In Search of the Perfect Romanian - National Specificity, Racial Degeneration, and Social Selection in Modern Romania

This book is the first comprehensive overview of debates about national character and race in modern Romania. It also argues that the Holocaust in Romania should 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 at the end of the Second World War, but was embedded in the socialist definitions of the ‘new man/woman’ emerging under communism.