Translation of an unpublished Hebrew manuscript, completed in 2001 and presented at a symposium at the Holocaust memorial Museum in Washington.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Describes Romanias antisemitic policies in the interwar period and the genocide of Jews in Romania and Romanian-controlled Transnistria (including Odessa) during World War II, stressing the economic aspect of these policies. The first clearly antisemitic law enacted in Romania was the Law to Reexamine Citizenship of January 1938, which stripped thousands of Jews of their citizenship. The great upheavals of 1938-42, including the loss of territories in 1940, an attempted Legionnaire takover in January 1941, and Romanias entrance into the war in June 1941, brought about an escalation in antisemitic policies. These included a boycott of Jewish trade, seizure of Jewish property, dismissals of Jewish workers, forced labor, measures to Romanize the countrys cultural and intellectual life, and outright plunder. The Iron Guard played a leading role in the economic destruction of Romanian Jewry, reinforced with terror. Antonescu tried not to lag behind the previous Iron Guard regime in expropriation policies. The genocidal acts of Antonescus regime (e.g. the pogrom in Iasi and murders in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Odessa, and Transnistria) were accompanied by expropriation of Jewish property, plunder, extortion of money by selling food and water at inflated prices in ghettos and camps, and exploitation of Jewish labor.