The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust

The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust

Author: Ion Popa

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780253029560

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"In 1930, about 750,000 Jews called Romania home. At the end of World War II, approximately half of them survived. Only recently, after the fall of Communism, have details of the history of the Holocaust in Romania come to light. Ion Popa explores this history by scrutinizing the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1938 to the present day. Popa unveils and questions whitewashing myths that concealed the Church's role in supporting official antisemitic policies of the Romanian government. He analyzes the Church's relationship with the Jewish community in Romania and Judaism in general, as well as with the state of Israel, and discusses the extent to which the Church recognizes its part in the persecution and destruction of Romanian Jews. Popa's highly original analysis illuminates how the Church responded to accusations regarding its involvement in the Holocaust, the part it played in buttressing the wall of Holocaust denial, and how Holocaust memory has been shaped in Romania today"--back cover.


The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust

The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust

Author: Ion Popa

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0253029899

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“An important book” that delves into the role of religious authorities in Romania during the Holocaust, and the continuing effects today (Antisemitism Studies). In 1930, about 750,000 Jews called Romania home. At the end of World War II, approximately half of them survived. Only recently, after the fall of Communism, are details of the history of the Holocaust in Romania coming to light. Ion Popa explores this history by scrutinizing the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1938 to the present day. Popa unveils and questions whitewashing myths that covered up the role of the church in supporting official antisemitic policies of the Romanian government. He analyzes the church’s relationship with the Jewish community in Romania, with Judaism, and with the state of Israel, as well as the extent to which the church recognizes its part in the persecution and destruction of Romanian Jews. Popa’s highly original analysis illuminates how the church responded to accusations regarding its involvement in the Holocaust, the part it played in buttressing the wall of Holocaust denial, and how Holocaust memory has been shaped in Romania today.


Final Report

Final Report

Author: International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13:

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The International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania was established in October 2003 on the initiative of Ion Iliescu, the President of Romania; this final report was presented to him in November 2004. The aim of the Commission was to research the facts and determine the truth about the Holocaust in Romania during World War II. The report examines various aspects of the state-organized participation of Romania in the mass murder of Jews in Romania and in Romanian-controlled territories, as well as in northern Transylvania where the genocide was perpetrated by the Nazis and their Hungarian allies. Inter alia, it discusses antisemitism and the evolution of Romanian anti-Jewish policies from the late 1930s to 1944, the impact of the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina on antisemitism in Romania, anti-Jewish incidents in 1940 and the pogroms in Bucharest and Iaşi, mass murders of Jews in the recaptured provinces and deportation to Transnistria in 1941, mass murder of Jews in Odessa and in Transnistrian camps, the "Romanianization" of the economy and the expropriation of Romanian Jews, the reaction of the Jewish community in Romania to anti-Jewish policies, and the personal responsibility of Ion Antonescu for the genocide. Relates, also, to war crimes trials held in Romania, and to the trivialization of the Holocaust and its "selective" and outright denial in postwar Romania.


The History of the Holocaust in Romania

The History of the Holocaust in Romania

Author: Jean Ancel

Publisher: Comprehensive History of the H

Published: 2017-05-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780803290617

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Drawing from an exhaustive collection of original Jewish accounts and sources not available until the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in the late 1980s, Jean Ancel provides a detailed analysis of the path of antisemitism that led to the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust in Romania. The Romanians and other nations inside and outside the Balkans related differently to "their Jews" and "other Jews," that is, those living in districts annexed to Romania after the First World War and those in areas occupied and annexed to the Romanian military administration after the Soviet invasion in June 1941. The Jews of the Regat, the core Romanian principality, suffered pogroms, decrees, and degradation, but on the whole they survived the Holocaust. Although more Jews survived in Romania than in any other non-occupied country allied with Germany, contemporary Romanian sources show that the Antonescu regime and Romania itself killed at least 400,000 Jews, including 180,000 Ukranian Jews. Among Nazi Germany's allies, Romania contributed most to the extermination of the Jewish people. Jean Ancel (1940-2008) was a Romanian-born Israeli independent historian and a research associate of Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including The Economic Destruction of Romanian Jewry (Yad Vashem, 2007), Prelude to Mass Murder: The Pogrom in Iisi, Romania, June 28 and Thereafter (Yad Vashem, 2014), and Resisting the Storm: Romania, 1940-1947: Memoirs.


Holy Legionary Youth

Holy Legionary Youth

Author: Roland Clark

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0801456347

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Founded in 1927, Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael was one of Europe’s largest and longest-lived fascist social movements. In Holy Legionary Youth, Roland Clark draws on oral histories, memoirs, and substantial research in the archives of the Romanian secret police to provide the most comprehensive account of the Legion in English to date. Clark approaches Romanian fascism by asking what membership in the Legion meant to young Romanian men and women. Viewing fascism "from below," as a social category that had practical consequences for those who embraced it, he shows how the personal significance of fascism emerged out of Legionaries’ interactions with each other, the state, other political parties, families and friends, and fascist groups abroad. Official repression, fascist spectacle, and the frequency and nature of legionary activities changed a person’s everyday activities and relationships in profound ways. Clark’s sweeping history traces fascist organizing in interwar Romania to nineteenth-century grassroots nationalist movements that demanded political independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It also shows how closely the movement was associated with the Romanian Orthodox Church and how the uniforms, marches, and rituals were inspired by the muscular, martial aesthetic of fascism elsewhere in Europe. Although antisemitism was a key feature of official fascist ideology, state violence against Legionaries rather than the extensive fascist violence against Jews had a far greater impact on how Romanians viewed the movement and their role in it. Approaching fascism in interwar Romania as an everyday practice, Holy Legionary Youth offers a new perspective on European fascism, highlighting how ordinary people "performed" fascism by working together to promote a unique and totalizing social identity.


