Ep. 2: Romania and the Holocaust with Grant Harward

Approximately 220,000 Romanian Jews died during the Holocaust, but their story is much less well-known.  In this conversation with Grant Harward, we talk about the history of the Holocaust in Romania.  He leads us through a really informative survey of both the history of Romania and the impact it had on the later unfolding of Romania’s attack on Jews in the region.

We look at the history of antisemitism and the rise of fascism there as well as the ways in which Romanian authorities Jews under their control.  The discussion also turns to comparisons between the Nazi and Romanian approaches to anti-Jewish policy.  

Grant Harward is an historian at the US Army Medical Center of History and Heritage.  He can be found on Twitter @GHarward.

His new book is Romania's Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust 

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.677)
Hello everybody. Uh, welcome to the Holocaust history podcast. I'm your host, Waidman Bourne. And today's topic is the Holocaust in Romania, which is an area of the subject that I think a lot of us, um, probably don't know a lot about, um, and hasn't received the same level of attention. Perhaps as other areas, but we have a great guest, um, Dr. Grant Harward, who was just written a book about, uh, it was partially about this topic, um, and so welcome to the podcast, Grant. Um.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this topic, what you do, what you're doing right now, that kind of thing.

Grant Harward (00:32.194)
Yeah, sure. So right now I'm currently a historian for the US Army Center of Military History, which means I need to start with a disclaimer that these views are my own and do not represent that of the US Army, Department of Defense, or US government. With that out of the way, yeah, I've kind of always been interested in history, and especially in the Second World War growing up.

And my grandfather was on an aircraft carrier in the 1930s, actually. He didn't actually fight in the war, but the war was kind of present in his experiences. And, you know, he kind of had those experiences with this ship, the USS Lexington. And he would also show me, you know, books and stuff about the Battle of Coral Sea in which it was sunk, even though it wasn't on it. And so I...

always interested in that aspect and World War II. The Holocaust came more late in Eastern Europe as well. Once I turned 19, I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I was called and assigned to Romania for my mission for two years. That was the first time that Eastern Europe really

popped up into my world view and kind of went there and learned the language. And when I came back, I was like, okay, this is kind of a no-brainer. I want to study the Second World War. I've learned this new language. Let me look into this. And I realized that very little had been written about Romania, in Romanian or in English, really. I mean, the historiography is pretty slim, even in Romanian, because you have all these decades of communism.

where things were Marxist-Leninist interpretation and censorship and all sorts of things like that. So, and getting into doing military history of the Eastern Front, very quickly I realized that the Holocaust was gonna play a big part in my research. And so kind of just to be able to do any kind of

Grant Harward (02:52.138)
of research into the Romanian army on the Eastern Front required also becoming very up to date with Holocaust research and literature. And that's really how I kind of came into this and did a fellowship at the Auschwitz Jewish Center, like went to Poland for three weeks. And

I've done other things like that. I got a fellowship at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. So I really, you know, because I had to kind of understand where the Holocaust literature was and to kind of situate what I was talking about with the Romanian Army and its involvement in the Holocaust.

Waitman (03:30.057)
Yeah, I just have to say, isn't Romanian a really tough language? I've heard it said that it's a really, really tough language.

Grant Harward (03:41.39)
I think it's the most difficult of your kind of Latin-based languages. It's still a Latin alphabet. I mean, that was, it wasn't a Cyrillic actually back until like the 1850s, so they cited Latinize the language a lot as kind of part of this nationalist nation-building project. So at least you don't have to learn Cyrillic.

Waitman (03:48.902)
Right.

Grant Harward (04:07.766)
The grammar can be a bit more difficult than some of the Spanish or Italian even because they've got some, they've got genitive and dative. I think it's, I don't know if it's that much harder. I think it's so much more obscure that it's harder to pick up just because there's a lot less opportunities and good programs and things like that to be able to pick it up. Or Spanish or Portuguese or Italian. I mean, those are languages that, you know, there's...

entire program, you know, you can go to school, you know, Elms into college and you're going to have you know some kind of you know French program, you know, and you're going to have a lot of French reading materials and I think that maybe is more of the issue than of it being like a head and shoulder above other Latin languages to learn.

Waitman (04:58.157)
Right. Okay. Yeah. Because it's one of those things I've always heard that, you know, oh my gosh, it's crazy. But you had a Fulbright. Was your Fulbright to Romania as well? Did you mention?

Grant Harward (05:10.126)
Yeah, I did. I took a Fulbright and I was able to ping one because I needed to get to the military archives, which I had peteched. And unlike the civilian archives where everything was kind of easy to access, in the military archives they are very 1970s. So they don't allow in laptops or cameras.

Waitman (05:17.319)
Right.

Waitman (05:32.497)
Mm-hmm.

Grant Harward (05:37.598)
everything has to be handwritten notes. They also recently had kind of some NATO, to make NATO kind of regulations, they reclassified tons of documents, even from 80 years ago. So, I could look at documents that had already been kind of reviewed and declassified, but if I wanted to look through other ones, I had to put in a request. So when I got there,

Waitman (05:40.264)
if

Waitman (05:53.19)
Oh wow.

Grant Harward (06:05.834)
at the beginning of this year, I was like, all right, put in requests for dozens and dozens of files, scores, 100, scores of files I wanted to see and waited like six months for those to get, maybe like five months for those to go through the process. And then while those were going through, anything that was already available, I went through and was able to look at those already. So,

It was, it was, and it's like, it was open four days a week, from eight to, eight in the morning to two in the afternoon. Which is, which again is worse than like the civilian, main civilian archives in Bucharest were open like five days, five or six days a week, you know, from like eight to five or something, right? The military archives were a special, a special place to go research and, you know, kind of.

behoove that having the Fulbright be there for a year. So I'd take all these notes, my hand would get cramped up, writing all these notes as much as I could. And then when I get home in the early afternoon when they were shut down for the public, then I would just type everything up so that I could have a searchable document to be able to use more effectively.

