The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union. By Diana Dumitru.New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii+268. $99.00 (cloth); $80.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).

2017 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 922-923
Author(s):  
Dennis Deletant
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust

Diana Dumitru, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xiv + 268 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 256-258
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Red Army

This study by Moldovian historian Diana Dumitru focuses on Jewish-Gentile relations in Bessarabia and Transnistria from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 to the liberation of these areas by the Red Army in 1944. Her book is based on material gleaned from a wide range of sources (archival, secondary, periodicals, oral testimonies) from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, the United States, and Israel, and its six chapters cover three chronological periods: late tsarist Russia, interwar Romania and the U.S.S.R., and the Holocaust years....

Constructing Interethnic Conflict and Cooperation: Why Some People Harmed Jews and Others Helped Them during the Holocaust in Romania

2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Dumitru ◽  
Carter Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Interethnic Conflict ◽  
Interethnic Relationships

The authors draw on a natural experiment to demonstrate that states can reconstruct conflictual interethnic relationships into cooperative relationships in relatively short periods of time. The article examines differences in how the gentile population in each of two neighboring territories in Romania treated its Jewish population during the Holocaust. These territories had been part of tsarist Russia and subject to state-sponsored anti-Semitism until 1917. During the interwar period one territory became part of Romania, which continued anti-Semitic policies, and the other became part of the Soviet Union, which pursued an inclusive nationality policy, fighting against inherited anti-Semitism and working to integrate its Jews. Both territories were then reunited under Romanian administration during World War II, when Romania began to destroy its Jewish population. The authors demonstrate that, despite a uniform Romanian state presence during the Holocaust that encouraged gentiles to victimize Jews, the civilian population in the area that had been part of the Soviet Union was less likely to harm and more likely to aid Jews as compared with the region that had been part of Romania. Their evidence suggests that the state construction of interethnic relationships can become internalized by civilians and outlive the life of the state itself.

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