Saw a very interesting presentation by Diana Dumitru, a Moldovan scholar, about the behavior of two Romanian provinces during the Holocaust. Both are near the Romanian/Ukranian border. Both were part of Tsarist Russia until 1918. Yet in one (Bessarabia) the local population actively aided anti-Jewish pogroms, while in the other (Trasnistria) the local population was far less anti-Semitic (according to Dumitru, based on both survivor testimony and the testimony of local non-Jews who were alive then). How come?
Bessarabia, the more anti-Semitic province, had been part of Romania since 1918, was taken over by Russia in 1940, and then was retaken by Romania in 1941. So the local population had been subjected to decades of anti-Semitic propaganda from the Romanian government and church.
In less awful Transnistria, the Soviet Union had ruled since 1918. The Soviets crushed religion and apparently discouraged anti-Semitism (on the negative side, from a Jewish standpoint, intermarriage rates increased quite a bit).
Religious conservatives (both Jewish and Christian) often believe that Jews are safest when Jews are good Jews and Christians are good Christians. Bessarabia and Transnistria suggest that this is only the case where Christians are pro-Jewish (as is thankfully the case in North America today).
More info on the presentation at http://www.cjs.utoronto.ca/event/2010/02/diana-dumitru-constructing-inter-eth
