* This study was made possible by support from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. I thank the staff of this institution for the excellent research conditions they provided. In addition, I would like to thank Henry “Chip” Carey, Charles King, Irina Livezeanu, Iziaslav Levit, Nancy Popson, Radu Ioanid, and Vladimir Tismaneanu as well as the anonymous reviews of the journal for their useful advice and suggestions. Michael Pellegrino, my research assistant, provided me useful technical aid. Any mistakes and omissions are, however, my own.Google Scholar

1. See Hitchins, Keith, Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 473–474. Strictly speaking, Moldovan historians deal with Northern Bukovina only tangentially, concentrating their attention on the history of the territories that now form part of the Republic of Moldova. However, due to the fact that Jews from Northern Bukovina shared the fate of their co-nationals from Bessarabia and Transnistria in the years 1941–1944, I cursorily refer to this province and its Jewish population.Google Scholar

2. According to Radu Ioanid, from 45,000 to 60,000 people were killed during this phase, The Holocaust in Romania: the Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), p. 289. Several thousand Jews were saved by the Mayor of Cernăuţi, the administrative center of Bukovina, Traian Popovici. (See ibid., pp. 155, 156, 159, 165–168, 172, 291). There is considerable literature on the tragedy of the Jews from those provinces. In addition to Ioanid's monograph, see Jean Ancel, ed., Documents Concerning the Fate of the Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust, 12 vols (Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), esp. Vol. 5, pp. 1–2 (Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transnistria: Extermination and survival); Mataties Carp, Cartea Neagră: Suferinţele evreilor din Romǎnia, 1940–1944 (Bucharest: Diagene, 1996), esp. Vol. 3 (Transnistria); Lya Benjamin, ed., Evreii din Romǎnia ǐntre anii 1940–1944, Vol. 1 (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1994); Benjamin, Prigoană şi rezistenţă ǐn istoria evreilor din Romǎnia 1940–1944. Studii (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); and Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1997).Google Scholar

3. At least 123,000 people were deported; see Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania, p. 172.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 289. This is what one might call a conservative estimate; Raul Hilberg raises the number to 300,000. The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 2, p. 759.Google Scholar

5. Michael Birenbaum estimated that out of 270,000 Jews who died as a result of this tragedy, two-thirds perished at the hands of Romanins, not Germans. See “Introduction,” in Braham, ed. The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, p. xv. Cf. also Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 2, p. 759.Google Scholar

6. Moldova does not include the whole of the province. The southern and northern parts of Bessarabia were transferred by the Soviets in 1940 to Ukraine.Google Scholar

7. With the exception of immigrants and their descendents from other Soviet republics during the Soviet era, who, according to my estimates, make up about 15% of the overall population.Google Scholar

8. In 1930, 205,958 Jews lived in Bessarabia, making up 7.2% of the overall population of the province, according to the Romanian census. Approximately 40% of them perished in the Holocaust; Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania, p. 170. In the Transnistrian part of today's Moldova the percentage of Jews killed in the Holocaust was probably higher.Google Scholar

9. Personal experience of the author, who was born in Chişinău in 1959 and spent most of his life there.Google Scholar

10. Gross, Jan T., Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 168–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. On the Soviet presentation of the Holocaust see Zvi Gitelman, “Soviet Reactions to the Holocaust, 1945–1991,” in Doroszycki, Lucjan et al., eds, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 3–27; Lukast Hirszowicz, “The Holocaust in the Soviet Mirror,” in ibid., pp. 29–59. For a fascinating discussion of the Soviet perception of Jewishness as intrinsically alien to their body politic and to the legitimizing myth of the War, see Amiz Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 191–235.Google Scholar

12. On the perception of the Romanian state by the country's elites and their policies towards various national minorities see Livezeanu, Irina, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). On the centrality of anti-Semitism in Romanian political culture and culture in general see Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, trans. Charles Kormos (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991).Google Scholar

13. There was, of course, a fair amount of agile political maneuvering by the Romanian leaders and sheer good luck—Romania happened to be on the right side after the Great War—that helped to produce a very impressive increase—by a factor of two—in the size of the territory and population of Romania after the First World War. See Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947, pp. 285–291.Google Scholar

14. The consensual view in Romania was that all persons whose mother tongue was Romanian and who were a member of a Christian denominations were Romanians, no matter how those persons might have perceived themselves. See Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar

15. Ibid.Google Scholar

16. There was some foundation for this, although demographic data in themselves were not that clear-cut and in the final resort they were used creatively to support decisions based on political and geostrategical considerations. See King, Charles, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000), pp. 94–95.Google Scholar

17. This story is persuasively analyzed in Meurs, Wim P. van, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography: Nationalist and Communist Politics and History-Writing (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994); and van Meurs, “Carving a Moldavian Identity out of History,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1998, pp. 39–58.Google Scholar

18. This was incorrect. After the war the Soviets were unwilling to publish this text, lest they provoke locals in the MSSR. See the text of the note in Degras, Jane Tabrisky, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (New York: Octagon Books, 1978), Vol. 3, pp. 458–459. It is extensively quoted in Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 167.Google Scholar

16. On the ideological evolution of Romanian Comminism, see Vladimir Tismaneanu, “The Tragicomedy of Romanian Communism,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1989, pp. 329–377. On the manipulation of history under the Communists in Romania see Boia, Lucian, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001). On the Romanian–Soviet polemics on the Bessarabian question in the 1960s–1980s see Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 329–360.Google Scholar

19. Only 34 of 551 pages (6.1%) were allotted to the Great Patriotic War in Vladimir Ivanovich Tsaranov et al., eds, Istoriia Moldavskoi SSR: s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei (Kishinev: Shtiintsa, 1982), pp. 365–389.Google Scholar

20. See especially Brysiakin, Sergei Kuz'mich, Kul'tura Bessarabii, 1918–1940 (Kishinev: Shtiintsa, 1978), pp. 19–34; Artem Markovich Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudarstvennost’ i bessarabskii vopros (Kishinev: Kartia moldoveniaské, 1974), pp. 262–281.Google Scholar

21. See Levit, Iziaslav Elikovich et al., eds, Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945: sbornik dokumentov i materialov v dvukh tomah, Vol. 2. (Kishinev: Shtiintsa, 1975), documents 8, 9 (p. 37), 15 (p. 44), 20 (p. 46), 63 (pp. 88–95), 115 (pp. 130–134), 185 (p. 193).Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 8. Gagauzis are a small Turkish-speaking Christian Orthodox community who have lived in Bessarabia since the late eighteenth century. They settled in Bessarabia together with Bulgarians under Russia protection, having fled Ottoman persecution in the Balkans.Google Scholar

23. The censors were KGB officers from Chişinău who were supposed to give their approval to the collection before it was sent to the publisher. In the preceding stages the collection was subject to approval by the fellows of the relevant section of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Moldavian SSR—also an opportunity for more zealous researchers to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime by blocking suspect materials from publication.Google Scholar

24. Personal communication of Iziaslav Levit, now an American citizen living in New York. The document referred to was published in Levit, , et al., eds, Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, Vol. 2, p. 236. There is an explicit reference to the unpublished paragraph. I understand the recommendation contained in the document to imply that it would have been useless to enroll Jews in guerilla activity, because, given the extermination policy of the Nazis and Romanians, the Jews would shortly be annihilated.Google Scholar

25. However, in a note to another document Levit was able to publish a paraphrase of this resolution together with the unwanted names—the censors were not attentive enough to read all notes (see Levit, et al., eds, Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, Vol. 2, p. 579). When in 1972 a monument to these victims was unveiled, it turned out that the inscription on it referred to them as a “group,” not as a “center”, obviously with the aim of concealing the role of the Jews in the partisan movement (personal communication by Levit).Google Scholar

26. Levit, , et al., eds, Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, Vol. 2, document 227, pp. 243–244.Google Scholar

27. Information of Iziaslav Levit. See Levit, Iziaslav Elikovich, Uchastie fashistskoi Rumynii v agressii protiv SSSR: istoki, plany, realizatsiia, 1.IX 1939–19.XI 1942 (Kishinev: Shtiintsa, 1981), pp. 262–287.Google Scholar

28. Bruchis, Michael, “The Jews in the Revolutionary Underground of Bessarabia and Their Fate after Its Annexation by the Soviet Union,” in Nations–Nationalities–People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), pp. 141–197.Google Scholar

29. Mostly scholars from Moldova and Romania took part. Dennis Deletante from Great Britain and Mikhail Bruchis from Israel also participated.Google Scholar