Waitman (07:29.869)
I'm having flashbacks to the Belarusian state archives in Minsk where they only would pull like 10 documents a day for you total. But if you're a foreigner, you could pay extra money and they'd pull like 10 more or something, but it was just like, yeah, it was a very sort of Kafkaesque process of getting access to the things. And the finding aids were, we'll say less than ideal. I mean, they were, they're basically like, you know,

Grant Harward (07:46.723)
We'll see.

Waitman (07:59.665)
German documents one, German documents two, and you would have no idea what you got. And one, I remember one of the folders I got one day was, literally it was like the only sort of coherent thematic descriptor to it would have been stuff we took off of dead Germans, because it was like library cards and driver's licenses and like some of them were bloodstained. It was literally stuff that like,

like personal documents they had pulled off and like paste it into this big notebook. So I feel some of your pain there. And I only had to work there for two weeks. So it wasn't a full year doing it. So yeah, I feel you. I feel your pain.

Grant Harward (08:45.378)
You know, the people who worked there, the archivists were very accommodating. There technically was like a five file pool in a day, but I was often the only person in there. And so the archivists actually would give me more stuff than I was supposed to look at in a day. You know, because sometimes it'd be like, oh, these five files are like...

Waitman (09:04.995)
Oh, nice.

Grant Harward (09:11.57)
have five pages or ten pages, or sometimes you come in, it's like 300 pages of stuff in the file, you know? So if I'm going to come in one day and there's just like three stuff, but I know that the archivist that was helping me would sometimes get the other archivist who had to pull the stuff angry at him because I would look through, or like, oh, this is something I've already looked at, because I was looking for certain things, like, oh, this file is just basically like the same orders that I've come across before, just for like a different unit.

Waitman (09:20.989)
Yeah.

Waitman (09:37.657)
Right. Yeah.

Grant Harward (09:39.81)
I'm just, you know, I'm kind of, I'm done with this, you know, and so like.

Waitman (09:42.781)
Can it not count against my limit or whatever?

Grant Harward (09:46.482)
And so, yeah, some days, especially when there's other people in there, the archivist is like, sorry, I can't bring you anything more because the guys in the back are like, what? We just pulled all this stuff for you. We got piles of things.

Waitman (09:56.685)
Yeah. So, so those of you that are listening, if you're doing research, the main takeaway here is always be nice to the archivists because they are super, super important in everything that we do. And, um, if you're nice to them, they can be nice to you. And that makes a big difference in your, in your research. Um, so, uh, speaking of your research, so Grant, tell us, let's, let's go back. Um, and we'll start some, a very basic.

Grant Harward (10:18.286)
Sure.

Waitman (10:25.649)
position of, um, Romania, right? Um, because Romania finds itself in this interesting position as you, as you show, um, in the, you know, 1930s before World War II starts, but can you give us maybe, you know, a brief overview of sort of Romania from say World War I.

to the interwar period up into the beginning of World War II. Tell us what is important for us to understand if we're trying to think about the Holocaust in the context of that history, if that makes sense.

Grant Harward (11:06.366)
I think a few important things to know about Romania is first that it's in a post-colonial space. It has only recently become an independent nation from the Ottoman Empire. It had been two small principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, that over time they unify, take some time to get involved in some wars and eventually get independence.

Then you have World War I, which then shatters the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that's on either of Romania's borders and allows Romania to then basically double in size. And so it grabs Bessarabia from Russia, and then Northern Bukovina and Transylvania.

from Austro-Hungary. It's also important to point out that Romania, this border on the eastern border, is kind of on the edge of the Pale Settlement in Russia. And so as Romania expands, it's going to bring in lots of Russian-speaking Jews and Yiddish-speaking Jews in Bessarabia, and even already would have had a few in Moldavia.

But you're going to see in Moldavia and Wallachia, the Jewish population is even smaller, but it's actually very integrated in Wallachia. Then when you annex Transylvania, you're bringing in lots of minorities like Hungarians, but you're also bringing in lots more Jews as well. All these are usually more kind of Hungarianized. Or once again, Yiddish speaking, depending on kind of the, whether they're urban or rural.

But you're going to see that Romania has, so it's doubling in size. It goes from being something like 90% Romanian Orthodox to then having 30% minorities. You're going to have ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, Bulgarians, sorry, Hungarians, Bulgarians, some ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and then of course, Jews. Part of the kind of settlement of the First World War is that you have minority

Grant Harward (13:32.114)
that's kind of enforced on Romania, that has to respect the rights of all these new minorities in its country. And this leads to an immediate backlash, especially against Jews. I mean, the Romanians are upset about having to deal with Hungarians or Bulgarians or whatever, but having Jews be given citizenship...

Having equal rights is a huge affront to a lot of Romanian nationalists. You have always right-wing leagues pop up, League of National Christian Defense. You have riots in universities already by 1922. They call it the Generation of 1922. It's this kind of upswing. So you already have, there's going to be some pogroms in like 1927.

Grant Harward (14:29.246)
So, very driven by students. And you also can, out of this milieu, you're going to have a fascist party, the Legionary Movement, that gets organized in the late 1920s out of one of these student groups that grows into the Legion of the Archangel Michael, also known as the Iron Guard. Although the Iron Guard is actually like a part of, it's like the paramilitary wing of the Legionary Movement, but it kind of, the name sticks. And you people use it for the whole...

the whole movement oftentimes. And so then you also have kind of an erosion of democracy, which was never very strong in Romania. It was, you know, the elites had a lot more power, but over time you have a kind of more authoritarian king come and get involved. King Carol II, and he becomes in conflict with the fascists. So it's a very kind of...

chaotic time for a country that feels like it won the war, but it's kind of the interwar piece is creating lots of tensions and the rise of Nazi Germany is just going to exacerbate a lot of these problems.

Waitman (15:43.149)
Yeah, and one of the things that struck me is kind of interesting is that it seems like there's sort of the, what we might call the old fashioned autocracy of like nobles and people sort of concerned with status in that sort of way. And then there's the fascists who are a different kind of sort of right wing. And as you know, they don't necessarily always get along. Is that right?

