Radu Ioanid – författare

In 1930, 757,000 Jews lived in Romania; they constituted the third largest Jewish community in Europe. Today not more than 14,000 Jews live in Romania, most of them elderly. The record of the Holocaust in Romania includes many curious chapters of support and betrayal, but they have been largely unavailable until now. Radu Ioanid''s account based upon privileged access to secret East European government archives, is an unprecedented analysis of heretofore purposely hidden materials. Archival records, published and unpublished reports, memoirs of survivors, letters-Mr. Ioanid uses all these elements to build an accurate perspective on Romanian policies of racism, anti-Semitism, and Jewish extermination during the regime of Ion Antonescu. The publication of The Holocaust in Romania is timely as well as important, for there is now in Romania a growing effort to deny the government''s role in the tragedy. Mr. Ioanid sheds light on the reality of the persecutions, the cruelty of the perpetrators, their blatant opportunism and endless cynicism. The story is one of destruction and survival; of German dissatisfaction with Romanian ad hoc violence; of an elusive national policy and the strategies of Romanian authorities that allowed 300,000 Romanian Jews to survive the war. "Invaluable...monumental...no comparable work in any language has documented this important history with the thoroughness, skill, and analytical sophistication this book demonstrates.”-Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With 8 pages of photographs.

In this book, Ioanid explores in great detail the physical destruction of Romania’s Jewish and Roma communities, including the pogroms of Bucharest and Iasi as well as the deportations and the massacres from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. Based on thousands of archival documents and testimonies of survivors, The Holocaust in Romania sheds new light on Romania’s prefascist and fascist antisemitic legislation and its implementation. New chapters consider the forced labor of the Jews, persecution by the Protestant churches, and the decision-making process of the Antonescu government in its treatment of Jews and Roma. With this book, the Romanian Holocaust will no longer be forgotten.

After 1948, the 370,000 Jews of Romania who survived the Holocaust became one of the main sources of immigration for the new state of Israel as almost all left their homeland to settle in Palestine and Israel. Romania's decision to allow its Jews to leave was baldly practical: Israel paid for them, and Romania wanted influence in the Middle East. For its part, Israel was rescuing a community threatened by economic and cultural extinction and at the same time strengthening itself with a massive infusion of new immigrants.Radu Ioanid traces the secret history of the longest and most expensive ransom arrangement in recent times, a hidden exchange that lasted until the fall of the Communist regime. Including a wealth of recently declassified documents from the archives of the Romanian secret police, this updated edition follows Israel’s long and expensive ransom arrangement with Communist Romania. Ioanid uncovers the elaborate mechanisms that made it successful for decades, the shadowy figures responsible, and the secret channels of communication and payment. As suspenseful as a Cold-War thriller, his book tells the full, startling story of an unprecedented slave trade.

After 1948, the 370,000 Jews of Romania who survived the Holocaust became one of the main sources of immigration for the new state of Israel as almost all left their homeland to settle in Palestine and Israel. Romania's decision to allow its Jews to leave was baldly practical: Israel paid for them, and Romania wanted influence in the Middle East. For its part, Israel was rescuing a community threatened by economic and cultural extinction and at the same time strengthening itself with a massive infusion of new immigrants.Radu Ioanid traces the secret history of the longest and most expensive ransom arrangement in recent times, a hidden exchange that lasted until the fall of the Communist regime. Including a wealth of recently declassified documents from the archives of the Romanian secret police, this updated edition follows Israel’s long and expensive ransom arrangement with Communist Romania. Ioanid uncovers the elaborate mechanisms that made it successful for decades, the shadowy figures responsible, and the secret channels of communication and payment. As suspenseful as a Cold-War thriller, his book tells the full, startling story of an unprecedented slave trade.