In Search of the Perfect Romanian

The book centers on debates about the Romanian national character and race between 1880s and 1950s. It also argues that during the early 1940s anti-Semitism and anti-Roma racism contributed directly to the programme of ethnic purification pursued by the Antonescu regime. Racism and eugenics explain not just the deportation and murder of the Jews but also the deportation and murder of the Roma. The Holocaust in Romania should therefore be understood as the result not just of anti-Semitism but also of biopolitical nationalism. Finally, the book suggests that the eugenic ideal of the ‘perfect’ Romanian did not disappear in 1945 but was embedded in the socialist definitions of the ‘new man’ and ‘perfect’ society emerging under communism.