Providential Anti-Semitism

Discusses how modernization and the birth of the nation state, with the concomitant impact of Western ideas, gave birth to a significantly different form of anti-Semitism in Romania. This type defined its national goals in a limited manner. That it did so would be critical in the 20th cent. for the survival of almost half a million Romanian Jews. Its unusual character would be hidden from view in most instances by a brutality of execution that has led observers over the course of the last hundred years or so to focus on the style rather than substance of what happened. The Romanians did not cooperate in the full execution of the Final Solution as the Nazis wanted and expected them to do. As they had done in the 19th cent., the Romanians attempted to counterpoise Great Power interests and thereby pursue their own self-interest whenever the Jewish Question came into play.