That is a little clearer, thanks. What I'm still unsure about is why those places would want to keep their streets named after him. Are the populace proud of him, and why?
I would be resistant to change if a Native American group wanted my home city of Jacksonville to change it's name, because it's named after the perpetrator of atrocities against Native Americans (and also because he apparently never visited the city named after him).
Because there's more to a name than it's namesake. People attach memories and stories and feeling to names. And being told that this all needs to be updated because of bad things in the past by people that don't even live near you will always seem obnoxious.
This makes it sound like I'm against renaming anything, and I'm not. But I don't find it at all surprising when people push back against renaming things or removing monuments due to a reassessment of the past via a modern critical view.
Thanks for chiming in. I do see your point - names have personal meanings that go beyond what they superficially refer to, and having that stripped away feels like an invalidation or a threat to one's identity and experience.
One the other hand I feel like there are some important differences. The Holocaust is still a recent and deep wound in the European psyche, and Antonescu was an enthusiastic and vicious perpetrator of it in Romania. Romania was the only Nazi ally that independently instigated the Holocaust within its borders. Hitler even praised Antonescu for putting in place much more radical policies for eliminating Jews. Anti-semitic policies continued well beyond the end of WW2 - while Germany invested in reparations and remembrance and rebuilding itself as a safe place for Jews to live, Romania was still outlawing Jewish organisations and bargaining with Israel to allow Jewish emigration for cash. There is still a small Jewish community in Romania, but from what I've read they have good reason to feel uncomfortable about expressing their beliefs openly.
The link that paganel provided is a report from the US embassy, advising US government and citizens on the status of religious freedom in Romania. Whilst it does reference specific city halls, it only does so via references to statements from the Wiesel Institute, a public institude established by the Romanian government to study the Holocaust in Romania. As far as I can tell, it's saying "the country's own national institutes having pointed out transgressions of its own constitution regarding religious freedom". This is presumably of interest for people considering tourism, business or diplomatic work in the country.
