Post–World War II Romanian war crime trials
Following the end of the Second World War, Romania was one of the 4 countries to be officially acknowledged as an "ally of Hitlerite Germany" by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties (along with Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland).
[4][5] Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe to initiate only a small number of court proceedings against accused war criminals and collaborators.
This declaration of practically singular responsibility allowed many of those guilty of war crimes and collaboration to escape justice in postwar Romania.
[8] Under Ion Antonescu's leadership, Romania joined the Tripartite Pact on 23 November 1940 as a sovereign state, took part in Operation Barbarossa as an equal partner of Germany, and was never occupied by the Wehrmacht.
Hitler respected Antonescu, who led the third largest Axis force in Europe: 585,000 Romanian troops served on the Eastern Front during June-October 1941.
With an entire German Army in their midst, they turned around within twenty-four hours and proclaimed their alliance with the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States.
[12] The "wholesale slaughter of Jews" in Romanian-occupied Soviet territories was "a genocide operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution".
This was acknowledged by Adolf Hitler on 19 August 1941: "As far as the Jewish Question is concerned, it can now be stated with certainty that a man like Antonescu is pursuing much more radical policies in this area than we have so far.".
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, the Communist Minister of Justice, adopted laws on the prosecution of war criminals in January 1945.
Most of the 668 who were sentenced by the "People's Tribunals" were Hungarian occupiers of Northern Transylvania and their collaborators rather than Romanians under Marshal Antonescu's regime.
The indictment was based on 4 major categories of arguments: rumors of Jewish cooperation with the enemy, communiques published by the authorities, army documents and orders of the local authorities forcing the Jews to hand over certain personal belongings (headlights, binoculars and cameras).
[25] Unlike the postwar trials in Germany, the testimonial materials were not widely disseminated and for the most part were largely withdrawn from access.
However, given the way the trial was organized and pursued along with the censored press and the carefully selected audience, the full horror of the Antonescu regime's crimes against the Jews did not touch the hearts of many Romanians.
[27] Romania has laws in place that acknowledge the outcomes of the postwar trials and make the glorification of people guilty of crimes against humanity illegal.
On Wednesday, 28 December 2022, the city council of Sector 2 (Bucharest) voted to reject the removal of a bust depicting Mircea Vulcănescu, a member of Ion Antonescu's government who was sentenced in 1946.
[28] On 8 May 1995, after the fall of Communism, 10 of the sentences pronounced by the "People's Tribunals" were overturned by the Supreme Court of Justice.
Attorney General Vasile Manea Drăgulin presented the convictions decided upon in 1945 as illegal, believing the interpretation of the evidence to have been “retroactive, truncated, and tendentious”, therefore amounting to a “conviction decision, whose content is a synthesis of vehement criticism of their activity, to which we forcefully ascribed the character of war crimes”.
An ardent pro-fascist and admirer of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, he was vice-president of the National Christian Party and then Antonescu's Minister of Propaganda.
[29][30] Eight members of Ion Antonescu's government were sentenced in 1949 for "crimes against peace", although one of them was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court on 26 October 1998.
