Description:

"Justice and Restitution: Reversing the Aryanization/Romanianization of Jewish Property in Post-Nazi Romania, 1944-1950"

Annual Spring Theodore “Zev” Weiss Lecture in Holocaust Studies featuring Ştefan Cristian Ionescu (Theodore Zev and Alice R. Weiss-Holocaust Educational Foundation Visiting Associate Professor, Northwestern University)

Please join us!
In-Person Only
Open to the Public
Reception to Follow

While Holocaust litigation campaigns became globally prominent in the 1990s, especially in the US courts, a significant litigation, though less spectacular and underreported by the international media, took place in the European courts during the first postwar years. For example, almost nothing is known about the massive Jewish litigation in the courts of Romania – the country that harbored the second largest Jewish community in postwar Europe (430 000 people in 1946) – which resulted in a significant success in the restitution of the Jewish properties (houses, businesses, and companies) that were transferred to gentiles during the pro-Nazi Antonescu dictatorship. This extensive property transfer was known as Aryanization or Romanianization. Ionescu will examine the reversal of Aryanization/Romanianization through court litigation and other methods in early post-Holocaust Romania (1944--1950).