The emergence of antisemitic and fascist regimes ("see Romania in World War II, Holocaust in Romania") signified the beginning of Relgis' marginalization. During the short-lived National Legionary State, established by the Iron Guard fascists between 1940 and early 1941, the author lived in seclusion. His "Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea" was banned in 1940, but Relgis secretly moved the books into a stable. After the Guard fell from power, the Ion Antonescu dictatorship still included Relgis on a nationally circulated list of banned Romanian Jewish authors, but Relgis continued to write. His texts of the time include a posthumous praise of his pacifist disciple Iosif Gutman, the son of a Bucharest rabbi, who had been killed during the Bucharest pogrom. The essay was planned as part of Rabbi Gutman's volume "Slove de martiri" ("Notes by Martyrs"), which, although anti-Guard, was not given Antonescu's imprimatur. Relgis was however able to publish an article in the Jewish-only magazine "Renașterea Noastră", on the occasion of Iosif's "yahrtzeit", where he compared the Gutmans to Laocoön and His Sons. Relgis' own son fled Romania in 1942, and settled in Argentina.