Recourse to History: The Day of Romanian Army
H.E. Ion JINGA, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative Council of Europe
Motto: „Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. –
George Santayana (Spanish-American philosopher, „The Life of Reason”, 1905)
In the tragic summer of 1940, Europe
was ravaged by war. With France capitulated and Great Britain under the
Luftwaffe siege, following Dunkirk evacuation, Romania found itself Internationally
isolated, as France and UK were its main allies in the inter-war period.
On 26-27 June, the Romanian
government was forced to accept Soviet ultimatums and allowed Moscow to invade
Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, two historical Romanian provinces which
rejoined the Kingdom of Romania after WW1 in application of the principle of self-determination
proclaimed on 11 February 1918 by the US President Woodrow Wilson („National
aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by
their own consent….
