REVIEWS 369 Bednarek, Jerzy and Anghel, Florin (eds). Refugiații polonezi în România 1939– 1947. Documente din Arhivele Naționale ale României. Polscy uchodżcy w Rumunii 1939–1947. Dokumenty z Narodowych archiwów Rumunii. 2 vols. Arhivele Naționale ale României, Institutul Memoriei Naționale and Comisia pentru Condamnarea Crimelor Împotriva Națiunii Poloneze, Warsaw and Bucharest, 2013. 844 and 834 pp. Illustrations. Indexes. Price unknown. During the early hours of the morning of 18 September 1939, Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz, the head of the Polish armed forces, crossed the Czeremosz (Ceremuș) bridge onto Romanian territory and was eventually placed in confinement in the town of Craiova. Thus began the internment of the Polish authorities in Romania following their exodus from their homeland as a consequence of Stalin’s attack of 17 September without a formal declaration of war. Poland’s partition thus began sixteen days after the German invasion from the west on 1 September. The Romanian government allowed seventy tons of gold belonging to the Bank of Poland to reach the port of Constanţa where it was loaded onto a ship and transferred to France via Syria. President Ignacy Mościcki was sent to Bicaz and other members of the government to isolated localities such as Slănic Moldova and Băile Herculane. They were joined by some 26,000 Polish citizens, 15,000 of whom were civilians, according to Romanian archival sources. The partition came shortly after the signing on 23 August 1939 of the NaziSoviet Pact of Non-Aggression. Through the Pact Hitler claimed to have ‘definitely sealed’ the peace between the German Reich and the Soviet Union by establishing ‘precisely and for all time’ the respective zones of interest of the two Powers. The pact shattered the status quo of East-Central Europe, one which rested on the mutual suspicion felt by both dictators and upon which both Poland and Romania based their respective foreign policies. The actions of Hitler and Stalin conspired to destroy the European order and the principle of the nation-state established at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920. By the same token, the Pact introduced a new order in Eastern Europe, one subject not to international deliberation and ratification but to the interests that the two partners considered they had the right to claim and to impose. By the beginning of October 1939 there were new internment centres at Brașov and Craiova. On 14 October, Marshal Smigly-Rydz was moved to the monastery of Dragoslavele. He eventually escaped, at the third attempt, during the night of 15–16 December 1940 and crossed into Hungary, before making his way back clandestinely to Poland. Within a few months several Polish ministers also managed to leave the country, despite the pressure from the German authorities on the Romanian government to prevent this. Thus President SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 370 Mościcki was able to reach Switzerland in Romanian foreign minister Grigore Gafencu’s official railway carriage, while in December 1940 Marshal SmiglyRydz also escaped. In contrast, Polish foreign minister Colonel Jozef Beck’s attempt to leave failed owing to the persistent opposition of the Germans and he fell prey to a lingering tuberculosis, despite treatment from doctors, in the village of Stănești on 5 June 1944. The two volumes under review describe the experience of the Polish refugees in Romania during the years 1939 to 1947 based on documents in Romanian from the Romanian national archives. The documents are accompanied by translations into Polish. Their publication is a notable achievement, and it is to the credit of both the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) and the Romanian National Archives that this collection has appeared in such impressive typographical form. The more than 1,500 pages of text are followed by high-quality photographs of the principal Polish and Romanian actors in this odyssey, one which is a testimony both to the initiative, enterprise and industry of the Poles in their adopted land, and to the generosity of spirit of the Romanian authorities who navigated the displeasure of the German government, with which they were soon to be formally allied, to provide sanctuary to...