Well, today is Dragobete, a holiday that kinda, sorta exists in Romania (and RM) and kinda not. If you read the English-language link above, you’ll get a nice clean story about how it’s sorta, kinda the local equivalent of Valentine’s Day and that Dragobete was the son of an important character in Romanian folklore. All that is true but, as my wife constantly educates me, … Continue reading Dragobete
From the Jerusalem Post: I looked for the “Why?” in the archives of Romania, but I could not find it there. In all the survivors, and children of survivors that I have talked to I awkwardly asked “why do you think this happened?” Despite my current work for my thesis, I have also been working on a book on the Jassy Pogrom which has put … Continue reading Historian Asks Hard Questions About Romanian Holocaust
Word Count: 2171 Not too long ago, I had the chance to visit the beautiful city of Odessa. When I casually mentioned how weird it was that the train station in Odessa – as well as train stations in Bender and Tiraspol (part of Transnistria, the country that doesn’t exist) has a lot of armed Interior Ministry cops posted there, I started getting comments about … Continue reading Odessa Tales
Word Count: 1689 In the ordinary course of things, one minor noble who struggled to hang onto his kingdom in the sparsely populated backwaters of an Eastern European principality in the Late Middle Ages would be familiar only to historians and antiquarians today. A prince who won and lost his throne three times and spent seven long years in the dungeon of his enemy after … Continue reading How a Minor Medieval Prince Became the Most Famous Killer in History
All Things Romania 