A conspiracy to murder : explaining the dynamics of Romanian 'policy' towards Jews in Transnistria

This article offers a comprehensive interpretation of the Romanian 'policy' towards Jews in Transnistria in 1941-1944. This region in southwestern Ukraine witnessed both a monstrous number of Jewish victims, usually estimated as no fewer than 250,000 and possibly more, and an unusually high survival rate by the standards of the occupied Soviet territory. The article argues that what is sometimes referred to as 'inconsistency' in Romanian policy can be best explained within the framework of the structuralist/functionalist approach of the history of the Holocaust that was first developed on German material. The article argues that Romanian leaders never adopted the policy of complete annihilation of Jews; rather, their aim was to expel them from Romania's national territory. However, they were not opposed to murdering Jews en masse when they believed it was 'necessary'from a militiary point of view of advisable for any other reason. Met literatuuropgave.