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Goodbye, Transylvania: A Romanian Waffen-SS Soldier in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series)

by Sigmund Heinz Landau

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シルビア said: " If you were looking for a personal account of the multicultural and pluriconfessional Transylvania against the backdrop of the Second World War, this racist, revisionist and Nazi apologist fiction written under the veneer of historicism is not for yo If you were looking for a personal account of the multicultural and pluriconfessional Transylvania against the backdrop of the Second World War, this racist, revisionist and Nazi apologist fiction written under the veneer of historicism is not for you. The author debuts the novel by explaining the demographic of Transylvania, claiming:

“In pre–Roman days, Transylvania was inhabited by a small swarthy race known as the Dacs. They were almost wiped out by the Romans, the survivors intermarrying with Roman and Byzantine convicts banished to the, for them, harsh climate of Transylvania as slave labor. They were joined by an increasing number of deserters from the legions, and a new nation emerged out of these ingredients, known as the Wallachs. Century after century these people kept crossing over the borders and, left by the Hungarian authorities to settle, mostly as shepherds and laborers, proceeded to multiply at an alarming rate. By the turn of the century, the Wallachian countries of Oltenia, Muntenia, and Moldova united and assumed the proud name of Romania.”

Not only is this passage profoundly incompatible with historical scholarship, but racist to its core since no historical accounts state that Dacians were "swarthy." The very use of the phrase "alarming rate" when explaining the numerical increase of Romance speakers in Transylvania indicates that Sigmund Landau considered the Romanian demographic a problem, even an infestation, which could not be further from the truth since he himself had claimed that Dacians and their successors preceded the arrival of the Hungarians and the Saxons.

In another scene, the author strikes up a conversation with fellow British tourists in the hotel and claims that Romanians are alien subjects in their own land, in addition to half breeds:

“Mr. Smith, please allow me to say that there aren't any coloreds in this country, except a few university students from leftist African and Asian countries. As to foreigners, the Romanians are the foreigners; they don't belong here. The Hungarians and Saxons, now minorities, are the rightful owners, or if you like, inhabitants.”
“You mean all these very dark people are the Romanians?”
“Yes, Mr. Smith. A mixture of Gipsy and Romanian.”

I congratulate myself on not wasting my money on this filth and choosing, instead, to pirate it off for free. You would expect someone who had known adversity and the pain of discrimination to have known better than to extrapolate his experiences to an entire population or dabble in historical fasehoods. If you are into the revision of history, the cosmeticization of German conduct on the Eastern Front, and the perpetuation of racist misinformation, this is the book for you! ...more "

Mar 26, 2026 01:14PM · see review