Ionescu, Ştefan Cristian Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanianization, 1940–44 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 184 influence on the decline and fall of the Soviet system. One does not have to buy into all of Rittersporn’s theorizing to appreciate the richness of the many examples he provides. For anyone interested in Stalinism or Soviet history generally, this is a valuable, eye-opening work. Department of History Richard B. Spence University of Idaho Ionescu, Ștefan Cristian. Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanianization’, 1940–44. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2015. xv + 267 pp. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £60.00. Ion Antonescu’s treatment of the Jews under his wartime pro-Axis rule was ambivalent; for the Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia, Antonescu was a cruel antisemite; for those of Moldavia, Wallachia and southern Transylvania, he was, as William Oldson has suggested, also an antisemite but ‘a providential’ one. Even Antonescu’s inhuman and shameful behaviour towards the Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia, whom he considered ‘infected by the virus of Bolshevism’ admits a distinction to be drawn between Romanian and German actions. While German and Romanian forces joined in mass executions of Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina in the summer of 1941, after that date Romanian treatment of the Jews broadly-speaking followed a separate course. If, as in the German case, discrimination was followed by deportation, deportation, in the Romanian case, did not lead to the gas-chamber. Tens of thousands of Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria were indeed shot in the period from winter 1941 until early spring 1942 on Romanian orders, but subsequently the plight of the Jews in Transnistria, the Romanian-administered area of Ukraine between the Dniester and the Bug, was characterized by degradation and callous neglect. Jews residing in Ukraine beyond Transnistria were likely to suffer a quick death by shooting at the hands of the Germans, but in Transnistria Jews often faced a slow death by typhus or starvation. The contrast between German and Romanian actions is illustrated by the fact that the largest proportion of Jews to survive Axis rule during the World War Two in the Soviet Union was in Transnistria. Ambivalent is also an adjective that comes to mind to describe Antonescu’s policy of ‘Romanianization’, as presented and analysed by Ștefan Ionescu in this unique and original contribution to the study of the persecution of the Jews and Roma under Antonescu. Romanianization formed the basis of Antonescu’s policy to exclude outsiders, principally Jews and Romas, from the economic life of Romania through property and business seizure, and denial REVIEWS 185 of employment. As Ionescu points out, Romanianization resembled in part the nationalization projects of the other Axis states, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia, but there were differences (p. 14). While the degree of assimilation of Jews and their share of the local economy was higher in Hungary, Romania expropriated Jewish real estate at a faster pace. Drawing upon a wealth of archival and secondary sources, both official and private, Ionescu dissects Romanianization and then analyses the responses to it. His focus falls upon Bucharest where Jews represented some 10 per cent of the capital’s population (they numbered 98,000 in a population of 992,536 according to the censuses of 1941–42). He explores two main questions: How was the process of Romanianization implemented, and with what results? How did gentiles and Jews respond to that policy? Chapter two examines the racial laws which followed in the footsteps of the accession of Antonescu and the Iron Guard to power and the proclamation of a National-Legionary state on 14 September 1940. On 5 October, a decree-law was passed providing for the appointment of commissars, who had to be Romanian, to enforce compliance by companies with the directives of the Ministry of National Economy. This decree ushered in what was known at the time as ‘the policy of Romanianization’. On 3 October, Jews had been barred from renting pharmacies — most pharmacies were either rented or owned by Jews — and on 5 October, rural real estate was expropriated from Jews, as were, on 12 November, forest land, mills, distilleries and cereal stocks, and shipping (4 December). The right of Jews to plead...