Final Report

The members of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania:

Chairman

: Elie Wiesel

Vice-chairmen

: Tuvia Friling (State Archivist of Israel), Radu Ioanid (United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum) and Mihail E. Ionescu (Institute for Political Defense and Military History,

Bucharest)

Members

Ioan Scurtu (Commission secretary Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest),

Viorel Achim (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest), Jean Ancel (Yad Vashem, Jerusa-

lem), Colette Avital (member of the Israeli Parliament), Andrew Baker (American Jewish Commit-

tee), Lya Benjamin (Center for the Study of Jewish History, Bucharest), Liviu Beris (Association

of the Survivors of the Holocaust in Romania), Randolph Braham (City University of New York),

Irina Cajal Marin (Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania), Adrian Cioflânca (A.D.

Xenopol Institute of History, Iasi), Ioan Ciuperca (Al.I. Cuza University, Iasi), Alexandru

Elias (Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania), Alexandru Florian (Dimitrie Cantemir

University, Bucharest), Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu (Centre de Sociologie Européenne, Paris), Hildrun

Glass (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet, Munich), Menachem Hacohen (Chief Rabbi of Ro-

mania), Vasile Ionescu (Aven Amentza Roma Center), Corneliu Mihai Lungu (National Archives

of Romania), Daniel S. Mariaschin (Bnai Brith International), Victor Opaschi (Presidential

Counselor), Andrei Pippidi (University of Bucharest), Ambassador Meir Rosenne (Israel), Liviu

Rotman (University of Tel Aviv), Michael Shafir (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), Paul Shapiro

(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), William Totok (Arbeitskreis fuer Geschichte, Ger-

many), Raphael Vago (University of Tel Aviv), George Voicu (National School for Political and

Administrative Studies, Bucharest), Leon Volovici (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
(Government Decision no. 672/May 5, 2004, published in

Monitorul Oficial al Rom^niei

, no. 436/

May 17, 2004)

Contents

Foreword .............................................................................................................

Speech Given by Mr. Ion Iliescu, President of Romania, at the Meeting Dedicated

to the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania October 12, 2004 ................................. 9
Message from Elie Wiesel, Chairman of the International Commission

on the Holocaust in Romania ................................................................................. 15
Message of President Traian Bãsescu at the Ceremony

for the Commemoration of the Martyr Jews Killed on January 21-22, 1941 ....................... 17
Background and Precursors to the Holocaust.

Roots of Romanian Anti-Semitism. The League of National Christian Defense

and Iron Guard Anti-Semitism. The Anti-Semitic Policies of the Goga Government

and of the Royal Dictatorship ................................................................................. 19
Romanian-German Relations before and during the Holocaust ........................................ 57
The June-July 1940 Romanian Withdrawal from Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina and Its Consequences on Interethnic Relations in Romania ............. 71
Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Official Rhetoric concerning

the Judeo-Bolshevik Danger: Romanian Jews and Communism between 1938-1944 ............ 89
The Holocaust in Romania ................................................................................... 109
The Exclusion of Jews from Romanian Society during the Antonescu Governments

with and without the Iron Guard: Anti-Semitic Legislation,

Romanianization and Expropriation ........................................................................ 181
The Life of Jewish Community under Ion Antonescu

and the Jewish Communitys Response to the Holocaust in Romania ............................. 205
The Deportation of the Roma and Their Treatment in Transnistria ................................ 223
The Role of Ion Antonescu in the Planning and Implementation

of Anti-Semitic and Anti-Roma policies of the Romanian State..................................... 243
The Holocaust in Northern Transylvania ................................................................. 255
Solidarity and Rescue. Romanian Righteous among the Nations ................................ 283
Trials of the War Criminals .................................................................................. 313
Distortion, Negationism, and Minimalization of the Holocaust in Postwar Romania .......... 333
Findings and Recommendations ............................................................................. 381

Afterword .........................................................................................................

391

Index .............................................................................................................

395

Foreword

On the initiative of Mr. Ion Iliescu, President of Romania, the International Commission on the

Holocaust in Romania was established on October 22, 2003. The Commission was conceived from

the very beginning as an independent research body, free of any influence and political considera-

tion. The Commissions budget and composition were approved under Government Decisions

no. 227 of February 20, 2004, and no. 672 of May 5, 2004, respectively.

At the invitation of the President of Romania, Mr. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and

honorary member of the Romanian Academy, accepted the chairmanship of the Commission.

The Commissions aim was to research the facts and determine the truth about the Holocaust

in Romania during World War II and the events preceding this tragedy. The results of the research

by the Commission are presented in this Report, based exclusively on scientific standards.

The Commission met three times in Washington from May 16 to May 22, 2004, in Jerusalem

from September 6 to September 9, 2004, and in Bucharest from November 8 to November 13,

2004 to evaluate the state of research and draft the Final Report. On November 11, 2004, the

Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania was presented to the

President of Romania.

We hope that the Commissions conclusions and recommendations will promote the education

on and understanding of the Holocaust among all citizens, and particularly the youth of Romania,

as well as contribute to further research on the subject.

Besides Mr. Elie Wiesel, the Commission included respected experts in history, the humani-

ties, and the social sciences from Romania and abroad, survivors of the Holocaust, representatives

of national and international Jewish and Roma organizations and representatives of the Romanian

Presidency: Tuvia Friling (State Archivist of Israel), Radu Ioanid (United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum) and Mihail E. Ionescu (Institute for Political Defense and Military History,

Bucharest) vice-chairmen; Ioan Scurtu (Commission secretary Nicolae Iorga Institute of

History, Bucharest), Viorel Achim (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest), Jean Ancel

(Yad Vashem, Jerusalem), Colette Avital (member of the Israeli Parliament), Andrew Baker

(American Jewish Committee), Lya Benjamin (Center for the Study of Jewish History, Bucharest),

Liviu Beris (Association of the Survivors of the Holocaust in Romania), Randolph Braham (City

University of New York), Irina Cajal Marin (Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania),

Adrian Cioflâncã (A.D. Xenopol Institute of History, Iaºi), Ioan Ciupercã (Al.I. Cuza Univer-

sity, Iaºi), Alexandru Elias (Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania), Alexandru Florian

(Dimitrie Cantemir University, Bucharest), Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu (Centre de Sociologie

Européenne, Paris), Hildrun Glass (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet, Munich), Menachem

Hacohen (Chief Rabbi of Romania), Vasile Ionescu (Aven Amentza Roma Center), Corneliu Mihai

Lungu (National Archives of Romania), Daniel S. Mariaschin (Bnai Brith International), Victor

Opaschi (Presidential Counselor), Andrei Pippidi (University of Bucharest), Ambassador Meir

Rosenne (Israel), Liviu Rotman (University of Tel Aviv), Michael Shafir (Radio Free Europe/

Radio Liberty), Paul Shapiro (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), William Totok

(Arbeitskreis fuer Geschichte, Germany), Raphael Vago (University of Tel Aviv), George Voicu

(National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest), Leon Volovici (Hebrew

University of Jerusalem) members.

Speech Given by Mr. Ion Iliescu,

President of Romania, at the Meeting Dedicated to the Holo-

caust Remembrance Day in Romania October 12, 2004

Messrs. Presidents of the Legislative Bodies,

Your Holiness, Father Patriarch,

Your Eminence, Chief Rabbi,

Honorable religious leaders,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Ambassadors,

Dear guests,

Having emerged from the darkness of totalitarianism, Romania has embarked on a

long and not so easy road to the recovery of memory and the assumption of responsibil-

ity, in keeping with the moral and political values grounding its new status as a demo-

cratic country, a dignified member of the Euro-Atlantic community.

Upon deciding to establish a Holocaust Remembrance Day, we intended to bring

pious homage to all those who suffered as a result of the discriminatory, anti-Semitic and

racist policies promoted by the Romanian state in a troubled moment of our national

history. This dark chapter in our recent past, when the Romanian Jews became victims

of the tragedy of the Holocaust, must not be forgotten or minimized. While paying

homage to the dead or deported, to those forced to leave the country, to those deprived

of their belongings, of their rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, and

treated like inferior beings, we search our conscience and try to understand the causes

and consequences of our abdication of the values and traditions of our people, of the

obligations assumed affer the Great Union of 1918.

A critical evaluation of the past is always necessary, so as not to forget it, but also to

set with clarity the landmarks of our effort to build ourselves, as part of constructing the

future of our nation. Such remembrance is all the more appropriate when it refers to

tragic events befallen for so long by an unmotivated silence.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The outbreak of World War II found Romania unprepared to face its multiple chal-

lenges. Under the shield of neutrality, proclaimed almost immediately, the Romanian

leadership of the time hoped to be able to prevent the countrys involvement in a conflict

that was foreign to us and could result in many losses and no gains.

However, the evolution of events brought Romania into the whirl of the war much

sooner than expected. In June 1940, under an agreement with Germany, based on the

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the USSR gave Romania an ultimatum, whereby it forced our

country, under the threat of hostilities, to surrender Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

Then, on August 30, 1940, under the Vienna Dictate, Germany and Italy forced Romania

to surrender Northern Transylvania to Hungary.

Against this background of profound national tragedy, following a coup, a radical

change of political regime took place in Romania. General Ion Antonescu came to power,

and in a first stage (from September 1940 to January 1941) he relied on the political force

of the Legionary movement an extremist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, antidemocratic,

and pro-Nazi party. In November 1940 Romania joined the Axis, rallying to the group of

states dominated by Hitlers Germany. Anti-Semitism and the crusade against Bolshe-

vism gradually became the main topics of the official propaganda, which attempted to

manipulate public opinion.

Germanys war against the USSR, launched in June 1941, which Ion Antonescu

joined from the very beginning based on the need to recover the territories abducted by

the Soviet Union a year before, enforced this obedience to the political aims and ideo-

logical orientations of Hitlers Germany.

Pressure from the pro-fascist organizations in the country, as well as from Hitlers

Germany and fascist Italy, led to the promotion of anti-Semitism as a state policy as early

as the time of the Goga-Cuza government (December 1937 February 1938); but it was

on August 8, 1940, under the royal dictatorship of Carol II, that a systematic policy of

excluding Jews from the life of Romanian society began.

After the instauration of the Antonescu-Legionary dictatorship in September 1940,

the anti-Semitic policy became extremely harsh: laws were adopted that excluded Jews

from schools and universities, bars and theatres, the army and the liberal professions;

commissions for Romanianization took over Jewish properties; forced labor was im-

posed on the males of the Jewish population.

During the Legionary rebellion of January 1941, a genuine pogrom took place, in

which 120 Jews were killed. After the Legionnaires removal from power, the anti-Semitic

policy continued at even higher levels. Of the most serious events we mention the

pogrom of Iaºi, in June 1941, when thousands of Jews perished.

A significant aspect, practically the most important chapter of the Holocaust in

Romania, refers to deportations. Initially, the regime led by Ion Antonescu planned the

deportation of all citizens of Jewish origin from Bessarabia and Bukovina, following that

later on, the citizens of Jewish origin from other areas of the country would be subjected

to the same policy. The place chosen for deportation was Transnistria, the territory

between the Dniester and the Bug that came under Romanian administration.

Massive deportations started on October 9, 1941, and continued for a year. Romanian

citizens, our fellow men, about 120,000 of them, were taken from their homes and

embarked on true death trains or marched through rain and snow tens and hundreds of

miles, across the Dniester. On the way, as well as in Transnistria, many thousands Jews

died as a result of the inhuman treatment, freezing, illness, or even shooting.

In memory of these people, at the proposal of several organizations of Holocaust

survivors and the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania, as well as from the

consciousness of our moral duty to the memory of the Romanian Jews who had to suffer

during those terrible years, the government has decided to make October 9 the annual

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania.

FINAL REPORT

Deportations were not the only component of the Holocaust. I will only mention the

retaliations of October 1941 in Odessa, following the explosion of the citys Romanian

Military Command. In August 1942 the Romanian side was presented with a plan

prepared by the German authorities that aimed to send all the Romanian Jews to the

Belzec death camp. However, this plan was never put into practice, and Antonescu

decided in October 1942 to put a stop to the deportations to Transnistria.

It must be said here that the evolution of the attitude of Ion Antonescus regime in this

regard was determined by the evolution of the war. In the phase of the German victories

on the Eastern front, the repression against the Jewish population reached its height, and

the regimes leaders often stated that the so-called Jewish problem was almost solved. As

the tides of war changed, the attitude of Ion Antonescus regime became more nuanced,

and measures were taken that limited the number of victims. This resulted in Romania

being one of Germanys allies where a significant part of the Jewish population on their

territory managed to survive. Moreover, many Jews from Northern Transylvania, under

Horthyst occupation at the time, succeeded in saving themselves by fleeing to Romania

with the help of Romanian citizens and the tacit agreement of some officials.

The terrible tragedy of the Holocaust was possible due to the complicity of top state

institutions secret services, army, police, etc. , as well as of those who executed, often

overzealously, Marshal Antonescus orders.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day it is also natural to mention the fact that many

personalities politicians, high priests, military officers, writers, journalists, actors,

other public figures intervened with the state authorities to cancel, or at least to ease,

certain frustrating and repressive measures. Many Romanians, known or unknown,

risked their freedom, and even their lives, to save their Jewish fellow men from death.

Those who are known are acknowledged today by the State of Israel as Righteous

among the Nations, and we are certain that many others are going to be found from now

on. Recently, a Romanian priest was awarded, at a venerable age, this high distinction for

his courage to help his Jewish fellow men in Transnistria. Such deeds ennoble a human

being and the community to which he or she belongs. Mention must be also made of

other similar acts of human solidarity in support of Jewish compatriots made by many

simple Romanians, such as the Transylvanian Romanians who, as we have reminded

here, helped many Jews in occupied Transylvania illegally cross the border to Romania.

We bring homage today to the resistance of the Jewish community, which knew how

to organize itself so as to oppose the tragedy and ensure its existence and continuity.

From the organization of its own educational system under circumstances in which young

Jews were forbidden access to state schools, to continuing its specific cultural life,

including the functioning of the Barasheum Theater, from the repeated interventions by

the authorities to acts of revolt, from the support granted to the deportees by those who

had remained in the country to actions designed to help organize the emigration of

thousands of Jews to Palestine.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Commemorating for the first time the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania, I

take the opportunity of this solemn reunion to propose that we all bow down before the

memory of the victims of this tragic event, which is part of our past, just as the repre-

sentatives of the religions living together in Romania have done under our administration.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

According to the latest research, over 250,000 people were killed during the Holocaust

in the territories under Romanian administration for the sole guilt of having been born

Jews, destroying people for their origin. To these we must also add the over 12,000

citizens of Roma descent who died in Transnistria in similar circumstances.

The Holocaust was one of those serious historical issues whose approach was avoided

both during the communist regime and after 1990. There were attempts to hide the facts,

or even distortions of the truth. In not a few cases there was also a transfer of responsi-

bility. The Ion Antonescu regime was credited, for instance, with having saved the

approximately 400,000 Jews who were still alive at the end of the war, while the

liquidation of the over 250,000 Jews of Romania and the occupied Soviet territories was

turned into the responsibility of the German troops in the country and Berlins orders.

Undoubtedly, Germanys Nazi regime bears the main responsibility for the European

Holocaust. But it is Ion Antonescus regime that is responsible for the initiation and the

organization of the repressive actions and the extermination measures directed against

the Jews of Romania and the territories under Romanian administration. Reality cannot,

and must not, be concealed. Assumption of ones own past, with its goods and evils, is

not just an exercise in honesty but also the proof of a democratic conscience, of the

responsibility of the Romanian states leadership, which, at a turning point in its history,

did not manage to rise up to its essential mission, namely, to ensure the security of all its

citizens, regardless of their ethnic origins.

The Holocaust tragedy has today a special significance. Such a tragedy must never be

repeated, and for that, no effort is too small for the younger generations to know and

understand the entire truth. This is the best way to prevent future repetition of the pasts

tragedies.

An international commission was established for the in-depth study of the Holocaust

in Romania, which includes renowned experts led by Professor Elie Wiesel, a native of

Romania and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Commissions report will be

presented in a few weeks at a meeting to be held in Bucharest. The document shall

provide the basis for a complete activity of future investigation into this tragic pheno-

menon and informing public opinion, particularly the young generation. In its turn, the

Ministry of Education and Research has decided to include in the school curricula an

optional course dedicated to the Holocaust in Romania. We also see with satisfaction that

the press, radio, and television stations have lately devoted increasing space to this

phenomenon, approaching it from objective positions.

These actions are part of a wider program that aims at knowledge of the past and the

events related to the Holocaust. This program includes the adoption of legislative meas-

ures banning fascist, racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic organizations and symbols as

well as the cult of persons guilty of crimes against humanity and peace. The first such

measure was taken by the government in March 2002 and was met with satisfaction by the

Jewish organizations and the overwhelming majority of public opinion.

Also as of 2002, the National Defense College has been organizing a course in the

history of the Holocaust. All these represent the implementation of the commitments

made by Romania when joining the Final Declaration of the International Forum on the

Holocaust in Stockholm, a group established in 1998 at the initiative of prime minister

Goran Persson, with the aim of promoting education meant to remember the tragedy of

the Holocaust and stimulate the historical research of this phenomenon.

FINAL REPORT

We sincerely wish to understand why, in a country like Romania, which in 1918 had

managed to fulfill its destiny through the Great Union of December 1, which had taken

an ascendant course of economic and social development, which had political structures

and institutions compatible with the great Western democracies, and which had success-

fully integrated the values of the Western culture and civilization, the development of

such a virulent anti-Semitic trend, which degenerated into the monstrosities of the Holo-

caust, was possible. The interwar Romanian anti-Semitism was the result of a democratic

failure and of the refusal of the political elite and a large part of the intellectual elite to

assume this failure. It also was a serious moral perversion.

When a nation suffers from a trauma of the kind suffered by Romania in the 1940s,

it can lose its way in the absence of a civic spirit and a consciousness of values and moral

duty. There is, however, no excuse for those who cynically and cold-bloodedly sent their

fellow citizens to death, who discriminated, humiliated, and excluded them from society.

The recent past obligates us to create mechanisms and institutions designed to serve

as the societys antibodies against these illnesses of the spirit that are racism, anti-

-Semitism, xenophobia.

This time, Romanians and Jews are on the same side of the barricade, a sign that we

have learned the lesson of solidarity and mutual respect.

Ladies and gentlemen

In my opinion, the Holocaust Remembrance Day should lead, first and foremost, to

a deeper knowledge of this collective tragedy. Beyond the concrete historical facts, very

important are the educational aspects, the change in the perception of an event of such

tragic dimensions.

This first commemoration of October 9 should mark the conscious and sincere

assumption of a painful episode of our national history, which the public conscience and

our collective memory must neither conceal, nor hide, nor relativize in significance.

Looking forward to the future, tenaciously pursuing the objectives that await us as

members of the North-Atlantic Alliance and future members of the European Union, we

have the duty to understand and assume all the moments and lessons of the past.

Holocaust Remembrance Day should be a moment of reflection for all of us, an occasion

to meditate on totalitarianism and its tragic consequences, on community relations and

values of human solidarity, on the perenniality of democracy, legality, and the respect for

the fundamental rights and liberties of citizens.

Message from Elie Wiesel,

Chairman of the International Commission

on the Holocaust in Romania

What is true about individual human beings is also true of communities. Repressed

memories are dangerous for, in surfacing, they may destroy what is healthy, cheapen

what is noble, undermine what is lofty.

A nation or a person may find various ways to confront their past but none to ignore

it. It is this principle that has motivated you, Mr. President, to repair years of forgetful-

ness and face the demands of History by creating this body of scholars and witnesses,

teachers and social activists. It is in their name that I have the honor to speak and present

to you, the Romanian people and the entire civilized world, the report the International

Presidential Commission has prepared on Romanias ambivalent but not monolithic role

in the implacable and tragic events during the Holocaust years.

For my part I am indebted to its members all eminent scholars, teachers and social

activists from various countries and backgrounds for their extraordinary efforts in

analyzing that singular era with skill, talent, sensitivity, sincerity and fairness. Their

endeavor, President Iliescu, will constitute an invaluable contribution to and perhaps the

understanding of the history of that era, its evil aberrations as well as its heroic martyrs.

Why have so many citizens betrayed humanity, theirs and ours, in choosing to

persecute, torment and murder defenseless and innocent men, women and children?

Granted, Jews were not the only ones to be singled out; there were others, particularly

the Roma. But remember: though not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims

why? There were good and brave Romanians who risked their own lives and saved the

honor of their nation by opposing the oppression and death of their fellow citizens and

they deserve our deepest gratitude but why were they so few? And also, why has

Romania waited so long to come to terms with its past?

