Exactly 20 years after the first edition, Humanitas we are happy to return the Romanian translation of RG Waldek’s wonderful book to bookstore shelves AthThis ispThis isthis is the Palace. An impure, as they say today, novel and reportage, memoir and often sharp political analysis of seven and a half months of one of the most dramatic periods in the history of Romania.

In one place, R. G. Waldek writes that at the end of November 1940, after the great earthquake, the Romanians said: “The seven plagues mentioned in the scriptures have attacked us: the Hungarians, the Russians, the Bulgarians, Lupeaska, the Guard regime, the German military mission and an earthquake.” Or: “Since we entered the Triple Pact, we eat like the Germans, have an army like the Italians, a civil war like Spain, and an earthquake like Japan.” And until the end of January 1941, when RG Waldek will leave Romania, having finished his mission as a correspondent of the New York weekly Newsweek (in Epilogue therefore, the inquisitive reader has the opportunity to find an attempt to unravel the turbulent biography of the author, an attempt thanks to Ernest H. Letman, Jr.), the bloody revolt of the legionnaires will also be exhausted.

By a happy coincidence, the reprint of Rosie Waldeck’s book coincides with the arrival in bookstores of another book that I consider extremely important. It is about The fall of France. The Nazi invasion of 1940 Julian Jackson (Publishing Publisol, Bucharest, 2022). I say this because Rosie G. Waldeck arrived in Bucharest on the very day that Paris fell. Less than two years after the tragic event, the journalist-novelist not only lavishly reconstructs how the Romanians received this news, but also makes a detailed analysis, in many respects also politically and historically valid and not only today, of the Romanian reaction, as well as the reasons for this events are felt not only in Bucharest, but throughout Europe and beyond as a moment of balance. “The fall of France marked the culmination of twenty years of empty promises after all attempts to control unemployment, inflation, deflation, social unrest, party selfishness, etc., had failed. Europe was tired, it had lost faith in the principles which had guided it until then, and felt almost relieved when it all ended in such a way that it was absolved of all responsibility.”

So, Rosie Waldeck arrives in Bucharest on June 14, 1940, she stays in the best hotel of the time, located in the very center of the capital, “from a topographical, artistic, intellectual, political and, if you like, moral point of view.” revision”. AthAnne Palace (I remind you that he also appears in The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning, a book printed in Romanian a few years ago at do not worry) in June 1940 was still the last cosmopolitan stage on which post-World War Europe and New Order Europe appeared together.’ …”Only Fr Athenaeum Palace, in a brilliant decoration in the style of large European hotels, actors of the post-World War II era and actors of the new order, all stars of the first magnitude, held the poster, and the performance itself was full of suspense. It housed diplomats, Germans and English (the change in proportions over time says a lot, well observed by Rosie Waldeck), journalists or fake journalists, spies and informants in full (we find in the book a wonderful portrait of the mysterious Mrs. Edit von Coler – dear Edith!), there were not only scandals, but also a struggle for supremacy between representatives of the state and representatives of the Nazi party imprisoned in Romania. Guests of all nationalities and types were joined by Romanians with various occupations and, above all, more or less secret or obscure missions, many of them in at least two positions, current or former perfection. In the somewhat mythical space of the news hotel, news on sourcesrumors, drunkenness interfered with the new regime Sensation. Rosie Waldeck notes: “I could not have known that here, in this strange and elegant hotel, I would be able to watch up close how the Nazis conquered and colonized Europe; a perspective that, although it included only a small piece of Europe, has not lost its charm – an analysis can be made from a single drop of blood.”

From the intimacy of his hotel room, from the lively corridors, cafes, and restaurants where many people were cooking, RG Waldeck observes not only the fall of Paris. But also the Soviet ultimatum, which led to the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and Viennese dictatorship and the last months of Charles II’s reign, and his relationship with Lupeasca, and the events and contradictions within the Iron Guard, and what the historical parties did, illegally, how they functioned, and the presence of Iulio Maniu, and how he came Antonescu’s decisionand the abdication of the king, and the essence of the National-Legionary State, and the consequences of the devastating earthquake, and nationalist excesses as part of totalitarianism, and anti-Semitic persecution, and the decision head State to break it at some point with the help of Horia Sima and the Legionnaires. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro