Recently in my research I came across the claim that Corneliu Codreanu – founder and original leader of famous Romanian ‘Iron Guard’ organization and creator of the ‘Legionary Doctrine’ – was of jewish origin from an otherwise solid historian who specialised in obscure topics and points: Ellic Howe.
He writes in his 1965 monograph ‘Nostradamus and the Nazis’ that:
‘A. was Corneliu Codreanu, the Rumanian fascist leader and head of the anti-Semitic Iron Guard organisation. Krafft had correctly pin-pointed his Jewish ancestry for his mother was a Jewess from Czernowitz.’ (1)
The Krafft that Howe referring to is Karl Ernst Krafft; a Swiss National Socialist sympathiser, astrologer and general fruitcake who the jewish conman and novelist Louis de Wohl falsely claimed was ‘Hitler’s Astrologer’ in 1940 in order to be funded by British intelligence (as well as get out of being conscripted) and was believed for several months. (2)
Howe doesn’t provide a source for his claim, but we know that Corneliu Codreanu was born on 13th September 1899 to Ion Zelea Codreanu and Elizabeth Brunner in Husi in Romania as we have his birth certificate. (3)
His father Ion Codreanu – an academic and an ardent Romanian nationalist – was likely of Polish origin originally – although he was at pains to deny this as was his son Corneliu – or had his ancestors had at the very least polonized his name at some point, because ‘Zelea’ likely comes from the Polish name ‘Zelenski’ which translates as ‘Codreanu’ in Romanian. (4)
There is no suspicion or claim that I am aware of that Ion Codreanu was of jewish extraction let alone any evidence for it that has been presented to date. (5)
But what of Codreanu’s mother Elizabeth Brunner?
Well, there is no evidence that she was jewish either as she was actually an ethnic German and came from a family of Bukovinian Germans in Romania with the family having originally emigrated from Bavaria whereupon Elizabeth’s grandfather – and Codreanu’s great-grandfather – Alois Brunner had been appointed as a customs official. (6)
So, Howe is quite wrong – he is quite likely repeating rumours he’d heard and not confirmed them in my estimation – in that Corneliu Codreanu’s mother Elizabeth Brunner – and thus also Corneliu Codreanu himself – was not jewish at all but rather German.
Therefore, Corneliu Codreanu was not jewish.
References
(1) Ellic Howe, 1965, ‘Nostradamus and the Nazis: A Footnote to the History of the Third Reich’, 1st Edition, Arborfield Products: London, p. 48
(2) Ibid., pp. 13; 133
(3) Tatiana Niculescu, 2018, ‘Mistica rugaciunii si a revolverului: Viata lui Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’, 1st Edition, Editura Humanitas: Bucharest, Ch. 1
(4) https://danielvla.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/originea-lui-corneliu-zelea-codreanu/
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ivan Berend, 2020, ‘A Century of Populist Demagogues: Eighteen European Portraits, 1918–2018’, 1st Edition, Central European University Press: Budapest, p. 79; Hugh Seton-Watson, 1950, ‘The East European Revolution’, 1st Edition, Methuen: London, p. 206, n. 1