Dr Viorel Achim

January - December 2012
Mail: viorelachim(at)hotmail(dot)com

Viorel Achim has been fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena from January to December 2012. He works on a project about the Romanian-German relations in ethnopolitics between 1940-1944. Since 1991 he is a researcher at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest. In 2003, Achim received his PhD from the Romanian Academy and has been promoted to a Senior Researcher in 2008. He studied history at the University of Bucharest from 1982 to 1986. Viorel Achim participated in different reseach projects in Romanian and in international teams. Between 2003-2004 he was a member of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania.

Research project at the Kolleg

The project aims to make a comprehensive research on the Romanian-German relations in ethnopolitics from 1940 to 1944, a period when Romania and Germany were in a political and military alliance. Relations refer to: 1) know-how transfer - because it involves the Romanians' takeover of some concepts, techniques etc. from the German "science" and politics; 2) cooperation - because it was about the effective cooperation between German and Romanian experts and institutions in the field of statistics, demography, geopolitics, eugenics etc. The main question is to what extent the population policy promoted by the Antonescu government was influenced by Germany; which were the elements of the Romanian ethnopolitics where there was a German influence; the means by which this influence was exerted. The project has an important comparative dimension because it regards the relation between two countries with political and ethnic interests in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which collaborated in some projects in the field, and in others they had divergent positions.

Main areas fo research

History of the Gypsies (Roma) in Romania and Southeast Europe
Ethnic minorities in Romania in 1930s and 1940s
Population policy in Romania, 1940-1944
Political and confessional relations in Southeast Europe in the 13th-15th centuries
History of Transylvania and Banat in the Middle Ages

Positions and Memberships

Member of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (in 2003-2004)
Member of the scientific board of the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest (1997-2011); Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest (since 2006)
Member of the editorial board of the journals: Revista Istorică (since 2006), Historical Yearbook (since 2008), Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări (since 2009), Archiva Moldaviae (since 2010)
Member of the Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde e.V. Hermannstadt (sice 2008); Gypsy Lore Society (since 2010)

Monographs

Politica sud-estică a regatului ungar sub ultimii Arpadieni [The Southeast Policy of the Hungarian Kingdom under the Last Arpadians], Bucharest 2008.
Evreii în cadrul recensământului general al României din 6 aprilie 1941 [The Jews within the General Census of Romania, of 6 April 1941], Bucharest: Editura Institutului Naţional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România “Elie Wiesel”, 2008.
(coauthor) International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Final Report. Editors: Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu. Iaşi: Polirom, 2005; Romanian version, 2005.
The Roma in Romanian History (English translation by Richard Davies), Budapest, New York 2004.
Banatul în evul mediu [Banat in the Middle Ages], Bucharest 2000.
Ţiganii în istoria României [The Gypsies in Romanian History], Bucharest1998.(Hungarian translation 2001; Bulgarian translation 2002).

Edited Volumes

Identity Projects and Processes in the Romanian Space, 19th-20th Centuries, Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Academy, Center for Transylvanian Studies, 2010 (= Transylvanian Review, Vol. XIX, Supplement No. 4).
With Achim, Venera (eds.): Minorităţile etnice în România în secolul al XIX-lea [Ethnic Minorities in Romania in the Nineteenth Century], Bucharest 2010.
With Iordachi, Constantin (eds.): România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice şi comparative. [Romania and Transnistria: The Holocaust Issue. Historical and Comparative Perspectives], Bucharest 2004.
(document collection) Documente privind deportarea ţiganilor în Transnistria [Documents Concerning the Deportation of Gypsies to Transnistria], 2 vols., Bucharest 2004.

Articles

“The Roma Organizations and their Relations with the Romanian Politics in the 1930s”, in: Dan Berindei (ed.): Nouvelles Études d’Histoire, Vol. XII (Publiées à l’occasion du XXIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Amsterdam, 2010), Bucharest 2010, pp. 85-102.
“Romanian Abolitionists on the Future of the Emancipated Gypsies”, in: Achim, Viorel (ed.):Identity Projects and Processes in the Romanian Space, 19th-20th Centuries, Cluj-Napoca 2010, pp. 23-36.
“Die Deportation der Juden nach Transnistrien im Kontext der Bevölkerungspolitik der Antonescu-Regierung”, in: Benz, Wolfgang/ Mihok, Brigitte (eds.): Holocaust an der Peripherie. Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien und Transnistrien 1940-1944, Berlin 2009, pp. 151-160.
“La tentative des Roms de Roumanie d’obtenir le statut de minorité nationale en 1948-1949”, in: Études tsiganes, No. 38, 2009, pp. 62-82.
“Romanian-German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuilă”, in: Fahlbusch, Michael/ Haar, Ingo Haar (eds.): German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing (1919-1945), New York, Oxford 2005, pp. 139-154.

Reviews

Blight, David W.: A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego, London2007,in: Revista Istorică, S.N., XX (2009), Nos. 1-2, pp. 192-194.
Egry, Gábor Egry/ Fetil, István (eds.): A Kárpát-medence népeinek együttélése a 19-20. Században. Tanulmányok, Budapest2005, in: Revista Istorică, S.N., XVIII (2007), Nos. 3-4, pp. 413-414.