A Member of the European Parliament has denied that the Holocaust took place in Romania.

Leader of the nationalist Greater Romania Party, Cornelui Vadim Tudor appeared on Romania’s network channel, Realitatea TV show “reality of the report” last Thursday.

In a statement issued by the Bucharest-based Elie Wiesel National Institute for the study of Holocaust in Romania, the public institution said that on October 18, Tudor stated, “In Romania there was never a holocaust” and further added: “I will deny it till I die because I love my people”.

The MEP is a member of the Committee on Culture and Education, a member of the Delegation for relations with Switzerland and Norway and to the EU-Iceland Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Economic Area (EEA) Joint Parliamentary Committee.

Tudor is also a substitute member for the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a member of the Delegation to the European Union-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee.

Tudor has regrettably followed in the footsteps of Romanian senator, lawyer and former Social Democrat Party (SDP) spokesman Dan Sova. In March, Sova gave a televised interview in which he made explicit anti-Semitic remarks. He proclaimed that “no Jew suffered on Romanian territory”.

In the same interview, Sova also claimed that “only 24 Romanian citizens of Jewish descent were killed” in an act “carried out by German soldiers. Romanian soldiers were not involved in the action. This is a historical fact”. Just five months later, Sova was appointed as Romania’s Minister for Parliamentary relations and retracted from his statements on holocaust denial. 

In truth, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed in Romania and its territories during the Holocaust, according to a commission headed by Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel.

Tudor is now facing calls for his resignation from the European Parliament.