Austria-Hungary settled in Transylvania at the same time and earlier. By
1900 Jews constituted more than one-half of the urban population of
Romania, most of them engaged in commerce, banking, or industry. Not
allowed to assimilate by various restrictions on their movement and
activities, the Jews remained apart from the rest of the population.
This apartness and their role in the economy engendered distrust and
resentment, which periodically erupted into persecution by some elements
of the population (see ch. 2).

The loss of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union and the deportations and
exterminations during World War II by the Nazis reduced the Jewish
population in Romania to its 1956 size. It has been further reduced
since then through emigration to Israel.

Despite their historic separateness from the rest of the society, most
Jews in the mid-twentieth century tend to think of themselves as
Romanians of the Jewish faith rather than an ethnic minority. All speak
Romanian, and only one-fourth claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue in
the 1950s. They continue to be urban oriented, and one-fourth of them
lived in Bucharest in 1956.

Other Minorities

Eight other ethnic groups were counted in the 1956 census. The largest
was Ukrainian, numbering 60,000. Ukrainians formed the majority
population in the southern part of the Danube delta and in pockets
along the Soviet border. Some 45,000 Yugoslavs, mostly Serbs, lived in
the southern Banat around the Iron Gate. Other Slav minorities included
39,000 Russians in northern Dobruja, near the Bessarabian border; 12,000
Bulgarians, mostly in southern Dobruja; and between 18,000 and 35,000
Czechs and Slovaks in the Banat.

Other ethnic groups of significance were 20,000 Tatars and 12,000 to
14,000 Turks in Dobruja, remnants of the period of Turkish rule.
Gypsies, variously estimated between 50,000 to 100,000, are not
recognized officially as an ethnic minority and not counted separately
in censuses. This, combined with their still largely nomadic life, makes
any reasonably accurate enumeration difficult.

Interethnic Relations

Relations between Romanians and Hungarians, the two largest ethnic
groups, have been less than smooth. During the eight centuries of
Hungarian rule of Transylvania, Romanians, who constituted the poorest
rural elements of the population, occupied a subservient position to the
wealthier, more urbanized, and better educated Hungarians and Germans.
Wi