The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 [Paperback]

Radu Ioanid is an excellent example of the promise of area studies. A Romanian native, he has written of the Holocaust in Romania. This work, originally written in French, is translated into English because of the generosity and commitment of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and its determination to make a study of Romanian Jewry available. It has assisted in the publication of two works on Hungarian Jewry including an important condensation of Randolph Braham masterful study of The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary.

Ioanid's work has many virtues. It is detailed and precise. His mastery of the material is evident throughout. His interpretations are sound, his methods are clear. Perhaps the two most important virtues of the work are that it is virtually without competition for Ioanid has reviewed and reported on new documentation that has hitherto been virtually unavailable for anyone to see. Too little has been published in the English language regarding the fate of Romanian Jewry. It is a story worth telling because it does not fit into the general pattern of destruction. Romania was allied with Germany. Some of its population and a large part of its Jewish population - the Jews of Northern Transnistria -- was given to Hungary by Germany in 1940, and thus its Jews remained relatively untouched by the "Final Solution" until the fateful days following the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944. Between May 15th and July 8th 437,402 Jews were transported to Auschwitz on 148 trains. Though originally Romanian - Elie Wiesel among them - their fate is regarded as an essential part of the Hungarian story, not the Romanian one.

The shape of Ioanid's chapters tell much of the Romanian story: Massacres at the Beginning of the War, Transit camps, Deportations and Other Mass Murders, Massacres in Transnistia, Life in Transnistria, the Survival of Romanian Jews. What scholars have long known but few non-professionals realize - and what Ioanid documents in precise detail -- is that for the most part Romania did not rely upon German assistance or initiatives to solve its own Jewish problem. They "took care" of their own Jews, mimicking some of the German formats, but in essence avoided the unique German creation of the death camps, instead transporting the Jews to Transnistria. Romania was not necessarily less ruthless to its Jews than the Germans, only significantly less disciplined and methodical, less technologically inventive. Those not murdered by Romanian troops, or those who did not die along the way, lived under such harsh conditions that their chances of survival were imperiled until Romanian adjusted its policy to the new reality that Germany was certain to lose the war. They then presumed that there was more value in living Jews than dead Jews. Living Jews could be exchanged for money or political advantage. Dead Jews were of little value, except for the fact that the land was Judenrein for unlike the Germans, Romania did not recycle Jewish bodies.

Along the way, the Romanians initiated pogroms, such as the one in Iasi. Romanian troops participated in the Einsatzgruppen murders along with SS troops, In Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and southern Ukraine - the most prominent murder sites were Bogdanovka, Dumanovka and Acmicetcka and of course Odessa.. They deported Jews from their homes in cattle cars, copying the German deportations of Jews from ghettos to death camps, but the Romanians did not have death camps at the end of the journey of these Jews. Thus, they were held captive in these trains without food or water in unlivable conditions until they died, and were then buried in mass graves along the railroad tracks. The majority of the Jews were deported to Transnistria, where they were held captive until they died. More than 150,000 Jews died there. And the Jews in old Romania were held for a ransom that was not forthcoming - until many years after the Holocaust when the Jews of Romania were ransomed from Communist rule, in a story that is still largely untold.

Ioanid is not only plowing fresh land, describing the fate of Romanian Jews that is little understood, but he is also relying on documents that have only recently become available. One of the major contributions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and its recently retired chairman Miles Lerman has been international agreements to copy documents relating to the Holocaust in countries that were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. Ioanid and the director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Paul Shapiro were deeply involved in these efforts for almost a decade and the fruits of their impressive labor are to be seen in the collection of the Museum archives and in the benefit that scholars such as Ioanid reap, from this newly available material. Only two scholars, Radu Ioanid and Jean Ancel of Yad Vashem have spent the time reading this vast documentation and Ioanid's work shows the benefits of such detailed documentary research.

The timing of his work is also fortunate. There have been efforts by Romanian nationalists on the right, who were long silenced by Communist rule, to rehabilitate the reputation of Marshall Antonescu, the Romanian ruler during the Holocaust. Monuments have been erected and new words of praise have seen their way into print. Ioanid's work will ensure that the full record of Antonescu will be known in the West and the revisionist history will not be fueled by ignorance in the West.

The Holocaust in Romania is difficult to read emotionally as Elie Wiesel put it in his foreword because the behavior of the Romanians at their own initiative without relying on the Germans marks an anguished chapter in the history of the Holocaust. In Ioanid, the Jews of Romania have found a historian whose intellect matches his dedication to detail and his passion to tell the truth that he uncovers.