Prelude to assassination. An episode of the Romanian Holocaust (original) (raw)
Related papers
Review Essay: New Research on the Holocaust in Romania
Sehepunkte, 2018
Over the last three decades and after many decades of near complete silence, research on the Holocaust in Romania has become a growing and increasingly diverse field. [1] The 1990s and early 2000s saw the publication of a range of ground-breaking works, including a number source collections, the first comprehensive overviews of the topic, and the Final Report on the Holocaust in Romania, assembled by an international team of scholars.
New Models, New Questions: Historiographical Approaches to the Romanian Holocaust
This essay surveys the historiography on the Romanian Holocaust, focusing in particular on four monographs published by Western historians within the past five years. Earlier research was limited both empirically and theoretically, and these works suggest new research paradigms and raise new questions about the genocide in Romania during the Second World War. Dennis Deletant assesses the rule of General Ion Antonescu in light of his responsibility for the Holocaust and attempts to explain why the General began and ended the Holocaust when he did. Vladimir Solonari argues that the Holocaust should be read in the context of plans for ethnic homogenization which were implemented when the opportunity presented itself in 1941. Jean Ancel examines the expropriation of Jewish property and shows that, among other things, the Romanian perpetrators were motivated by a desire to enrich themselves at the expense of the Jews. Finally, Armin Heinen reads the Holocaust by looking at how different groups of perpetrators used violence and attempts to recreate the logic which shaped their actions. In addition, the essay discusses Holocaust denial, survivor memoirs, primary source collections, and research into Roma victims in Romania.
While the Germans quickly repressed Ukrainian nationalist aspirations, they left a valve open for the release of activist energy, first in the form of pogroms and later by creating Ukrainian police units. In the early days, anti-Sovietism linked Nazi propaganda and the German occupation to local fears and hopes, most visibly in Lviv. As Struve points out, German and Ukrainian perpetrators also shared a mindset in which elevated aggressive impulses and a sense of euphoria merged with rational considerations about settling old scores and establishing a new order. Anti-Jewish violence by relatively few Ukrainian men, German soldiers, SS-men, and policemen attracted others, including women, adolescents, and children, to participate in collective rituals that combined public humiliation, assertion of power, and "cleansing" aspirations (pp. 353-76, 675-81). The book's final chapter points to similar dynamics in other parts of the German-occupied Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, especially in Lithuania and Latvia. Where the occupying forces prescribed a more traditional form of order, as in the area under Hungarian occupation, fewer deaths occurred (pp. 630-67).
Jewish Life in Bucharest at the Time of the Holocaust: A Research Based on the Survivors' Diaries
Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări / Holocaust. Study and Research, 2015
A long list of laws, decisions, and decrees with impact on the Jewish population of Romania has been enacted between 1940 and 1944. Moreover, brutal actions towards the Jews, violent pogroms, and significant isolations, ghettoizations, and deportations took place throughout that period. Their impact made the subject of a considerable number of researches and studies. In this study, I am particularly interested in presenting the results of a research that investigated the impact on the Jewish life in Bucharest and on how the Jewish community responded to all that. I am particularly interested in seeing how that is reflected in the diaries that focused on the period in question. Through their personal and informal approaches, those diaries bring to the public a complementary understanding of the topic. From bringing charity under the form of food or medical assistance to making use of their official positions and approaching the state leaders, the Jewish leaders tried to cover as much as possible from the personal to the professional life of the community members.