All these questions, and many related others, all pertinent and related to the painful

subject, have been studied and explored in depth without any particular reservation or

complacency. All the relevant documents were examined, all the available testimonies

investigated. When questions were ambiguous or not sufficiently clear, we said so. As

we did when a difference of opinion regarding the interpretation of certain events or

figures.

For us this was our sacred mission: to honor truth by remembering the dead. For

them, it is too late; but not for their children and ours.

November 11, 2004

Message of President Traian Bãsescu at the Ceremony

for the Commemoration of the Martyr Jews Killed

on January 21-22, 1941

Today, January 20, 2005 we are paying our pious respects to those who, starting with

1941, died in the extermination acts for the only fault of being Jewish.

The pogrom started by the legionnaires in Bucharest in 1941, where 120 of our

Jewish fellow citizens died is just a phase in the series of events which victimized

common people, with common lives, thrown in the midst of historys storm and killed

during actions that cannot possibly be ever justified by anyone.

Ethnocentricity, which in the modern age represented one of the ways used by the

South-Eastern European countries to build their national identities is to this day tempting

for any society that finds itself at a cross-road. And not just by chance the lack of a

mature civic spirit is sometimes coexistent with the emergence of a stronger and stronger

xenophobic sentiment.

Romania is no longer a society at a crossroad. Its choice of the democratic values is

obvious and there is no way back. We can only support those voices, attitudes and actions

that will eventually lead to the crystallization of a civic spirit which is going to be

intolerant towards intolerance, which will promote the idea that people can only be

judged according to what they do and not to their genetic and cultural inheritance.

I think that, under these circumstances, the practice of dialogue is more than needed,

as it is benefiting everyone and it can contribute to the avoidance of all limitations and

confinement.

A phenomenon at the scale and tragedy of the Holocaust cannot and must not be

forgotten.

One of the objectives of my mandate will be that of fighting all xenophobic and

anti-Semitic acts, of reminding everybody that there was a time when the respect for the

other was only a slogan emptied of any actual meaning.

I consider that to say what happened in the past to our Jewish fellow is a duty we have

towards those who lived in those times, towards the youth of this country who have to

send a common message of coexistence and cultural exchange.

That is why I consider the educational process to be overwhelmingly important.

I think that the subject of the Holocaust needs to be more and more present in the

Romanian schools and universities, so that the mistakes of the past will never be repeated

again. The memory of the Holocaust should not be just a one day event.

There was much talk of the danger of annihilation, of uprooting that was considered

to be too high a price for the contemporary human being to pay. From the point of view

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of otherness, any of us need not only the feeling of belonging to some place, some past

but we also need an other who is our equal, for us to discover ourselves as autono-

mous, independent individuals.

The youth who are shaping their distinctive personalities today must know their past,

where they come from in order for them to know where to go from here.

I am counting on the support of institutions like the Yad Vashem Memorial in

Jerusalem and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to consolidate together

this process of molding our youth on the basis of the respect for truth and moral values.

I take this opportunity to salute every collaboration with institutions, research centers,

Jewish organizations or foundations that can help us to start further such activities.

I think that such an approach is even more necessary in a country that is a unique area

of Sephardic and Ashkenazi confluence, which defines its special profile among the

countries that enjoyed the presence of Jewish people during the centuries.

We can take pride in our original Jewish inheritance which significantly imprinted

Romanian culture and civilization. I would say that it is our duty towards our great

personalities, not only those belonging to the Jewish community, but of the whole

Romanian people, to reestablish the truth and to make it known by all means we have at

our disposal. That is why I think that the application of the recommendations of the

International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania is a decisive step in

this direction.

I am sure that the remarkable progress Romania has made so far for the research,

education and commemoration of the Holocaust will continue in the future.

Im ending with the beautiful words of the traditional prayer NIZKOR (We will

remember).

Background and Precursors to the Holocaust.

Roots of Romanian Anti-Semitism. The League of National

Christian Defense and Iron Guard Anti-Semitism.

The Anti-Semitic Policies of the Goga Government

and of the Royal Dictatorship

The Roots of the Romanian Anti-Semitism

The roots of Romanian anti-Semitism are intertwined with the origins of the modern

Romanian state and the emergence of the rich national cultural tradition that accompa-

nied unification of the principalities, independence, and the creation of Greater Romania.

The anti-Semitism that manifested itself in Romania between the two world wars grew

directly from seeds sewn at the major turning points of the countrys development

starting in the mid-nineteenth century. For reasons that may have differed from person to

person or group to group, strong anti-Semitic currents were present in various forms and

with varying intensity in the political, cultural and spiritual life of the Romanian society

for most of the century that preceded the accession to power of the National Christian

Party in 1937, the installation of the Royal Dictatorship in 1938, and the Antonescu

Iron Guard National Legionary State in 1940 that is, for most of the century that

culminated in the Holocaust.

The anti-Semitic actions of that succession of governments drew inspiration from the

anti-Semitic themes that had entered the Romanian lexicon of ideas long before the thirties

and long before the Nazi rise to influence and then to power in Germany. While each of these

three governing configurations mixed the essential elements of widespread anti-Semitic

concepts somewhat differently leaning more or less heavily on certain themes, perhaps

adding to native concepts notions adapted from non-Romanian anti-Semitic expression,

and advocating sometimes greater and sometimes lesser violence to accomplish their

goals they all represented essential continuity with Romanian anti-Semitic ideas that

had their origins in the pre-World War I era. It is true that politicians with radical

anti-Semitic views achieved greater legitimacy in the public eye after Hitlers accession

to power in Germany. But what was novel under the National Christian Party, during the

Royal Dictatorship, and especially when control passed to the Iron Guard and Antonescu,

was not the nature of the anti-Semitism they espoused, but the fact that anti-Semitism had

passed from the realm of verbal expression and occasional outbursts of anti-Semitic

violence by private groups or individuals to the realm of government policy and state action.

The anti-Semitic policies of the National Christian Party government, the Royal

Dictatorship and the National Legionary state set the stage for far worse that was yet to

come under the wartime regime of Ion Antonescu. Antonescu wanted to eliminate the

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Jews of Romania through Romanianization

(

românizare

the deprivation of property

and livelihood), deportation, and finally murder. This change was supported or at least

accepted by the majority of the countrys political, cultural, and religious elite. And

little wonder. Even this adjustment in policy was within a framework of fundamental

continuity with the ideas that had been an integral part of the political, intellectual, and

spiritual discourse from the nineteenth-century struggle for creation of an independent

Romanian state to the establishment of Greater Romania, which Antonescu and his

acolytes were seeking to reestablish.

The Jewish Community of Greater Romania

The Jewish community of Greater Romania was diverse and numerous, with roots in the

histories and civilizations of the Regat, of Habsburg Austria, of prewar Hungary, and of

the Czarist Empire. According to the national census of 1930, there were 756,930 Jews,

or 4.2 percent of the total population, in the country at that time, and there was

undoubtedly some increase during the decade that followed. Jews constituted 13.6 per-

cent of the urban population of approximately 3,632,000, and just 1.6 percent of the

rural population of approximately 14,421,000. Over two thirds of the countrys Jews

lived in cities and towns, less than one third in rural areas. The Jewish population was not

spread evenly across the country, as the following table demonstrates:

Jews as a percentage of population,

by province and urban/rural area, 1930

Population

Total

Jews

Jews as %

of Total

Jews as % #

of Urban

Jews as %

of Rural

Romania

18,057,028

756,930

4.0

13.6

1.6

Oltenia

1,513,175

3,523

0.2

1.6

<0.1

Muntenia

4,029,008

94,216

2.1

7.8

<0.1

Dobrogea

815,475

4,031

0.5

1.8

<0.1

Moldavia

2,433,596

162,268

6.5

23.1

1.2

Bessarabia

2,864,402

206,958

7.2

26.8

4.3

Bukovina

853,009

93,101

10.8

30.0

3.9

Transylvania

3,217,988

81,503

2.4

8.6

1.3

Banat

939,958

14,043

1.2

5.8

0.2

Cri[.-Mara.

1,390,417

97,287

6.4

16.7

3.8

* See Institutul Central de Statisticã,

Recensãmântul general al populaþiei României din 29

decemvrie

1930

10 vols. (Bucharest, 1938-1940), vol. 9, pp. 440-443. For a summary presentation of the

statistics, see Sabin Manuilã and D.C. Georgescu,

Populaþia României

(Bucharest: Institutul

Central de Statisticã, 1938).

While sharing many common interests and concerns in the new state, the Jewish

population was composed of several distinct communities, differentiated by the political

FINAL REPORT

history of the region in which they lived, the degree to which they had been assimilated

to Romanian language and culture, the degree and visibility of their adherence to Jewish

tradition and religious practice, and other factors.

Unfortunately, virtually every segment of Romanias Jewish population was viewed

with antagonism by the Romanian elites that had succeeded in 1918-1920 in bringing all

Romanians under a single state authority for the first time in the modern era.

The Jews of the Regat, assimilated in Walachia but less so in Moldavia, were per-

ceived unfavorably for all the reasons that had fostered the growth of Romanian anti-

-Semitism in the decades leading up to the Great War political, economic, cultural and

religious and because foreign support for their struggle to obtain citizenship had led to

a widespread sentiment that the Jews, with the help of outside powers, were seeking to

limit the sovereignty of the Romanian state. The Jews of Transylvania and Criºana-Maramureº,

the majority of whom spoke either Hungarian or Yiddish, were viewed as foreign not

only because they were not Christian, but because their cultural identity and political

loyalty in post-1867 Austria-Hungary had been cast clearly with the Magyar majority in

Hungary. Constituting 5 percent of Ausgleich Hungarys population, the Jews had been

counted as Hungarians in Hungarys prewar cultural identity census, thus allowing the

Hungarians to claim majority status in their state. These Jews were perceived by Roma-

nians to be sympathetic, or potentially sympathetic, to Hungarian revisionist claims. The

Jews of Bukovina, culturally aligned with the Germans in the Habsburg monarchy or

speaking Yiddish, were also stigmatized by Romanians as foreigners who had lived

well in a region of historical Moldavia pared off by the Habsburgs in 1775 and only

returned to Romania in 1918. Finally, the Jews of Bessarabia numerous, principally

Yiddish and Russian-speaking, and more of a presence in the countryside than in other

regions of the country served as the model of the stereotypical foreign Jew against

which anti-Semites in the Regat had been agitating for decades.

In this atmosphere it is not surprising that anti-Semitism was common coinage in the

newly expanded Romanian state created in the aftermath of World War I. Anti-Semitism

manifested itself in three forms political, cultural/intellectual, and popular.

Anti-Semitic Precursors

In a parliamentary speech he delivered as leader of the National Christian Party in

December 1935 and later published as a pamphlet entitled

România a românilor

, Octavian

Goga, a poet and a political and spiritual leader of the struggle of Transylvanian Roma-

nians for political rights before World War I, repudiated the Romanian press:

because it is not produced by Romanians. People who do not have burial plots in Romanian

cemeteries think that they can direct our soul, the ethereal impulse of our thought; they

imagine that any moral manifestation of ours is their patrimony and grasp it with their filthy

hands; they have transformed their printing presses, quite simply, into a tool for the ruination

of Romanian society.

His attack on Jews was greeted enthusiastically by National Christian Party members

of the Chamber of Deputies. Goga, who as prime minister three years later would initiate

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

decree-laws that deprived tens of thousands of Jews of their citizenship and other rights,

was not satisfied. He wanted to link the stance of his party to the noblest spirits of

Romanian tradition. Later in the speech, citing the peasantry as the foundation of the

Romanian race, he added:

I might say that for decades before the war the entirety of Romanian ideology was consti-

tuted on this basis: we have to establish a

national

state. Who represents our race? The

peasants There is no monopoly in this way of thinking; it is the result of all the fibers of our

intellectual thought from before the war.

At this point, Goga was interrupted by Pamfil ªeicaru, who was editor of

Curentul

and who certainly understood the national slogans and mood of the day. {eicaru shouted

out: Beginning with Eminescu, from 1876. Then a National Liberal Party parliamen-

tarian broke in to add Kogãlniceanu. And Goga concluded:

I could say, without exaggeration, that the entire nineteenth century constitutes one

current of logical thinking along this line.

Clearly it was not just Goga who identified the antecedents of Romanian anti-Semitism

in the intellectual, cultural and political patrimony of the country. There was a general

sense, expressed on that particular day in Parliament, that aspiring to an exclusionist,

race-based

Rom^nie a românilor

was part of the national inheritance passed down from

the founders of modern Rom^nie and its culture. Goga concluded his speech with a call

to recognize the instinct of differentiation based on race and differentiation based on

religion; and to recognize that the organic entity of the Romanian people and

Romanian soul cannot absorb foreigners and is being unjustly assaulted by an invasion of

foreigners Gogas shorthand for Jews.

Was this, indeed, Greater Romanias inheritance? There are sufficient examples that

can be cited in the political, cultural and religious spheres to support the notion that

anti-Semitism must be dealt with as an integral part of the sweep of Romanian history.

One of the issues that evoked an enormous outpouring of anti-Semitic sentiment of

every sort from the mid-nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth was the juridical

status of Jews in the new Romanian state. The leadership of the 1848 uprisings in

Walachia and Moldavia had called for the emancipation of the Jews and political equal-

ity.

However, after the uprisings were crushed and as the status of the principalities

became the subject of diplomatic negotiations among the European Powers, improvement

of the juridical status of Jews in the principalities became an issue of international

interest. With no action to improve the status of Jews forthcoming from within the

principalities during the period of European guardianship that followed the Crimean War,

the Powers pressed the issue, gently at first and then more insistently, as the principalities

sought first unification and ultimately independence. This external pressure caused

extreme resentment among a Romanian elite seeking to establish Romanian self-determination

and sovereignty, and reinforced in the minds of many questions that still persisted a

1. All citations are from Octavian Goga,

România a românilor

(Sibiu: Tipografia Sãteanului, 1936).

2. See Article 27 of Dorinþele Partidei Naþionale în Moldova and Article 21 of the Proclamaþia de

la Islaz, cited in Carol Iancu,

Evreii din România, 1866-1919. De la excludere la emancipare

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), pp. 52-54. The French edition appeared in 1978.

FINAL REPORT

century later about the loyalties and motivations of Romanian Jews seeking full citizen-

ship and equal rights in the Romanian state.

Thus, in the Convention of Paris (August 19, 1858), which set the terms on which the

European

Powers would accept the unification of Walachia and Moldavia, Article 46

opened the door to, but did not require, the eventual grant of full juridical rights to the Jews:

Moldavians and Walachians will all be equal before the law, in tax status and will have

equal access to public functions in both Principalities Moldavians and Walachians of all

Christian rites will have equal political rights. The benefit of these rights may be extended to

other cults (religions) through legislation.

Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza took important steps in this direction during his six years

on the throne of the United Principalities. Article 26 of the Communal Law of May 31,

1864, granted certain rights, including the right to vote in municipal elections, to certain

categories of Jews who fulfilled specific conditions. The Civil Code he proposed in

1864, which came into effect a year later, allowed for granting citizenship to Jews under

certain very limited conditions. No Jews actually received citizenship under Cuza,

however, and there was a general sense in his last twenty-four months in power, as

internal as well as external opposition to his rule grew, that the reforms he inaugurated

would not last. Nevertheless, these improvements in the situation of the Jews sharpened

opposition to his rule among the political and cultural elite and hastened the coup that

removed Cuza from power in early 1866.

A real explosion of openly expressed anti-Semitism occurred as the prospect of

achieving national independence became more certain. During discussions of the new

Constitution of 1866, Romanian leaders began to portray Jews as a principal obstacle to

Romanian independence, prosperity, and culture. Later, the extended debate over the

acceptance or rejection of the requirement levied in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, which

granted Romania independence on condition that citizenship be granted to Jews, further

radicalized these views.

When the majority Conservative/minority Liberal government charged with drafting

a new constitution presented a draft text that included the language, Religion cannot be

an obstacle to obtaining citizenship, the drafting committee in Parliament immediately

modified it by adding the sentence, Regarding Jews long established in Romania, a

special law will regulate their gradual admission to naturalized status. As Parliament

met to consider this new text, street demonstrations against the provision in any form

took place outside the building, followed by a destructive rampage through the Jewish

quarter of Bucharest.

Ion Brãtianu, minister of finance in the Government that had proposed the original

text, but whose Liberal Party was generally unsympathetic to citizenship rights for Jews

and would lead the opposition to any such measure for the next half century, immediately

attacked the already weakened proposal, declaring in the parliamentary session of June 19,

1866, we have stated that the Government does not intend to hand the country over

to the Jews, nor to grant them rights that affect or damage in the slightest way the

3. On the period of Russian domination of the principalities and of European guardianship following

the Crimean War, see Barbara Jelavich,

Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), chapters 1 and 2; and Iancu,

op. cit.

, pp. 56-65.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

interests of Romania. The following day he labeled the Jews a social plague (

plagã

socialã

) for Romania, that:

pure and simply because of their large number threaten, as everyone acknowledges, our

nationality

...

Only

[

strong

]

administrative measures can save us from this calamity and prevent

this foreign underclass from invading our country.

Two days later, a revised text that specifically excluded Jews from acquiring Roma-

nian citizenship was introduced as Article 7 of the new constitution:

The status of Romanian citizen is acquired, maintained, and forfeited in accordance with

rules established through civil legislation. Only foreign individuals who are of the Christian

rite may acquire Romanian citizenship.

By the end of the year the harsh restrictions of Article 94 of the Organic Law,

imposed on the principalities by Russian occupiers in the 1830s, were reinstated.

Brãtianus anti-Semitic language sharpened from that point on, as his influence in

succeeding governments grew. As minister of interior in 1867, Brãtianu issued a series

of Circulars to prefects across the country ordering them to enforce harsh exclusionary

measures against the Jews, restricting their right to live in rural areas, expelling them

from certain livelihoods, and exposing them to physical expulsion from Romania.

Protests from abroad, from foreign governments seeking to guide Romania toward

independence as well as from Jewish organizations, further intensified Brãtianus

anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Setting the tone for many of his countrymen, who looked to him

for national leadership, Brãtianu responded to a parliamentary question from P.P. Carp

about these policies by laying blame on Romanians who hired Jews for creating a

situation in which they have latched on to our land so tightly that we will never be

able to get rid of them, and laying blame on the Jews for bringing down the wrath of

the Great Powers of Europe on Romania and serving as tools in the hands of the

nations enemies:

...Jews, even when they commit crimes, are better treated than others... Not because Jews have

greater morality than Christians, at least when it comes to fraud, but because whenever you lay

a hand on a Jew, all Israelites, not only in Romania but abroad as well, come screaming...

[

]

you lay a hand on a Jew, even one caught in a crime, a Consul comes to you and says, This

is my subject. Whether he is or is not a foreign subject, a Consul always appears to say he is...

This is what the enemies of our nation are doing today; they are taking the Jews and using

them to attack us.

Two years later he summarized his view in a single sentence: The goal of the Jews

is nothing less than to put an end to our national existence.

Brãtianu was not the only 1848 revolutionary to adopt such extreme views as Romania

moved toward independence. Thus we find Cezar Bolliac labeling the Jews a real

Monitorul Oficial

, June 19 and 20, 1866.

5. See Iancu,

op. cit.

, pp. 74-80.

6. Parliamentary Speech of April 30, 1868, in

Din scrierile ºi cuv^nt\rile lui Ion C. Brãtianu

, vol. 1

(Bucharest: Carol Göbl, 1903), pp. 441, 445-446.

Monitorul Oficial

, January 4, 1870.

FINAL REPORT

parasite and complaining that while Jews are the same everywhere, nowhere is the

Jewish problem more severe than in Romania:

It is frightening, gentlemen, to see the spread, day by day, of this deadly congregation, but

even more frightening to realize that nowhere has it sunk its roots in as deep as here.

And Mihail Kogãlniceanu, whose anti-Semitism was recalled during Gogas speech

in Parliament in 1935, as government minister in 1869 resumed the process of expelling

the Jews from Romanian villages to deprive them of their livelihood. When foreign

governments protested, Kog\lniceanu responded angrily that Romanias treatment of

Jews living there was no one elses business.

Lesser political figures echoed the national leadership. Parliamentary Deputy

I.C. Codrescu of Bârlad, for example, published one of his parliamentary speeches in its

entirety in a pamphlet entitled

Cotropirea judoveascã în România

. He attacked the

Alliance Israelite Universelle

and painted Jews as anti-national elements undermining

Romanian character both in the countryside and in urban areas:

The term

Romanian Jew

is an insult hurled at our nation

...

Whatever the Jew is, Jew he will

remain

...

Must we really resign ourselves to permanently seeing an enemy population such as

this among us? Gentlemen, the growth of this element has always proven so dangerous for all

countries that no people has hesitated to take the most energetic steps, and often the most

crude, to get rid of them.

