Then and then only, maybe finally and certainly more comprehensively, documents from Romania offered opportunities for studying a wartime regime that was second only to Germany in the killing of the Jews. Yes, do read this book (if your Romanian is good enough:0 ) because it offers a certain je ne sais quoi.Both historiography and history of the Romanian Shoah are a matter which could be tackled without obstruction only after the fall of Communism (from the last decade of the past century on) with the accretion of documentary collection and the opening of archives that began in the 1990s. It is as if I could have almost heard her talk. She is intelligent and that comes not necessarily from her knowledge of at least three to four languages (Romanian, French, German, and English), but of her presence in her own writing. She is quaint and refined in ways that only a polished mind would be. The turn of the phrase is like a second game to her, it is as if she is turning her wrist and snaps her fingers as a prima donna. That is a tragedy in itself.īut, let me talk about who she was and why I am so enthusiastic about her.Įven if she wrote little in this diary/journal the bits that she had laid on paper are glorious. She outlived both of her sons and husband.

Then, as the years pass, the fragments become more vague and much more macabre as her eldest dies in war, at only a year after his father`s departure. She jotted down the impressions that had been made on here.

For the lengthiest part she talks about her stay in Florence, after she had split from Nae Ionescu. There are bits of notes concerning periods of time from the 30s to the 50s. The woman that tried to redefine herself after she had separated herself from said husband. It is a clever name for a book, but it is still unjust to the person that she was. It translated to Diary with and whiteout Nae Ionescu. The entire premise of this book is that these are the thought of Nae Ionescu`s wife. A pity, really, as I would have wanted to hear more of Elena-Margareta Ionescu.

I am announcing my intention of yet again writing a review in English for a book written in Romanian. I am not bringing them up to flatter myself. I read one book on Cioran then one on Nae Ionescu and then this. This is my third book in what has become a thread of books written between the two World Wars.

Ionescu în ţara tatălui by Marta Petreu