The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union

Based on original sources, this important book on the Holocaust explores regional variations in civilians' attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish population in Romania and the occupied Soviet Union. Gentiles' willingness to assist Jews was greater in lands that had been under Soviet administration during the inter-war period, while gentiles' willingness to harm Jews occurred more in lands that had been under Romanian administration during the same period. While acknowledging the disasters of Communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s, this work shows the effectiveness of Soviet nationalities policy in the official suppression of antisemitism. This book offers a corrective to the widespread consensus that homogenizes gentile responses throughout Eastern Europe, instead demonstrating that what states did in the interwar period mattered; relations between social groups were not fixed and destined to repeat themselves, but rather fluid and susceptible to change over time.

Introduction; 1. Experiencing the Russian Empire; 2. Bessarabia within the Romanian state - antisemitism reframed; 3. Committed to change - fighting antisemitism and integrating Jews in Soviet Transnistria; 4. Under assault - civilians' behavior toward Jews during the Holocaust in Bessarabia; 5. Jews and their neighbors in occupied Transnistria; 6. Substantiating and explaining the differences.

Diana Dumitru is Associate Professor of History in the World History Department at Ion Creangă State Pedagogical University, Moldova. She has been awarded prestigious fellowships, including the Gerda Henkel Stiftung fellowship, the International Institute for Holocaust Research Postdoctoral Fellowship for Study and Research at Yad Vashem, and the Rosenzweig Family Fellowship for research at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. She has authored over twenty articles and two books and, in 2012, she received the Mary Parker Follett Award for the best article or chapter published in the field of politics and history awarded by the American Political Science Association.