2021, Romania has made strides to rid itself from the past of Holocaust denial. It has joined the International Holocaust Remembrance alliance in 2004, and took over chairmanship in 2016, as well as constantly organizing and sponsoring events surrounding Holocaust education. In 2021, the first sentence over Holocaust denial was made in the country. The accused was Vasile Zărnescu, a former Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) member who published several articles and a book against the veracity of the Holocaust. Post-War According to the Wiesel Commission, "... at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived". Howard M. Sachar estimated that 360,000 Romanian Jews were still alive at the end of World War II. According to statistics from the end of the war, 355,972 Romanian Jews lived on the territory of Romania. Mass emigration to Israel ensued (see Bricha and Aliyah). According to Sachar, for the first two post-war years, tens of thousands of Romanian Jews left for Mandatory Palestine; the Romanian government did not try to stop them, especially due to its desire to reduce its historically suspect and now impoverished Jewish minority. Afterwards, Jewish emigration began to encounter obstacles. In 1948, the year of Israeli independence, Zionism came under renewed suspicion, and the government began a campaign of liquidation against Zionist funds and training farms. However, emigration was not completely banned; Romanian Foreign Minister Ana Pauker, herself a Jew with a father and brother in Israel, negotiated an agreement with Israeli ambassador Reuven Rubin, who himself was a Romanian Jewish immigrant to Israel, under which the Romanian government would allow 4,000 Jews a month to emigrate to Israel; this decision was at least partially influenced by a large Jewish Agency bribe to the Romanian government. This agreement applied mainly to ruined businessmen and other economically "redundant" Jews. Around this time, Israel also secured another agreement with the Romanian government, under which Romania issued 100,000 exit visas for Jews and Israel supplied Romania with oil drills and pipes to aid the struggling Romanian oil industry. By December 1951, about 115,000 Romanian Jews had emigrated to Israel. During the period of transition towards a communist regime in Romania, following Soviet occupation (see Soviet occupation of Romania), Jewish society and culture were subject to the same increasingly tight control by the authorities. The community leader Wilhelm Filderman had been arrested already in 1945 and had to flee the country in 1948. Antonescu, after a brief