30. The district (judeţ) of Herţa is a strip of land adjacent to Northern Bukovina but belonging up to June 1940 to the Old (Romanian) Kingdom. It was annexed by the Soviets in 1940, probably by accident, no claims having been laid down for it in the Soviet ultimatum of 26 June 1940. See map in Charles King, The Moldovans, p. XXXI.Google Scholar

31. “Declaracia de la Chişinău a Conferinţei internacionale Pactul Molotov–Ribbentrop şi consecinţele sale pentru Basarabia şi Bucovina de Nord, 26–28 inunie 1999”, in Adauge, Mihai and Furtuna, Alexandru, eds, Basarabia si basarabenii (Chişinău: Uniunea Scriitorilor din Moldova, 1991), p. 343.Google Scholar

32. To name but a few: Bulat, L., ed., Basarabia, 1940 (Chişinău: Cartea Moldovenească, 1991); Mihai Adauge si Alexandru Furtuna, eds, Basarabia si basarabenii; Ion Şişcanu, Raptul Basarabiei. 1940 (Chişinău: Ago-Dacia, 1993); idem, Uniunea Sovietica–Romǎnia, 1940: tratative ǐn cadrul comisiilor mixte (Chişinău: Editura Arc, 1995); idem. Desţărănirea bols̆evica ǐn Basarabia (Chişinău: Adrian, 1994); idem, Răşluirea teritorială a Romăniei: 1940 (Chişinău: Civitas, 1998); Anton Moraru, Istoria romǎnilor: Basarabia si Transnistria (1812–1993) (Chişinău: Editura Aiva, 1995); Valerii Ivanovich Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy: 1940–1950-e gg (Moscow: Terra, 1994). There were also numerous articles published in the journals Revista de istorie a Moldovei, Nistru, Basarabia, Patrimoniu, and Cugetul. Moldovan historians were also published in collections of articles in Romania, like, for example, Ion Şişcanu, “Instaurarea regimului sovietic in Basarabia 1940, 1944–1945,” in 6 martie 1945: ǐnceputurile comunizarii Romǎniei (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica, 1995). See also the monographs of Anatol Petrencu referred to hereinafter.Google Scholar

33. The only other major theme was the unification of 1918.Google Scholar

34. For an informed and persuasive critique of this tradition see Boia, Lucian, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), esp. pp. 175–184. Such historians as Ion Scurtu, Constantin Hlihor and Gheorghe Buzatu are mentioned by their colleagues in Moldova. See, e.g., Gheorghe Buzatu, Romǎnia cu şi fara Antonescu: documente, studii, relatări si comentarii (Iaşi: Editura Moldova, 1991); Buzatu, Romǎnii ǐn arhivele Kremlinului (Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 1996); Buzatu, Romǎnia şi războiul mondial din 1939–1945 (Iaşi: Centrul de istorie şi civilizacie europeană, 1995); Constantin Hlihor and Ioan Scurtu, The Red Army in Romania (Iaşi; Center for Romanian Studies, 2000); Ioan Scurtu and Constantin Hlihor, Complot ǐmpotriva Romǎniei, 1939–1947: Basarabia, Nordul Bucovinei si ţinutul Herţa ǐn vǎltoarea celui de-al doilea război mondial (Bucharest: Editura Academiei de Ǐnalte Studii Militare, 1994); Ioan Scurtu, ed., Istoria Basarabiei de la ǐnceputuri pǎna ǐn 1998, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Editura Semne, 1998).Google Scholar

31. Cf. “the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things“ (Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration [New York: Routledge, 1990], p. 11, emphasis added). However, as Benedict Anderson has shown, Renan should not be understood too literally, as condoning any kind of forgetting. (Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [London: Verso, 1983], pp. 199–201).Google Scholar

35. Petrencu, Anatol, Basarabia ǐn al doilea război mondial, 1940–1944 (Chişinău: Lyceum, 1997); Anatol Petrencu, Romǎnia si Basarabia ǐn anii celui de-al doilea razboi mondial (Chişinău: Epigraf, 1999). The second of these books was published with the support of the Soros–MOLDOVA foundation (ibid, p.4).Google Scholar

36. See his interview for the readers of Moldova azi website (this site is supported by Soros–MOLDOVA foundation), available at: http://www.azi.md/iv?iv=29&lang=Ro&page=2. However, the new Moldovan Communist government formed after February 2001 never heeded the opinion of the University Senate due to its strong disagreement with Professor Petrencu and the Association of Historians about what kind of history should be taught at schools in Moldova—while Pentrencu and the Association insist the course must be that of “The History of Romanians,” the Communist government wants it to be “The History of Moldova” (see Petrencu's, interview). I have addressed the issues involved in “Narrative, Identity, State: History Teaching in Moldova,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 415–446.Google Scholar