Grant Harward (16:10.89)
Yeah, so I mean, the old conservative party falls apart, which was the old land hold, the great land holders, the great boyer, kind of the decidedly these big families because all of a sudden everyone has a vote now, right? Democracy. But that then means that you have all these right wing groups bubbling up. And so you still have the liberals now are kind of the establishment, which were these smaller boyers in the past, but kind of grew into this.

These are your middle class professionals, they're smaller landholders. But they've now become the establishment. And these right-wing groups and these fascists are gunning for them because they want to kind of... It has this idea of social revolution. The interesting thing, the anti-Semitic parties are less social because they think basically if you get rid of Jews, you solve all social problems.

The fascists are the ones that are going to be more radical in ideas of a national revolution and more egalitarian. Kind of meritocracy within the people, within the... Nyam is kind of the term that you could see. You could use the kind of nyam, kind of translate as nation. It could be maybe folk. It's kind of close.

But it can have this kind of racial undertones. But yeah, there's a lot of conflict between these different right-wing groups, whether you're monarchist or even if you're just like a liberal because there are some liberals that want to stay in power and are willing to use some pretty authoritarian measures to suppress the legionary movement and you're gonna have assassinations by the government.

Eventually, the leader of the Iron Guard gets assassinated by a government after the king declares a dictatorship in 1938. But it's kind of like this liberal, it's a one-party state, but it's kind of based off of creating out of the old liberal party this one-party pro-monarch state, and they're using it to hammer the...

Grant Harward (18:34.051)
the far-right fascists who threaten the king.

Waitman (18:38.081)
And are the Nazis in the, we'll say the from 33, once they take power in Germany, is there any sort of communication with Romanian fascists? Are they, are they looking to Nazi Germany, I guess, or to fascist Italy as an example, or is this something that they're sort of doing on their own and inventing in their own national way?

Grant Harward (19:05.78)
So, I mean, the rise of, like, our right-wing populism is very much native-born, but they are looking at the rise of, you know, fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany very quickly. You know, they're looking to them as models, praising them. I mean, even like, but that's not even just the fascists. I mean, you know.

religious publications in Romania, in the Romanian Orthodox Church, or liberals, or there's a liberal faction that gets enamored of, you know, the fascists and the Nazis. But you do have, like, there is some German money coming in. I mean, there's a lot of accusations at the time, but these are mainly homegrown movements. And the legionaries are getting money from Romanians. I mean, there's some Rosenberg, Alfred Rosenberg, you know, the kind of famous or infamous Nazi

helps come in and puts together a anti-Semitic alliance of two parties. The League of National Christian Defense joins with another party and becomes the National Christian Party, which is kind of an alternative to the actual hardcore fascists. So there is some German meddling and you have fascists in Romania looking, but they're also very looking at Nazism. They have people volunteering to go fight.

in Spain for Franco, right? We always think about the international brigades going to fight for the Republicans. We actually have, you know, fascists or pro- or right-wingers going around, also going to go fight for Franco. So there is, they are looking at and kind of copying, but also doing their own thing. I mean, I think overall, the impetus is its own Romanian origins. And, you know, and you're going to see Romanian fascism has

a lot of heavy dose of Romanian orthodoxy. It's very religious, which is very different from the more anti-clerical or even anti-Christian fascism and Nazism, respectfully.

Waitman (21:10.865)
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely one of the things I noticed in the in your book as well is sort of the role of religion. What we'll probably talk about when we think about sort of what is what are Romania's, I guess, goals. So what in the interwar period, right? What is what is Romania trying to accomplish? And I guess how does it end up aligning with Nazi Germany?

Grant Harward (21:36.558)
Well, I think initially Romania, it wants to... It's... The whole thing is that it's created Greater Romania, România Mare in Romanian. And so in some ways they've obtained, although there's still nationalists that want more. They want more of what would be Hungary all the way to the Tisza River. There's some even that want more in the Soviet Union. You know, there's actually more ethnic Romanians left.

outside of Romania's border in the Soviet Union than anywhere else after Romania doubles in size.

Waitman (22:10.073)
Is this still, is this, sorry, is this, is this still the old kingdom? Like, cause I think that's a, and it will become an important distinction later on. Like what is the old kingdom? And then what is the, I guess, what are they looking for? Is that, is that what you're talking about now? Like the old kingdom is what they had before the war. And then greater Romania is what they're sort of trying to create.

Grant Harward (22:28.906)
Well, they basically created it because they've got the old kingdom of Wallachia and Moldavia and then because of just how the empires fell apart, they doubled in size. So they get almost everything that only the most kind of ultra-nationalists are still like, we need more. But there are some who want more. But the Romanian has gotten so much land and so many of pretty much almost all Romanians you could think of.

Waitman (22:30.738)
Okay.

Grant Harward (22:56.186)
other than there's like I said, there's a few like in the USSR. But the problem is that comes with minorities. So you kind of turn inward. It's less about creating Romania, Greater Romania by conquest or expansion. It's now about creating Greater Romania by creating a Romanian middle class by displacing

Jews, ethnic Germans, Hungarian, from like the middle class in Transylvania, of kind of setting up Romanian institutions and Romanianizing schools and education in Bessarabia and all these areas. And the kind of the unifying factor here is that there's Jews in all like our in for Manians are in too many places of where you need, right? We want a Greater Romania that has a

proper Romanian middle class that controls the Romanian economy. Right now we see it's in the hands of foreigners, especially Jews. Although in reality, lots of those foreigners are actually ethnic Germans. And really they aren't foreigners anymore because they're all citizens of Romania. But in the Romanian nationalist view, you can't trust that, you can't leave that. So there's kind of, in the interwar period, it's this effort of, we have Greater Romania, now how do we really make it pure? Right? Or

work for the Romanians. And that's even like kind of liberal, you know, there's extra taxes on merchants and stuff, which they know are gonna hurt like Jews, and then tax breaks or like writing off of debts for peasants, which are mostly Romanian, but this is also gonna help, you know, Ukrainian peasants. But there's these policies that are kind of meant to privilege Romanians, even in a state that's technically supposed to be more liberal, democratic.

have equal rights. And so the interwar period is this kind of period where also then you have all this land, you seem to have created Greater Romania, but they're still crushing poverty in a lot of the country. Romanians are still out of work, and I'm saying of all nationalities, but for Marines especially, they're saying, okay, we got this, we sacrificed a lot in the First World War, but...