Anti-Semitic expression was not limited to Romanias founding political elite. It was

also widespread among the cultural and intellectual elite of the country; that is, among

people trained to understand the importance of universal values, people who, through

their genius, were establishing the cultural values of the nation. In 1866, as Brãtianu,

Bolliac and others were establishing the anti-Semitic themes that would resonate for a

century in the political sphere, philologist Bogdan-Petriceicu Hasdeu wrote that Jews

bring hatred upon themselves and provoke economic ruin because they are characterized

by three hideous traits: the tendency to gain without work, the absence of any sense

of dignity, and hatred of all other peoples.

When the European Powers stipulated in Articles 43 and 44 of the Treaty of Berlin in

1878 that recognition of Romanian independence was to be conditioned on the grant of

citizenship and political rights to Jews, the voices of the new countrys cultural elite were

as outraged as any in the political realm. The philosopher Vasile Conta, arguing that the

real goal of the Jews was to drive Romanians out of Romania and establish a purely

Jewish country there, declared in the Chamber of Deputies, If we do not fight against

the Jews, we will die as a nation.

The poet Vasile Alecsandri added a vitriolic attack:

What is this new challenge, what is this new invasion? Who are these invaders, where do

they come from, what do they want?

...

They are an active, intelligent people, tireless in

Monitorul Oficial

, December 20, 1870.

9. See Iancu,

op. cit.

1996, pp. 105-109.

10. Speech of December 16, 1869, in I.C. Codrescu,

Cotropirea judoveascã în România

(Bucharest:

Noua Typographia a Laboratorulilor Români, 1870).

11.

Industria naþionalã, industria strãinã ºi industria ovreeascã faþã cu principiul concurenþei

(Bucharest,

1866), p. 30.

12. Speech of September 5, 1879, in Vasile Conta,

Opere Complecte

(Bucharest: Libr\ria [coalelor,

1914), pp. 647, 660.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

fulfilling their mission. They are adherents of the most indiscriminate religious fanaticism, the

most exclusive (to themselves) of all the inhabitants of the earth, the most inassimilable to the

other peoples of the earth

...

Their country is the Talmud! Their power is without limit,

because it is based on and supported by two other forces: religious freemasonry and gold.

The novelist and essayist Ioan Slavici, in his

Soll [i Haben Chestiunea ovreilor din

România

, characterized the Jews as a disease that is virtually impossible to get rid of

and, tapping into the religious anti-Semitism that motivated the mass of the population

more than the elite itself, described Judaism as the denial of all religions and the God

of the Jews as the denial of all Gods. Blaming the Jews for Romanias problems, he

suggested expelling them, but was certain that no one would accept them. Thus, he

concluded:

The solution that remains for us is, at a signal, to close the borders, to annihilate them, to throw

them into the Danube right up to the very last of them, so that nothing remain of their seed!

Thirty years later, a more mature Slavici, in a series of essays written in 1908 and

entitled

Semitismul

, had not mellowed in tone at all. Blaming the Jews themselves for

their fate a favorite tactic of anti-Semites he called for the use of all resources against

them, and again suggested that a violent solution would be acceptable:

The hatred that has welled up against these people is natural, and this hatred can easily be

unleashed against all of them that have inherited wealth or acquired it themselves, and could

lead at the end to a horrible shedding of blood.

Thus from the earliest decades of the development of modern Romania, there was a

strong anti-Semitic current in the countrys political and intellectual life that was not on

the fringes of society, but at its very heart. Moreover, the language used to discuss the

Jews was extreme, even in those early years. Restrictions on where Jews could live,

denial of citizenship, denial of livelihood, physical expulsion, blood-letting, talk of

drownings in the Danube, assault on Jewish religious belief and practice, designation of

Jews as foreign agents, enemies of the state and of the nation the language of separa-

tion, de-humanization, and killing appeared early on the Romanian scene.

In fact, the extreme anti-Semitic language introduced in those years echoed through

the following decades, right up to, during and even following the Holocaust. Much has

been written about the anti-Semitism of Mihai Eminescu. His opinions about the Jews

were complex and not as extreme as sometimes stated. But it is important that it was

credible for a large segment of the population in the thirties when the name of the

countrys national poet was invoked repeatedly, as during Octavian Gogas 1935

13. Speech in Senate, October 10, 1879, cited in Iancu,

op. cit.

, p. 240.

14. Ioan Slavici,

Soll [i Haben Chestiunea ovreilor din România

(Bucharest, 1878). For anyone who

has read Holocaust-related documents in the archival repositories of Romania, there is a chilling

echo of Slavicis language in the language of Romanian perpetrators of the Holocaust. Many Jews

were drowned in the Dniester River during the forced deportations of Jews from Bessarabia and

Bukovina to Transnistria in 1941. The river was the Dniester, not the Danube, but Antonescus

intention to eliminate the entire Jewish community of the region, to the last individual, was the

same.

15. Ioan Slavici, Semitismul (IV),

Tribuna

, vol. XII (1908), no. 133 (June 18/July 1).

FINAL REPORT

parliamentary speech, as the forebear of rabid twentieth-century anti-Semitic extremism

in Greater Romania.

Eminescu was not alone among the cultural leaders who expressed

anti-Semitic opinions during the period between the achievement of national independ-

ence and the establishment of Greater Romania. Historian Alexandru D. Xenopol de-

clared at the turn of the century that only baptized Jews should be eligible for Romanian

citizenship and that those who did not convert to Christianity should be physically

removed from the country.

Even Nicolae Iorga, maturing during this period, despite his genius and admirable

accomplishments in scholarship and other fields, must be acknowledged to have been

blind on the issue of anti-Semitism. A creature of the culture he came to epitomize, Iorga

joined with A.C. Cuza in 1910 to establish the National Democratic Party, the first

explicitly anti-Semitic political party in Romania. His early writing was steeped in

blatantly anti-Semitic language. In a speech in the Chamber of Deputies in 1910, which

he later republished in a pamphlet that included an introduction by A.C. Cuza entitled

The Nationalists and the Problem of the Kikes (

Naþionali[tii ºi problema jidoveascã

Iorga reacted to Jewish demands for citizenship rights by charging that Jews from

everywhere, the entirety of Kikedom had lined up against Romania and that granting

rights to Jews would so fundamentally change the character of the state that:

...Romania would no longer be Romania. Its entire mission would disappear, its future destiny

could not be maintained.

Echoing the voices that decades earlier had charged the Jews with wanting to displace

the Romanians from their lands, Iorga argued that the Jewish question was the most

significant issue facing the Romanian nation, since its essence was:

...the question of our rights in all areas and in the whole expanse of the territory to which we

alone have ethnic and historical claim.

In another speech published the same year, Iorga attacked Zionism as a movement

intended not to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine, but aimed at expelling Romani-

ans, so that Romania might become the Jewish homeland:

Zionism, represented by the newspaper

Adev\rul

, is cultivating Jewish national sentiment,

and it is cultivating it against us

...

Some non-Zionist Jews do not hate us, but the Zionist Jews all

hate us and cannot forgive us for the fact that we are where we are and that, because there is not

room for both them and us here, we do not depart for Zion, in order to leave this space for them.

16. On Eminescu, see the excellent summary in Leon Volovici,

Nationalist Ideology and Anti-Semitism:

The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s

(Oxford: Pergamon, 1991), pp. 10-13; G. Ibrãileanu,

Spiritul critic în cultura româneascã

, 3

ed. (Bucharest, 1929), pp. 153-192; and for an Iron

Guard perspective published after World War II, D. Murãraºu,

Naþionalismul lui Eminescu

(Madrid:

Carpaþii, 1955), esp. pp. 183-202. In many respects, Eminescus opinions were similar to those of

nationalist poets in other European countries in this era.

17. See A.D. Xenopol, La question israélite en Roumanie,

La Renaissance latine

, October 15, 1902,

pp. 165-192; and Naþionalism ºi anti-Semitism,

Noua Revistã Românã

, vol. 5, pp. 277-280.

18.

Problema evreiascã la Camerã

(Vãlenii de Munte: Tipografia Neamul Românesc, 1910).

19. Parliamentary speech În chestia manifesta]iilor studenþeºti: Ce represintã adevãrul, December 17,

1909, published in N. Iorga

, Douã cuvânt\ri în chestia muncitorilor/în chestia agitaþiilor evreieºti

(Vãlenii de Munte: Tipografia Neamul Românesc, 1910), p. 48.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

After Iorga and A.C. Cuza parted ways in 1922 after a dozen years of political

partnership Iorga tempered his anti-Semitic language for a period, though never

denying that he was anti-Semitic.

Still, in 1937, with Nazi Germany threatening the

peace of Europe, with extreme right-wing movements on the verge of power inside

Romania, and with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country clearly in

jeopardy, Iorga issued a call to arms against the Jews in his

Iudaica

. It is difficult to

understand his motivation. Perhaps he hoped to ride a wave of popular sentiment back to

political prominence. It is possible that he wanted to deflect growing sympathy for

extreme action against the Jews by directing Romanians to overcome the Jewish menace

by competing with them. This would have been in keeping with the more moderate

anti-Semitic stance Iorga had adopted following World War I and his criticism of the

radical anti-Semitism of Cuzas League of National Christian Defense (

Liga Apãrãrii

Naþional-Creºtine

LANC) and Corneliu Z. Codreanus Iron Guard (

Garda de Fier

Whatever his intention, however,

Iudaica

was not moderate in tone by objective stand-

ards. Writing in response to a series of articles on the history of Romanian Jewry by Dr.

Wilhelm Filderman, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities, Iorga asserted

that the country had no need for Jews, as could be seen in his beloved Vãlenii de Munte,

a Romanian place without Jews (

o localitate româneascã fãrã evrei

). He then dredged

up all of the canards of Romanian anti-Semitism national, economic, religious, moral,

social, cultural, demographic, and political of the previous ninety years to support the

following assault on Jews:

[

The Jews

]

are at work to accumulate for themselves, as an invading nation, as much as

they can. Even in the liberal professions, in education, in science, in literature, as lawyers, as

doctors, as architects, as professors, more and more of them, with philologists, with philoso-

phers, with journalists, with poets, with their critics

they are quite simply throwing us out of

our own country

They are razing our churches, taking over our shops, occupying our jobs,

and, what is even more devastating,

they are falsifying our soul, they are degrading our

morality by means of the journalistic and literary opiates with which they enchant us

Instead of preferring to relieve the pressure, which through prudently organized emigra-

tions would reduce their proportion in cities to a level that could be acceptable in a national

setting, they seek to advance their banner at every moment and with whatever means lie at their

disposal, and in order to hide their advance, they resort to changing their names in real life and

to pseudonyms in literature.

We must organize ourselves for a war of conscience and work. Let us band together where

we still are able to do it. Let us set out to regain through daily effort and with perfect

understanding, by breaking ties with those who want to take our places, and let us reconquer

what we have lost.

They with their own, for themselves, as they have wanted. We with our own, for ourselves,

thats what we want!

[

authors emphasis

]

20. Iorgas relationship with A.C. Cuza preceded the creation of the National Democratic Party. In

1906 Cuza was writing articles for Iorgas journal

Neamul Românesc

; see

Enciclopedia Cugetarea

(Bucharest: Georgescu Delafras, 1940). Iorga expressed his opinions about Cuza and his political

activity in several of his books. See, for example, N. Iorga,

Istoria românilor Întregitorii

(Bucharest, 1938), vol. 10, pp. 305, 460, 489-493; and

idem

Supt trei regi

, 2

ed. (Bucharest,

1932), p. 77. See also William O. Oldson,

The Historical and Nationalistic Thought of Nicolae Iorga

(Boulder:

East European Quarterly

/Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 84-88.

21. On Iorgas shifting attitudes, see Volovici,

op. cit.

passim

; and Oldson,

op. cit.

22. N. Iorga,

Iudaica

(Bucharest: Bucovina E. Torouþiu, 1937).

FINAL REPORT

These were not the words of Octavian Goga, who would become prime minister a few

months after Iorga wrote

Iudaica

; nor of A.C. Cuza, whose entire

raison d

tre

was

anti-Semitism; nor of Corneliu Codreanu, although they captured some of the intense

animosity of Codreanus language. They were the words of a man recognized by many as

the intellectual mentor of the nation.

Anti-Semitism in the Mainstream Political Parties

of Greater Romania (1919-1937)

With the Romanian political and intellectual elite steeped in anti-Semitic sentiment and

producing anti-Semitic rhetoric uninterruptedly for decades, it was not surprising that

the two principal political parties of Greater Romania, the National Liberal Party and the

National Peasant Party, were indifferent, at best, to the situation of the countrys Jewish

minority. While neither party had openly anti-Semitic positions in their political plat-

forms, neither did they take positions that were designed to ensure equal rights, equal

status and security to the Jews. The granting of citizenship en masse to Jews, which was

forced upon Romania as a condition for international recognition of its expanded

post-World War I borders, angered broad strata of the leadership in both parties. Their

anger at having lost the stranglehold on the citizenship issue that had been maintained

since the Treaty of Berlin simmered throughout the interwar period and regularly emerged

to the surface in parliamentary discourse and in the press.

Both the Liberals and those who presumed to represent the interests of the peasantry

saw the Jews as adversaries in economic terms to their own aspirations and those of their

constituents. In the minds of the Liberals, control of the countrys industry and banking

system had to be wrested away from the Jews. And despite the weight of evidence to the

contrary, both the National Liberals and the National Peasantists, not to speak of more

openly anti-Semitic political organizations, found it more convenient to place blame for

the peasant uprising of 1907, the most traumatic internal crisis experienced since the

countrys independence, disproportionately on the Jewish leaseholders (

arendaºi

) who

represented Romanian landowners on many rural estates in Moldavia, rather than exploring

the root causes of the unrest. This was Iorgas position, as well, and certainly colored the

attitude of General Alexandru Averescu, who had put down the uprising with armed force

in 1907 and served twice as prime minister after 1918.

23. Anti-Semitic violence broke out in Bucharest and Br\ila immediately after the withdrawal of

German troops in November 1918, and occurred in different localities with regularity throughout

the interwar period; see, for example, Andrei Pippidi,

Despre statui ºi morminte

(Iaºi: Polirom,

2000). For a description of developments under the National Liberal and National Peasant govern-

ments, see chapter 6 in Carol Iancu,

Les Juifs en Roumanie, 1919-1938: De lémancipation à la

marginalisation

(henceforth: Iancu,

Les Juifs

) (Paris-Louvain: E. Peeters, 1996).

24. For a short analysis of the economic issue by one of Romanias leading interwar sociologists, see

ªtefan Zeletin, Finanþa ºi antisemitismul, in his

Neoliberalismul

(1927; reprint, Bucharest:

Nemira, 1997). For the classic discussion of the peasant uprising of 1907, see Radu Rosetti,

Pentru ce s-au rãsculat þãranii

(Bucharest: Atelierele grafice Socec, 1907); Rosetti, writing

under the pseudonym Verax, had published four years earlier

La Roumanie et les Juifs

(Bucharest:

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Moreover, both the Liberal and the National Peasant parties included powerful fig-

ures who were intent on using opportunities that presented themselves to promote

anti-Semitic policies whenever it was possible to do so, in particular in the economic and

education spheres. While these parties were in power, Jews in different parts of the

country were subjected to regular outbreaks of violence and received little effective

protection. And the Jewish community found itself regularly on the defensive, constantly

battling in order not to lose rights recently obtained. When Romanian Jews appealed for

help from Jewish communities and organizations abroad, or from foreign governments,

this reinforced the position of those who sought to portray the Jews as anti-Romanian.

Other political parties that led governments between 1918 and 1937, such as Alexandru

Averescus Peoples Party (1920-1921, 1926-1927), Iorgas National Democratic Party

government of experts (1931-1932), and the National Peasant Party governments led by

Alexandru Vaida-Voievod (1932-1933), were more openly anti-Semitic in their posture,

stimulating public and governmental discussion of the possible introduction of

numerus

clausus

(sometimes

numerus valahicus

) legislation regarding Jews in higher education,

the economy, and state administration. Still, while all of these governments may have

condoned non-governmental anti-Semitic acts, none of them enacted or implemented

anti-Semitic legislation.

This situation changed during the long National Liberal Party government headed by

Gheorghe Tãtãrescu between 1933 and 1937. While it at times encouraged some move-

ments of the Right, the T\t\rescu government also sought to control the rise of right-wing

extremist and violently anti-Semitic movements inside Romania the Iron Guard and the

League of National Christian Defense, in particular, as well as Vaida-Voievods breaka-

way Romanian Front (

Frontul Românesc

). It sought as well to blunt the impact of other

right-leaning movements sympathetic to Nazi Germany, including Gheorghe Brãtianus

Young Liberal Party and Gogas National Agrarian Party. As the flavor of debate

sharpened inside Romania, especially after the rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany,

the Tãtãrescu government introduced certain laws that, while not explicitly aimed at Jews,

began the systematic process of stripping away the resources and rights of Jews.

The Law for the Use of Romanian Personnel in Enterprises (1934) called for at

least 80 percent of the personnel in all economic, industrial, commercial, and civil

enterprises to be Romanian and for at least half of the administrative board to be

Romanian. It also required special approval of a committee appointed by the ministries

of war, labor and industry for all hiring by industries involved in national security and

defense affairs.

While not explicitly aimed at the Jews, the law had a much greater

impact on them than other minorities, who frequently lived in compact ethnic areas

where implementation of the law was impracticable. For the first time Jews were

confronted with the possibility of a government-managed process that would deprive

them of their jobs and professions. Some Jews who worked for the railroad system and

the postal and telegraphic service were demoted or simply fired. Despite international

I.V. Socecu, 1903), a detailed study of the status of the Jews in Romania that focused attention on

the direct contact between Jews and the Romanian peasantry and called for continued denial of

citizenship rights to the Jews. For a modern analysis, see Philip G. Eidelberg,

The Great Rumanian

Peasant Revolt of 1907

(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974).

25. Lege pentru utilizarea personalului românesc în întreprinderi (Bucharest:

Monitorul Oficial

and

Imprimeriile Statului, 1934).

FINAL REPORT

protests, the law remained on the books. In its wake, professional schools began to deny

admission to Jewish students, and some private professional associations, like the Bucha-

rest Bar and then the National Bar Association (in May 1937), expelled their Jewish

members. University campuses became centers of anti-Semitic sentiment and action,

and street violence against Jews increased.

In December 1936, a parliamentary commission began consideration of a draft law to

review the citizenship lists through which Romanias national minorities, including the

majority of Romanian Jews, had obtained Romanian citizenship. This sweeping draft did

not become law, but the T\t\rescu government issued a series of less ambitious decree-laws

and administrative orders aimed at limiting or eliminating the presence of Jews in the

liberal professions, finance and other branches of the economy.

This record of Romanias mainstream political elite opened the door to the more

radical anti-Semitic policies that would follow during the short-lived National Christian

Party government, under the Royal Dictatorship, Antonescu and the Iron Guard. The

National Christian Party government proved to be a watershed in Romanian interwar

political development.

Anti-Semitism of the National Christian Party.

The National Christian Party in Power

(December 1937 February 1938)

After its creation in 1935 as a nationalistic and virulently anti-Semitic party of the conserva-

tive Right,

the National Christian Party (

Partidul Naþional-Creºtin

PNC) of Octavian

Goga and Alexandru C. Cuza was unquestionably the leading competitor of the Iron Guard

on the Right of the Romanian political spectrum. During the thirties, the National Christian

Party (and, before 1935, Gogas National Agrarian Party) was the principal Romanian

recipient of German National Socialist support, despite the closer ideological affinity of the Iron

Guard movement to Nazism.

And while the PNCs time in power was short, the anti-Semitic

policies that Goga and Cuza pursued survived their precipitate fall from power and

exerted considerable influence on the policies of the governments that followed. A

significant number of PNC adherents served in the governments of the Royal Dictatorship

and resurfaced again in the civilian bureaucracy of wartime dictator Ion Antonescu.

26. On the Tãtãrescu government and the restrictive measures introduced in 1937, see Iancu,

Les Juifs

pp. 295-303.

27. For useful definitions and distinctions between the conservative Right, radical Right, and

reactionary Right, see Eugen Weber, The Right, in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (eds.),

The

European Right: A Historical Profile

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,

1966), pp. 1-28.

28. Armin Heinen,

Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail o contribuþie la problema fascismului internaþional

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999), pp. 314-319 (original in German:

Die Legion Erzengel Michael in

Rumanien

Soziale Bewegung und politische Organization

, Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1986). Also

addressed in Paul A. Shapiro, German Foreign Policy and the Romanian National Christian

Party, manuscript, 1971.

29. Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera,

The Green Shirts and Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and

Romania

(Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970), pp. 328-329.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Octavian Goga (1881-1938) and Alexandru C. Cuza (1857-1944) both had long

careers in Romanian politics. Gogas prestige rested on his status as a great nationalistic

poet and on the reputation that he had acquired during World War I as an outspoken

advocate of the integration of his native Transylvania into the Romanian state. Having

fled from Transylvania to Romania in 1914, at wars end he became minister of public

education in the short-lived coalition government of the National and Peasant Parties, led

by Alexandru Vaida-Voievod. After this he joined the Peoples Party of wartime hero

General Alexandru Averescu and served in the Ministry of Interior, first as deputy and

then as full minister, during Averescus administrations of 1920-1921 and 1926-1927.

In April 1932, Goga left the Peoples Party and founded the National Agrarian Party

(

Partidul Naþional-Agrar

). The new partys published platform (1932) was pro-monarchy

and conservative, but also nationalistic and anti-Semitic.

The roots of Gogas anti-Semitism are clear. In prewar Vienna Goga had come under

the influence of Karl Lueger, Viennas Christian Social mayor. Convinced that the Jews

were the most active agents of the policy of Magyarization in prewar Hungary, Goga

found Luegers sermons against Judeo-Magyars convincing and important.

As Hun-

garian pressure for Transylvanian border revision grew in the thirties, Goga drew on

this experience of his youth and identified a suitable response to the renewed danger of

Magyarization. His response was anti-Semitism and a reliance on Romanias youth,

part of which was already coalescing into violence-prone anti-Semitic movements, to

move from word to deed and eradicate the Jewish (and Hungaro-Semitic) threat.

Gogas

Mustul care fierbe

, a collection of essays published in 1927, captured his

increasingly extremist position. Goga saw the situation as one of war between Roma-

nians and Jews, and called for the defense of racial purity, prerogatives of the

blood, and the organic truths of the race. He warned that developments were

pushing the traditional patience of the people to its extreme limits, and praised a

coming purifying storm in which the youth would save the nation from parasites.

He called for a national offensive to save the Romanian nation.

Harking back to

30. In 1907, while a subject of Austria-Hungary, Goga won the Herescu-Nãsturel Prize, joining the

ranks of only two prior recipients, Mihai Eminescu and George Co[buc. At the outbreak of World

War I, he resigned from the National Party of Transylvania and fled to Romania. See V. Curticãpeanu,

LAction dOctavian Goga pour lunité politique roumaine,

Revue Roumaine dHistoire

, vol. IV,

nos. 3-4 (July-December 1938). In conflict with Iuliu Maniu since the outbreak of the war, Goga

participated in the Averescu Governments dismantling of Transylvanian regional autonomy plans

in 1919 and remained at odds with Maniu thereafter, over issues that included attitude toward King

Carol II, democratic versus authoritarian rule, attitude toward Germany, organization of the peasantry.

31. On the National Agrarian Partys platform of 1932, see International Reference Library,

Politics

and Political Parties in Roumania

(London: International Reference Library, 1936), p. 433. The

platform called for, among other things, an increase in royal prerogatives, a reduction in the size

and powers of the Parliament, greater censorship of the press (which Goga saw as excessively

Judaized), and agricultural modernization. On the evolution of Gogas thinking regarding the

Jews, see Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii la istoria României. Problema evreiascã, 1933-1944

(hence-

forth: Ancel,

Contribu]ii

)

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001), vol. 1, part 1, pp. 30-33; Volovici,

op. cit.

pp. 41-44; and Paul A. Shapiro, Prelude to Dictatorship in Romania: The National Christian Party

in Power, December 1937 February 1938 (henceforth: Shapiro, Prelude),

Canadian-American

Slavic Studies

(Pittsburgh), vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 45-88. See Octavian Goga,

Mustul

care fierbe

(henceforth: Goga,

Mustul care fierbe

) (Bucharest: Imprimeria Statului, 1927),

pp. 55, 88-89, 140 and

passim

. On Luegers influence, see Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

, pp. 19 and 28.

FINAL REPORT

pre-World War I rhetoric about a Jewish invasion of Romania, Goga described the

Jews as impure secretions of Galicia, who were threatening the very existence of the

Romanian state.

The political influence of Alexandru C. Cuza, professor of Political Economy and

Finance at the University of Iaºi, was very localized if measured by the votes he

received in parliamentary elections. Electoral support for Cuza never expanded far

beyond the North Moldavian districts surrounding his native Iaºi and, after World War I,

the heavily Jewish districts of Bessarabia. Cuzas career in politics, however, was

remarkable for its longevity and consistency, which provided a native Romanian foun-

dation for the development of more radical and more dangerous anti-Semitic move-

ments than that of Cuza himself. Cuzas entire political philosophy was built around a

single issue, resting on a set of anti-Semitic convictions that he pursued steadfastly

throughout his career.

First elected to the National Chamber of Deputies in 1892, Cuza maintained his seat

there, with a single hiatus between 1927 and 1931, until the beginning of the Royal

Dictatorship in 1938, at which point he became a member of the Crown Council.

Between 1895 and 1923, Cuza helped establish six different political movements. In

1897 he joined with A.D. Xenopol, whose views have been cited earlier, to found the

Romanian League against Alcoholism (

Liga Românã contra Alcoolismului

), a platform

that he used to charge the Jews with breeding alcoholism among Romanians as a means

of increasing Romanian mortality rates.

In 1910 he joined with Iorga to found the

National Democratic Party, which advocated extreme measures, including violence, to

reduce the influence of the Jews. When the two men parted ways following the creation

of Greater Romania, Cuza founded the Christian National Democratic Party (1919) and

then, together with N.C. Paulescu, the National Christian Union (1922). The National

Christian Union adopted the swastika as its official symbol in 1922, before the Nazis.

Finally, in 1923, Cuza established the League of National Christian Defense (

Liga

Apãrãrii Naþional-Creºtine

LANC).

Cuza was a prolific author of anti-Semitic tracts, which he did his best to disguise as

analytical or scholarly work, and for some of which he plagiarized broadly from foreign

propagators of anti-Semitism.

Some of these publications began as extended parliamen-

tary speeches, which Cuza carefully edited for subsequent publication. The titles are

indicative of the content:

Despre poporaþie Statistica, teoria ºi politica ei

;

Scãderea

poporaþiei creºtine ºi `nmulþirea jidanilor

;

Jidanii în rãzboi

;

Naþionalitatea în artã

Expunerea doctrinei naþionaliste

;

Jidanii în presã

;

Numerus clausus.

Every such work, to which Cuza added hundreds of political pamphlets, newspaper

articles, introductions and reviews, consisted of a condemnation of the Jews as the origin

32. Goga, Primejdia strãinilor, in

idem

Mustul care fierbe

, pp. 395-398.

33. A.C. Cuza,

Ce-i alcoolismul?

(Iaºi: Tipografia Naþionalã, 1897), and

Lupta `mpotriva alcoolismului

în România

(Iaºi: Tipografia Naþionalã, 1897).

34. On Cuzas political career, see Ancel,

Contribu]ii

, pp. 23-30; Iancu,

Les Juifs

, pp. 185-194; and

Shapiro, Prelude,

loc. cit.

For a sympathetic description by another notable figure in interwar

Romania, see Pamfil ªeicaru,

Un junimist antisemit A.C. Cuza

(Madrid: Carpaþii, 1956).

35. See E.M. Socor,

O ruºine universitarã Plagiatul d-lui A.C. Cuza

, 2

ed. (Bucharest, 1923).

36. See, for example, A.C. Cuza,

Þãranii ºi clasele dirigente

(Iaºi: Tipografia Naþionalã, 1895);

Despre poporaþie Statistica, teoria ºi politica ei

(1899; 2

ed., Bucharest: Imp. Independenþa,

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of whatever problem was being discussed. Cuza professed an insistent, violent, racist

and religious anti-Semitism. Influenced by Chamberlain, Drumont, Mommsen, Renan

and Gobinau, he sought inspiration wherever he could find support for his obsessive

hatred, whether the source was foreign or Romanian. His arguments ranged from the

economic and cultural, which were common in Romanian anti-Semitic parlance before

World War I, to racial anti-Semitism, which Cuza enunciated very clearly as early as the

1890s and which remained a constant theme after that. In 1893 in his

Meseriaºul român

Cuza described the Jews as an alien race that was destroying the Romanian race.

Fifteen years later, in

Naþionalitatea în artã

, he wrote of the Jews racial inferiority

and the danger of race mixing. By 1930 he was identifying his movement with Adolf

Hitler racial anti-Semitism, and he welcomed Hitlers rise to power three years later as

an opportunity to end the international domination of the Jews.

The parliamentary platform of the League of National Christian Defense called for

the complete elimination of the Jews: The sole possible solution to the Kike problem

is the elimination of the Kikes. To accomplish this, the platform proposed withdraw-

ing political rights and revoking the right of Jews to be considered natives; revoking

name-changes; reviewing all grants of citizenship and revoking any made without

proper documentation; expulsion of all Jews who had entered the country after 1914;

expulsion of Jews from rural areas and cession of their lands to ethnic Romanians;

expropriation by the state of Jewish-owned land and industrial plants in the petroleum

industry; exclusion of Jews from public offices or jobs; gradual expropriation of

Jewish urban property; introduction of a

numerus clausus

in all areas of education and

economic activity; and stricter laws and harsher enforcement of infractions of the law

relating to counterfeiting, contraband, usury, pornography, and white slave traffic.

Cuza clearly drew his parliamentary program from all the themes of traditional Roma-

nian political anti-Semitism, though he considered the

numerus clausus

simply as an

interim step leading to enforcement of a

numerus nullus

He added the racial element

in a series of 10 theses on nationality, religion and action. The Jewish nation,

he wrote,

...is a bastard and degenerate nation, sterile, without its own land and not constituting a

complete, productive social organism, (

...

)

thus living from its beginnings until today

superimposed on other nations, exploiting their productive labor, and thus a parasite na-

tion.

1929);

Scãderea poporaþiei creºtine ºi `nmulþirea jidanilor

(Vãlenii de Munte: Tipografia Neamul

Românesc, 1910);

Jidanii în rãzboi

(Bucharest: Institutul Grafic Steaua, 1923);

Naþionalitatea în

artã Expunerea doctrinei naþionaliste

(Bucharest: Minerva, 1908);

Jidanii în presã

(Vãlenii de

Munte: Tipografia Neamul Românesc, 1911);

Numerus clausus

(henceforth: A.C. Cuza,

Numerus

clausus

) (Bucharest: LANC, 1924);

Plagiatul populaþiei, o calomnie moro judaico sau cum

lucreazã Cahalul împotriva goimilor, dupã Talmud

(1911).

37. A.C. Cuza,

Meseriaºul român

(Iaºi, 1893), p. vi; Problema jidãneasc\ ºi Adolf Hitler,

speech delivered on December 12, 1930, in

Îndrumãri de politicã externã Discursuri parla-

mentare rostite în anii 1920-1936

(Bucharest, 1941); and Doctrina cuzistã ºi hitlerismul,

Cuvântul

April 25, 1933.

38. A.C. Cuza,

Numerus clausus.

39.

Idem

Doctrina naþionalistã creºtinã Cuzismul, definitii, teze, antiteze, sinteza

(Iaºi, 1928),

pp. 12-17.

FINAL REPORT

The League adopted as its banner the Romanian tricolor with a black swastika in a

yellow circle in the center of the flag.

After World War I, Cuza also wove into his anti-Semitic litany traditional Christian

anti-Semitic themes (and canards) and new interpretations based on Christian theology

and philosophy.

He was influenced in this direction by Nicolae C. Paulescu (1869-1931),

a professor of physiology at the Medical Faculty in Bucharest and world-renowned

specialist in biochemistry and physiology. Paulescu was also self-trained in philoso-

phy, which he sharpened into an anti-Semitic weapon, and, like Cuza, authored

pseudo-scientific works that served as vehicles for racial and religious hatred. Paulescu

served as co-publisher and wrote regular articles for

Apãrarea Naþionalã

, Cuzas news-

paper starting in 1922. He wrote articles and books that sought to merge theology,

medicine, and science into philosophical physiology (

fiziologia filozoficã

), which was

in reality simply a route through which he could express an obsessive anti-Semitism that

made his views very appealing to Cuza. Paulescu found the origins of Jewish perfidy in

the Talmud, which he determined was a tool for the extermination of other nations, and

the kehillah, which he argued secretly plotted the disasters that afflicted the rest of

mankind. While he could not have anticipated the Nazi death camps, Paulescus condem-

nation of the Jews was so total that he even went so far as to raise the possibility of

exterminating the infesting evil parasites in the way bedbugs are killed. Can we

perhaps exterminate them in the way bedbugs are killed? Paulescu suggested in his

Fiziologia filozoficã Talmudul, Cahalul, Francmasoneria

. That would be the sim-

plest, easiest, and fastest way to get rid of them.

Interestingly, not only was Cuza

influenced by Paulescu, but the young Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, future founder of the

Iron Guard, specifically acknowledged the powerful impact of Paulescus ideas on his

development.

Nichifor Crainic (1889-1972) was another theoretician of religion whose work had an

important influence on Cuza and on the younger generation that would assume the

radical anti-Semitic banner in the interwar period. Crainic was Professor at the Faculty

of Theology, University of Bucharest, which became a hotbed of anti-Semitism among

40. See

idem

Învãþãtura lui Iisus Judaismul ori teologia creºtinã

(Iaºi, 1925); and

Doctrina

cuzistã Lupta pentru credinþa ºi problema învãþãmântului religios cu ilustraþii din Thora

(Iaºi,

1928). Cuzas argument that it is possible to separate the New Testament from the Old is also

addressed in ªeicaru,

op. cit.

, pp. 17-18. Efforts, especially by Jewish writers, to counter the

impact of such arguments, as in Horia Carp,

Strãinii în Biblie ºi Talmud

(Bucharest, 1924), and

I. Ludo,

În jurul unei obsesii Precizãrile unui evreu pentru românii de bunã-credinþã

(Bucharest:

Adam, 1936) had little effect.

41. See, for example, Nicolae C. Paulescu,

Fiziologia filozoficã Talmudul, Cahalul, Francmasoneria

(Bucharest, 1913);

Fiziologia filozoficã Sinagoga ºi biserica faþã de pacificarea omenirii

, 2 vols.

(Bucharest: Apãrarea Naþionalã, 1923);

Complot jidano-francmasonic împotriva neamului românesc

(Bucharest: Apãrarea Naþionalã, 1924);

Degenerarea rasei jidoveºti

(Bucharest, 1928); and

Tãlmãcirea apocalipsului, soarta viitoare a jidãnimii

(Bucharest, n.d.). The quoted phrases are

from

Complot jidano-francmasonic

, p. 31, and

Fiziologia filozoficã Talmudul

, pp. 11, 55.

Paulescus influence was substantial. For a similar approach, arguing that Jews must be treated as

a disease, see J.D. Protopopescu,

Pericolul ovreesc

(Bucharest: Atelierele Grafice Steaua, 1922).

42. Corneliu Z. Codreanu,

For My Legionaries The Iron Guard

(henceforth: Codreanu,

For My

Legionaries

) (1

ed.

Pentru legionari

, Sibiu: Totul pentru }ar\, 1936; English ed., Madrid:

Libertatea, 1976), pp. 36-37.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

university students.

Crainic advocated creation of a Romanian spirit that was anti-Semitic

in theory and anti-Semitic in practice.

He applied his theological and rhetorical skills

to breaking the Judeo-Christian relationship by arguing that the Old Testament was not

Jewish, that Jesus had not been Jewish, and that the Talmud, which he saw as the

incarnation of modern Jewry was, first and foremost, a weapon to combat the Christian

Gospel and to destroy Christians.

Crainics influence on his generation was substantial, as he was able to tap into the

appeal of the mysticism and nationalism of Romanian Orthodox Christianity and use it to

sway intellectual, student, and ordinary Christian citizen alike in favor of the racist,

anti-Semitic movements that he saw as essential to secure the existence of Romania and

the Romanian nation.

The Romanian Orthodox Church itself had strong anti-Semitic

leanings, both in its senior hierarchy and among local clergy. Patriarch Miron Cristea did

not speak out against anti-Semitism. To the contrary, he demonized the Jews and called

for their departure from Romania:

One has to be sorry for the poor Romanian people, whose very marrow is sucked out by

the Jews. Not to react against the Jews means that we go open-eyed to our destruction

...

defend ourselves is a national and patriotic duty

...

[

]

ou have sufficient qualities and oppor-

tunities to look for, find and acquire a country, a homeland that is not yet inhabited by others

...

Live, help each other, defend yourselves and exploit one another, but not us and other peoples

whose entire wealth you are taking away with your ethnic and talmudic sophistications.

As a political player loyal to King Carol, the Patriarch did try to limit the influence

of the Iron Guard on local clergy. Thus, in March 1937, at the request of the T\t\rescu

43. It was here that Viorel Trifa, leader of the Student Movement of the Iron Guard, leader of the

demonstration that ignited the Iron Guard rebellion in January 1941, and later Romanian Orthodox

Archbishop of the United States, received his training. Despite his high ecclesiastical position,

Trifa was denaturalized and deported from the United States because of his Iron Guard past. For

a sympathetic rendition of Trifas life, see Gerald J. Bobango,

Religion and Politics: Bishop

Valerian Trifa and His Times

(Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981). On his deportation,

see

The Washington Post

, August 15, 1984.

44. See Problema evreeascã, in Nichifor Crainic,

Lupta pentru spiritul nou Germania ºi Italia în

scrisul meu dela 1932 încoace

(Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1941), pp. 142-145.

45. This issue had preoccupied Crainic early in his career and grew in intensity as it took on greater

political significance. For an early statement, see Nichifor Crainic, Problema biblicã, in

Icoanele

vremii

(Bucharest: H. Steinberg, 1919), pp. 203-207. For later statements and development of the

centrality of this religious-based argument, see

idem

Punctele cardinale în haos

(Bucharest, 1936)

and

Ortodoxie ºi etnocraþie

(henceforth: Crainic,

Ortodoxie

) (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1937).

46. On Crainics influence, see Z. Ornea,

Anii treizeci Extrema dreaptã româneascã

(Bucharest:

Editura Fundaþiei Culturale Române, 1995). See also Volovici,

op. cit.

, pp. 96-99. For an early

expression of the separation of the Jewish Old Testament from the Christian New Testament, see

Iacov, Metropolitan of Moldavia,

Înfruntarea jidovilor asupra legei ºi a obiceiurilor lor, cu

dovedirea din Sfânta ºi Dumnezeeasca Scripturã atât din cea veche, cât ºi din cea nouã

(Iaºi:

Macarie, 1803). For an argument on the same point 135 years later, presented in the journal of the

Theology Faculty where Crainic taught, see Pr. I. Popescu Mãlãieºti, Iudeii ºi Românii,

Raze de

luminã

, vol. 10, nos. 1-4 (Bucharest: Facultatea de Teologie, 1938), pp. 5-63.

47. See Cristeas attacks on the Jews in

Apãrarea Naþionalã

, August 24, 1937, and

Curentul

, August 19,

1937. The quotation is from

Curentul

, August 19, 1937, as cited in Volovici,

op. cit.

, p. 55. See

Cuzas enthusiastic reaction in

Apãrarea Naþionalã

, August 24, 1937. On Miron Cristea, see

Ancel,

op. cit.

, pp. 160-168.

FINAL REPORT

government, the Patriarch assembled the Holy Synod of the Church and issued a decision

that forbade local clergy from joining Iron Guard nests (

cuiburi

), allowing political

demonstrations or symbols in their churches, or addressing politics in their sermons.

When Cristea became the first prime minister of the Royal Dictatorship in 1938, his

government tried to subdue the anti-Semitic violence that had been unleashed under

Goga and Cuza, but did not alter the anti-Semitic legislation they had introduced (see

below). Thus Crainics philosophy fit well within the theological-political stance of the

Church.

Crainic had a long association with Cuza. He served as secretary general of the

League of National Christian Defense and then, after its merger with Gogas National

Agrarian Party, fulfilled the same function for the National Christian Party. After the

brief government of the National Christian Party fell from power, Crainic became

minister of national propaganda in the pro-Nazi government of Ion Gigurtu (July 4

September 3, 1940), the last government of the Royal Dictatorship and the first in which

a number of Iron Guard ministers participated. Days later, Crainic hailed the arrival of

the National Legionary state as a passage from death to resurrection.

In addition to playing a traditional political role, the League of National Christian

Defense organized militant student groups, led initially by Codreanu, and blue-shirted

paramilitary units called

Lãncieri

that disrupted university life, terrorized the coun-

trys Jews, and contributed to the street violence that became increasingly prevalent as

the interwar years progressed. The Leagues electoral strength in the twenties never

exceeded 4.76 percent of the vote. It fell to less than the 2 percent required by law for

parliamentary representation in the 1927 and 1928 elections after Codreanu had bro-

ken away from the League to found his own movement, the Iron Guard. But, by the

1933 elections the League had recovered to 4.47 percent of the vote, and Cuzas party

acquired nine seats in the Chamber of Deputies. While the party was an influential

voice of uncompromising anti-Semitism and was feared on the streets, it was losing

influence to the youthful Iron Guard, and the likelihood that it would achieve political

power was remote.