37. Petrencu, Anatol, Basarabia ǐn al doilea razboi mondial, 1940–1944 (Chişinău: Lyceum, 1997), pp. 7, 8, 31–34, 77–86, and passim.Google Scholar

38. On Marshal Antonescu's regime and Romanian historiography, see Mark Temple, The Politicization of History: Marshal Antonescu and Romania, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 10, No.3, 1996, pp. 457–503; Michael Shafir, Marshal Antonescu's Post-communist Rehabilitation: Cui Bono? in Braham, The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, pp. 349–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. The reference is to Florin Constantiniu, O istorie sinceră a poporului romǎn (Bucharest: Univers enciclopedic, 1997), pp. 394–396.Google Scholar

40. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea război mondial, 1940–1944, pp. 112, 116.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 43.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., esp. pp. 111–119, and passim.Google Scholar

43. Basarabia: un an de muncă romǎnească (Chişinău: Guvernămǎntul Basarabiei, 1942), published in Bucharest as Basarabia dezrobită. Drepturi istorice, nelegiuiri bolsevice, ǐnfătuiri romǎneşti (Bucharest: Marvan, Institutul de arte grafice, 1942).Google Scholar

44. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea război mondial, 1940–1944, pp. 33.Google Scholar

45. An excellent analysis of the official anti-Semitic discourse under Antonescu is in Lya Benjamin, “Anti-Semitism as Reflected in the Records of the Council of Ministers, 1940–1944: An Analytical Overview,” in Braham, The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era, pp. 1–18; Benjamin, Concepţia maresalului Antonescu despre evrei şi problema evreiască ǐn Romǎnia, in Prigoană şi rezistenţă, pp. 127–150.Google Scholar

46. Anatol Petencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea război mondial, 1940–1944, pp. 42–46, 60–67, 79, 235–242.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., p. 66.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., pp. 237–240.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., pp. 30, 33, 48, 65, 107, 163 et al.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., p. 66.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., pp. 62–64. On the numerus clausus movement and its relationship to Romanian fascism, see Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, pp. 245–296.Google Scholar

54. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea razboi mondial, 1940–1944, p. 63.Google Scholar

55. At about 1,000 members in 1944. This number remained more or less the same throughout the inter-war period (see Tismaneanu, “The Tragicomedy of Romanian Communism,” p. 338).Google Scholar

56. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea razboi mondial, p. 163.Google Scholar

57. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea razboi mondial, 1940–1944, p. 63.Google Scholar

58. This expression, host country (ţara-gazdă), is used by Petrencu (ibid., p. 63). On the anti-Semitic outburst see, e.g., ibid., p. 92.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 51–52. Here Petrencu refers approvingly to the Romanian translation of Larry Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941 (Boulder: East European Monographs), pp. 232–237. (Casandră a Romǎniei: Ion Antonescu şi lupta pentru reformă, 1918–1941 [Bucharest: Editura Tess-Express, 1996]. Petrencu does not indicate pages). In contrast to Petrencu's admiration of Larry Watts (he calls him a good specialist in the problems of the Second World War), Watts's book was less well received in the US academic press. See, e.g., Livezeanu's, Irina review in Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 3, 1996, pp. 673–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. Petrencu, Basarabia ǐn al doilea razboi mondial, 1940–1944, p. 168.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., p. 167.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 162.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 165.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., p. 166.Google Scholar

65. Ibid., pp. 168–170.Google Scholar

66. See Shermer, Michael et al., Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why They Do Say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. xv–xvi. According to the authors’ definition, the Holocaust is denied when and if the numbers of those killed (approximately six million), the technique of mass murder, and in particular gas chambers, and the intentionality of the whole enterprise are denied. In respect to the Romanian wartime administration of the fate of the Jews of Bessarabia, Petrencu is doing exactly this.Google Scholar

