The Russian edition of history professor Vladimir Solonari’s book Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania was just released. The English edition was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2009 and remains sold out. The book was also published in Romania by POLIROM, a highly reputable press.
Purifying the Nation is a provocative exploration of the Holocaust in World War II Romania. Solonari argues that the persecution of Jews and Roma by the Romanian government was not a response to pressure from the country’s ally, Nazi Germany, but rather stemmed from the vision of an ethnically pure Romania. Through a rigorous, archive-based analysis of the country’s interwar political and intellectual climate and policies and practices during its alliance with the Nazis, Solonari sheds valuable new light on the genocidal activities of one of Hitler’s European satellites.