Throughout the war, Roosevelt backs the transfer of "Joint” and US funds to Joint and WEJ contacts in Europe to assist Jews anywhere even if the funds fall into enemy hands or pad their bank accounts. What also follows the cash to Europe is Roosevelt's Riot Act -- his assurance to all pro-German and pro-Nazi governments and their leaders in the specific countries of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Slovakia, and Croatia that American air power and bombing raids on their cities and industrial complexes will be matched by other threats of retribution and war crime trials after the war for those who do not protect their Jews. These threats begin to have an immediate effect on the powers-that-be inside of Romania.

The dictator of Romania, Ion Antonescu, embarks early on in the war on a plan he calls Romanianization -- a calculated scheme to deliberately rid his nation of over a half million Jews. During this period, he ships hundreds of thousands of his Jews to Transnistria where many are slaughtered. However, stiff opposition to his policies emerge, primarily led by Antonescu's deputy prime minister, Mihai Antonescu, and a powerful coterie of his friends and pro-Allied associates which include the young King Michael and his family.

With the intervention of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican through his papal nuncio in Bucharest and with the onset of American air power, Roosevelt's Riot Act, and the news of Hitler's defeat at Stalingrad, Ion Antonescu vacillates and capitulates to the opposition. He brings a halt to the deportation of Romanian Jewry to Poland and agrees to transport the Jews who still remain alive in Transnistria back to Romania proper.

Leo V. Kanawada, Jr.