Riddled with antisemitism during the 1930s, the Romanian Orthodox Church energetically supported the Romanian state in the murder of at least 250,000 Jews and roughly 20,000 Roma during the Holocaust. Priests and theologians played an active role in fascist parties before the war, including in the National Christian Defense League, the National Christian Party, and the Legion of the Archangel Michael. The Patriarch Miron Cristea introduced antisemitic legislation during his term as Prime Minister, which was unprecedented in its cruelty toward Jews, and hundreds of clergy travelled to Transnistria as “missionaries” to establish a new metropolitanate there. These priests and bishops witnessed and gave their blessing to the murder of Jews and Roma in ghettos, concentration camps, and massacres in Transnistria. The story of the Romanian Orthodox Church's involvement in the Holocaust has already been outlined and documented by Jean Ancel, and this book adds only minor details to a story that still awaits a comprehensive treatment. Ion Popa elaborates on the rhetoric that accompanied the Church's involvement in Transnistria, and proves that attempts to distance the Church from the Holocaust are disingenuous. The book's real achievement is the way it unpacks the significance of the Holocaust for subsequent Church history.

Writing about the Romanian Orthodox Church is difficult because church archives remain closed, and most of the book is based on the archives of the former secret police, Holocaust-era archives held at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Church newspapers, magazines, and books. Despite the fact that so much of the book is based on published sources, this is a story that the Church has successfully denied for decades. Cristian Vasile has shown how the Church's links to fascism allowed the Romanian Communist Party to compromise and subordinate it during the immediate postwar years, and research by Oliver Gillet and Lucian Leuştean has demonstrated how willing the Church was to collaborate with the communist regime. Nevertheless, Popa's history is groundbreaking in several respects. By placing the Holocaust at the center of his narrative, Popa explains how earlier misdemeanors motivated Church leaders to lie about the past, to restrict access to archives, and to seek the closest possible ties with the state. Details about clerical perpetrators emerged only when it was politically expedient for the Church, such as when the Romanian Church used accusations about Valerian Trifa's involvement in the Holocaust to discredit him as the leader of Romanian Orthodox Christians in the United States and to replace him with their own appointee. Denying the Church's guilt resulted in a contradictory stance, in which “the Church presented itself as a victim of Communism, and portrayed itself in a glorious light in relation to its involvement in the Holocaust” (197). Antisemitic nationalism characterized Romanian Orthodox discourse under state socialism and has continued to do so since the 1989 revolution, when right-wing bishops and theologians, some but not all of whom were active anti-Semites, have been promoted as Orthodox heroes in religious publications.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Popa's story is the response of the Jewish community. Although Jewish leaders were and are well aware of the Church's complicity in the Holocaust, they have refrained from calling it to account and instead have focused on building bridges between the two religious communities. In return for its silence, the Church and state worked to create an image of “religious harmony” (116), stifling extreme expressions of antisemitism, allowing Jews to emigrate, and giving them some degree of independence in managing religious affairs. Similarly, although the state of Israel publicly reproached the Romanian President for denying the Holocaust in 2003, it continues to maintain a positive relationship with the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Church plays an important symbolic role in Romanian-Israeli diplomacy, Israel encourages Romanian Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and no one talks about the war.

Although at times it slips into broad, unjustified generalizations, such as the claim that “in the countryside … the sermons and advice of village priests were followed without hesitation” (42), or the characterization of Romanian state socialism as a “totalitarian regime” (129), most of Popa's analysis is careful and precise. His deconstruction of the handful of articles in which Church writers have rewritten history is particularly valuable. The story that Popa has to tell of a powerful religious institution using its social and political influence to misrepresent the past for political gain is an important one that is crucial for understanding the relationship between religion, politics, and history in contemporary eastern Europe.