Postwar reparatory justice and restitution in Romania

In 2015, within a historiography of the Holocaust in Romania largely focused on Jews as passive victims of persecution – despite significant international contributions to the field of Jewish resistance – historian Stefan Cristian Ionescu stood out with a volume that emphasized victim agency: Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanianization’, 1940–44 (Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide, 2015). In his latest book, Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities (1944–1950) (Cambridge University Press, 2025), the author contributes to another under-researched area – the aftermath of the Holocaust in Romania. Shifting the focus from resistance to survival, Ionescu follows in the footsteps of scholars such as Bernard Wasserstein, Michael Brenner, Laura Jockusch and Michael Bazyler, examining the complex processes of postwar reparatory justice and the restitution of property and rights to Jewish victims.

This volume explores both the political and legal dimensions of the 1944–1950 period – a difficult stage of postwar reconstruction marked by socioeconomic hardship, the challenging integration of traumatized refugees and survivors, political persecution, uncertainty, reforms, strikes, famine and epidemics. Ionescu offers a concise grassroots history of Romania’s postwar political evolution, bringing to the forefront the precarious situation of Jews. As he demonstrates, the communist nationalization policies increasingly targeted broad segments of the population who owned businesses, factories or larger properties across East-Central Europe. In this context, Jews – already dispossessed by previous regimes and struggling with material losses and psychological trauma – were disproportionately affected.  

Through a meticulous analysis of legal norms and their impact on the restitution of Jewish rights, Ionescu focuses on both the transitional politics of the various government coalitions and the early years of full communist control. The book offers a consistent examination of legislation and legal practices under totalitarian and transitional regimes, across different levels of jurisdiction. It highlights the evolving nature of restitution laws in relation to shifting communist political interests and underscores the discrepancies between the stated objectives of these laws and the methods and effectiveness of their implementation. One of the most consistent chapters (Chapter 3: “Negotiations and Drafting of the Main Restitution Laws”) is structured around this turbulent debate, revealing not only the difficulty of reaching consensus on restitution itself, but also on the methods, timing, immediate consequences and the protection of non-Jewish individuals who had come to possess formerly Jewish-owned property. 

The main protagonists of the book are Holocaust survivors – primarily former lower-middle and middle-class Jews, numbering over 428,000 in 1947. As the author demonstrates, both local and international Jewish leaders played significant roles in shaping restitution strategies. Across the book’s seven chapters, Ionescu approaches the issue of restitution from multiple perspectives: state authorities (see Chapter 3, Chapter 6: “Restitution through Court Litigation”,and Chapter 7: “Communist Nationalizations, Jewish Property, and Emigration”); victims and Jewish institutions (Chapter 2: “Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities”); international organizations (Chapter 5: “Negotiating the Peace Treaty and the Boundaries of Jewish Rights with the Allies”); and public opinion and non-Jewish beneficiaries (Chapter 4: “The Public Opinion and the Topic of Restitution”) – leaving no angle unexplored.    

The complex process of restitution is reconstructed using archival materials produced by the postwar transitional governments (archives from Romania, the USA, Israel and Austria) – as well as documents from Jewish communities and diplomats. Framed by a coherent legal analysis, the book also incorporates individual perspectives drawn from ego-documents, including those of Jews (notably the frequently cited Rabbi Alexandru Șafran), gentiles and foreign residents in Romania. These personal accounts reveal the psychological trauma experienced by survivors, portrayed as multiple victims – of wartime upheaval, the tragedy of the Holocaust and the duplicity of the regimes that followed.      

One of the most compelling interpretive angles of this volume lies in its examination of the relationship between Jews and successive political regimes. Ionescu carefully traces multiple continuities between the earlier far-right dictatorships (1938–1944), the transitional postwar governments and the rise of communist rule. A significant point of continuity emerges in the persistence of discriminatory policies and practices, as well as in the transfer of administrative knowledge and methods from one regime to the next. As the transcripts of early transitional governments (such as that of General Constantin Sănătescu from August 23-November 3, 1944) and internal party meetings reveal, antisemitism continued to manifest as a social and political reality. Anti-Jewish attitudes were further fueled by the visibility of some pro-communist Jews within governing coalitions.

Continuities also emerge in the economic resentments of non-Jewish Romanians, many of whom viewed the wartime expropriation of Jewish property as a form of “social justice.” Notably, even communist leader Petru Groza appears to have been a beneficiary of the wartime nationalization of Jewish-owned assets in Arad. Drawing on a range of sources, Ionescu illustrates how non-Jewish Romanians expressed support for the Antonescu regime – even as it collapsed – motivated by fears of losing the material gains they had acquired at the expense of Jews. Similar anxieties resurfaced after the war, especially in response to the return of Jewish refugees and survivors seeking to reclaim their homes and properties.   