67. Petrencu, Romǎnia si Basarabia ǐn anii celui de-al doilea razboi mondial, p. 163.Google Scholar

68. Ibid., pp. 57, 88–89, 94–95, 111, 113, 122–129, 138–139.Google Scholar

69. The slogan “Down with the kikes and Communists” is quoted, among others from the report of the police commissariat of the Bessarabian town of Ungheni to their superiors (chestura) in Jassy upon locals welcoming Romanian troops in July 1941, without the author distancing himself from this kind of language (ibid., p. 63). When citing Antonescu's response to the memorandum of the oppositionist politician Iuliu Maniu protesting full-scale Romanian participation in the war against the Soviet Union (October 1942) the following is quoted mot à mot with nonchalance: “The Communists, Legionnaires (i.e., members of the Iron Guard), kikes, Hungarians” (ibid., p. 139).Google Scholar

70. Ibid., p. 93.Google Scholar

71. Levit, Iziaslav. Holokost v Bessarabii (Kishinev: Antifashistskii demokraticheskii al'ians Respubliki Moldova, Molodezhnaia organizatsiia Helsinkskoi grazhdanskoi assamblei v Moldove, 1999). This is a small brochure published by two Moldovan NGOs in both the Russian original and a Romanian translation. At the time of its publication Levit was a pensioner living in the USA.Google Scholar

72. MOLDPRES Press Agency, 1 April 2002. This declaration was prompted by the protests against the policies of the Moldovan Communist government of introducing Russian language as a separate subject to be taught obligatorily in the Moldovan (Romanian) language schools and of replacing the history of Romanians with the history of Moldova in all types of educational institutions in the country. Anatol Petrencu and the Association of historians played a very active role in those protests. (See Ţara, 19 March 2002). Given the publicity this declaration was accorded in the government-controlled media of Moldova it looks like it was inspired by the authorities. On the protests see Vladimir Socor, “Chişinău Children's Crusade Plods on,” in Jamestown Foundation MONITOR, 15 April 2002.Google Scholar

73. See his interview for Moldova azi readers at: http://www.azi.md/iv?iv=29&lang=Ro&page=4. Significantly, Petrencu reaffirmed his position vis-à-vis Antonescu after official the Romanian position towards this figure began to change. In June 2001 the Romanian President Ion Iliescu while laying a wreath of flowers at the doorstep of the Jassy synagogue was reported to have said, “Not incorrectly [Antonescu] was and is considered now a war criminal for the political responsibility which he accepted to be an ally of Hitler.” See “Der Fall Antonescu—Cazul Antonescu.” Avalable at: http://home.t-online.de/home/totok/ion2g.htm. I thank Radu Ioanid for bringing my attention to this article.Google Scholar

74. Nicolenco, Viorica, Extrema dreaptă ǐn Basarabia (1923–1940) (Chişinău: Civitas, 1999).Google Scholar

75. On the extreme right in Romania see Weber, Eugen, Romania, in Rogger, Hans et al., eds, The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 501–574; Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel: Fascist Ideology in Romania, trans. Peter Heinegg (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1990); Francisco Veiga, La mística del ultranacionalismo: historia de la Guardia de Hierro, Rumania, 1919–1941 (Bellaterra: Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1989), Romanian translation: Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 1919–1941: mistica ultranaţionalismului, trans. Marin Ştefanescu (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995).Google Scholar

76. Nicolenco, Extrema dreaptă ǐn Basarabia, pp. 8–26.Google Scholar

77. Ibid., pp. 48–61 passim.Google Scholar

78. Ibid., p. 97.Google Scholar

79. Palade, Gheorghe and Şarov, Ion, Istoria romǎnilor. Epoca contemporană. Manual pentru clasa a IX-ea (Chişinău: Cartdidact, 1998). This textbook was approved by the Methodical Commission of the Faculty of History of the Moldovan State University as an experimental manual. At present it is the only history textbook published in Moldova (as opposed to those published in Romania) and available in both Romanian (Moldovan) and Russian for use in Moldovan gymnasia. It is routinely used in the ninth grade in both Romanian- and Russian-language schools.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., pp. 68.Google Scholar

81. Enciu, Nicolae, Istoria romǎnilor: Epoca contemporană. Manual pentru clasa a XII-a (Chişinău: Civitas, 2001). For information on the approval by the Commission of Experts see ibid., p. 2.Google Scholar

82. Ibid., p. 102.Google Scholar

83. Ibid., p. 104. The reference is to Stephen Fischer-Galati, Romǎnia ǐn secolul al XX-lea, trans. Manuela Macarie (Iasi: Institutul European, 1998), pp. 81–82 (Twentieth century Rumania, 2nd edn [New York: Columbia University Press, 1991], p. 63). I have quoted the English original.Google Scholar

