A 1923 Romanian university student newspaper suggested murdering Jews - because their med school needed cadavers ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, February 13, 2026

A 1923 Romanian university student newspaper suggested murdering Jews - because their med school needed cadavers

Ever notice how today's antisemites always use morality and liberal ideas to justify their noxious ideas? And how universities, which are supposed to be the source of philosophy and morality, are instead the epicenters of hate?

Here's how that looked 103 years ago:

Kill Jews So You May Have Corpses for Dissection
February 5, 1923 - JTA
Wholesale pogroms on Jews are urged as a means of providing corpses for the dissection rooms of the Klausenburg University, in an article appearing in the students’ publication there. The writer predicts that the pogroms will serve a two-fold object: the extermination of the Jew, and the supply of corpses. The University authorities have taken the student publication’s assertion under advisement.

There was a real problem of a shortage of cadavers. How can medical students continue their studies? It is a moral issue!

So the student newspaper published a simple solution - kill Jews, who are human enough for these purposes. And as a bonus, it will exterminate the Jews! Win-win!

The university did not reject the idea outright. It said, OK, we'll consider this.

The university, now known as Babeș-Bolyai University, dates from 1581 and is one of the most prestigious universities in Romania.

This story didn't make it into the New York Times or wire services. And, from everything I can see, the university never took it seriously.

But there is another lesson from the 1923 incident. When one makes outrageous suggestions like this, it moves the Overton window to allow less outrageous ideas seem almost sane.

From The Jewish Press (Omaha, NE) Thu, Mar 25, 1926, 100 years ago:

The Romanian government said that Jews could not dissect Christian bodies, and must provide their own. And this idea was not limited to Romania - a Warsaw institute was roiled by the same demand also in 1926.

This was a major topic in the mid 1920s using this as an excuse to limit the numbers of Jewish medical students, since Jewish law does not allow Jewish corpses to be used in this manner.

But notice how these antisemitic demand were framed: not as bigotry but as fairness. The intelligentsia of Romania and Poland would no doubt protest mightily that they were not antisemitic; that these laws targeting Jews were in fact ethical and necessary for the well being of the entire population.

What is obvious antisemitism today was considered mainstream thinking then. And this is a constant pattern - the things that are considered antisemitic now were always positioned as fairness or morality or scientific.

And in fifty years, the current BDS movement and UN/NGO obsession with Israel and "genocide" accusation and weaponization of international law and all the rest will be seen clearly as antisemitic and a direct successor to earlier versions of Jew hatred. But in the moment, the haters have enough power to make their hate sound almost reasonable.

Just like the cadaver affairs of the 1920s.

History is rhyming, hard, today.