Continuities can also be observed from the perspective of those persecuted. Under all political regimes, Jewish individuals and leaders relied on legal instruments and international advocacy to defend or reclaim their rights and property – efforts which often fueled accusations of conspiracy and disloyalty to the state. An informal network of legal resistance, led by Jewish leader Wilhelm Filderman, carried over the expertise developed during the Holocaust into the postwar context. Until 1948, the recovery of rights and assets largely depended on court litigation, legal negotiations and the work of lawyers and other specialists – making successful restitution accessible to only a limited number of former Jewish owners. For children and youth who had lost their families and lacked material resources, hope of recovery disappeared even earlier.   

Nonetheless, advocacy remained a longstanding strategy – one of the few means available to assert the rights of the Jewish population. Its historical roots stretch back to the struggle for collective naturalization, as seen in debates surrounding the Treaty of Berlin (1878) and the Treaty of Minorities following the First World War.¹ Interestingly, similar tactics – such as petitioning – were also employed by non-Jewish Romanians, who lobbied against the reversal of Romanianization and the restitution of Jewish property.  

From the perspective of state authorities, the sources reveal that local-level abuses – such as those related to housing requisitions or the enforcement of ethnicity certificate requirements – were a constant across all regimes and remained difficult to monitor and control. At the same time, the treatment of Jews by state institutions during and after the war varied not only according to their social status but also based on regional categorizations, including place of residence and proximity to the frontlines. Geographical and perceived cultural distance from the Romanian national core shaped the experiences of Jewish communities: some, particularly in Bessarabia and Bukovina, faced deportation, while others – primarily in the Regat (Old Kingdom) – were relatively safer in terms of physical survival. As Ionescu emphasizes, Jews continued to be perceived as external to the national community. Even after the fall of the Antonescu regime, discussions of minority rights were framed not in terms of integration, but rather through the lens of emigration – as if Jewish belonging remained conditional and provisional within postwar Romanian society.

Having established these continuities, the volume also highlights what was distinctive about the transitional governments’ approach to Jewish survivors. Most notably, Ionescu points to a heightened degree of duplicity. This is particularly evident in the dissonance between the public, philosemitic rhetoric and the subsequent adoption of restitution laws that were quickly undermined or reversed. The apparent support for restitution was, in reality, driven by national political interests – specifically, the desire to secure more favorable terms and territorial gains during the 1947 Peace Treaty negotiations. Following the treaty, the Romanian government amended the citizenship legislation it had initially adopted, soon revoking the citizenship of those who had fled the country, framing this as a punishment for presumed disloyalty. As Ionescu shows, public opinion was largely indifferent or even hostile to the issue of restitution. Even the radical leftist press, while addressing legitimate social concerns, often redirected grievances toward surviving Jews. Only a handful of non-Jewish lawyers (such as Valjean Vasilescu, V.V. Stanciu and Constantin Vicol) publicly advocated for the repeal of anti-Jewish legislation and the defense of survivors’ rights.

Another distinctive feature of the transitional governments was the widespread use of Romanianization and retributive justice as political tools employed by all sides against their opponents, rather than out of genuine concern for the hardships endured by Jews. Meanwhile, bureaucrats, profiteers and politicians from the former regime continued to benefit from wartime acquisitions of Jewish property, despite legislation adopted between January and April 1945 that explicitly targeted the category of “war profiteers.”

The continuities and innovations of successive Romanian political regimes form a complex framework that Stefan Ionescu expertly navigates to reveal the arduous journey of Jewish survivors toward reconstruction – a journey that ultimately culminated in a definitive rupture with Romania. While the author’s primary focus is on efforts toward reparatory justice and restitution, the book also opens important avenues for further research on the postwar experiences of survivors. These include the fate of Romanian Jews in Displaced Persons camps across Germany, Austria and Italy; patterns of both legal and illegal migration; urban housing crises caused by refugee influxes within a broader European context; and the revival of Zionism.

Though the volume excels in integrating multiple perspectives and previously unpublished sources, it might have benefited from a more thorough analysis of Romanian foreign policy. Despite the apparent indifference of Soviet officials toward Romania’s internal affairs concerning Jews, it would be valuable to explore how external relations with the Soviet Union influenced political decisions – such as those regarding Jewish emigration to Palestine/Israel. Additionally, the transnational dimension, including the relationship between Romanian Jews and the Yishuv (the Jewish communities in Palestine), could have been more fully developed, even though the author does briefly draw comparative parallels to the situation in other European countries in some sections.  

Nonetheless, with this book, Holocaust scholars and the wider public gain a groundbreaking volume on a topic long overdue for exploration. It is the great merit of Stefan Cristian Ionescu to illuminate this blurry and chaotic postwar period, laying out the arguments that explain how a large and vibrant surviving Jewish population was able to leave behind its tragic past and country of origin in search of a chance to rebuild their lives elsewhere.