Jean Ancel, In memoriam

Abstract

Jean Ancel, the outstanding Israeli historian of the Romanian chapter of the Holocaust, died on April 30th, 2008, after a long illness. This article summarizes his essential contribution the study of Romania’s participation at the implementation of the Nazi “Final Solution” during the first years of the war against the Soviet Union, especially the anti-Jewish massacres in Bessarabia and Bukovina and the deportations to the camps and ghettos of Transnistria. Having spent many years as a researcher at Yad Vashem, he edited twelve volumes of Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust (1986) and published a two-volume synthesis, History of the Holocaust : Romania (2002), three volumes of documents on Transnistria (2003), a comprehensive book on The Pogrom in Iasi, June 29, 1941 (2003). He also edited Wilhem Filderman’s Memoirs and Diaries (2004), as well as other volumes of documents and studies on the Antonescu’s radical anti-Semitic legislation and policy. His last book was on The Economic Destruction of Romanian Jewry (2007).