84. Ibid.Google Scholar

85. Ibid., p. 107.Google Scholar

86. Scurtu, Ioan et al., Istoria romǎnilor. Epoca contemporană. Manual pentru clasa a XII-a (Chişinău: Prut Internacional, 2001).Google Scholar

87. Ibid., p. 81. The first mention of anti-Semitic legislation is under King Carol II and is linked to the change of external policies away from the Western powers towards the Axis states in the summer of 1940 (ibid., p. 23). It should be noted that in reality anti-Semitic legislation first appeared in Greater Romania in 1938, and anti-Semitism was a part of everyday national life during the entire inter-war period. See Radu Ioanid, “The Legal Status of the Jews in Romania,” in The Holocaust in Romania, pp. 3–36, esp. pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

88. Ibid., pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

89. Ibid., p. 85.Google Scholar

90. The quotation is from Giurescu, Dinu G., Romǎnia ǐn al doilea război mondial (Bucharest: Editura All), 1999, p. 151.Google Scholar

91. Hilberg, Cf. Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 2, pp. 752–758, 796–860.Google Scholar

92. The war against the USSR and government of the three provinces are covered on pages 83–87. Information on the court trial in the summer of 1947 at which Antonescu was indicted with crimes against humanity and condemned to death is inserted in the section dealing with Communization; the impression given is that the correctness of his sentence is highly questionable (ibid., p. 103).Google Scholar

93. At least some of the authors of the textbook in question are Romanian citizens, including Ioan Scurtu, some of whose books were referred to in note 30.Google Scholar

94. Andrushchak, Viktor Efimovich et al., Istoria Respubliki Moldova (Kishinev: Tipographia Akademii nauk, 1997). The authors of this book work almost exclusively in Russian, which is (still) the second language of academic research in Moldova.Google Scholar

95. For a more circumstantial account, see my “Narrative, Identity, State: History Teaching in Moldova.”Google Scholar

96. The author of the respective section is Petr Şornikov (Shornikov if transliterated from Russian), who also wrote the chapter on the Second World War in The History of Pridnestroviian Moldovan Republic, which was published in Tiraspol in 2000–2001. Pridnestroviie” is a Russian appellation for an illegal separatist entity that seceded from Moldova in 1990–1991 in the turmoil surrounding the last days of the former Soviet Union and during the nationalist upheaval in the Soviet Moldavian Republic. Pridnestroviie (Transnistria in Romanian) survives as an unrecognized illegal “state” thanks largely to military, economic and political support from Russia. (See King, The Moldovans, 178–208; Pål Kolstø et al., “The Transdniestrian Republic: A Case of Politicized Regionalism,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1998, pp. 103–128; Crowther, William, “Ethnic Politics in the Post-Communist Transition in Moldova,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1998, pp. 147–164). The publication of The History of Pridnestroviian Moldovan Republic was meant to legitimize this entity. The only mention of the extermination of the Transnistrian Jewry is in reference to the occupiers’ policy of destroying the system of health protection and sanitary security in the province. In this context it is said that “Romanian troops shot hundreds of Jewish doctors” (Vadim Sergeevich Grosul et al., eds, Istoriia Pridnestrovskoi Moldavskoi Respubliki [Tiraspol': RIO PGU, 2001], p. 214).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97. Izrail’ Elikovich Levit, “Poslednii pogrom. Istoria Kishinevskogo getto,” in Kishinevskii pogrom 1993 goda (Kishinev: Liga, 1993); Dov Doron (Spektor), Kishinevskoe getto: poslednii pogrom (Kishinev: Liga, 1993); Izrail’ Natovich Pilat, Iz istorii evreistva Moldovy (Kishinev: Assotsatsia veteranov voiny, truda I cionistskogo dvizhenia pri obshchestve evreiskoi kul'tury, 1990); Izrail’ Elikovich Levit. Pepel proshlogo stuchit v nashi serdtsa. Holokost (Kishinev: Obshchestvo evreeiskoi kul'tury Respubliki Moldova, Institut natsional'nyh menshinstv Akademii nauk Moldovy, Kishinevskaia gorodskaia evreiskaia biblioteka im. I. Mangera, 1997).Google Scholar