The impossible separation between Romania’s far-right AUR party and Legionary antisemitism

On August 23, 2023, during a meeting with the Israeli ambassador in Bucharest, George Simion—the leader of AUR (the far-right Romanian party Alliance for the Union of Romanians)—personally and “firmly” condemned antisemitism. Moreover, a statement issued by AUR on that occasion “strongly condemned antisemitism” and declared that the party has “zero tolerance” for it.

As he has done many times before, George Simion lied. In the autumn of 2023, Claudiu Târziu and Sorin Lavric—then second and third in AUR’s hierarchy—participated in commemorations of notorious members of the fascist Iron Guard (a violent, antisemitic, ultranationalist movement in 1930s–40s Romania), including the well-known antisemite Justin Pârvu. In 2024, Simion proudly claimed the legacy of Corneliu Vadim Tudor (a former Romanian politician and notorious nationalist with an antisemitic record). Two members of AUR’s shadow cabinet were known public admirers of Ion Antonescu (Romania’s WWII dictator and convicted war criminal, responsible for the deportation and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Roma). Simion’s unequivocal support during the election campaign for Călin Georgescu (a controversial figure linked to fascist sympathies) further proved that he has no intention of distancing himself from antisemitic or pro-Iron Guard ideologies.

Sorin Lavric, the head of AUR’s Senate group and officially listed on the party’s website as second-in-command both in the presidency and executive office, has unleashed some of the most violently antisemitic statements seen in post-communist Romania. It’s worth recalling that Claudiu Târziu (a co-founder of AUR and editor of the pro-Iron Guard magazine „Rost”) recently left the party, making way for Lavric to ascend.

A quote from Lavric’s Facebook page, who is known for his public veneration of the Iron Guard, for his anti-Roma racism, and extreme misogyny:

“The Jewish repression institute of Romania’s right-wing values bears the name of a common fraud: Elie Wiesel. This chameleon never spent a second at Auschwitz, but falsified his biography to the point of stealing the identity of another Wiesel, a Hungarian who actually went there. This liar Wiesel even wrote a memoir about how much he suffered as a child in the death camp. The real Wiesel denounced the scoundrel. The result? The scoundrel won the Nobel Peace Prize and became a symbol of universal concord.”

Lavric repeated these claims in an open letter to the Romanian Prime Minister, in which he stated the following about the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (the official Romanian institution tasked with Holocaust education and research) and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate himself:

“The name it bears [the Wiesel Institute] is that of a fraud who never spent a second at Auschwitz—a detail that did not stop him from forging his biography so thoroughly that, by adopting another Wiesel’s life, he constantly posed as a victim of the death camp. It is a macabre farce that the very institution tasked with researching the Holocaust would display on its frontispiece the name of a proven impostor.”
(Artemis, July 30, 2025)

Behind this defamation campaign against Elie Wiesel lies a tragic misunderstanding sparked by another Auschwitz survivor, Miklós Grüner. Grüner challenged Elie (Lázár) Wiesel’s account of being a prisoner at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and claimed that Wiesel did not write the memoir Night. Grüner alleged that he personally knew the „real” Elie Wiesel. These claims have been widely embraced by Holocaust deniers and antisemitic militants around the world.

However, numerous records from the International Tracing Service (ITS) archives in Germany, which hold the registration files of Nazi concentration and extermination camp inmates, clearly demonstrate that Elie (Lázár) Wiesel—residing in Sighet, at 1 Grof Csaky Istvan Street, born on October 4, 1928 (registered as born in 1913 to avoid immediate extermination upon arrival, parents: Shlomo and Feiga)—was imprisoned for four weeks in Auschwitz, eight months in Monowitz (a subcamp of Auschwitz, inmate number A-7713), and three months in Buchenwald (inmate number 123565), where he was treated in the infirmary due to exhaustion, and where his father died.

Grüner’s confusion may have stemmed from archival facts. The ITS database contains at least nine inmates with the last name Wiesel, including two named Lázár Wiesel from the Sighet region. The second Lázár Wiesel, born on May 20, 1892, in Saplonca-Sighet, was an illiterate butcher, also interned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. According to camp records, he died during an American air raid on February 9, 1944. It is likely this individual whom Grüner had actually known.

But militant antisemites and Holocaust-denying Iron Guard sympathizers have no interest in historical accuracy. They won’t hesitate to falsify facts or spread slander to defile the memory of the survivors of the 20th century’s greatest tragedy. Lavric is part of this group. Did AUR’s second-in-command really believe that successive U.S. Presidents—Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—sought the company and counsel of a fraud without being informed by the world’s most capable intelligence agencies? Did he truly believe Elie Wiesel lied and cheated to obtain the Nobel Peace Prize? Of course not. This was nothing more than savage, hateful antisemitism.

Still, Lavric may have a point when he ironically lamented on his Facebook page:

“I feel completely wronged: Călin Georgescu has been indicted for fascist propaganda, while I’m not even facing the prospect of a trial. The situation is unbearable: why should he get to wear the martyr’s halo and I be ignored? …I protest from the depths of my soul! For four years, I’ve praised the Iron Guard in the Romanian Senate [emphasis added], and in the height of injustice, Călin Georgescu reaps the laurels. This cannot be tolerated! The superficiality of Romanian justice is downright disgusting.”

Hopefully, Romanian justice will rectify this serious oversight. But ultimately, responsibility lies with AUR’s number one leader, George Simion, when it comes to antisemitism. Through repeated antisemitic actions by his party’s leadership, Simion has crossed the “red line” set by the U.S. federal administration, which—regardless of political leadership—does not tolerate antisemitism. Simion knows from official American communications that AUR has breached that line and hopes silence will cover up the actions of his close associates.

He is wrong.

Such serious manifestations do not go unnoticed at the White House or the State Department. These institutions will not engage in dialogue with political forces that promote hatred against Jews. A public separation from the antisemites within AUR’s leadership would be the bare minimum George Simion could do to prove he still believes in his own words.

This article was written in a personal capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of any institutions the author may be affiliated with.