The Forgotten Holocaust : Romania, 1940-1944

Romania had a catastrophic experience during the Second World War: an ally of the Axis in its invasion of the USSR, it then turned against the Nazis and joined the Allies in 1944. Its role in the Holocaust was a complex and terrible one. Dan Stone's remarkable new book tells the full story of Romania in this dark period, a country with a large Jewish population and several other notable minority groups. The survival of almost half of this population has tended to imply (in obvious contrast the Final Solution in German-held territories) that Romania had a milder attitude. But this obscures the extraordinary ferocity, particularly in occupied Transnistria (today's Ukraine), with which Romanian soldiers and civilians behaved. Drawing on a wide range of sources from perpetrators and victims, Stone sheds new light on the Eastern Front during WWII as well as the strange aftermath of the Holocaust in Communist Romania. Enlightening and shocking, The Forgotten Holocaust is an important contribution to the history of this dark period in Europe.