ROMANIAN DICTIONARY TO CHANGE SLUR'S DEFINITION

Posted: 8/29/2011 8:57:00 PM
Author: Jason Maoz, Editor
Source: This article first appeared in the Jewisah Press (weekly) on Aug. 19, 2011.

ROMANIAN DICTIONARY TO CHANGE SLUR'S DEFINITION
Edited by Jason Maoz

Romania's highest cultural forum, following a request by a watchdog group, agreed to make clear in the definition of an anti-Semitic slur thsat the word is a pejorative.

The Center for Monitoring and combating Anti-Semitism had urged the Romanian Academy to change its definition in the
official DEX dictionary, or The Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language, of the word "judan."

The word is described in the latest edition of the dictionary as a "popular" alternative name for Jew; in previous editions it is defined as a "familiar and pejorative" term, the French news agency AFP reported.

"'Judan" was the last word to be heard by the hundreds of thousands Jews whose belongings were stolen...and who were themselves crammed into death trains or killed like animals
simply because they were born Jewish, the center said in a letter to the academy.

At least 280,000 Romanian and Ukranian Jews died in Romania and its territories during the Holocaust.