Romanian Holocaust center blasts local council for funding anti-Semitic children’s book

Book features fascist WWII-era leader on its cover

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, a fascist WWII leader, featured on the cover of a new children's poetry book in Romania that received public funding (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, a fascist WWII leader, featured on the cover of a new children's poetry book in Romania that received public funding (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A Holocaust research center in Romania says public funds were used to finance a children’s poetry book that features on its cover Romania’s World War II-era fascist leader.

The National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania blasted a local council on Tuesday for helping publish the book by 100-year-old George Ungureanu, a former member of a pro-Hitler group active in Romania during the World War II.

The book has Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the fascist Iron Guard legion, in its cover.

There was no immediate reaction from Ungureanu or Romanian authorities.

The legionnaires, as Iron Guard members were known, gained notoriety for their vicious anti-Semitism. In 1941, they went on a torture-and-killing spree, slaying thousands of Jews in Bucharest.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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