P.6 - Archive of Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, 1924-1947

P.6 - Archive of Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, 1924-1947 
 
 The personal archive of Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, 1924-1941 and 1944-1947, includes 119 bound collections of documents which were submitted to Yad Vashem in 1967.
 
 Dr. Wilhelm Filderman was the leader of Romanian Jewry from the early 1920's until 1948. A prominent lawyer, he served as Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania and Chairman of the Union of Romanian Jews. He was Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee from 1920, a Deputy in the Romanian parliament representing the Union of Romanian Jews in the period between World War I and World War II, the Romanian non-Zionist representative of the Jewish Agency for Eretz Israel, and for a short time, the Chairman of the Bucharest Jewish Community.
 
 As part of his many public duties, he struggled hard to secure citizenship for the Jews of Romania after World War I, while working on behalf of the Jewish refugees from Ukraine, preserving the rights of the Jews of Romania and combating anti-Semitism. Dr. Filderman continued his struggle even during the Iron Guard terror and Antonescu's fascist regime, 1940-1944, including dissolution of the traditional Jewish organizations by the German authorities and the establishment of a "Jewish Center" based on the German model in their place, 1942-1944. For these activities, and his resistance to the forced contribution of four billion lei that was levied on the Jews, Dr. Filderman was deported to Transnistria for a short time in 1943. 
 
 Throughout the war, Dr. Filderman maintained contact with senior officials and ministers, and even with Ion Antonescu and Mihai Antonescu. He succeeded in preventing the deportation of all the Jews of Romania to Poland, and prevented the deportation of the Jewish refugees who had escaped to Romania from other countries under Nazi occupation; thanks to his intervention, the decree imposing the wearing of the yellow badge was repealed in 1941, and deportees to Transnistria were repatriated. 
 
 During the war, he cooperated with the Zionist Federation as part of the underground Jewish Committee. Due to persecution by the Communists, Dr. Filderman had to leave Romania secretly in 1948. Until his death in 1963, he lived in Paris and devoted himself to writing his memoirs.
 
 With the agreement of his family, Dr. Filderman's archive was transferred to Yad Vashem from Paris in 1967 by Dr. Gruber, Filderman's former personal secretary and his testament executor.
 
 The collection is made up of 119 bound collections of documents, arranged for the most part in chronological order, 1924-1947. The documents include correspondence with Romanian government institutions and Jewish institutions, collections of laws, memoirs, memoranda, notes, newspaper clippings, and reports regarding Jewish life in Romania and Dr. Filderman's activities for the rights of the Romanian Jews. 
 
 - 79 volumes include documentation regarding the period between World War I and World War II, and the years 1933-1944;
 
 - 33 volumes include documentation regarding the period from 1944-1947;
 
 - 7 volumes include Dr. Filderman's memoirs. 
 
 Two additional volumes, which were found in Israel, and contributed to Yad Vashem, have been added to the archive. Not all the original material is in the archive, and it can be assumed that many original documents are still in the possession of the Filderman family in Paris and London
 
 During the registration and arrangement process, a number of difficulties arose due to the multiplicity of copies and translations of the documents from Romanian to French interspersed within all the volumes and disrupting the chronological order.