During the late 1930s, Romania drew closer to Nazi Germany and gradually introduced discrimination against Jews; the National Renaissance Front banned the PER, along with all other Romanian political parties, in early 1938.

[10] He served as its president in 1919–1920, during which time he was acquainted with more senior Zionist figures, including activist Leon Mizrachi, Mișu Weissman, and Chief Rabbi Jacob Itzhak Niemirower.

[12] This period saw him involved in at least one scuffle with antisemitic colleagues: on January 31, 1923, they tried to prevent Benvenisti and Samuel Steinberg from hearing a lecture by Mircea Djuvara; "other Jewish students arrived in" to assist, after which the two groups fought each other, leaving three Jews and one Romanian slightly injured.

"[29] In August, shortly after the Sighet Jewish Temple had been set ablaze, the "General Council of Romanian Jews" delegated him to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he demanded details on the investigation.

"[44] In May of that year, Renașterea Noastră's eponymous newspaper carried an article by Benvenisti which made him an official enemy of Germany, for celebrating the boycott of Nazi business and for condemning German rearmament.

[57] This assignment put Benvenisti in direct contact with the Istanbul branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel and its representatives Mayer Segall and Haim Barlas, who successively handled the emigration project in Romania.

Benvenisti and fellow Zionist Executive man Cornel Iancu joined the Assistance Committee presided upon by Arnold Schwefelberg, which offered some relief to survivors of Transnistrian marches.

He also organized relief for survivors of the Iași pogrom who were stranded at Călărași—alongside fellow Zionists Abraham Feller, Iacov Litman, and Lazăr Wurmbrand, he oversaw a fundraiser for this group.

[71] In January 1942, Antonescu's government formed a state-controlled Central Jewish Office, which nominally supplanted the Zionist Executive; its direct overseer was a non-Jewish Commissioner, Radu Lecca.

As he recounts, Romanian authorities were sympathetic to such demands, but noted that the matter was of direct interest to the Nazi agency in Romania; consequently, Benvenisti and Iancu visited with the local Judenberater, Gustav Richter.

[88] According to his own reports, Benvenisti once overheard Lecca's conversations, becoming the first person to record his approval for the mass deportation of 40,000 Transylvanian and Banatian Jews to Nazi extermination camps; he also notes his and Carol Reiter's role in stopping "this new monstrosity", by appealing to Antonescu himself.

They met with PNȚ leaders Iuliu Maniu and Ghiță Popp, who promised to assist them with preventing the deportation of Bukovina Jews, as well as with asking Antonescu's men to improve the living conditions of those already held in Vapniarka and Grosulovo.

Though noting that he could not hope to persuade the Conducător to improve on his antisemitic record, Brătianu put Benvenisti in contact with his party colleague Ion Costinescu, who was presiding over the Romanian Red Cross and who "undertook the most energetic efforts toward [the deportees'] repatriation.

"[110] As noted by historian Dennis Deletant, his name surface during an investigation of Zionist escape routes by the German Foreign Ministry, which "passed this information on to the Romanian authorities as evidence of 'hostile' activities";[111] Siguranța and Gestapo agents chanced upon letters and receipts which implicated Benvenisti in illegal acts, resulting in his arrest on January 30, 1944.

[114][115] Mella Iancu recounts that she was also involved in bribing Siguranța Commissioner Albert Rădulescu with hundreds of thousands of lei from Zionist Executive coffers, which, she claims, contributed to his leniency on that specific matter.

[117] Benvenisti himself credited his success to his defense team, which comprised Doru Gherson and S. Hart, to Filderman and Zissu, as well as to "the most progressive left-wing circles"—the trial, he maintained, was one of "racial persecution".

[122] He took this decision when a group of Romanian and Palestinian Zionists (including Zissu, Entzer, Barlas and Moritz Geiger) expressed their wish to defy the British caps on immigration by fitting illegal transports of Jews.

"[135] By February 1944, Benvenisti, Moscovici and Iancu Scarlat were facing prosecution for an alleged participation in forging papers that exempted Isac Juman and other Jews from their labor duties.

[136] Rabbi Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, who arrived to Bucharest from Northern Transylvania in early 1944, attested that Benvenisti was among those directly involved in the effort to rescue would-be victims of the Holocaust in Hungary—specifically, they smuggled Hungarian Jews into Romania across the border, and obtained the Antonescus' assurances that the network would be tolerated.

[137] Both Zissu and Cohen argue that, in May or June 1944, Benvenisti unwittingly jeopardized a major rescue plan for the Hungarian Jews, when he showed up for direct talks with Lecca and Antonescu, without consulting them and other Jewish leaders.

[142] Benvenisti gave up on his emigration plan when his mother was diagnosed with a heart condition which made it unlikely that she could survive the journey; he also noted that Suzana was depressed by the thought of leaving Romania.

[143] Benvenisti claims that, on August 22, 1944, government officials rushed him to the Sturdza Palace on Calea Victoriei, asking him to urgently send a message to the "world's Jewish organizations", and, through them, the Churchill war ministry, announcing that Romania was ready to surrender.

[149] Benvenisti formed a Mixed Judicial Commission, which represented Zionist and non-Zionist parties and organizations, in a common effort to undo the antisemitic legacy and obtain increased rights for Jews.

"[157] This was influenced by his contacts with Mella Iancu, a Labor Zionist, and veered into support for a "people's democracy"; Benvenisti boasted his participation in collecting funds for the International Red Aid.

[176] In preparation for the general elections in November 1946, the CDE, UER, and PER established a "Jewish Representation", which ran as a minor ally of the PCR's governing coalition, itself called Bloc of Democratic Parties (BPD).

He alleged that the CDE wished to spy on the WJC for his communist patrons, or, alternatively, that it was interested in forcing Montreux delegates to take a pro- or anti-communist position, which would have compromised the Romanian movement.

[216] Comparing these records with parallel testimonies provided by Zionist Smaya Avny-Steinmetz, Wexler and Popov also argue that Benvenisti was tortured "liberally" after that date, in what was an attempt to extract his confession to have spied for Israel.

As Wexler and Popov note, the supposed document integrated terminology that "no Western intelligence service would have been caught using", and contained orders for Benvenisti to send Tabacinic-Sunea newspaper clippings "which is to say publicized material that anyone would have had access to, in a free country.

[226] In March, when asked to describe his involvement with military intelligence, Benvenisti spoke of his having witnessed the arrival in Bucharest of Soviet-trained units from the Tudor Vladimirescu and HCC Divisions, and of sending Israel information about them being "very well equipped and highly motivated".

[5] Known as "Moshe Benvenisti", in October 1946 he traveled with Idov Cohen and others to West Germany, where he negotiated compensation rights for Transnistria deportees—based on the claim that "Bucharest had been the Nazi center from which the persecution of Jews in all parts of Romania was controlled."