Grant Harward (25:16.802)
we still have problems. So who's to blame? Is it the politicians? And a lot of the politics will wanna push, no, it's not us, it's Jews, or it's Judaized corrupted politicians. It's the politicians in league with the Jews, right? And then we also have this threats of, we got the USSR rebuilding itself after a civil war. And so there's also this worry about we need to be able to defend.

Also from Hungary and Bulgaria, they've also snatched territory from. So it's very inward-looking but also outward-facing time where you're afraid of external threats. There's all these problems. Your depression hits you. What did you sacrifice for? There's a lot of angst and anxiety and anger over time, especially after the 19...

Grant Harward (26:13.654)
rise of Naziism, as the remaining see the League of Nations fall apart, they start moving more into the orbit of Nazi Germany because they see that as a better bet than collective defense or collective security through the League of Nations.

Waitman (26:33.541)
And I'm guessing that they're obviously not going to side with the Soviets because of their religious background and everything else and the conservative aristocratic and fascist backing. I guess the communist movement in Romania is not a very powerful thing.

Grant Harward (26:51.51)
No, it's very small, it's a few thousands in the 1920s. It's eventually outlawed. It's not very popular in part because the communists are pro self-determinations. They actually are against greater Romania, so you're gonna alienate lots of people. And once it's suppressed legally, then it becomes, you know, you have to be basically like someone who's willing to live, you know, kind of in an underground resistance type life.

And you have very few, I mean Romania, its economy is, I don't wanna say backwards, but it's not industrialized. And so you have, you know, you have very few workers, very few factories, so you're not gonna have those people who are gonna be more sympathetic to the communist ideology. So you have lots of peasants and.

Waitman (27:26.918)
Right.

Grant Harward (27:41.686)
You have the famine next door and you literally have Ukrainian famine. You have waves in the 1920s from the Civil War and then from the collectivization famine and they come, these people escaping across the border. This is very immediate. They recognize that, they might not understand Marxist-Leninism, but they understand that communism means collectivization, starvation, cannibalism.

I mean, so not even just having... You don't even have to be like someone with property, like a middle-class professional, or an old, elite landowner. You can be a peasant with a small farm and still be afraid of communism because of what you hear about what it's doing to Ukrainians.

Waitman (28:34.257)
So then how do, and this gets, I guess, into a little bit now into the beginning of the war and the alliance with Nazi Germany, that this must kind of throw the Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union, the non-aggression pact, must sort of throw Romania for a bit of a loop and doesn't, ultimately doesn't Nazi Germany give away some of Romania's land to the Soviets?

Grant Harward (29:01.83)
Yeah, I mean, so yeah, so the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, you know, one of the secret protocols, specifically mentions Bessarabia giving it back. And then the Soviets, after the fall of France, they move in, they give an ultimatum, and Romania is forced because Germany says, we're not going to help you. And Romanians can be very angry about this, even today and then at the time, but at the same time, there's an attitude of kind of, ugh.

We didn't buddy up with Germany enough. We chose the wrong side. So of course we can't expect Germany to kind of help us out. And so, but the anger publicly is at the Soviets. It's at Jews because they blame the Jews, local Jews for kind of welcoming in and radicalizing and attacking the retreating Romanians. It's at the government, especially Carol, because of...

Grant Harward (30:01.342)
He's been a dictator for several years. So there is, and then Romania is forced to give land back to Bulgaria and to Hungary, and especially the Northern Transylvania to Hungary is kind of enforced by a German-Italian settlement team. And that is a blow, but most Romanians...

it when it comes down to it's not even kind of lesser of two evils but I mean that's part of it even for like most You know anti-nazi Romania, which was not really that many is you know The Nazis are lesser of two evils in their view but I think for a lot of Romanians it's seen as temporary that you know, we can kind of if If we do by if we do right by the Germans in the future We'll be able to get back northern Transylvania and eventually defeat, you know Communism well and get back Bessarabia

Waitman (30:55.633)
This is one of the areas that I think is really important. And it comes across, I think, particularly strongly in your book as well, which is this. I thought it was very interesting just as a reader, this moment where the Soviets are kind of flooding into, I guess it's Bessarabia, right, in Bukovina. And the Romanians are also trying to excrete themselves at the same time.

Grant Harward (30:55.963)
Another Bookabina.

Waitman (31:25.381)
And they've had an agreement that, so they're not really supposed to be fighting each other, but at the same time you have these competing interests where the Romanians are trying to get, it sounds like trying to get as much of their people and material out as possible. The Soviets are trying to sort of counter that and you almost have the Soviets racing the Romanians as they're retreating. But I think one of the really important,

elements of this that I'd love to hear a little more about, and I think our listeners would too, is the effect this has later, like a year, two years later, during the invasion of the Union with regards to atrocities against Jews, because this is a particularly, it's seen as a particularly humiliating moment for the Romanian army, for the Romanian military, and then, you know, the sort of Jews get blamed for this.

Is that a, have I somewhat summarized that properly?

Grant Harward (32:29.494)
Yeah, I mean there's this idea that the Romanian peasants in Bessarabia and Romania can kind of mournfully watch the Romanians go, the Ukrainians and Bulgarians are kind of on the fence, but it's the Jews that whip up those groups to attack and lead bands against the Romanians and try to direct the Soviets.

And so immediately they begin saying that the Jews are helping the Soviets during this withdrawal. And so you have this idea of wounded honor. You know, there were soldiers who thought they were going to fight. And the government had been saying, because they were trying to use deterrence, right, kind of broadcasting. And you had the king visiting each of the major frontiers in 1939, promising, we'll fight for every furrow of remaining soil. And then they just give it up.

without a fight, which is actually, you know, something with solid shot fire, with actually there's these minor skirmishes, because some units don't get the order, you know, the Soviets are going too far, Brahmins are then also shooting, they start shooting, executing Jews primarily, I mean also probably a few like Ukrainians, but primarily they start attacking Jews during the retreat, blaming them for all sorts of things.

