government debarred Benvenisti. A review board under Coty Stoicescu found that his claim for a legal exemption was groundless, upholding his debarment in early September 1940; this remained his status until reinstatement in 1944. The emigration effort was organized through a Zionist Executive, which survived the FRN's downfall. During late September 1940, Romania emerged as an ally of the Axis countries; Ion Antonescu took over government, as Romania's ''Conducător'', and, initially, as a senior partner of the Iron Guard. The latter was expelled from government in January 1941, following a Guardist revolt and anti-Jewish pogrom. According to Moscovici, Benvenisti was in Bucharest shortly after these events, frantically preparing his own escape to Palestine, and upset by the lengthy approval process. In March or April, Benvenisti was made leader of the Zionist Executive—which coordinated ''Renașterea Noastră'' and other organizations. He took over from Mizrachi, who had actually managed to obtain a Palestine visa.

This assignment put Benvenisti in direct contact with the Istanbul branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel and its representatives Mayer Segall and Haim Barlas, who successively handled the emigration project in Romania. On May 17, the Executive received its legal recognition from the Siguranța police, allowing it to be formally joined in May by factions such as Tnuat HaMizrahi and Ihud

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