BUCHAREST, Romania — The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has criticized Romania's central bank for refusing to withdraw from circulation a coin featuring an image of a prime minister who stripped Jews of their citizenship before World War II, calling the decision "insensitive" to the memory of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims.

The museum in Washington, D.C., said in a statement received Friday that Miron Cristea's tenure as Romania's premier from 1938 to 1939 "marked the opening of a systematic campaign of anti-Semitic persecution by successive Romania governments that resulted in the devastation of the Romanian Jewish community during the Holocaust."

As prime minister, Cristea was responsible for revising Romania's citizenship law, stripping about 225,000 Jews — or 37 percent of the nation's Jewish population — of citizenship.

Some 280,000 Jews and 11,000 Roma, or Gypsies, were killed during Romania's pro-fascist regime of dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, who was prime minister from 1940 to 1944 and executed by the Communists in 1946.

Only about 6,000 Jews live in Romania today.

A commission set up by Romania's National Bank to reconsider the coin said Thursday it would not be withdrawn because it was minted only as one of five to commemorate Romania's five patriarchs, or leaders of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which Cristea headed from 1925 to 1939. The bank stressed the coin had not intended to be anti-Semitic.

Holocaust Museum Director Sara Bloomfield called the bank's decision "misguided" and "insensitive to the memory of the victims, and inconsistent with the great progress Romania has made in acknowledging its past."

In a report about Romania's role in the Holocaust published in 2006 and chaired by Romanian-born Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, Cristea's anti-Semitic activities are documented. The report was endorsed by Romanian President Traian Basescu and ex-Romanian President Ion Iliescu.

Today, anti-Semitism activities and manifestations are illegal in Romania.