With encouragement from the royal palace, Crainic appears to have played a critical

role in organizing the merger of the National Agrarian Party and the League of National

Christian Defense to form the National Christian Party (PNC). The merger took place on

July 16, 1935. Cuza, 78 years old, was elected supreme chief of the new party, while

Goga, at 53, became its president and

de facto

leader. Crainic became secretary general.

The new party pooled the parliamentary seats of the separate Goga and Cuza parties,

giving the PNC a total of eighteen seats. The Leagues swastika was adopted as the

official symbol of the new party. Gogas newspaper

Þara noastrã

became the official

party newspaper. Goga and Cuza were quick to associate the PNC with international

fascist causes and retained the

Lãncieri

as their paramilitary force. Between 1935 and

1937, the

Lãncieri

were responsible for Jew-baiting and brutality that rivaled that perpe-

trated by the Iron Guard. Clashes between the

Lãncieri

and Iron Guard units were not

48. Iancu,

Les Juifs

, p. 301.

49. See Crainics praise of Cuzas work in Nichifor Crainic, Naþionalitatea în artã,

Gândirea

, March

1935; and his effusive welcome of the National Legionary state in Revoluþia legionarã,

Gândirea

, October 1940.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

unusual and were often bloody.

Imitating Hitler and Mussolini, Goga and Cuza organ-

ized massive displays of disciplined manpower in an effort to establish a claim to power.

They assembled 200,000 blue-shirted men in Bucharest on November 8, 1936, on the

occasion of a PNC congress.

The platform of the PNC included the anti-Semitic positions that had been in the

platforms of Goga and Cuzas pre-merger parties. They were pro-monarchy, but advo-

cated modifications to the 1923 Constitution to ensure ethnic Romanian domination in all

areas of national life. They sought to guarantee the national character of the press and

all cultural activity. The

numerus clausus

was to be imposed on the Jews. They wanted

to expel Jews if they or their ancestors had entered the country by fraud or after the

signing of the peace treaty. In addition to the

numerus clausus

, Jews who remained in

the country were to be excluded from all public offices and the civil service.

Unlike the

Iron Guard, Goga and Cuza did not call for regime change, but they were anxious to

assume the reins of government in order to implement the anti-Semitic measures they had

advocated for decades.

Goga and Cuza wanted to establish closer relations with Germany, but not at the risk

of the countrys borders. They had been actively courted by elements of the Nazi regime.

As early as 1934, Alfred Rosenberg and Arno Schickedanz of the Nazi Partys

Aussenpolitisches Amt

settled on Goga as the most promising leader of any future

Volksbewegung

in Romania:

A basically sound anti-Semitic tendency existed in

[

Romania

]

. But in spite of repeated

efforts this tendency had never risen above the limitations of a club because of scientific

[

academic

]

doctrinaire leadership. What was lacking was the guiding leadership of a politi-

cal personality. After manifold, groping trials, the Bureau believed to have found such a

personality the former minister and poet, Octavian Goga.

50. While the analyses by the authors reflect the political era in which these books were written, on the

activity of the National Christian Party, see Florea Nedelcu,

Viaþa politicã din România în preajma

instaurãrii dictaturii regale

(Cluj: Dacia, 1973), and Gheorghe T. Pop,

Caracterul antinaþional ºi

antipopular al activitãþii Partidului Naþional-Creºtin

(Cluj: Dacia, 1978). On Crainics role in the

merger, see Nedelcu,

op. cit.

, pp. 91-92. On other factors leading to the merger, see Shapiro,

Prelude, pp. 50-54. On PNC violence, see Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

, pp. 289-296; and micro-

filmed

Siguranþã

and Police files in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Romanian Infor-

mation (Intelligence) Service (henceforth: USHMM/SRI), RG 25.004M, esp. roll 97, files 560

and 566; roll 106, files 1153 and 1154; and roll 107, files 1157 and 1159.

51. The PNC leadership made a nationwide call (

chemare

) for its adherents to descend on Bucharest,

hoping to assemble 500,000 men in order to demonstrate to the country and the whole world our

unmatchable power in the country, and thus our right to govern. The appeal to the soldiers of the

swastika called for the assembly to be peaceful, but noted that those who did not come would be

considered deserters (see the poster issued by the PNC organization of Neamþ county in USHMM/

SRI, RG 25.004M.) Goga claimed later that 200,000 adherents had participated. The German

minister to Romania, Fabricius, estimated the number at between 100,000 and 120,000; see

Shapiro, Prelude, p. 51.

52. Using the standard that they proposed, Goga and Cuza estimated that more than one quarter of

Romanias Jews would have been expelled under these guidelines. On the platform, see Interna-

tional Reference Library,

op. cit.

, pp. 174-177; and Cristian Sandache,

Doctrina naþional-creºtinã

în România

(Bucharest: Paideia, 1997).

FINAL REPORT

From 1934 on, Goga was their principal Romanian client, and they provided him with

both material and advisory assistance.

The kings objections to German involvement in Romanias domestic politics kept the

PNC far from the reins of power until 1937. The December elections of that year,

however, resulted in a dramatic change of the partys fortunes. Precipitated by the

expiration of the four-year term of the Parliament elected in December 1933, the elec-

tions represented the first and last time in interwar Romania that the party that organized

the elections did not secure a parliamentary majority.

The National Peasant Party, Iron

Guard, and Gheorghe Brãtianus Young Liberal Party concluded an electoral

non-aggression pact to combat governmental manipulation of the elections, but in the

process the National Peasant Party and the Young Liberals eliminated themselves from

suitability to govern in the kings eyes. The election campaign was marked by violent

armed clashes between the PNCs

Lãncieri

and the Iron Guard.

The

Aussenpolitisches

Amt

tried to arrange an alliance between the PNC and the Iron Guard, but failed.

Codreanu saw the PNC as simply a different face of the established regime, and in-

structed his followers not to vote for PNC candidates under any circumstances, even in

districts where no Iron Guard candidate was running.

The PNC ran an independent list of candidates in the elections. The German minister

in Bucharest gave them little chance of success, and recommended to the German

Foreign Ministry that Germany not endorse any right-wing party, but count on the

victory of Tãtãrescus Liberal Party, which was increasingly anti-Semitic, increasingly

willing to deal with Germany

[

and prepared

]

to protect the German minority.

When

voting took place on December 20, 1937, the PNC received only 9.15 percent of the

vote, barely more than the combined 8.56 percent of the vote Goga and Cuza, running

separately, had attracted in 1933. Significant support for the party existed only in

Northern Moldavia and Bessarabia Cuzas traditional base. In all other parts of

Romania the Iron Guard was clearly the dominant party of the political Right.

53. Afred Rosenbergs

Aussenpolitisches Amt

(APA)

of the NSDAP claimed to have been the decisive

force for uniting Goga and Cuza, hoping to create a pro-German political party that might be

acceptable to King Carol; see Short Activity Report of the APA of the NSDAP, 1935 (IMT

Document 003-PS), Office of the United States Chief Council for Prosecution of Axis Criminality,

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression

(Washington, 1946), vol. 3, p. 15. The quoted passage is from

Brief Report on the Activities of the APA of the NSDAP from 1933 to 1943 (IMT Document

007-PS),

ibid.,

vol. 3, p. 36. Rosenberg devised many plans to filter German funds to Goga and

the PNC. In 1934 he tried to manipulate a Romanian-German clearing agreement to provide

700,000 RM. He passed funds to the PNC through Radu Lecca, a Bucharest correspondent of the

Volkischer Beobachter

, who later served the Antonescu regime as chief of the Governments

Commissariat for Jewish Affairs. A number of payments are clearly documented, as are shipments

of swastika badges and campaign literature printed in Germany. Figures for the total aid provided

are thus far not available.

54. A useful analysis from this perspective is Matei Dogan,

Analiza statisticã a democraþiei parlamentare

din România

(Bucharest: Editura Partidului Social-Democrat, 1946).

55. Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

, p. 293.

56. Brief Report on the Activities of the APA of the NSDAP from 1933 to 1943,

loc. cit.

, p. 36.

57. Fabricius Report to German Foreign Ministry, July 6, 1937, Captured German Documents, U.S.

National Archives (henceforth: NARA) Microcopy no. T-120, series 1986, frame 440810-821.

58. The results for parties that achieved the 2 percent minimum for representation in the Chamber of

Deputies, were as follows: Government bloc 35.92 percent/152 seats; National Peasant Party

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Despite this poor showing in the elections, within a matter of days Octavian Goga was

prime minister. Because the Liberal Party failed to achieve a parliamentary majority even

while organizing the elections, and because of his strained relations with the leadership

of the National Peasant Party, King Carols choices were actually limited. He feared that

the Iron Guard might try to topple him from the throne, or move the country abruptly

closer to Germany and Italy diplomatically, or simply bring chaos.

In the PNCs favor, the party leadership did not appear to constitute a threat to the

kings authority. With limited popular support, the PNC might prove a pliant tool for

Carols achievement of his own authoritarian goals. The appointment of Goga might

appease the Nazis without undermining Romanias security arrangements with Britain

and France, to which the king gave great significance. Carol might have been trying to

steal the thunder of the more threatening Iron Guard by calling on the right-wing,

conservative, but vociferously anti-Semitic PNC. The king may have viewed summoning

Goga and Cuza to govern as simply an interim step toward new elections or a calculated

maneuver to demonstrate that parliamentary democracy could no longer function in

Romania. Whatever the kings motivation, a nominally National Christian Party govern-

ment took office on December 28, 1937. Cuza became minister without portfolio; his

son Gheorghe became minister of labor. To limit the freedom of action of the PNC

leadership both at home and abroad, the king appointed ministers of his own choosing

who were not PNC members to key security, military, and diplomatic positions in the

new government. In spite of these precautions, the appointment of the PNC government

was greeted with alarm in Western Europe because Goga was considered to be a de-

clared disciple and worshipper of the brown-shirted Messiah of Nazi Germany.

However limited their power, Goga and Cuza lost little time in seeking to implement

their anti-Semitic platform. In his inaugural proclamation, prime minister Goga de-

clared:

Romania for the Romanians! That is the birth certificate of the new Cabinet. We believe

in the rebirth of the Romanian nation with its Christian Church. We believe that it is a sacred

duty to impress the stamp of our ethnic domination in all areas of political life.

Governing through decree-laws, without parliamentary sanction, the PNC directed its

first administrative measures against the Jewish minority. Jewish journalists were de-

prived of their press privileges. Newspapers considered by the government to be Jewish

owned or dominated, including

Dimineaþa

Adevãrul

, and

Lupta

as well as Jewish

provincial newspapers that appeared in Yiddish and Hebrew, were shut down. Jews on

public payrolls were fired, and all state aid to Jewish institutions was withdrawn.

20.40 percent/86 seats; Legionary movement 15.58 percent/66 seats; PNC 9.15 percent/39 seats;

Magyar Party 4.43 percent/19 seats; National Liberal Party (Gh. Brãtianu) 3.89 percent/16 seats;

Radical Peasant Party (G. Iunian) 2.25 percent/9 seats. For a statistical analysis of the 1937

election, especially relating to the respective strength of the PNC and the Iron Guard in different

counties, see Shapiro, Prelude,

loc. cit.

See also C. Enescu, Semnificaþia alegerilor din

decemvrie 1937 în evoluþia politicã a neamului Românesc,

Sociologie Româneascã

vol. 2, nos. 11-12

(November-December 1937), pp. 512-526.

59. On the Kings motivation to call the PNC to govern, see Shapiro, Prelude,

loc. cit.

The quote

is from A.L. Easterman,

King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu

(London: Victor Gollancz, 1942), p. 101.

60. As cited in Jérôme and Jean Tharaud,

LEnvoyé de lArchange

(Paris: Librairie Plon, 1939), p. 186.

FINAL REPORT

Accused of poisoning the peasantry and prostituting young Romanian Christian girls,

Jews were declared unfit to hold liquor licenses or to employ non-Jewish female servants

under the age of forty. Yiddish, long used as a language of public administration in

Bessarabia and Northern Moldavia, was declared unacceptable. (A decree to ban all

Jewish lawyers from the bar was drafted, but not promulgated.) Certain Jewish real

properties, such as the land and buildings of the Jewish Center (

Cãmin evreiesc

) in

Cernãuþi, were taken over by the state.

Most significantly, in accordance with the PNC platform of 1935, the government

announced Decree-law no. 169 of January 22, 1938, calling for the review of the

citizenship status of Jews. The law in effect invalidated citizenship granted to Jews after

the beginning of World War I. It required that within forty days of the publication of

citizenship lists all Jews, however long their families had resided in Romania, submit

their citizenship papers, along with specified supporting materials, for verification.

Jews who did not comply or whose supporting materials were considered deficient would

be declared foreigners. In addition to loss of political rights, this would also mean the

loss of employment or professional rights for many Jews, and potential deportation at the

pleasure of the government.

These anti-Semitic measures were intended by Goga and Cuza to increase the PNCs

popularity before new elections were held and to reassure their patrons in Berlin that they

could move Romania closer to Germany, the kings preemption of the governments

foreign policy, defense and security functions notwithstanding. They also had a dramatic

impact on Romanian Jews. Many lost their jobs almost overnight. Some Jews who lived

in rural areas found themselves deprived of a way to make a living and had to move to

a town or city, leaving any real or unmovable property behind. All experienced the

insecurity of not knowing where the governments fist would strike next and whether any

documentation would satisfy the overseers of the citizenship review. While the PNC

government was ousted from power before the review process was completed, Decree-law

no. 169 remained in force under the Royal Dictatorship. When final statistics were

tallied, of the 203,423 family requests for review submitted, 73,253 Romanian Jewish

families a total of 225,222 Jews lost their citizenship as a result of the National

Christian Partys initiative.

The consequences were disastrous not only for the Jews, but for the new government

and country as well. Romanian Jews declared an economic boycott, withdrew their bank

deposits, sold their stocks, and organized a tariff and tax strike. Jews outside Romania

brought the situation before their respective governments and the League of Nations.

61. On the PNC governments anti-Semitic decrees and ordinances, their effects, and the reactions they

evoked inside Romania and abroad, see Ancel,

Contribuþii

, pp. 65-84; Iancu,

Les Juifs

, pp. 303-313;

and Shapiro, Prelude, pp. 72-74. Once it had been seized, the Jewish Center was turned over to

the Metropolitan Church of Bukovina.

62. For the governments referat and the text of the decree, see Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Evreii din Rom^nia

între anii 1940-1944

vol. 1,

Legislaþia antievreiascã

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1993), pp. 25-32.

63. See Ancel,

Contribuþii

, p. 81; and the official report Studiu asupra problemei evreieºti în

România, 1942, from which his statistics are drawn, in Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning

the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

(Jerusalem: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986),

vol. 10, no. 107, p. 255. Iancu provides slightly different statistics in Iancu,

Les Juifs

, p. 312. An

official tabulation presented under the Royal Dictatorship appeared in

Monitorul Oficial

, Novem-

ber 24, 1939, cited in part in Benjamin,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, pp. 33-36.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

France and Britain both used the opportunity that the anti-Jewish measures provided to

express their dissatisfaction with a government they perceived to be tilting toward Nazism

and Nazi Germany. By the end of January, the Quay dOrsay had let it be known that

France would consider itself relieved from its alliance obligations to Romania, which

included a border guarantee, military training assistance, and armaments credits, unless

the anti-Semitic measures were repealed. On January 22, the British government in-

formed the Romanians that King Carols state visit to Great Britain scheduled for March

21 would be postponed indefinitely. The British minister to Bucharest, Reginald Hoare,

told the kings confidant Constantin Argetoianu that Britain wanted the immediate re-

moval of the Goga government.

In the face of growing economic chaos and diplomatic pressure from Romanias

allies, the situation of the PNC government deteriorated rapidly. Having hoped to assume

the lead position on the Romanian Right, Goga and Cuza appeared to be losing ground

to the Iron Guard in spite of interior minister Armand Cãlinescus efforts to suppress

Codreanus movement. Neither Italy nor Germany extended full support either. After an

Iron Guard delegation to Rome was welcomed by huge crowds and with full official

honors, Gogas protest led Italian foreign minister Ciano to conclude that the PNC

government was one of transition, a sort of von Papen government that would soon

yield to a Codreanu take-over.

When Goga used his New Years message to Hitler to

seek a German guarantee of Romanias boundaries, Hitlers Presidential Chancellery did

not permit the message to be published in Germany and offered no guarantee.

Fearing

that Germany, too, might prefer the Iron Guard, Goga charged that 17,000 kilograms of

printed material had been shipped to the Iron Guard via the German Foreign Ministry

(

Auswärtiges Amt

) and demanded that German support for the Iron Guard be termi-

nated.

Internal harmony within the PNC also deteriorated. Cuza wanted radical action

against the Jews and rapid movement toward adherence to the Axis. In addition, he

sought a free hand to utilize the

Lãncieri

in street actions against the Jews and against the

Iron Guard. Cuza was furious when Goga, seeking to schedule a new set of elections,

opposed the terror campaign that resulted. Cuza also objected when Goga first made

exceptions to anti-Semitic decrees for personal friends and then sought to delay parts of

the anti-Semitic campaign until after the elections.

As for rapid movement toward

adherence to the Axis, Goga had been given little power for initiative in foreign affairs

and was in no position to satisfy Cuzas demands. Protesting foreign minister Micescus

64. Shapiro, Prelude, pp. 73-75.

65.

Cianos Hidden Diary, 1937-1938

, trans. Andreas Mayor (New York, 1953), p. 62, entry of

January 7, 1938.

66.

Documents on German Foreign Policy

1918-1945

, series D (Washington, 1957-1966), vol. 5 (hence-

forth:

DGFP

), document 157, Memorandum of the Presidential Chancellery, January 1, 1938.

67. Heinburg of Foreign Ministry to War Ministry, Abteilung Ausland, January 3, 1938; and Foreign

Ministry to Presidential Chancellery and

Reich

Chancellery, January 5, 1938; in Captured Ger-

man Documents, NARA Microcopy no. T-120, series 1945, frame 435399-400 and 435408. Also

DGFP

, document 164, Chief of Reich Chancellery to Foreign Minister, January 18, 1938.

68. Andreas Hillgruber,

Hitler, König Carol und Marschall Antonescu Die Deutsch-Rumanische

Beziehungen, 1938-1944

(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1954), p. 16; and Fabricius to Foreign

Ministry, February 12, 1938, in Captured German Documents, NARA Microcopy no. T-120,

series 1988, frame 440988-997.

FINAL REPORT

visit to the League of Nations, Cuza and his son refused to take part in the reception

arranged to welcome the foreign minister home from his first diplomatic journey.

When the electoral campaign opened on February 6 for the parliamentary elections

scheduled for March 2, violence of such alarming proportions broke out that there was

fear, including among German diplomats on the scene, that the situation would degenerate

into total chaos. On the first day of the campaign fierce clashes took place between Iron

Guard units on the one hand and Cuzist

Lãncieri

and Cãlinescus government security

forces and police on the other.

Codreanu reported that two Iron Guard men were killed,

52 wounded, and 450 arrested.

Goga was stunned. Through intermediaries that are not

yet conclusively identified, he reached an agreement with Codreanu to end the violence.

On February 8 they announced that while both the PNC and the Iron Guard would

present lists of candidates for the scheduled elections, the Iron Guard had agreed to

abstain from participation in the electoral campaign.

This collaboration by Goga with

the leader of a movement that King Carol correctly thought was trying to remove him

from the throne was more than the king could tolerate. He summoned Goga on February

10 and demanded his resignation. On February 11 he declared the Constitution of 1923

invalid. Four days later he outlawed political parties, and on February 20 he promulgated

a new constitution establishing a royal dictatorship.

As Romanias entanglement with Nazi Germany grew more intimate, the National

Christian Party government of December 1937 February 1938 was hailed in both

countries as the initiator of their collaboration and the regime responsible for the rise to

prominence of wartime dictator Ion Antonescu. In 1943 Alfred Rosenberg wrote,

Antonescu today appears in practice as executor of the heritage bequeathed to him by

Goga.

Antonescu stated, Romania fulfills today the dreams and the ideals of A.C. Cuza

and Octavian Goga, setting out to solve the Jewish Question

[

according to

]

the Nazi

program.

This continuity of purpose regarding the Jews was understandable and part

of a progression in Romanian thought that Goga, Cuza, and Antonescu could trace back

nearly 100 years. Adherents of the PNC reappeared as part of the wartime regimes

civilian bureaucracy after Antonescu ended his brief cooperation with Codreanus suc-

cessors and crushed the Iron Guard uprising of January 1941.

69. Institutul de Studii Istorice ºi Social-Politice de pe lângã Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist

Român (ISISP),

Studii privind politica externã a României

(Bucharest, 1969), p. 201.