And so there's this pent up anger and these same armies, Romanian third army and fourth army, are going to be the ones that come back as part of Operation Barbarossa. And so I think there is a sense of immediate revenge for these events in 1940 that is going to be dealt out in 1941 because of this connection in Romania's remains between Jews and communism.

that there is a thing called Judeo-Bolshevism or Jewish communism that Jews are somehow responsible for or even kind of the stream-pullers for the Soviet regime and Soviet Union and are responsible for Soviet crimes. So that they are linked as an enemy and not just like a national enemy but kind of an enemy to all.

Grant Harward (34:46.122)
you know, a European Christian civilization. So you're not fighting just for Romania, which is important. You're also fighting for this wider ideal of, you know, Christianity and European civilization, which is going to help explain a lot of what happens in the year before. But I think it might be... Yeah, go ahead.

Waitman (35:06.801)
And, and, you know, I was going to say that, that seems to me, you know, because obviously when I'm, when I'm thinking about this and reading through what you've written, I'm comparing it to Nazi Germany. And it does seem like this is, this is a fundamentally, there's a fundamental difference in, in some of the ways in which, um, the Romanians are couching their, what you call their holy war.

versus the Nazis, because I feel like the Nazis will sometimes pay lip service to these things like sort of the West and Christian civilization. But it sounds like, at least the way you're arguing it, that Romanians really believe this in a way, in a more of a crusading kind of way perhaps than the Nazis did. Is that a fair assessment, do you think?

Grant Harward (35:59.638)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, I mean, David Harris films written more about like the German army and I think a lot of this will get down to like the ranks and the actual. But I think that's the point is that you don't need to be a Nazi to kind of get on board with some of this right wing authoritarian.

ideology. I mean, I think there's, we kind of have a skewed view of World War II because we have Nazism and communism. It all becomes very, our ideology, that is not ideology unless you're at that level of kind of the extremes of, you know, racial Nazism or class-based communism. But it's like, you can still have very powerful ideological motivations, you know, nationalism, religion.

Waitman (36:46.609)
Yeah, I mean, certainly the German army has this... There is a very sort of generalized, I think, abstract view of civilization, right? Because they encountered the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and they inherently view it as inferior because they see the poverty and they see the lack of technology comparing it to their world. And then they assign this a racial explanation.

Grant Harward (37:15.83)
Hmm.

Waitman (37:16.293)
These people are incapable of this because they're a lesser form. But the religious piece, I think, is much more subdued.

Grant Harward (37:27.358)
Yeah, I think that's a big difference. The religious aspect is stronger in Romania. They also have, it's more in common with Ukrainians and going to USSR because a lot of them were Eastern Orthodox. And the race, the racial issue, the racial science, even though it's the kind of...

that kind of attitude of the scientific racism has not permeated down into the ranks. You can find some of that among some of the officers in the Romanian army and leadership in the Antinesco regime who are kind of making policy. But when you get down to like your common peasant soldier, they're not really thinking along lines of race and racial enemies. So that religious element is a lot stronger. I think that's one of the interesting things about Romania.

is that it's a good foil to Germany, because it's never taken over by Germany. But you can compare and contrast, OK, what things are the same or what things are different, but why are some of the outcomes very similar? So I think that's a very interesting aspect of looking into Romania, which is kind of

I was doing my research, kind of preparation. I had to learn all the other stuff about, kind of the main story we know about Germany. And then I get to go and look at Romania and kind of say, okay, what can we learn by looking at this smaller country, but using it as a foil to compare and contrast with the Germans and see how we get some very similar outcomes, but then in the end, kind of very different finals outcomes.

Waitman (39:09.957)
And this is a place where, as we sort of, I think we probably should move into the actual, the actual war. Um, but this is also a place where we'll talk about this, I think, but, um, I think some of the historiography is somewhat skewed by the Nazis themselves. Um, because often you hear, I think from German voices, how awful the Romanians are even regarding sort of anti-Jewish violence, you know, even, even comparing themselves to the Nazis. The Nazis are saying, gosh, you know,

their minions are really out of control, which, you know, maybe that's, and we'll talk about that, maybe that's partially true, but it also seems like is in some ways kind of an anti-Slavic kind of racist, Nazi racist views as well about these people are sort of hot blooded, you know, uncivilized people. Um, even when they're doing things that the Nazis sort of agree with in principle. Um, which I think is an interesting.

It's something that comes up quite frequently where the Nazis are sort of comparing themselves and their murder of Jews favorably to Romanians in some way, shape or form.

Grant Harward (40:19.83)
Yeah, I think that's a pretty common trope that's out there. Usually when you bring the Romanians in kind of a usual narrative, there's a couple quotes that they all, yeah, like, oh, these guys are the worst. And I think we're kind of buying into German racial stereotypes and self-serving arguments. I mean, the Romanians were...

terrible towards Jews, but I don't think what they were doing wasn't that much different at the time. And I think it's mostly the Germans trying to kind of give a veneer of like, we have our racial science guiding our terrible mass atrocities. The Romans are killing whoever.

Waitman (41:03.357)
Great.

Waitman (41:07.661)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is the sort of, you know, the gas chambers are some kind of, you know, humane way of putting people down, sort of Nazi version of genocide, versus sort of

Grant Harward (41:20.514)
But even if we're talking about the Holocaust by bullets, I mean, even in that period, the Romanians, sure, they don't have some of these criteria, but overall, they start shooting the Indian children a little bit sooner than, but overall, they're targeting Jewish men of military age. And they aren't that scripted. Who are they targeting? Yeah, they'll shoot some communist functionaries who aren't Jewish now and then.

They'll kill the commissars, but they're also focusing on Jewish men of military age, and then they eventually extend that to just all Jews pretty quickly. But I mean, it's functionally, the remains too, they're kind of shooting men, they kind of get used to it, they start shooting women and children more. It's like functionally, they're basically shooting same people, kind of, they may be a little faster for a little bit, and the Germans overtake them. It's like, I think that the quotes are kind of...

buying into this stereotyping of the Romanians of just as bloodthirsty Balkan, hot blooded Latins more than anything.

