Her name is Elana Stafoi and she was the Consul General of Roumania in Montreal until the last little while. Now, Ms. Stafoi is Roumania’s Ambassador to Canada, located in Ottawa. She’s gone a long way, to be sure. Unfortunately, her government is still the same Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying group of corrupt liars they always have been.

Before the Holocaust, there were about 800,000 Jews in Roumania, my mother’s and father’s families included. Afterwards, thanks to the special attention of Nazi wannabe Ion Antonescu and his Iron Guard killers, there were 300,000 remaining.

Fortunately, there were survivors left to tell the tale. West End resident Baruch Cohen is one of them. Chairman for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, a think tank that exposes the truth about anti-Semitism in the world today. The preferred mechanism for spreading their hate today is Israel-bashing and they have found willing partners in the left-wing Jews who buy into the garbage that Israel doesn’t deserve its own state and that the Palestinians are a weak, innocent group who are being victimized by the Israelis. Go tell it to the Muslim fundamentalists.

Roumanian-born, the 88-year old Cohen was born in Bucharest and experienced the physical and psychological torments of the Holocaust first-hand, so when he talks, it pays well to listen while he is still here. I ask him about a promise the Roumanian government made to Jews here that they would teach the Holocaust in their general educational system. “There are so-called Holocaust courses in universities there, but not compulsory ones and not in high schools,” he told me. This is the same scholastic system that churns out university professors like Ion Coja, who denies the Roumanian Holocaust took place, but promises that if it ever happens there again, it will be “a better Holocaust without remnants… we are going to do it better.” Charming.

“The editor of Roumania’s Jewish newspaper has complained about what goes on there, but the government doesn’t do anything about it,” Cohen told me. He admitted that the 9,000 or so Jews that still live there are well looked after, thanks to the community’s Jewish federation, but they are mostly his age and soon they will all be gone. Cohen is a hawk on Holocaust matters and he writes articles and poems for large numbers of media around the world. “I do what I can, trying to keep this issue in the public eye while I am still alive,” he said. Many of his contemporaries have re-visited Roumania, but “I will never go back. I won’t give one dollar of my money to them,” he states.

Meanwhile, Cohen writes and talks to groups of students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, at high schools, universities and at Snowdon’s Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre. “You moved the students… you are a wonderful teacher,” stated a letter sent him in 2006 from Concordia University. To book Cohen for a talk, you can reach him at 514-486-5544, or at baruch@isranet.org. Don’t count on Elana Stafoi being there.

Book bus seat now for national Holocaust memorial service in Ottawa

RSVP now if you want to attend the national Yom Hashoah / Holocaust Remembrance event in Ottawa on May 1, featuring a keynote address by Prime Minister Harper.

A chartered bus will be engaged if there are at least 55 Montrealers taking the round trip. Contact Gillian Weintraub at the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem at 416-785-1333 to book your seat. They are also looking for survivors to lay wreaths and seasoned “shofar” blowers