70. Fabricius to Foreign Ministry, February 9, 1938, in Captured German Documents, NARA Micro-

copy no. T-120, series 1988, frame 440972-975.

71. Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

, p. 295.

72. On Gogas anger and his own claim to have served as intermediary, see the account by Michel

Sturdza, future Iron Guard foreign minister in the National Legionary state, in Michel Sturdza,

The

Suicide of Europe

(Boston: Western Islands, 1968), pp. 104-105. On the Goga-Codreanu agree-

ment, see Weber, Romania,

loc. cit.

, p. 551; Fabricius to Foreign Ministry, February 9, 1938,

in Captured German Documents, NARA Microcopy no. T-120, series 1988, frame 440972-975; and

Shapiro, Prelude, pp. 83-84. Codreanus order to the Iron Guard to cease electoral activity is in

a Manifesto dated February 8, 1937, in Corneliu Zelea Codreanu,

Circulãri ºi Manifeste

(hencenforth:

Codreanu,

Circul\ri

) (Colecþia Omul Nou, 1951), pp. 232-233.

73. Brief Report on the Activities of the APA of the NSDAP from 1933 to 1943,

loc. cit.

, p. 40.

74.

Blood Bath in Rumania

(New York: The Record, 1942), p. 33.

75. Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

, pp. 328-329.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Anti-Semitism of the Iron Guard

Octavian Goga and A.C. Cuza were clearly the products of the traditional political

regime established in the mid-nineteenth century and inherited by Greater Romania after

World War I. They functioned within it, conceived their political strategies based on it,

rose to power through it, and clung to it as their power evaporated. The same could not

be said of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and the movement he founded, the Iron Guard. The

PNC was pro-monarchy and pro-Carol; the Iron Guard was not. The leadership of the

PNC sought to maintain relations of equality, if not cordiality, with the political leader-

ship of other political parties; the Iron Guard did not and defined itself differently, not

as a party, but as a movement. The PNC wanted to retain parliamentary government,

even if it was to be reshaped and organized along more elitist and corporatist lines; the

Iron Guard sought to overturn the parliamentary regime. Goga and Cuza valued their

relationships with the national cultural and religious establishment at the top of Romanias

social pyramid; the Legion was anti-establishment, embracing youthful action, peasantist

populism, and mystical religiosity as exemplified by the (often illiterate) local clergy.

The PNC officially embraced the

numerus clausus

; the Iron Guard rejected it as not

sufficiently radical to solve the Jewish problem.

Son of a long-time associate of A.C. Cuza, Codreanu became a law student at the

University of Iaºi, where he imbibed the raw anti-Semitism and pseudo-scientific theory

that Cuza and N.C. Paulescu professed. He became politically active at the university

under Cuzas protection, becoming president of the Law Students Association and,

inspired by articles in

Apãrarea Naþionalã

, which Cuza and Paulescu had founded in

1922, founded the Association of Christian Students that same year with the purpose of

defending our fatherland against Jewish invasion. The leaders of the Association

embraced the principles of anti-democracy, discipline, and leadership.

At the founding of the League of National Christian Defense in March 1923, Cuza

entrusted the youthful Codreanu with the task of organizing the League on a nationwide

basis, which he set out to do through the organization of a youth corps outside the

traditional political model. Cuza had first organized student paramilitary units in 1922,

when he was one of the chairmen of the short-lived National Christian Union, but they

were clearly subordinated to the Unions senior leadership. It did not take long for

conflict to develop between Cuza and Codreanu. Cuza wanted to run the League along

the lines of a traditional political party, albeit an extremist and sometimes violent one,

and to press within the parliamentary system for specific anti-Semitic goals. Codreanu, on

the other hand, not only wanted more power for himself, in keeping with the leadership

76. Numerous scholarly studies of the Iron Guard exist, and an abundance of ideological, historical,

and memorial literature has been left by Iron Guard leaders, members, sympathizers and exiles.

Among the more important scholarly analyses are Armin Heinen,

Die Legion Erzengel Michael in

Rumanien Soziale Bewegung und politische Organisation

(Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag,

1986); Radu Ioanid,

The Sword of the Archangel Fascist Ideology in Romania

(Boulder: East

European Monographs, 1990); Francisco Viega,

La Mistica del Ultranacionalismo Historia de

la Guardia de Hierro

(Barcelona: Bellaterra, 1989); Eugen Weber, The Men of the Archangel, in

George L. Mosse (ed.),

International Fascism

(London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), pp. 317-343;

Eugen Weber, Romania, in Rogger and Weber (eds.),

op. cit.

; and Nagy-Talavera,

op. cit.

77. Codreanu,

For My Legionaries

, pp. 45, 48.

FINAL REPORT

principle, but also sought to make the League a revolutionary movement of moral

rejuvenation, in which organized violence, not only against Jews but against the estab-

lishment, was an acceptable, even preferred, method of accomplishing the movements

goals. By 1927 relations between the two men had become so strained that Codreanu and

his followers resigned from the League on June 24. They founded their own movement,

first called the Legion of the Archangel Michael, then the Iron Guard.

Anti-Semitism was a central element of Iron Guard ideology. In 1937, Codreanu

wrote in his Circular no. 119:

The historical mission of our generation is the resolution of the kike problem. All of our

battles of the past 15 years have had this purpose, and all of our lifes efforts from now on will

have this purpose.

The anti-Semitism of the Iron Guard harkened back to the Romanian voices of

anti-Semitic intolerance that had inspired Cuza and others in the decades before the Iron

Guard appeared on the scene. In

Pentru legionari

, Codreanu specifically acknowledged

the inspiration he had received from Conta, Alecsandri, Kogãlniceanu, Eminescu,

Hasdeu, Xenopol and others, not to mention A.C. Cuza, Paulescu and more modern

purveyors of anti-Semitism. All the traditional themes were absorbed by the Legion:

refusal of citizenship rights; mass invasion of Jews from the East; Jewish over-population

in Romanias cities; exploitation of the peasantry through alcohol, tobacco, and other

vices; control of the press; de-nationalization of Romanian culture; outright service to

Romanias enemies; and representation of foreign interests.

Guardist anti-Semitism also contained new elements, however. It was not directed

against the Jews alone, but also against Judaized Romanians especially politicians

who had been corrupted by Jews and were allowing the takeover of Romania by Jews.

It embraced dictatorship as an organizational principle and violence as a tool to combat

the Jewish menace the Judaic State which had organized itself around the Talmud

and the Kehillah, and more recently in the form of Bolshevism and communism.

And

it glorified spiritual struggle and morality grounded in the mystical imagery of the

Romanian Orthodox Church.

78. The relationship between the two men and the issues around which it developed and faltered are

described in Codreanus autobiographical statement of purpose,

Pentru legionari

(

For My Legion-

aries

), first published in 1936. For Cuzas defense of the student movement before the resignation

of Codreanu from the League of National Christian Defense, see

Miºcãrile studenþeºti ºi cauzele

lor Declaraþie fãcutã înaintea comisiunei de anchetã de A.C. Cuza

(Bucharest: Tipografia

Deleormanul, 1925). The term

Iron Guard

is used to designate Codreanus movement in this

chapter, recognizing that the official name of the movement changed from time to time (e.g.,

Legion of the Archangel Michael, All for the Fatherland) and that the term

the Legionary move-

ment

is also widely used by scholars.

79. Codreanu,

Circulãri

, p. 199.

80.

Idem

For My Legionaries

, pp. 103, 222-224.

81.

Ibid.

, pp. 125-127, 213-214. The first passage relates how the saints name day and an icon of the

Archangel Michael, which Codreanu and his colleagues viewed while imprisoned in Vãcãreºti

Monastery in 1923, provided inspiration for naming the new youth movement they planned

the

Legion of the Archangel Michael. Saintly purity, the sword, and the battle against Satan were

central concepts. The second passage, subtitled Matter versus Spirit by Codreanu, cited moral

strength, unshaken faith, and matters subordination to the spirit as the guarantors of victory

over the satanic forces coalesced with the purpose of destroying us.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

These three elements produced dramatic consequences. Beginning in 1923, Codreanu

began identifying traitors, Romanians who betrayed their people for Judass silver

pieces, with the intention of killing them. The fiercest punishment, argued Codreanu,

ought to fall first on the traitor, second on the enemy.

The first list of traitors

drawn up in 1923 included six Cabinet ministers, headed by George Mârzescu, who had

drafted the principal law through which Jews obtained citizenship following the promul-

gation of Romanias new constitution that year. Over the next 18 years, Codreanus

movement was responsible for vicious incidents of street violence, aimed mainly at

Jews; the assassination of two incumbent prime ministers (Ion Duca in 1933 and

Armand Cãlinescu in 1939); and the murders of numerous Cabinet ministers and other

local and national personalities in both the political and cultural spheres. With their

battle against the established order integrally linked together with their life and death

battle against the Jews, Iron Guard violence culminated on November 26-27, 1940, with

the murder of sixty-four leading personalities and defenders of the interwar political

order (including one former prime minister) at Jilava Prison; the murder of six addi-

tional police prefects the same night; the seizure from their homes, with the intention of

killing them, of seven additional political and internal security leaders (including three

former prime ministers); and the brutal murders of Nicolae Iorga, also a former prime

minister, and former minister Virgil Madgearu of the National Peasant Party, also on the

same night. The Iron Guard Rebellion of January 1941 also began as an assault on the

established order, at this point personified by Ion Antonescu, but of course was again

integrally related to street attacks on the Jews, for whom the

rebeliune

was a pogrom

in which at least 120 Jews were murdered.

The Iron Guard was considered by King Carol to be a threat to his policies, his place

on the throne, and possibly to the dynasty itself. The movement was declared illegal

three times by three separate governments in the early thirties, was aggressively surveilled

by the Tãtãrescu government of 1933-1937, and was pursued relentlessly during the

Royal Dictatorship. Codreanu himself was murdered in November 1938 while in custody

of the state security police (

Siguran]a

). The assassination of Armand Cãlinescu in

September 1939 was followed by yet more arrests and the flight of some members of the

movement to Germany. Following just six months of relative freedom of action during

the government of Ion Gigurtu (July-September 1940) and the National Legionary state

(September 1940 January 1941), the movement was again outlawed following the Iron

Guard Rebellion. Clearly, the tying together of anti-Semitism and anti-establishment

ideology had its costs.

The mystical-religious component of Legionary anti-Semitism also went beyond the

traditional anti-Semitic themes of the Church. The Iron Guard did not reject earlier

ideas. It used the myths of the

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

to propagandize village

clergy; condemned rabbis, the Talmud and the Kehillah as satanic weapons for Jewish

domination; and argued that the Old Testament was not of Jewish origin and that modern

82.

Ibid.

, p. 118.

83. Comandantul Militar al Capitalei,

Asasinatele dela Jilava, Snagov ºi Strejnicul 26-27 noemvrie

1940

(Bucharest:

Monitorul Oficial

and Imprimeriile Statului, 1941); Preºedinþia Consiliului de

Miniºtri,

Pe marginea prãpastiei 21-23 ianuarie 1941

, 2 vols. (Bucharest:

Monitorul Oficial

and

Imprimeriile Statului, 1942); and Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã. Suferinþele evreilor din România,

1940-1944

, vol. 1,

Legionarii ºi Rebeliunea

(Bucharest: Atelierele grafice Socec, 1946).

FINAL REPORT

Jews (

iudei

evrei

jidani

) were not the descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. Codreanu

emphasized the national-religious connection, charging the Jews with seeking to break

the spiritual link between the Romanian people and God, so that the Jews could

destroy the Romanian nation.

The language used by Legionary writers was replete with

religious symbolism. The elite corps of the Legion was dubbed the Brotherhood of the

Cross (

Frãþie de Cruce

), Iron Guard members who were killed fighting for Franco in

Spain were called the crucified ones (

Crucificaþii

Codreanus critics accused him of seeking to emulate Mussolini and Hitler. But in

contrast to the fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which were areligious or

anti-religious in nature, the Iron Guard was a movement of religious rebirth or, perhaps

more precisely, a movement of regeneration with religious overtones.

This was, of

course, for a purpose. In

Pentru legionari

, Codreanu relates a supper with his followers

in Vãcãreºti Prison after their plot to kill Judaized Romanian political leaders was

discovered. He says to his disciples, I am compelled to bring you sad news. The betrayer

has been identified. He is in our midst, sitting at the table with us. The betrayer is

identified, and Codreanu forgives him.

The language of sacrifice (

jertfã

), of gladly

accepting death to save the nation, of crucifixion and of resurrection (

reînviere

) was used

constantly by Iron Guard writers and by Codreanu himself. When the names of fallen

Iron Guardists were read out at meetings and demonstrations, present (

prezent

) was the

accepted refrain. And after Codreanus death, it was not uncommon for members of the

Legion to use the phrase The Captain is with us! (

Cãpitanul e cu noi!

) or to refer to

his resurrection.

The Legions combined call for spiritual renewal, immersion in the mystical, violent

battle against Satan (i.e., the Jews), Romanian Orthodox faith, leadership by an

appropriately anointed figure, and overthrow of the established (Judaized) order had

immense appeal for the generation of young Romanian intellectuals that developed

during the interwar period, just as traditional anti-Semitism had proved a magnet for the

countrys nineteenth and early-twentieth-century elites. The Iron Guard appeared to offer

an integrated, purposeful philosophy of life and of death. The new generation of intellec-

tuals for whom anti-Semitism was an integral part of their Legionary credo (

crez

however, were not pseudo-scholars of the Cuza or Paulescu type. They were the main

protagonists of Romanian cultural and intellectual identity in the mid-twentieth century. Some

of those who survived World War II, like Eliade and Cioran, living outside Romania,

became internationally recognized intellectual icons after the Holocaust, hiding their

84. Codreanu,

For My Legionaries

, p. 106.

85. See La Icoanã,

Pãmântul Strãmoºesc

, August 1, 1927, in Ion Moþa,

Cranii de lemn Articole

1922-1936

, 3

ed. (Bucharest: Totul pentru Þarã, 1937), pp. 19-22. On this elite group, see

Gh. Istrate,

Frãþia de Cruce

(1935; reprint, Colecþia Omul Nou, 1952); Bãnicã Dobre,

Crucificaþii

(1937; reprint, Colec]ia Omul Nou, 1951).

86. Eugen Weber, Romania,

loc. cit.

, p. 534.

87.

For My Legionaries

, pp. 126-127.

88. For numerous examples of Codreanus use of related language, see Codreanu,

Circulãri.

See

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu Douãzeci de ani dela moarte

(Madrid: Carpaþii, 1958), p. 27. Also,

the poem by Radu Gyr on p. 9: Mormântul tãu e numai Înviere/ Prin tine luminãm de Veºnicie.

Ion Tolescus article in the same volume, pp. 175-182, draws an explicit parallel between Codreanu

and Jesus, closing with a drawing of an unidentified figure carrying a cross on his back.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

past while demonstrating their genius. Others, like Crainic and Noica, faded into Roma-

nian prison life, but saw the power of their thinking affect a post-Holocaust generation

of Romanian youth that was also seeking, as they had done earlier, a destiny better than

that offered by the countrys established (communist) order. Some lesser lights, like

Vintilã Horia and Horia Stamatu, continued their affiliation with the Iron Guard in exile

after the war, trying to maintain Legionary vitality and hoping for a final resurrection of

the movement before their own days ended.

The Legion produced a number of theoreticians whose ideas were important within

the movement but less so in Romanian society as a whole. Nicolae Roºu, Vasile Marin,

and others wrote books praising the Legions new role on the Romanian scene, and

especially the virtues of Codreanu.

None of these individuals had the ability to influ-

ence and impress that belonged to Nae Ionescu, Mircea Eliade, Nichifor Crainic, Emil

Cioran, or Constantin Noica. These latter figures did not emerge from within the Iron

Guard, but in the early thirties discovered in the movement the appealing promise of a

national revolution. These were the years when Greater Romanias promise, so glitter-

ing in the aftermath of World War I, appeared to be slipping away. Disillusioned by the

failure of the restoration of Carol II to the throne in 1930 to address the countrys

woes, the so-called young generation of philosophers and scholars turned to the Legion-

ary movement in pursuit of a national resurrection.

Newspapers on the political

Right, literary journals, and bookstores were filled with their writings. Their quest for

philosophical, spiritual, and political renewal inclined them toward fascist doctrines,

while their ethnic, nationalist, Romanian Orthodox focus impelled them toward the

Legionary movement. Nae Ionescu joined first, and the others followed.

Whatever their attitudes toward Jews before they affiliated with the Iron Guard, these

thinkers all adopted radical anti-Semitic language and incorporated the anti-Semitic

orientation of the Iron Guard into the intellectual framework they called Romanianism.

89. Nicolae Roºu,

Orientãri în Veac

(Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1937

)

, and

Dialectica naþionalismului

(Bucharest: Cultura Naþionalã, 1935); and Vasile Marin,

Crez de generaþie

(henceforth: Marin,

Crez

)

(Bucharest: Bucovina, 1937).

90. On the intellectual ferment on the Right in the thirties, see Ornea,

op. cit.

, and Volovici,

op. cit.

On the young generation in particular, see Ornea,

op. cit.

, pp. 146-220, and Volovici,

op. cit.

pp. 70-94. On Iorgas political role in the early thirties, see his

Doi ani de restauraþie Ce a fost,

ce am vrut, ce am putut

(Vãlenii de Munte: Tiparul Datina Româneasc\, 1932). In the eyes of the

young generation, Iorga epitomized the values of the old regime. He had been King Carols

tutor in the monarchs youth, and the Legion considered Carol an enemy. Iorga served as prime

minister in the so-called government of specialists from mid-1931 to mid-1932, which declared

the Iron Guard illegal. He also served on the Crown Council during the Royal Dictatorship from

1938 to 1940, again a period when the Iron Guard was outlawed.

91. Nae Ionescu used this phrase and dated his conversion to the Legion to fall 1933, just before it

was banned by the National Liberal Party government of Ion G. Duca; see Ionescus

introduc-

tion to Marin,

Crez.

For professions of Legionary faith of the others, see, for example, Mircea

Eliade, De ce cred în biruinþa miºcãrii legionare (hencenforth: Eliade, De ce cred),

Buna

Vestire

, December 17, 1937; Emil Cioran,

Schimbarea la faþã a României

(Bucharest, 1937);

Crainic,

Ortodoxie

; C. Noica, Între parazitul din afar\ ºi parazitul dinãuntru,

Vremea

January 30, 1938.

92. On Romanianism (

românismul

) and the contribution made to it by each, see Volovici,

op. cit.

pp. 75-94.

FINAL REPORT

Nae Ionescu took the lead in definitively excluding the Jews from Romanian Christian

society:

Christians and Jews, two bodies alien to one another, which cannot fuse into a synthesis,

between which there can only be peace

...

if one of them disappears.

Cioran echoed the same sentiment of inevitable separation:

The Jew is not our fellow being, our neighbor. However intimate we may become with him,

a precipice divides us, whether we want it or not. It is as if he were descended from a different

species of ape than we are and had been condemned from the beginning to a sterile tragedy, to

everlasting cheated hopes. We cannot approach him as a human because the Jew is first a Jew

and then a man.

...We Romanians can only save ourselves by adopting a different political form. The Jews

have resisted with all the means available to their subterranean imperialism, cynicism and

centuries-old experience. What we must understand once and for all is that the Jews are not

interested in living in a consolidated and self-aware Romania.

Noica did the same:

What we regret is that

[

the Jews

]

are forbidden to see and understand all that is good and

truthful in Legionarism. We regret their suffering at not participating in any way, with not even

a hope, with not even an illusion, in Romanias tomorrow.

In 1936, Mircea Eliade returned to the language of the mid-nineteenth century to

describe a Jewish invasion of the country and to excoriate the Romanian political class

for permitting Romania to be overrun by Jews:

Since the war, Jews have occupied the villages of Maramure[ and Bukovina and gained the

absolute majority in the towns and cities of Bessarabia... And if you tell them

[

the political

leaders

]

that in the Bucegi you no longer hear Romanian, that in Maramure[, Bukovina, and

Bessarabia they speak Yiddish, that the Romanian villages are dying and the face of the towns

is changing, they consider that you are in the pay of the Germans or assure you that they have

passed laws for the protection of national labor.

In his public declaration of support for the Iron Guard a year later, Eliade, too, made

it clear that the relationship between Romanians and Jews was, in fact, a battle to the

death:

Can the Romanian nation end its life in the saddest decay witnessed by history, undermined

by misery and syphilis, conquered by Jews and torn to pieces by foreigners, demoralized,

betrayed, sold for a few hundred million lei?

Iron Guard anti-Semitism, of course, was not limited to abstract consideration of the

nature of Jews, Romanians, and their (non-)relationship. Legionary writers produced

93. Prefaþã to Mihail Sebastian,

De douã mii de ani

(Bucharest: Naþionala-Ciornei, 1934), p. xxviii.

