I've actually made a map of the Jewish Bucharest buildings that were nationalized by the communists after WW2 (available here: http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/# - works better on desktop, not so sure about mobile/tablets), you can see that while there was a concentration of buildings in what people now call the "Jewish neighborhood" (which was not called like that back then) those properties were quite largely spread over the entire city (the Jews made 10% of the Bucharest population before WW2).

> beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.

WW2 and the 1930s were very difficult times (and not only for the Jews). I like to look at those times as the exception rather than the norm.

weird because we've been relatively paceful only in the first world and only in the last 30 or so years. jugoslavia was just torn in an ethnic war; spain, ireland and russian client state were host to terrorost movement up until a couple generation ago, with many issue yet unresolved and likely to resurface. before the first world war there were a host of proxy wars around africa and middle east, class cleansing in the east, before that full on wars in the americas, before that france england and germany were in a state of constant skirmishes, with spain under siege by the moors and italy cities changing state flag every couple of generations. china was in warring state mode too until unification, then class warfare, then religious warfare, then the great step ahead.

humans have been a bunch of assholes, we living in a niche of limited peace on a few locations shouldn't give us the peace of mind that everyone else understand the value of integration. note that a person or a family by itself is likely to integrate, it's significant migration that end up into more or less pronounced isolationism.

again, just have a look at all the chinatown and italian quarters. the actual border may be fuzzy, but the sense of identity is definitely there. and while wwii was an exceptional time, smaller conflict are still very present and the failure integration models are popping up every day stronger.

I think it's easy to forget that we've had relative peace in the west since WWII only because the two major powers built nuclear arsenals large enough to end all life on the planet in a matter of minutes.

Even with all the carnage of WWII, I have very little doubt we'd have been back at it 10 years later if it weren't for the specter of nuclear armageddon hanging over everyone's heads.

You'd be surprised. We did horrible things to our Jewish communities. But... in a strange way.

Current Romania was formed out of regions that were occupied by different empires. The Old Romanian Kingdom was formed out of the bits formerly under Ottoman control. In 1918 the kingdom expanded to include regions formerly under Austria-Hungarian and Russian control.

When far right sentiment flared during WW2, the Jews in Basarabia (ex-Russian territory) were persecuted, even butchered. The ones in the Old Kingdom weren't.

In a weird way, they were "our Jews". They were considered different, yet still a part of our community.

> In a weird way, they were "our Jews". They were considered different, yet still a part of our community.

I’ve heard the same thing from Ukrainians. Isn’t the world fun like that?