La rhétorique antisémite du régime d’Antonescu

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The Anti-Semitic Rhetoric of Antonescu’s RegimeLeon Volovici discusses the official rhetoric of Antonescu’s regime to justify anti-Jewish discrimination and a progrom to eliminate Jewish presence in Romania. In the early 1940s, the old anti-Semitic discourse became for the first time the official discourse of the Romanian State, with its eclectic mix of radical nationalism, racism, the slogan of the biological inferiority of the “Jewish race”. However, a significant change occurred : what is on the forefront now is not the racial element, but the identification of the Jew with the Bolshevik danger. The demonization of Judeo-Bolsheviks is amplified by frequent religious connotations, attributing exclusively to the Jews the atheism and the anti-Christianism of the Soviet ideology, presenting the Jew as a symbol of supreme danger and his elimination as a patriotic imperative, in order to save the fatherland and the nation. The author explains how the official rhetoric of the Romanian political leaders developed in an opportunistic way during the war. In contrast with the Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda, both Ion Antonescu and Mihai Antonescu changed their rhetoric concerning the Jews several times, in relation to the situation at the front, their political position, the target audience, or fear of a possible post-war trial for their crimes against the Jewish population.