Bucharest Diary

Bucharest Diary

Author: Alfred H. Moses

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 0815732732

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An insider's account of Romania's emergence from communism control In the 1970s American attorney Alfred H. Moses was approached on the streets of Bucharest by young Jews seeking help to emigrate to Israel. This became the author's mission until the communist regime fell in 1989. Before that Moses had met periodically with Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, to persuade him to allow increased Jewish emigration. This experience deepened Moses's interest in Romania—an interest that culminated in his serving as U.S. ambassador to the country from 1994 to 1997 during the Clinton administration. The ambassador's time of service in Romania came just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. During this period Romania faced economic paralysis and was still buried in the rubble of communism. Over the next three years Moses helped nurture Romania's nascent democratic institutions, promoted privatization of Romania's economy, and shepherded Romania on the path toward full integration with Western institutions. Through frequent press conferences, speeches, and writings in the Romanian and Western press and in his meetings with Romanian officials at the highest level, he stated in plain language the steps Romania needed to take before it could be accepted in the West as a free and democratic country. Bucharest Diary: An American Ambassador's Journey is filled with firsthand stories, including colorful anecdotes, of the diplomacy, both public and private, that helped Romania recover from four decades of communist rule and, eventually, become a member of both NATO and the European Union. Romania still struggles today with the consequences of its history, but it has reached many of its post-communist goals, which Ambassador Moses championed at a crucial time. This book will be of special interest to readers of history and public affairs—in particular those interested in Jewish life under communist rule in Eastern Europe and how the United States and its Western partners helped rebuild an important country devastated by communism.


Denial and Repression of Anti-Semitism

Denial and Repression of Anti-Semitism

Author: Jovan Byford

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2008-06-20

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 615521154X

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Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1881–1956) is arguably one the most controversial figures in contemporary Serbian national culture. Having been vilified by the former Yugoslav Communist authorities as a fascist and an antisemite, this Orthodox Christian thinker has over the past two decades come to be regarded in Serbian society as the most important religious person since medieval times and an embodiment of the authentic Serbian national spirit. Velimirović was formally canonised by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2003. In this book, Jovan Byford charts the posthumous transformation of Velimirović from 'traitor' to 'saint' and examines the dynamics of repression and denial that were used to divert public attention from the controversies surrounding the bishop's life, the most important of which is his antisemitism. Byford offers the first detailed examination of the way in which an Eastern Orthodox Church manages controversy surrounding the presence of antisemitism within its ranks and he considers the implications of the continuing reverence of Nikolaj Velimirović for the persistence of antisemitism in Serbian Orthodox culture and in Serbian society as a whole. This book is based on a detailed examination of the changing representation of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović in the Serbian media and in commemorative discourse devoted to him. The book also makes extensive use of exclusive interviews with a number of Serbian public figures who have been actively involved in the bishop’s rehabilitation over the past two decades.


The Holocaust in Romania

The Holocaust in Romania

Author: Radu Ioanid

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13:

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Radu Ioanid's account of the Holocaust in Romania, based upon privileged access to secret East European government archives, is an unprecedented analysis of heretofore purposely hidden materials.


Tortured for Christ

Tortured for Christ

Author: Richard Wurmbrand

Publisher: Hodder Faith

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780340863688

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This classic story of amazing faith in shocking circumstances has been updated for a new generation. Its message remains urgent and relevant: thousands of Christians are still persecuted and tortured around the world today, suffering solely for their belief in Jesus Christ. Richard Wurmbrand endured months of solitary confinement, years of periodic physical torture, constant suffering from hunger and cold, the anguish of brainwashing and mental cruelty. His captors lied to his wife, saying he was dead. Yet he went on to tell the West the truth about Christianity behind the Iron Curtain. Millions of people have been touched by this story, and thirty years after its first publication it is now updated with a new foreword by Rob Frost, a picture section and details of the final years of Wurmbrand's life.


Romania's Holy War

Romania's Holy War

Author: Grant T. Harward

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1501759973

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Romania's Holy War rights the widespread myth that Romania was a reluctant member of the Axis during World War II. In correcting this fallacy, Grant T. Harward shows that, of an estimated 300,000 Jews who perished in Romania and Romanian-occupied Ukraine, more than 64,000 were, in fact, killed by Romanian soldiers. Moreover, the Romanian Army conducted a brutal campaign in German-occupied Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, and civilians. Investigating why Romanian soldiers fought and committed such atrocities, Harward argues that strong ideology—a cocktail of nationalism, religion, antisemitism, and anticommunism—undergirded their motivation. Romania's Holy War draws on official military records, wartime periodicals, soldiers' diaries and memoirs, subsequent war crimes investigations, and recent interviews with veterans to tell the full story. Harward integrates the Holocaust into the narrative of military operations to show that most soldiers fully supported the wartime dictator, General Ion Antonescu, and his regime's holy war against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The army perpetrated mass reprisals, targeting Jews in liberated Romanian territory; supported the deportation and concentration of Jews in camps or ghettos in Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; and played a key supporting role in SS efforts to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. Harward proves that Romania became Nazi Germany's most important ally in the war against the USSR because its soldiers were highly motivated, thus overturning much of what we thought we knew about this theater of war. Romania's Holy War provides the first complete history of why Romanian soldiers fought on the Eastern Front.