Post–World War II Romanian war crime trials

Following the end of the Second World War, Romania was one of the 4 countries to be officially acknowledged as an "ally of Hitlerite Germany" by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties (along with Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland). The treaty of peace with Romania obliged the country to apprehend and bring to trial those accused of "war crimes and crimes against peace and humanity".

Only 4 Romanian war criminals were executed (Ion Antonescu, Mihai Antonescu, Constantin Z. Vasiliu and Gheorghe Alexianu) and hundreds more were sentenced to prison or forced labor. Only slightly more than 200 Romanians were sentenced by the initial postwar trials, carried out by the "People's Tribunals". Although the two courts - based in Cluj and Bucharest - sentenced 668 people, the vast majority of these were foreigners. The Cluj tribunal sentenced only 26 Romanians, the remainder being Hungarians (370), Germans (83) and Jews (2). The Bucharest tribunal sentenced only 187 people. There were more trials concerning war crimes and "crimes against peace" after the "People's Tribunals" were disbanded, however. Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe to initiate only a small number of court proceedings against accused war criminals and collaborators. This declaration of practically singular responsibility allowed many of those guilty of war crimes and collaboration to escape justice in postwar Romania. In Czechoslovakia and Hungary, for comparison, tens of thousands were convicted and hundreds were executed. In Bulgaria, death sentences alone amounted to 2,618, of which 1,576 were carried out.

The postwar regime "went easy" on the mass of genocidal antisemites, sentencing them to relatively minor punishments. Early amnesties were often granted. For example, on 1 June 1945, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu successfully had 29 death sentences commuted by the King. Although hundreds of high-ranking officials and officers were condemned to life or lengthy prison sentences, all who did not die in prison were released between 1958 and 1962.