The Holocaust’s complex legacy includes continuing debates and disputes over issues of justice, ownership, reparations, and restitution, topics often influenced by both international and domestic politics. In Stefan Cristian Ionescu’s recent book, Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2024), he analyzes these topics in the context of the immediate aftermath of World War II in Romania as the country’s Jewish survivors struggled to rebuild their lives and communities by recouping their assets and rights and obtaining reparations. Peter Hayes, emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, has called Ionescu’s monograph “a groundbreaking contribution . . . to the study of the both the Holocaust and the early Cold War.”

Stefan Cristian Ionescu joined the Chapman faculty as associate professor of history and associate director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education in fall 2024. He was previously Visiting Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies in the Department of History at Northwestern University. He has also taught at The Hugo Valentin Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Minorities Studies in the Department of History at Uppsala University in Sweden. Dr. Ionescu holds a Ph.D. in History from Clark University and an L.L.B. from the University of Bucharest, School of Law. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and of an earlier monograph Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanization,’ 1940-1944 published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. 

Limited Seating. Registration Required.
Priority given to Supporting Members of the Rodgers Center

Pre-event reception at 6:15pm