Primitiviness and humanity clashed against the backdrop of the multicentennial coexistence between Romanians and Jews that principles alien to our nation were then disturbing.
        As Traian Popovici recalles in his Testimony, "Callousness was a virtue; charity a debasement. Anyone that tried to protest or reason with the crazed ended up a target for contempt by the public and persecution by the powerful.
        Still, the Romanian nation has always at the core been innocent of what has been committed in its name.
        Such deviations from its traditional humanity, reputed kindness, gentle, warm, heart. are nowhere else to be found throughout its history.
        Even the maryred will have to admit that during their long cohabitation with our nation, they had lived inmutual understanding and even brotherhood with us untill the moral eclipse of 1940-1944".
        Mayor Traian Popovici saved 20.000 Jews in Czernowitz. He was not alone in this struggle for the right to live. The entire staff of the city hall, the military commander of Czernowitz - General Ionescu Negresti, stood by jim. Popovici pointed out that he owed his coduct in Czernowitz yo the education he received at home, as the descendant of a long lineage of Ortodox Christian priests and from his high school teachers in Suceava.
        By taking part in the publication of Traian Popovici's Testimony, the Ministry of Culture and I wished to pay tribute to a MAN whose deeds have become a legend and to th ecomming generations.
                        Razvan Theodorescu
                        Member of the Romanian Academy
                        Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs