Book aims to shine light on Romanian role in the Holocaust

BUCHAREST, Romania — Maksim Goldenshteyn recounts a story his grandmother once told him about how, as a 4-year-old child, she snuck out of a Jewish ghetto during World War II to retrieve her favorite dolls that had been left behind when her family was forcibly evicted from their home in occupied Soviet Ukraine. “She put on a kerchief and slipped out of the ghetto.” It’s one of the stories that Seattle native Goldenshteyn tells in his book, “ So They Remember,” which recounts — with a blend of intimate family memoir and historical research — the Holocaust in Transnistria, a territory in occupied southern Ukraine that was controlled by Romania, a close ally to Nazi Germany for most of the war. Nearly two-thirds of the 32% who agreed that the Holocaust took place in Romania mistakenly identified the deportation of Jews to “camps controlled by Nazi Germany.” Stefan Cristian Ionescu, a historian and Holocaust expert at Northwestern University, said that most Romanians “think that it’s a responsibility of Nazi Germany.” “I think a lot of Romanians still have a problem accepting that the Antonescu regime and the Romanian authorities … were involved in the Holocaust,” he said. But in January the far-right Alliance for Romanian Unity, which holds seats in parliament, called it a “minor topic” and an “ideological experiment.” David Saranga, Israel’s ambassador to Romania, strongly condemned the party’s comments, saying such statements are “outright proof of either a lack of taking responsibility, or of ignorance.” Goldenshteyn believes that Romanian authorities have made progress in recent years in acknowledging the country’s role in the Holocaust. There is not enough knowledge about what happened during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.” Last month at a Holocaust memorial at the Choral Temple Synagogue in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, President Klaus Iohannis said that the pandemic has “amplified the virulence of antisemitic attacks” and warned against “conspiracy theories and misinformation.” “Let us not close our eyes to these real dangers, which are often cleverly hidden behind a claimed freedom of expression,” Iohannis said.