IN HIS lifetime, he was known as Hitler's favourite East European ally, a red-haired syphilitic former cavalry officer who joined enthusiastically in the genocide of the Jews. But today, 50 years to the day after he was overthrown in a coup d'etat, Marshal Ion Antonescu is the object of a posthumous personality cult that is raising question marks over the quality of Romania's post-Communist democracy.

The rehabilitation of Antonescu, who was executed as a war criminal in June 1946, is no academic matter. It bears directly on present-day Romanian politics. For the man who rid Romania of its ...

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