Waitman (42:29.557)
Right. Yeah. So you mentioned a little about the Holocaust by bullets. So Romania ends up aligning with Nazi Germany and then participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union. And so do you want to talk us through sort of, I guess, the beginning or the different phases of the Holocaust in terms of Romania's participation in it?

Grant Harward (42:53.418)
Yeah, okay, I think it'd be good, just so kind of do a quicker view, go back in time a little bit. It kind of really gets started in 1937, I think it's good in time, because that's when there's a major election, which don't want you to do any details, but like the Liberal Party loses, the fascist and the popular fascist parties, and the national peasants who are kind of these like, they're

other than the wings, the king brings in instead the National Christian Party, which has got less votes than them, but they're this like hard, right, anti-Semitic party. Like they're saying they're a whole platform as we hate Jews. This is the one that Alfred Rosenberg had some influence with. They start implementing a bunch of anti-Semitic laws. That government doesn't last very long. In

Grant Harward (43:51.438)
It keeps all those anti-Semitic laws on the books. And this, you're given, you know, and like several hundred thousand Jews lose their citizenship. And, you know, you start creating kind of these segregated cultural organizations, not just for Jews, but also for other minorities. And then you have, we discussed in the 1940s, you have the Soviet occupation. And this kind of ratchets it.

This is kind of, this time you're still kind of a break. You still have King Carol and his government. There's the worry that the Soviets will come in. So at this point, even when you have some massacres, the state and general staff and the army halts it because they don't want the pogroms to spread and kind of destabilize law and order, which then gives the Soviets an excuse to

Grant Harward (44:47.286)
He's kind of forced into exile. Jan Antonescu takes over. And so really the next section, the next radicalization is from 1941 to 1942, which is basically Romania's big part is in the Holocaust by bullets as they go into the Soviet Union. Romania is kind of planning this on its own. There is some discussions, Antonescu and Hitler meet each other before a few times before the invasion.

They discuss off the record, but we kind of know from context, they discuss kind of pushing the Jews eastward beyond the Urals. And so the Reign Army, you know, takes a big part as it goes into reconquers, best Reign of the Kovina. You know, they're executing Jews. And without real orders to do so, this is kind of this vengeance. It's kind of ad hoc by the army and kind of different commanders push it.

There are orders for gendarmes, kind of military police in the rear who are following the front to then shoot more Jews and deport the survivors eastwards. And so they have explicit orders. The army actually doesn't really have explicit orders to shoot Jews. It just finds lots of reasons and excuses, excuse the reason being frontiers, you know, kind of guerrillas. They eventually use the term partisan.

this term frontier. And so as they go further eastwards, the Romanians obtain rights to certain Ukrainian territory called Transnistria. It's bigger than the Republic, the breakaway Republic of today. It's all the way from the Nistr river to the Bulg River. It's going to include Odessa once that city falls.

that turns into a dumping ground for Jews. Because one of the reasons why the Germans agree to this is because the Reims are pushing the Jews into Ukraine into the rear areas of the German army, which they don't want. They're pushing it back and forth or shooting some of them. Jews are dying from exhaustion, being pushed back and forth across the Dniester River. And so, giving the Reims Transnistria is something they want, but also gives...

Grant Harward (47:07.33)
the Germans then say, hey, you can only put your Jews this far. You have to wait until Moscow falls before you can push them all the way to the Urals. And so, and then you can kind of come back and just then there's some massacres that go on in there in the winter of 42. But at that time, we can kind of get into that if you want. But these massacres kind of wrap up with in the spring of 42.

And the last part of the Holocaust in Romania is from 1942 to 1944, where mass killing slows down a lot. It's more about Jews in Transnistria having to try to survive, dying from overwork. They are executed sometimes, or given to Germans in Ukraine, who then shoot them there. There are some Jews, some hundreds, deported from...

Romania. There's also Roma, Gypsies, thousands of them, 25,000 deported to Transnistria. And so there's this different dynamic of, but in part because the Germans have control over the rest of Ukraine. So the Romanians actually still participating in Holocaust by bullets in southern Ukraine and Crimea, but to a lesser extent because the SS is actually saying this is our job. We want to do it. We don't trust you to do it.

But that's kind of like the phases there of like 38 and 37 to 41, where you have laws getting put in place, you have tensions building up, you have the occupation in 1940. And then 41 to 42, you have these large collaboration of the Holocaust by bullets. And 42 to 44 is this kind of different aspect of, you know, where they don't go to the final solution like Germany does.

in Transnistria.

Waitman (49:07.278)
Yeah, so one of the moments, and I guess in that sort of middle phase, is the Yashi Orgram, right? Which I think of all of the Romanian-led anti-Jewish violence probably is the most well-known. Can you talk a little about that and sort of how that came about and sort of characterize that particular moment?

Because it also takes place in the same moment where there's one that happens in L'Evolve at roughly the same time, you know, different but similar in terms of participation of Germans and non-Germans, that kind of stuff.

Grant Harward (49:48.29)
The interesting thing about the Jasper gram is that, one of the reasons it's so infamous is because it's still in Romania today. So it's one of the few kind of mass, anti-Semitic, episodes of anti-Semitic violence in Romania. Whereas most of the rest is now in Moldova or Ukraine. And so even at the time, it's a little unusual because

Waitman (49:57.315)
Okay.

Grant Harward (50:17.618)
the panegescu kind of wants to keep the home front stable. He wants to have the economy working. So the Yash program, Yash is in Moldavia, it's in the Old Kingdom, where most Jews don't get killed. They get kind of persecuted, but right at the outset of the invasion, Yash is very close to the border. You can drive an hour or less.

you're at the border and ends getting bombed. And there was all these accusations of Jews directing the Soviet pilots with like red lanterns or red drapery. And the city is kind of a, maybe a third Jewish. It's a large Jewish population. And it's kind of, and it's been swallowed a bit because they've pushed Jews out of villages and pushed them into the cities.

as part of kind of anti-Semitic policies before this. And so, and then there's this idea of like, let's deport. They started deporting some Jews to concentration camps down along the Danube River, down in Wallachia, kind of getting away from the front, right? Because we don't trust these people. And so you have a breakdown of authority in Romania where you have...

the army, the German army, the local police, the Romanian intelligence. It's kind of like everybody's there, but nobody's in charge. And you have a breakdown where soldiers start shooting Jews, accusing them of having shot at them and people, the actual citizens of the city join in. And so you have German soldiers, Romanian soldiers shooting, arresting Jewish men, machine, there's a couple of notorious machine guns.

