Conclusion

Summary

After the putsch that toppled the Antonescu regime in August 1944, Romania changed sides: It abandoned the Axis and joined the Allies. Even though the new transitional governments proceeded to build a democratic society, formally abolished the Romanianization legislation, and adopted the main restitution laws rather quickly (by the summer of 1945), restitution did not proceed smoothly in practice. A fair, rapid, complete, and permanent restitution of real estate, businesses and other rights did not take place. Restituting Romanianized Jewish property and repairing Holocaust injustices in the aftermath of the Antonescu regime proved to be a complicated process involving Jewish leaders and ordinary survivors, Jewish domestic and international organizations, individual gentile profiteers, Romania’s transitional governments, and political and social groups.