A Holocaust research center in Romania announced that public funds have been used to finance a children’s poetry book that features Romania’s World War II fascist leader on its cover, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania condemned a local council for helping publish the book, which was written by George Ungureanu, a former member of a neo-Nazi group active in Romania during World War II.
The book’s cover features a picture of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the fascist Iron Guard legion.
The legionnaires, as Iron Guard members were known, gained notoriety for their vicious anti-Semitism, as well as their fascist, anti-communist and orthodox Christian ideals.
In 1941, they went on a torture-and-killing spree, murdering thousands of Jews in Bucharest, noted the AP.
There was no immediate reaction from Ungureanu or Romanian authorities.