And it kind of basically lose control for a little bit. The main army actually has to like use this, says everyone go back inside and send you if anyone's caught on, you know, there's their curfew, we're going to shoot people, we find them with weapons. So, you know, students can't continue for a few days because they're accusing, hey, this student shot at us from this building, we'll pull them out, we'll shoot them.

Grant Harward (52:40.262)
Antinestkut actually gets upset about this because he sees it as a breakdown in order, which it was. He wants order in Romania, but on the other side, when you're actually in the front, in places that they're reconquering, it's going to be very, very different. Where he's totally okay with Juni being killed, but these are reprisals, legitimate...

where this is seen as a black eye for the Romanian army, as they lost control of the city and have this pogrom. Once again, Antonescu, as a young officer, there was a peasant uprising in 1907 in Romania, and was triggered in part by anti-Semitic violence. It becomes more general.

But so there's a, it's within his memory and his experience of like, antisemitic violence can get out of control and threaten the entire state. So in Romania itself, he tries to hold, he tries to keep things in control, but out in the front, it's getting, you know, he actually is pushing for shootings and deportations and, and then Odessa, you're going to have an even bigger massacre.

the Romanians take that city, there's an act of partisan sabotage and blows up a building, kills a Romanian general, dozens of soldiers and a few Germans and civilians, like Romanian and German civilians who were there to try to set up the port and everything. So the commandos

Grant Harward (54:27.042)
take more reprisals, and Ternescu demands more, even when we kill thousands, probably 12,000 Jews. Some estimates are much, much higher.

Waitman (54:38.693)
And what's the role of the Germans in this? I mean, one of the things that I hadn't really picked up on until you mentioned it in the book is that Einsatzgruppe D was kind of created at the last minute to sort of operate from the Romanian front of the invasion, because we had the army group, north, south and center with A, B and C, but the D is also in the south. But you explain it as, you know, that it was

generally supposed to operate with or behind the Romanian front. So how does that work in terms of the actual violence taking place and that kind of thing?

Grant Harward (55:20.298)
Yes, it's a forgotten Army Group, Army Group Antinescu. Everyone forgets that there's AB. AB, there's North, Center, and South, but Army Group Antinescu only lasts for about a month. But that's kind of what D is for. And then it's attached technically to German 11th Army. It's not actually reporting to Army Group Antinescu. So it's kind of operating.

Waitman (55:29.905)
South.

Waitman (55:46.162)
Right.

Grant Harward (55:51.542)
It's operating under German Lammfarmer. German Lammfarmer has authority over the remaining Third Army, which is one of the two armies. So, you know, but basically, so there's, Germans are kind of operating independently, but they can show up and get a lot of people, while they're remaining in the know, they know who they are. Remaining intelligence, both military and kind of the state intelligence guys who are running around.

We have an operational echelon that they put to follow the front. They give them support. The job guards are told, hey, you have orders to... It's a quodicenia terenolui, like cleansing the terrain. You know, what we basically call ethnic cleansing. It's actually a military term. You kind of like clear and hold. It's kind of a foul, you know, like you take an area, you've got to clear it, and then kind of, you know,

stragglers, snipers, you know, but they're using it in terms of, you know, considered in terms of, you know, claimant of Jews. So you have the John Donnes who have this order to do this and also kind of are aware of the commanders that there is this German unit that's running around, but the Germans have to kind of interact in each place and they're small enough, so they're basically focused on going to the major cities.

and trying to enforce their criteria of who should be shot. According to like, we're looking for communist functionaries and Jews too, but especially Jews who are communist. At this point, we're looking for commissars. And so as things go along, they actually start pushing the Romanians to go further. As the Germans themselves say, like, let's just start shooting everybody, then they kind of, they'll change.

But it's an interesting dynamic I think we haven't really looked much into. But they're trying to, you know, they're having kind of place by place interact with whatever Romanian authorities are on the spot, at least in Mocuvenia and Biserabia, right? Because that's kind of the Germans recognize that this is going to be turned back over to the Romanians. Once you get beyond the Easter, then, you know, the Germans can kind of order around

Grant Harward (58:16.878)
the Romanians, okay, we're gonna do this and that and the other, you know, and when Transnistria gets given to the Romanians, and once again, it kind of gives the Romanians more authority, and there has to be more negotiation, although there's carve-outs in the agreement between the Germans and the Romanians that the SS will have kind of authority over ethnic Germans, so there's kind of in Transnistria.

and some other carve outs as well. So it's a very interesting dynamic there of kind of the Germans coming in, accelerating things, and also trying to redirect things. The Lenin's doing their own thing. And the Lenin's should get into Ukraine proper, the Germans are going to reassert, you know, the primacy of the SS in Jewish policy, you know, and so the Lenin's soldiers are told to like turn over Jews that they've taken as hostages.

and give it to the SS. The Germans will still shoot Jews off out of town, but in general, they're kind of, you have to be more restrained because the SS is demanding that the Jews be given to them for treatment, as the Germans would say.

Waitman (59:29.485)
Right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, I think, always to look at areas where, you know, the Germans have to negotiate their policies. You know, and it happens in all of, you know, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, all of their Eastern allies, where they have to kind of, and sometimes, I mean, obviously, they take over Hungary, and then they do their own thing there as well. But with Romania, they have to sort of negotiate it. I mean, as we're...

As we're coming a little bit to the end, I'll talk a little bit about after. What's the memory of this, of the Romanian participation in the Holocaust, Romanian murders of Jews, in terms of the legal repercussions, if any, and then how was this sort of seen today?