94. Cioran,

op. cit.

, pp. 130-133 (English translation cited from Volovici,

op. cit.

, pp. 108, 119-20).

95. Noica,

op. cit.

96. Mircea Eliade, Piloþii orbi,

Vremea

, September 19, 1936.

97.

Idem

, De ce cred,

loc. cit.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

works intended to incite pogroms and crimes, and designed practical proposals of mass

murder. In 1938, Alexandru Rãzmeriþã, a Romanian Orthodox priest, described a plan

for the total elimination of the Jews in the cities and their deportation to forced labor

camps in the countryside. Attempts to escape the work camps would be punished by

execution.

Traian Herseni developed Legionary racial theory, which combined the

doctrine of inequality with a doctrine of the betterment of the human races. Calling

the racial purification of the Romanian people a question of life and death, Herseni

argued for a eugenics program and the complete separation of inferior races from the

ethnic group.

Weakened by Carols dissolution of political parties in February 1938 and decimated

after the killing of Codreanu and the assassination of prime minister Armand Cãlinescu

in reprisal in November 1938 and September 1939, respectively, the Iron Guard got its

first opportunity to give practical implementation to its anti-Semitic ideology from inside

government during the last few months of the Royal Dictatorship.

The Royal Dictatorship and the Jews

On February 13, 1938, Patriarch Miron Cristea, the first prime minister under the Royal

Dictatorship, issued a position statement that could not have been encouraging to Jews.

The Patriarch established the following goals:

Repair of the historical injustices of all sorts done to the dominant Romanian element,

without acts of injustice toward the long established national minorities... Reexamination of

the acquisition of citizenship after the war and annulment of all naturalizations made fraudu-

lently and contrary to the vital interests of the Romanians This reexamination will also

promote broader economic participation by the Romanian element. The organization of the

departure from the country of foreign elements that, recently established in the country,

damage and weaken our Romanian ethnic national character. Romania will cooperate with

other states that have an excess of Jewish population, helping

[

the Jews

]

to find their own

country...

100

The new Constitution promulgated by King Carol one week later promised equal

rights to Romanian citizens, regardless of ethnic origin or religion (Paragraph 5), but

also called for preference to the majority nation; allowed for laws that could differ-

entially limit those rights (e.g., Paragraphs 12 and 22, regarding education and press

freedom); restricted civil and military service to Romanian citizens belonging to the

majority strata of society (Paragraph 62); and effectively prevented Jews, with the

exception of the Chief Rabbi, from serving in Parliament. Provisions regarding the

granting of citizenship to people who were not ethnic Romanians returned to the terms

98. Alexandru Rãzmeriþã,

Cum sã ne apãrãm de evrei Un plan de eliminare totalã

(Turnu-Severin:

Tipografia Minerva, 1938), pp. 65-69.

99. Mitul sângelui,

Cuvântul

, November 23, 1940; and Rasa ºi destinul naþional,

Cuvântul

January 16, 1941.

100. Benjamin,

op. cit.

vol. 2,

Problema evreiascã în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri

, p. 31.

FINAL REPORT

of Article 11 of the 1877 Constitution, requiring a separate special law for each indi-

vidual case.

This ambiguous, self-contradictory set of statements and provisions foreshadowed the

inconsistency and uncertainty that would characterize the situation of Romanias Jews

during all but the last months of the Royal Dictatorship. In this matter as in others, Carol

and his ministers were trying to balance between policies that might keep the increas-

ingly assertive Nazi

regime in Germany satisfied and policies that would enable Romania

to retain a degree of credibility and its security arrangements with France and Britain.

Carol was cracking down on the Iron Guard internally and resisting the Nazis diplomati-

cally. A more aggressive stance toward the Jews might have provided some maneuvering

room vis-à-vis the Germans, but Carol knew, based on the recent protests from Paris and

London that Gogas policies had elicited, that clearly-defined new anti-Semitic policies

would set off reactions there that he wanted to avoid.

As a result, no new anti-Semitic legislation appeared for well over two years of the

new regime. But the Royal Dictatorship continued to implement the review of citizen-

ship called for by the PNC governments Decree-law no. 169, which remained in force.

This resulted in 225,222 Romanian Jews being deprived of their citizenship. In many

cases citizenship was lost not because the mandated procedures had not been followed

when citizenship had been granted, but simply because the documentation available then

had been lost or scattered, or because it was beyond the financial means of some families

to assemble the necessary evidence. The law was implemented by local authorities that

were more lenient toward the petitioners in some districts and more severe in others, thus

introducing a high degree of anxiety and uncertainty into the process. Jews might be

expelled from their positions in one administrative district, while in another district Jews

who had lost their jobs or whose shops had been closed during the PNC regime were

allowed to go back to work. Still, a large number of Jews were no longer able to earn a

living when they lost their citizenship, and it was not unusual for state authorities at both

the national and the local levels to suggest to Jews that they might be better off emigrat-

ing voluntarily.

101

While no new explicitly anti-Semitic laws were promulgated until August 1940, a

series of administrative decisions and instructions gradually imposed greater separation

and material hardship on the Jews. While in theory Jews were not excluded from the

Front of National Rebirth (

Frontul Renaºterii Naþionale

), the only political party

permitted in the newly declared Royal Dictatorship, in practice Jews could not gain

admission. Responding to their requests was postponed, because it made little sense to

admit Jews whose citizenship status was being reviewed, and in order not to unnecessar-

ily strain relations with Germany over the Jewish issue. When the Front of National

Rebirth gave way to the Party of the Nation (

Partidul Naþiunii

) in June 1940, the situation

became clearer. Members of the Iron Guard just released from prison were admissible

into the new party; Jews were not. In September 1938, the Ministry of Internal Affairs

ordered that Jews who had lost their citizenship had to register as foreigners. Again,

implementation of the order was inconsistent; but the humiliation was not. In Bukovina,

Royal Resident Gheorghe Alexianu, who would later serve the Antonescu regime as

101. See, for example, the radio remark of foreign minister Grigore Gafencu on February 1, 1939,

cited in Ancel,

Contribuþii

, p. 104.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

governor of Transnistria, ordered Jews who had lost their citizenship to register and

suggested that it would be appropriate for them to sell their property and businesses

within fourteen days. He also banned the speaking of Yiddish in public, which made it

more difficult for the Jews of the region to function professionally, survive commercially,

or simply live normally.

Additional administrative measures reinforced the gradual disengagement to which

Jews were subjected. Recipients of foreign university and professional degrees were

required to seek recertification of their degrees in order to teach or practice their

professions. Job applicants had to include documentation of their ethnic origin with their

requests, encouraging the evaluators to make ethnicity part of their decision-making

process. Because many Jews had been forced to study abroad to avoid becoming victims

of Iron Guard and LANC youth group violence at Romanian universities and professional

schools, this measure was especially damaging as well as demeaning for Jews. Restric-

tions were placed on Jewish participation in banking and accounting, pharmacies, pub-

lishing houses, and other fields of professional activity.

102

The Romanian government continued to hope that Jews would leave the country

voluntarily as their conditions deteriorated. The government tried through diplomatic

channels to encourage a cooperative effort for mass emigration of Jews from Romania,

Poland, and other European countries.

103

As time passed, however, fewer and fewer

Romanian Jews had the connections abroad or the resources necessary to emigrate.

Moreover, the Evian Conference in July 1938 demonstrated just how few countries were

prepared to receive even a modest number of Jews.

Anti-Semitic violence during the first two years of the Royal Dictatorship was limited.

The Iron Guard had been dissolved at the beginning of the new regime, as had the PNCs

L\ncieri.

Interior minister and later prime minister Armand Cãlinescu gave priority to

preventing Legionary violence from upsetting the countrys already difficult political

situation. After Cãlinescu himself fell victim to Legionary assassins in September 1939,

reprisals and arrests by the government took additional large numbers of Iron Guard

members off the streets. Others found refuge in Nazi Germany.

This ambiguous but survivable situation for the Jews changed dramatically after the

German defeat of France at the beginning of June 1940 and the Soviet ultimatum to

Romania for the cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina at the end of the same

month. With only Germany available as a possible shield against further territorial

demands from Romanias neighbors, King Carol acted with a sense of urgency. The king

called on Ion Gigurtu to serve as prime minister and help convert the authoritarian

one-party state the king had installed two years earlier into a fascist-style dictatorship

that would be acceptable to Nazi Germany. Gigurtu was an industrialist with strong

German connections. He had served as minister of industry and commerce in the PNC

government and was minister of public works and communications in the government led

by Gheorghe Tãtãrescu that was in place in June 1940. The king abolished the Front of

National Rebirth and established the totalitarian Party of the Nation, with restricted

access, in its place. He appointed three Iron Guard leaders, recently returned from their

102. On this period, see

ibid.

, pp. 111-120.

103. See statement of December 31, 1938, by foreign minister Grigore Gafencu, cited in Benjamin,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, pp. 36-37.

FINAL REPORT

refuge in Germany, in addition to a group of former National Christian Party officials, to

ministerial posts. Nichifor Crainic became minister of national propaganda.

In the wake of the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union,

major incidents of anti-Semitic violence shook the relative physical security that Roma-

nian Jews had enjoyed during much of the Royal Dictatorship. Romanian military units

assaulted Jews throughout southern Bukovina following the spread of rumors that Jews

had vilified Romanian troops as they withdrew from the ceded territories. Major assaults

on Jews by military units and civilians took place in Dorohoi and Gala]i as well.

104

As part of its frantic effort to realign Romanias diplomatic position, the Gigurtu

government quickly made it clear to the Nazi leadership in Berlin that it intended to

change Romanias policies toward Jews to bring them closer to the German model.

During a visit to Berlin in late July, Gigurtu assured both German foreign minister

von Ribbentrop and Hitler himself that Romania hoped to solve its Jewish problem

definitively in the context of a German-led total solution for all of Europe. Gigurtu

told Hitler that he was determined to move ahead step by step with the process of

eliminating the Jews.

105

On the delegations return home, foreign minister Mihail

Manoilescu, who had accompanied Gigurtu to Berlin, declared on July 30:

Romanians cannot succeed in being masters of their own house, as they would like,

unless the problem of the Jewish element in our country is resolved through categorical and

decisive measures. In this regard we are determined to undertake serious and well planned

measures, and to carry them out In this way we will fulfill to a degree greater than ever

before in our history the venerable slogan of Romanian nationalism: Romania for Romanians

and only for Romanians.

106

The Gigurtu government began to consider concrete new actions against the Jews as

soon as it assumed office.

107

Through a decree-law issued on August 9, 1940, it estab-

lished a definition of Jews based on both religion (

rit

) and race (

sânge

), with either

criterion sufficient to identify an individual as a Jew. Decree-law no. 2650 dramatically

altered the juridical status of Jews, with little regard to whether they were Romanian

citizens or not. Jews might be Romanian citizens (

cetãþeni români

), but they could not

achieve the status of Romanians by blood (

români de sânge

), and that distinction was

sufficient basis to establish a regime of extensive legal discrimination. Jews were sepa-

rated into three categories for the purpose of further regulating their status, but all of the

categories were subjected to major restrictions on their political, civic, economic, and

cultural activity. Jews were excluded from government office and other public functions,

numerous professions, the boards of both public and private enterprises, and ownership

of rural property or economic activity in rural areas. They were subjected to numerous

104. On anti-Semitic violence during this period, see Ioanid,

The Holocaust in Romania

The

Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944

(Chicago: Ivan R.

Dee, 2000), pp. 38-43; and Ancel,

Contribuþii

, pp. 199-227.

105.

DGFP

, document 233, Memorandum of Conversation between Gigurtu and German foreign

minister von Ribbentrop, July 26, 1940; and document 234, Memorandum of Conversation

between Gigurtu and Hitler, July 26, 1940.

106. Cited in Benjamin,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, p. 53.

107. See the governments communiqué regarding broad-ranging discussions (

ample discuþiuni

) of

the principle elements of policies regarding the solution of the Jewish problem (

soluþionarea

problemei evreieºti

), in

ibid.

, p. 49.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

additional restrictions that endangered their ability to earn a living. Jews could no longer

adopt Romanian names, and, following the model of Germanys infamous Nuremberg

Laws, conversion to Christianity provided little protection from the discriminatory meas-

ures aimed at Jews. The decree-law required the development of special regulations

regarding education for Jews, from primary school through professional and post-graduate

study.

108

A separate decree-law forbade intermarriage between Jews and Romanians by

blood.

In the few weeks that passed between the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

the beginning of the end of Greater Romania and the establishment of the National

Legionary State led by Ion Antonescu and Iron Guard leader Horia Sima in September

1940, the physical and economic security of Romanian Jews deteriorated rapidly. The

day on which they would suffer the full cumulative fury of nearly a century of Romanian

anti-Semitism was near.

Conclusion

With the benefit of history and hindsight, it should not have been a surprise that in the

thirties and forties large segments of the Romanian population accepted the anti-Semitism

of the League of National Christian Defense, the National Christian Party, and the Iron

Guard, and then either participated in or acquiesced to the murderous crimes committed

by the Antonescu regime against the Jews. It should have been no surprise that the

intellectual icon Mircea Eliade, who gained international acclaim for his spiritual study

of eastern religions, had extreme right-wing roots in Greater Romania. Nor that Viorel

Trifa, having become the Romanian Orthodox Archbishop of the United States, was

stripped of his American citizenship in the seventies because of his leadership role in the

Iron Guard rebellion and anti-Semitic pogrom in Bucharest in January 1941. Nor that in

France in 2003 it became impossible to honor an accomplished scientific figure of

Romanian origin, N.C. Paulescu, because Paulescu had authored flagrantly anti-Semitic

tracts in Romania in the twenties. Nor that a staunchly xenophobic and anti-Semitic

political party pretended to political power and even the presidency of the country in

post-communist Romania.

The political and intellectual roots of these tragic realities stretch back to the emer-

gence of modern Romania. For well over 100 years many of the countrys most respected

political and cultural leaders embraced anti-Semitism and with consistency and persever-

ance inserted it into the rich mixture of action and inspiration that came to constitute

modern Romanian political culture and modern Romanian intellectual life. It was not

possible during the communist era to undertake the difficult task of critically examining

the pillars of Romanian consciousness who made anti-Semitism part of the Romanian

mainstream. Much of the work required to understand fully the legacies left by these

individuals still remains to be done.

108. For the extensive discriminatory provisions of the Decree-law on the Juridical Status of Jews

Residing in Romania (Decret-lege privitor la starea juridic\ a locuitorilor evrei din România), see

the introduction (

referat

) presented by minister of justice Ion Gruia and the text of Decree-law

no. 2650, in Benjamin,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, pp. 37-50.

FINAL REPORT

Understanding the deep roots of anti-Semitism in Romanian politics and culture will

make it easier to confront the factual record that is emerging regarding Romanias role

in the Holocaust from the hundreds of thousands of Romanian Holocaust-era documents

that are now available for research. The Holocaust did not arrive in Romania like a

meteorite from outer space. Nor did it arrive from Nazi Germany. The rise of fascism

and Nazism in Western Europe may have increased the confidence of Romanians with

radical anti-Semitic views, and may have increased the chances that they might one day

play a role in government. But their anti-Semitism was not dramatically altered by those

developments. Hitlers rise did not substantially change Romanian anti-Semitic ideology.

Hitlers rise opened the door to the possible implementation of anti-Semitic programs

that had been discussed in principle for decades. The anti-Semitism of the National

Christian Party and the Iron Guard, the genocidal regime of Ion Antonescu, and the

lengthy history of Holocaust denial in Romania since World War II all rested firmly on

the foundations of a century of anti-Semitism preached at the highest levels of Romanian

political and intellectual life. The separation, expropriation, deportation, and murder of

Jews were not new themes in the thirties and forties. The Holocaust had deep Romanian

roots and must be dealt with as an integral part of Romanian political and cultural

history.

Romanian-German Relations

before and during the Holocaust

Introduction

It was a paradox of the Second World War that Ion Antonescu, well known to be

pro-Occidental, sided with Germany and led Romania in the war against the Allies. Yet,

Romanias alliance with Germany occurred against the background of the gradually

eroding international order established at the end of World War I. Other contextual

factors included the re-emergence of Germany as a Great Power after the rise of the

National Socialist government and the growing involvement of the Soviet Union in

European international relations. In East Central Europe, the years following the First

World War were marked by a rise in nationalism characterized by strained relations

between the new nation-states and their ethnic minorities.

At the same time, France and

England were increasingly reluctant to commit force to uphold the terms of the Versailles

Treaty, and the Comintern began to view ethnic minorities as potential tools in the

anti-imperialist struggle.

In 1920, Romania had no disputes with Germany, while its

eastern border was not recognized by the Soviet Union.

Romanian-German Relations during the Interwar Period

In the early twenties, relations between Romania and Germany were dominated by two

issues: the reestablishment of bilateral trade and German reparations for war damages

incurred during the World War I German occupation. The German side was mainly

interested in trade, whereas the Romanian side wanted first to resolve the conflict over

reparations. A settlement was reached only in 1928. The Berlin government acted very

cautiously at that time. In regard to internal political affairs in Romania, German policy

was one of strict neutrality.

From 1928 onward, Germany began to pursue its political and economic interests

more actively. This shift affected all aspects of Romanian-German relations. It was not

1. See Joseph Rothschild,

East Central Europe between the Two World Wars

, Series A History of

East Central Europe, vol. 9 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).

2. Vladimir Tismãneanu,

Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)

[

Stalinism pentru eternitate. O istorie politic\ a

comunismului rom^nesc

, Ia[i: Polirom, 2005

]

3. For context see: Hans-Paul Höpfner,

Deutsche Südosteuropapolitik der Weimarer Republik

(Frankfurt:

Lang, 1983).

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

until this period that the fate of the German minority became an issue in bilateral

relations. The German side now granted not only modest financial support to their

cultural and religious organizations, but also a measure of political support. As another

way to further the interests of its minorities abroad, Weimar Germany tried to establish

itself as a protector of the international ethnic minority movement. In this respect, it also

began to take an interest in the situation of the Hungarian and Jewish minorities in

various eastern European countries.

German-Romanian relations, both political and economic, suffered after the Nazis

seized power in Germany and demanded a radical revision of the World War I peace

treaties. This policy was diametrically opposed to Romanian interests. But soon enough,

economic relations between the two countries were to improve again: the beginnings of

the German-Romanian rapprochement date back to 1936. Romanian officials were mo-

tivated by economic interests and by security considerations; they wanted Germany to

keep Hungarian revisionism in check and to protect Romania against potential Soviet

threats.

Nazi foreign policy placed particular emphasis on economic penetration of the

southeastern European states.

This, in turn, helped Romania to alleviate some of the

effects of the Great Depression. Germany was, in effect, the only open market for

southeastern European grains, the regions most important export.

As a result, by 1938

Germany had become Romanias most important commercial partner, accounting for

almost 50 percent of Romanias foreign trade.

But Romania managed to deepen trade relations with Germany without being forced

to forsake the protection of its Western allies.

It is worth mentioning that in the pre-Antonescu

period, the new eastern European states, notably Romania and Czechoslovakia, believed

they could trust French and British guarantees, in part due to their opposition to Mussolinis

proposal to revise the Versailles Treaty.

Political relations, therefore, remained precarious. The increasingly aggressive Ger-

man revisionist policy was interested not only in a reorientation of Romanian foreign

policy, but also in a change in its internal affairs. Ideologically and financially, Germany

4. Sabine Bamberger-Stemmann,

Der europäische Nationalitätenkongreß 1925 bis 1938. Nationale

Minderheiten zwischen Lobbystentum und Großmachtinteressen

(Marburg: Verlag Herder Institut,

2000).

5. Rebecca Haynes,

Politica României faþã de Germania între 1936 ºi 1940

(Iaºi: Polirom, 2003,

p. 18).

6. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry During the Holocaust

(hence-

forth: Ancel,

Documents

), vol. 9,

Romanian-German Relations, 1936-1944

(New York: Beate

Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986);

Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945

(henceforth:

DGFP

), vol. 8,

The War Years, June 23, 1941 December 11, 1941

, ser. D (1937-1945) (London:

Her Majestys Stationery Office, 1964).

7. Harry M. Howard,

The Policy of National Socialist Germany in Southeastern Europe

, Harry S.

Truman Library, pp. 10-529.

8. Andreas Hillgruber,

Hitler, König Carol und Marschall Antonescu. Die deutsch-rumänischen

Beziehungen 1938-1944

(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1954), p. 45.

9. I. Benditer and Ion Ciupercã, Relaþii româno-germane în perioada 1928-1932,

Anuarul Institutului

de Istorie ºi Arheologie A.D. Xenopol

(henceforth:

A.I.I.A.

), 8 (1971), pp. 317-330.

