The governor of Romania's central bank said Friday that it was not anti-Semitic despite minting a coin commemorating a prime minister who stripped Jews of their citizenship before World War II.
Governor Mugur Isarescu up a commission to analyze the coin depicting late Patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1925 to
1939 and was prime minister from 1938 to 1939.
The commission will issue its findings in a few days and could recommend scrapping the coin if it is considered to be anti-Semitic, which is illegal in Romania. The coin is one in a series issued by the bank in July to commemorate five Romanian Orthodox patriarchs.
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The patriarch was responsible for revising the citizenship law, stripping about 225,000 Jews - or 37 percent of the Jewish population - of citizenship.
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