User:T1116000/sandbox/Leon Volovici

Leon Volovici new article content ...

Leon Volovici (10 August 1938 - 1 December 2011) was a Romanian-Israeli historian, essayist, and literary critic. Author and editor of several books on Romanian literature, historian of Romanian Jewry, antisemitism, and the Holocaust.

Leon Volovici was born in Iași in 1938. He studied Romanian literature at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, and completed a PhD titled ‘The Emergence of the Author in Romanian Culture”, which was published in book form in 1976. Between 1964 and 1984 he worked as a researcher at the Alexandru Philippide Institute of Philology at Iasi, where he was involved in the publication of the Dictionary of Pre-1900 Romanian Literature.

In 1984, Leon Volovici immigrated with his family to Israel. He worked as a researcher at the Yad Vashem archives between 1984-1989, and in 1989 joined the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a senior researcher.

In 1991 he published the monograph Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, the first book-length study of fascist and antisemitic currents in interwar Romania. The book appeared in 2012 in Polish. In 1996, Volovici edited and annotated the diary of Romanian-Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian. The diary documented the prevalnce of antisemitism in the years 1935-1944 and offered a unique perspective on Jewish life under in Bucharest during the Second World War. The publication stirred controversy and debate in Romania, and was subsequently published in various languages.

Volovici was a member of the Wiesel Commission, convened by the Romanian government in 2003 to examine the history of the Holocaust in Romania and offer a program for Holocaust education in Romania. He also edited the section on Romanian Jewry in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, published in 2008. Since the fall of Romanian communism, Volovici has been an active contributor in Romanian intellectual debates. In Jerusalem, he organized decades together with Cinematographer Costel Safirman a series of public meetings with Romanian intellectuals and artists. The transcripts of these meetings appeared in 2001, 2007, and (posthumously) 2014.

In 2007, Volovici published in Romanian the book From Iasi To Jerusalem and Back, which includes a number of autobiographical essays and a series of conversations with Romanian philosopher Sandu Frunza. The book was translated in Polish. Another collection of his essays appeared posthumously in Romanian under the title Essays on Delicate Matters.

Volovici died in Jerusalem in 2011.

External links

• Raphael Vago, "Leon Volovici - in memoriam", Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 40:1 (2012), [1]
• Camelia Crăciun, "A Man of Ideas: Dr. Leon Volovici (1938-2011)", Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări, vol. 4, no. 5 (2012), 230-234 [2]
• Claudia Ursutiu, "Leon Volovici - istoric al vietii intelectuale evreiesti din România", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, vol. 7, no. 21 (2008) [3]

• Apariția scriitorului în cultura română, Editura Junimea, Iași, 1976; ediție revăzută Curtea Veche, 2005; ediție revăzută, Editura Universității „Al. I. Cuza” din Iași, 2012
• Dicționarul literaturii române de la origini pîna la 1900, coautor, Editura Academiei RSR, București, 1979;
• Nationalist ideology and antisemitism: the case of Romanian intellectuals in the 1930's, translated from Romanian by Charles Kormos, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1991; Romanian version appeared under the title Ideologia naționalistă și „problema evreiască”. Eseu despre formele antisemitismului intelectual în România anilor '30, Humanitas, București, 1995; Polish translation: Nacjonalizm i ,,kwestia zydowska" w Rumunii lat trzydziestych XX wieku, trans. Kazimierz Jurczak, Austeria, 2016.
• “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: A Marginal or Central Issue?” (Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 1994), ACTA, No. 5,
• Mihail Sebastian – Jurnal 1935-1944, Preface and annotations by Leon Volovici, Humanitas, București, 1996; Translated into German, English, Hebrew, and other languages.
• B. Fundoianu – Iudaism și elenism, Preface and annotations by Leon Volovici and Remus Zăstroiu, Hasefer, Bucharest, 1999
• Arnold Schwefelberg, Amintirile unui intelectual evreu din România, ediție, Preface and annotation by Leon Volovici, Hasefer, Bucharest, 2000;
• Întîlniri la Ierusalim, co-edited with Costel Safirman, Fundația Culturală Română, 2001
• Noi întâlniri la Ierusalim, co-edited with Costel Safirman, Institutul Cultural Român, 2007
• De la Iași la Ierusalim și înapoi, Ideea Europeană, Iași, 2007
• Mircea Săucan, Colivia caută pasărea, Preface by Leon Volovici, Institutul Cultural Român, 2007
• "Mihail Sebastian: A Jewish Writer and His (Antisemitic) Master," in Richard L. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, Stefani Hoffman, eds. Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010.
• "Moses Gaster and Ronetti Roman - two Romanian Jewish intellectuals facing modernization", Studia judaica, 11, 2007.
• Sertarele exilului. Dialog Leon Volovici - Norman Manea, Polirom, Iași, 2008
• Mihail Sebastian. Dilemele identității, editor Leon Volovici, Biblioteca Apostrof, 2010
• Eugen Relgis, Eseuri despre iudaism, ediție îngrijită de Camelia Crăciun și Leon Volovici, prefață de Leon Volovici, Hasefer, Bucharest, 2011
• Eseuri pe teme delicate, Editura Universității „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, 2016