Grant Harward (01:00:24.878)
So as part of the Soviet Romain Anarchists in September 1944, one of the first articles is that the Romains will turn over war criminals for prosecution. So we already have arrests starting in, you know, fall of 1944 of Romain and who were involved in the Holocaust.

of course, then to rescue, he gets kind of whisked off to Moscow for a while. He brought back, he's a big trial. I think that's 1946 is his trial. With him and a bunch of others and some in absentia, because a lot of the fascists are no longer there. Some of them escaped to the West, but so you have a big trial out of it. And there's smaller trials for some of the others. And then

once the communists come in there's some more trials and because they it becomes kind of more you know used more politically you know to discredit some of the former rural officers and members of government and stuff although but which remains like to you know he was like oh see it's just a political trial well though maybe yeah sure but they were still guilty like these guys were still mass murderers even if like the soviets were willing to prosecute them

than the previous government was, the non-communist government. So there is some like immediate, and the problem with some of this is that it all focuses in this time in front of show, going up, focusing on the internet school, it becomes very kind of intentionalist, which is what trials like to do, right? They want to show here's the guy in charge, do you need these orders?

So, and I think we still have a lot of time.

Grant Harward (01:02:23.218)
Under communism, we don't talk about it. You know, the Holocaust kind of becomes taboo. But when you talk about it, it's like, oh, it's Antonescu. And a few local fascists, and the Germans. But it wasn't most Romanians. Most Romanians were downtrodden and basically occupied by the Germans, you know, which was not at all the truth. But that's kind of the idea, you know, the message. So it's like Antonescu is...

is to blame for everything. He took us to war, he's reasonably new to all the Jews, you know, maybe a couple other bad eggs and Germans, but not Romanians. And then once you have the fall of communism in 1989, this call comes out and you have the anti-communists come back and they want to rehabilitate Antonescu. So there's actually a period in the 90s where you have streets beaming after him, you know, statues being put up to him.

you know, speeches being given and, you know, at the same time that you still feel all of those materials coming out showing, you know, yes, he was super involved, but also all these other entire state apparatus, you know, of the of Romania was involved. And I think it was I'm trying to actually kind of push like Antonescu isn't he was ultimately responsible for everything because he's, you know, the head of state, but there's lots of decisions being taken.

by, you know, mid-level, even like, you know, your lowly private or first lieutenant, you know, or, you know, sergeant in the John Darmes, you know, they're taking initiatives as well that we need to kind of push down responsibility more. And so today in Romania, there's still kind of this general rehabilitation of antinesculen like in the 2000s.

Grant Harward (01:04:17.382)
on the international stage, there were several union presidents and ministers who said, the Holocaust didn't happen here. And that didn't fly with your European union, who kind of put pressure on Romania. They put together a commission, set it right out on the crimes committed by the Romanian state, and acknowledged them, and then turned that commission into a permanent institute, the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. So at least at the top level,

there is an official recognition and continued investigation into the Holocaust in Romania. You get down below, a lot of Romanians kind of here worship Antonescu, they rehabilitate a lot of these regionaries as anti-economists. There are some efforts now to put into high school curriculum in Romania to include Jewish history and Holocaust history.

at least teach it and kind of get them to understand that no, this isn't something that just happened in Poland and that the Germans did, right? That we had Jews, we had a vibrant Jewish community, it's gone. And then the Holocaust involved Romanians as well, doing things for their own reasons.

Waitman (01:05:38.149)
Yeah, it seems like, um, you know, and something that, you know, obviously we couldn't cover the whole book in this, this discussion, but I highly recommend people check it out because, um, I can totally see how there is sort of a Romanian clean Wehrmacht myth coming out of this, um, which is, you know, which is also, you know, Grant does a great job of refuting it because it shows that in a way that it seems, it seems.

less rigorous than the German system, there was a lot of initiative being taken and people could decide almost in some ways to a larger degree because there wasn't as sort of monolithic a push to exterminate Jews in the way that there is for the Nazis. It seems like in some ways it was even more voluntary at times for the rank and file to be involved or not be involved.

which I think is just an interesting sort of comparison between the two sort of forms of participation. Yeah, I mean, really, really interesting. Grant, I don't wanna keep you too long. Thank you so much for coming on and for telling us about this and giving us just a sense of this very complex history. Can you tell us, I always ask,

at the end, a what is one Holocaust book that you would recommend that's been really important to you or influential for you?

Grant Harward (01:07:17.886)
Um, gosh, I think, um, you know, as cliched as it is, like ordinary men, I think ordinary men is still a extremely powerful, succinct look into kind of realities on the ground. And as we're talking here about all initiatives, and, you know, there's all different types of interpretations and critiques of it now.

and everything, but I still think that that's something that, overall, that ordinary people can do some pretty terrible things. I think that's kind of some of the push of, you don't need to be a Nazi to have participated in the Holocaust. When I look at the Romanian ideology in my book, Romania's Holy War, right?

You don't need fascism to have some similar results. And so I think that book still sticks with me and still I think is worth reading and to see how much we still debate it and how much we still refer to the title and everything I think just goes to show if you're going to give something to an undergrad or just anybody.

who doesn't know anything about the Holocaust. You're like, that's a book that can introduce people that's not gonna overwhelm them. Well, it'll overwhelm them, I think, in different ways, but it's not gonna be a giant tome. It's not gonna be like, you know, Browning's other book that he co-authored about the origins of the final solution. You know, where someone's not...

Waitman (01:08:55.878)
Right.

Waitman (01:09:03.565)
Right. Yeah. That's, that's not for the faint of heart. Um, I mean, I, I certainly can't argue with anyone who says that ordinary men is important. Um, yeah. So thank you so much for coming on. Where can we find you on Twitter?

Grant Harward (01:09:19.702)
Yeah, it's Gene Harwood, at Gene Harwood on Twitter.

Waitman (01:09:22.393)
Okay. So at G Harward, I will put in the show notes, links to, to Grant's book, Romania's holy war, soldiers motivation and the Holocaust. And as always, this is the Holocaust history podcast. And you can find us on Twitter at Holocaust pod. You're welcome to email me at Holocaust history pod at gmail.com. And we're also on all of the places. So.

Please like, subscribe, give us a rating, leave a comment, and thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you next time.