10. Ion Ciupercã, N. Titulescu ºi rolul statelor mici în viaþa internaþionalã contemporanã, in

Titulescu ºi strategia pãcii

(Iaºi: Junimea, 1982);

idem

, Locarno oriental, semnificaþia unui eºec

(1925-1937),

A.I.I.A.

, vol. 34, no. 2; E. Bold and I. Ciupercã,

Europa în derivã (1918-1940). Din

istoria relaþiilor internaþionale

(Iaºi: Casa Editorialã Demiurg, 2001).

FINAL REPORT

supported the Romanian radical right and anti-Semitic groups, which helped to under-

mine Romanias democratic order from within. According to German historian Armin

Heinen, Octavian Goga was the first Romanian politician to be financed by Nazi Germany.

Germany also played an active role in the internal conflicts of the German minority

in Romania, and supported and financed the creation of a Nazi movement from within.

During the thirties Berlin succeeded in bringing the ethnic Germans in Romania under its

control.

The fact that anti-Semitism in Germany had become official state doctrine,

encouraged anti-Semitism elsewhere, especially in Romania. The rise of this German-

-influenced anti-Semitism, which intensified Romanian anti-Semitism, occurred even

before German efforts to draw Romania away from its former allies had begun to take

effect.

As the thirties advanced, German diplomacy also encouraged direct measures against

Romanian Jews, such as forcing them out of German-Romanian commercial relations. It

pressured German companies in Romania not to employ Jews or let them sell German

goods. In 1939 the German Foreign Office required each of its Romanian consulates to

supply comprehensive information on the number of Jews in its area and their role in the

communitys business life. At the signing of the economic agreement in March 1939, the

leader of the German delegation reported to Berlin that, aside from the real economic

cooperation intended by the agreement, it also aimed to eliminate Jews from the Roma-

nian forest industry.

However, German anti-Jewish actions were still somewhat restrained during this

period for fear of a negative impact on the German minority in Romania. Thus, in 1937 the

German Ambassador in Bucharest protested against the Romanian governments plans to

introduce the Law for the Protection of National Labor. If enacted, this measure would

have required Romanian firms to employ, at minimum, 75 percent so-called Romanians

by blood. The Romanians repeatedly reassured the Germans that this measure was not an

attempt to damage German interests and was intended to affect only the Jews. Indeed, the

Romanians did request German help in achieving the intended elimination of the Jews,

a request to which the German diplomats had no principal objection.

The German-Soviet rapprochement exemplified by the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agree-

ment (August 23, 1939), the fall of France in June 1940, and Romanias humiliating

territorial losses that same summer were all incentives for a closer relationship with

Germany. Arguably, the range of options available to the Romanian government in 1940

was narrowing. After the loss of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union in June 1940, the

Romanian government envisaged Germany as a defender against Hungarian and Bulgar-

ian revisionism. Yet, Romanian hopes for German protection were not to be realized, as

11. Armin Heinen,

Die Legion Erzengel Michael in Rumänien. Soziale Bewegung und politische

Organisation. Ein Beitrag zum Problem des internationalen Faschismus

(Munich: Oldenbourg,

1986), pp. 322-335.

12. Wolfgang Miege,

Das Dritte Reich und die deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien 1933-1938

(Frank-

furt: Lang, 1972); Johann Böhm,

Deutsche in Rumänien und das Dritte Reich

(Frankfurt: Lang,

1999); Vasile Ciobanu,

Contribuþii la cunoaºterea istoriei saºilor transilvãneni 1918-1944

(Sibiu:

Hora, 2001), pp. 179-219.

13. Hildrun Glass,

Zerbrochene Nachbarschaft. Das deutsch-jüdische Verhältnis in Rumänien 1918-1938

(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), pp. 357-457, 527-560.

14.

Ibid.

, pp. 544-547.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Hitler supported Hungarian and Bulgarian territorial claims against Romania.

At the

same time, the use of population transfers as a policy tool was gaining credibility;

Romanian foreign minister Mihail Manoilescu saw population transfers as a way to ease

Bulgarian and Hungarian demands for territory. Such moves were part of a broader

debate about ethnic homogeneity within the borders of nation-states, and its legitimation

in diplomatic statements further encouraged harsh anti-minority rhetoric and policies. It

was only a small step from here to cleansing the land, the implementation of ethnic

purification a small step, which triggered the tragedy of the Jews and Roma under

Romanian authority during World War II.

In fact, however, the shift from Franco-British to German protection actually oc-

curred before the end of March 1940 three months before the defeat of France

apparently because the Romanian government had lost faith in an Allied victory. As a

symbol of this fundamental change, the Romanian government signed an oil agreement

with Germany after months of negotiating. Throughout the war Romania remained a

sovereign state, but committed itself more and more to dependence on its new ally,

which initially had seemed so overwhelmingly powerful. Romania delivered its raw

materials and put its army at Germanys disposal, thereby helping to keep the German

war machine going.

Moreover, Nazi Germany insisted that Romania sign an agreement granting extensive

autonomy to the German minority in Romania. Thus, the ethnic Germans, in effect,

erected a small state within the state. This

de facto

territorial entity was built directly by

the

Reich

and followed the Nazi model; and in 1943 Romania was forced to allow ethnic

Germans to join the Waffen-SS instead of being drafted into the Romanian army.

In a

parallel to German maneuvers removing the German minority from Romanian sovereignty,

Nazi Germany also attempted to gain control over Jewish life in Romania, with the

intention of destroying Romanian Jewry. Beginning in spring 1941 Gustav Richter,

diplomat and member of the

Reichssicherheitshauptamt

(RSHA

Reich

Main Security

Office), was active in Bucharest. His job was to ensure that all regulations regarding

Romanias Jews were to be formulated in accordance with the German example. In strict

conformity with German directives, the Romanian Jews were to be exterminated.

Antonescu and Germany

When Antonescu came to power in September 1940, it was not obvious that he would be

Berlins favorite. The Nazis identified him as a potential leader through their embassy in

Bucharest; yet the German Ambassadors endorsement of Antonescu was accompanied

by a cautionary note: Antonescu had criticized the Munich Conference and Anglo-French

appeasement.

Nevertheless, when Antonescus Romania joined the Axis on Novem-

ber 23, 1940, Antonescu showed an unabashed commitment to the German option.

The vision of the Antonescu regime was that of a Romania able to retrieve its lost

15. Constantin Iordan, La neutralité dans le sud-est européen (1939-1941). Le cas de la Bulgarie et

de la Grèce. Quelques repères,

Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Européennes

, 3 (1991), p. 171.

16. Ciobanu,

op. cit.

, pp. 236-264.

17. Gh. Barbul,

Le troisième homme de lAxe

(Paris: Editions de la Couronne, 1950), p. 189.

FINAL REPORT

territories and to participate in the new international order planned by the Tripartite

Pact.

In his plea against German support for a Ukrainian state or for Bulgarian territo-

rial claims, Mihai Antonescu, vice president of the Council of Ministers, added to this

vision a racial element during his meeting with Hitler on November 27, 1941: For me,

the greatest challenge of European reconstruction is the solving of the Slav problem;

to ensure an enduring peace, it was necessary to link the German action against the

Slavs with the one of the Latin race; our position vis-à-vis the Slavs must not be toned

down by hesitation and any policy viewed at the isolation, neutralization, or occupation

of Slavic territories may be considered legitimate.

Mihai Antonescu further added that German support for Ukrainian and Bulgarian

claims would be tantamount to an injustice to Romania and the Romanian people, which

is and was anti-Slav, just as it has always been anti-Semitic.

This rhetoric was well

received by Hitler, who used the opportunity to declare that there was space in Europe

only for Germanic and Latin races and that these two races needed to work together

against the Slavs. He also promised Mihai Antonescu that Romania could grab as much

[

territory

]

in the East as it pleases, as long as Romanian settlers were sent to help win

the common fight against the Slavic race.

Yet, Hitler made no firm promises to

support the return of Northern Transylvania to Romanian sovereignty.

Romania, Germany, and the Final Solution

The Jewish problem, or the treatment of Jews in Romania, was neither an issue nor the

core of a conflict or cause for dissent between Germany and the National Legionary

government. It had no impact on the stance of Nazi Germany with regard to the leaders

of the Legionary regime in Romania. In the beginning, Berlin viewed the Legionary

offensive against Jewish property and the Jews themselves as characteristic of a fascist

revolution in Romania similar to that which had taken place in Germany. At the two

meetings between Marshal Ion Antonescu and Hitler (November 22-23, 1940, and

January 14, 1941), the treatment of Jews was not even addressed seriously. Romanias

complex political situation and Germanys immediate interests at the time preparations

for war with the Soviet Union and the campaign in the Balkans constituted the

backdrop for a special Romanian-German relationship. The Nazi government (Hitler, the

Foreign Ministry and Ribbentrop, and the German military mission and embassy in

Bucharest) was chiefly interested in Romanias resources primarily wheat, produce,

and oil and in subordinating the Romanian army to the

Reich

in the upcoming war. The

anti-Semitic policy, which was already central to the ideology of the new Romanian

fascist government, was of less interest to the Germans. Another reason the Jewish

problem was a matter of only secondary importance was that at that time the objectives

and proportions of the Final Solution had not yet been clearly formulated; the Nazis,

therefore, did not pressure Romania into adopting their policies.

18. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 9, pp. 134-135.

19.

Ibid.

, no. 105, p. 280.

20.

Ibid.

, p. 281.

21.

Ibid.

, p. 284.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Some of the anti-Semitic propaganda in the Romanian press was financed by the

German embassy in Bucharest through bribing journalists and newspapers and by provid-

ing financial support to the two anti-Semitic parties, the National Christian Party of

Octavian Goga and A.C. Cuza and the Legion. On August 15, 1940,

Porunca vremii

, the

semi-official newspaper of the anti-Semitic movement, stated: Any attempt at strength-

ening Romania will fail as long as the Jewish problem in Romania is not solved according

to the wonderful German model. In conformity with the Nazi model, the solution

implied a staunch repression and expulsion of the Jews from Romania. This is but

one example out of hundreds of similar newspaper items.

The Legionnaires believed, and they were not entirely incorrect, that their movement

had the full support of the Nazis and that the

Reich

s guarantees of Romanias crippled

borders after June-August 1940 were warranted by the existence of a fascist regime in

Romania. On the last day of the Iron Guard rebellion (January 23, 1941) when the

Romanian army indiscriminately killed armed Legionnaires, their semi-official paper

Cuvântul

warned Antonescu that the destruction of the Legionary movement would

threaten the very existence of the Romanian state and Romanian sovereignty: Only the

existence in Romania of a national movement similar to the National Socialist and fascist

ones guarantees our future.

Antonescu also believed that the Legionnaires had the full trust and support of the

Germans.

It seemed that in the minds of Hitler and the Nazis, Romania cannot be

ruled in opposition to the Iron Guard.

On October 15, 1940, Antonescu declared his

readiness for close political, economic, and military cooperation with Germany and

sent Valer Pop, who was known to be pro-German, to Berlin as a special envoy.

He then

invited a German military mission to Romania to train the Romanian army and consoli-

date the border defense. The German officers who visited Romania, led by General

Tippelskirch, were favorably impressed by the

Conduc\tor

(Ion Antonescu; the Leader)

but not by his deputy, Horia Sima, and reported as much to Berlin.

In January 1941, during the struggle between Antonescu and the Iron Guard, the

Fuehrer

was obliged to choose between two potential partners for the

Reich

. Although the

Legionary movement was the ideological counterpart to National Socialism, Hitler

favored Antonescu because he exerted firm control over his army and upheld Romanias

economic commitments to the

Reich

. At the January 14, 1941, meeting with Antonescu,

Hitler basically granted him a free hand to crush the Legionnaires. Even before that

meeting, it was clear that those with a military role in Berlin supported Antonescu:

Hitler, the

Wehrmacht

generals who had met with Antonescu, the head of the military

delegation in Bucharest, various economic offices, and the representative in Bucharest,

Wilhelm Fabricius.

Himmler and all of his organizations as well as Goebbels, on the other hand, sup-

ported the Iron Guard. On January 24, Goebbels, who did not know that the battle had

already been decided, wrote in his diary: In Romania, nothing is clear yet. The

22.

Cuvântul

, Bucharest, January 24, 1941.

23. Horia Sima,

Era libertãþii. Statul Naþional Legionar

(Madrid: Editura Miºcãrii Legionare, 1982),

vol. 2, p. 79.

24.

DGFP

, vol. 11, no. 652, p. 1094.

25. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 9, no. 61, p. 129.

26.

DGFP

, vol. 11, no. 75, pp. 126-128.

FINAL REPORT

Legionnaires are continuing their revolt, and Antonescu has issued orders to shoot them.

The

Fuehrer

, for his part, says that he wants an agreement with a state and not with an

ideology. Still, my heart is with them.

Several days later, after learning of the Legion-

naires defeat, Goebbels added in his diary: I am with the

Fuehrer

. He continues to

support Antonescu, since he needs him for military reasons. That is one point of view.

But it wasnt necessary to wipe out the Legion.

Himmlers emissaries in Romania

helped the commander of the Legionnaires, Horia Sima, and the heads of the movement

to escape to Germany. Throughout the war years, the leaders of the Iron Guard remained

in Germany under relatively comfortable conditions, albeit with restrictions on their

freedom of movement; Sima and his henchmen could serve as an alternative to Antonescus

regime if something went wrong in Bucharest. In return for their assistance to the Iron

Guard, Antonescu forced Himmlers representatives and members of the Foreign Office,

as well as known Gestapo agents to leave Romania, thereby ensuring himself control over

domestic matters.

It should be noted that Romanian-German cooperation and Antonescus consent to

satisfy most of the German economic and military demands stemmed in part from his

fear of the Soviet Union. For almost four years from September 1940 to August 1944

this fear was greater than his fear of Germany. The economic obligations Antonescu

accepted increased from month to month and became a heavy burden on Romanias

finances and natural resources, particularly grain and oil. Yet, something unprecedented

for a Nazi ally or satellite country happened in Romania: the local pro-Nazi party was

forcefully deposed; its active members were arrested, and its leaders were saved from

the death penalty only by representatives of the National Socialist party and the Gestapo.

Thus, during the years of the Antonescu government, Romania did not have an actual

fascist party. After removing the Legionary element from power, the Antonescu govern-

ment continued to implement the anti-Jewish measures, which aimed primarily at the

confiscation of Jewish property and the elimination of Jews from the national labor market.

In January 1941, Hitler and Göring revealed their plan for the invasion of the Soviet

Union, Operation Barbarossa, to both Ion and Mihai Antonescu and agreed on the

participation of the Romanian army in recovering Bessarabia and Bukovina. Mihai

Antonescu stated: Following these talks, Romanias participation in the war on the side

of Germany was agreed; we set the day, and only we, Marshal Antonescu and I, knew

the day when Romania and Germany would declare war on Russia.

Several months later,

in March, special emissaries of the

Reich

and Himmler, as they were described by Mihai

Antonescu, arrived in Bucharest to discuss the fate of the Jews in Romania. The emissar-

ies arrived just after the suppression of the Iron Guard rebellion, when the political

situation was still uncertain.

This was the first attempt by Himmler and the RSHA to

take over the handling of the Jews of Romania, done at a critical juncture in the relations

27. Joseph Goebbels,

Tagebücher

(Munich-Zurich: Herausgeben von Ralf Georg Reuth, Series Piper),

vol. 4, 1940-1942, p. 1524.

28.

Ibid.

, p. 1525.

29.

DGFP

, vol. 12, no. 258, pp. 443-444.

30. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 9, no. 162, p. 423. The offical protocol does not mention that Hitler

shared the secret of operation Barbarossa.

31. Cable from Mihai Antonescu to Romanian legation in Ankara, March 14, 1944, Foreign Ministry

Archives, Ankara file, T1, p. 108.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

between the two states at a time and when a huge German force (680,000 troops) was

stationed on Romanian soil. Mihai Antonescu, however, refused to relinquish this control,

and it was during this period that he and the Germans reached certain understandings

regarding the deportation and extermination of Bessarabian and Bukovinan Jews.

The subsequent arrival in Romania of SS-

Hauptsturmführer

Gustav Richter at the end

of April 1941 would have grave implications for the fate of Romanian Jewry. Richter, a

special envoy of the RSHA, was an expert on Jewish problems. In August 1941,

believing that Germany stood on the brink of victory, Mihai Antonescu informed his

Cabinet that he had discussed the solution to the Jewish problem with representatives of

the

Reich

: I can report to you that I have already conducted intensive negotiations with

a high-ranking German representative with regard to the Jewish problem.

[

They

]

understand that the Jewish problem will ultimately require an international solution, and

they wish to help us to prepare this international solution.

On May 16, 1941, in a report to his immediate superior, Ambassador Killinger,

Richter recounted the first achievements:

1. All draft laws from the Undersecretariat of State for Romanianization will be sent for my

confirmation before being seen by Antonescu.

[

The dissolution of

]

all Jewish political organizations, associations and unions, except for

the Jewish religious communities, the blocking of their bank accounts and confiscation of

their property, the total interdiction of their legal or underground activity. Their prop-

erty will be transferred to the future Jewish Center.

3. The creation of a Jewish Center of legal public character as the sole authorized Jewish

organization.

4. The obligation to report and declare all Jewish property.

5. The creation of an evacuation (

Aussiedlung

) fund by the Undersecretariat of State for

Romanianization, which would constitute the financial resource for the coming evacuation

of the Jews from Romania.

This was the Richters working program essentially, the application in Romania of

the directives for the handling of the Jewish problem (the Final Solution) as they had

been conceived in Berlin shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union. These included

the incitement of the local population against the Jews and the toleration of anti-Jewish

violence; defining what constituted a Jew; forcing Jews to wear distinctive yellow

badges; and the establishment of ghettos. The third paragraph of these directives ex-

plained: One of the primary goals of the German measures was supposed to be the

forceful isolation of Jewry from the rest of the population.

Before the war with the Soviet Union, Romanian-German military relations had

already become closer, and the joint preparations for war intensified with Antonescu

32. Transcript of the conversation between Ribbentrop and Mihai Antonescu (excerpts), September 23,

1942, United Restitution Organization (URO),

Sammlung

(Frankfurt: URO, 1959), vol. 4, no. 13,

p. 578.

33. Transcript from Cabinet meeting of August 5, 1941 (excerpt), Interior Ministry Archives, file

40010, vol. 9, p. 40.

34. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 129, pp. 401-404 (reproduced from Yad Vashem Archives, Micro-

film JMl3102.)

35.

Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg

(Nuremberg, 1947), vol. 14, file no. 218-PS, p. 302.

FINAL REPORT

seeking not only the return of Bessarabia and Bukovina but also to strengthen Romania

in the face of the Slavic threat. Antonescus June 12, 1941, visit to Munich to finalize

the details of Romanian-German military cooperation had a decisive impact on the fate

of the Jewish population of Bessarabia and Bukovina. At that time, under the influence

of his generals, Hitler did not give much credit to the operational capability of the

Romanian army, charging it only with the defense of Romanian territory against

penetration by Russian forces.

At the same time, he wished to stress his personal appreciation of the Romanian

dictator. He offered Antonescu the post of commander in chief of both the German and

Romanian troops in the Romanian territories and to provide him with a liaison headquar-

ters under the command of General Hauffe, head of the German military mission to

Romania.

This was not the only manifestation of trust and appreciation for the Romanian

dictator. Hitlers translator, Paul Schmidt, later stated that Antonescu was the only

foreigner from whom Hitler ever asked military advice when he was

[

having

]

difficulties.

As Mihai Antonescu reminded Ribbentrop, he had reached certain understandings

(

Abmachungen

) with the SS on the policy toward the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

also Transnistria.

Following the meeting in Munich, the earlier conversations with the

RSHA delegation, and the

Abmachungen

, the Romanian leaders in Bucharest drew up

their own guidelines for the military forces and gendarmerie. The fate of the Bessarabian

and Bukovinan Jews was therefore quickly decided. Once he returned to Bucharest from

Munich, Ion Antonescu now the commander of the Romanian-German troops in

southern Europe decided to imitate the Nazis and implement his own plan for a Final

Solution, which he would call the cleansing of the land.

Before the ethnic cleansing

began, Romanian leaders, convinced of German victory, made known to the inner circle

of the civil administration their plans regarding the Jewish population in Bessarabia and

Bukovina, known as the lost provinces.

On June 19, General Ilie {teflea, one of Antonescus reliable senior officers, commu-

nicated to the army, by means of a confidential circular, Antonescus order to identify

all

Jidani

, Communist agents or sympathizers... as the Ministry of Interior must know

where they are in order to ban their movement and in order to be able to enact whatever

orders I may transmit at a given time.

This order echoed instructions issued earlier by

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel to the

Wehrmacht

In late July 1941, the Romanian army

quickly deported up to 25,000 Jews to Moghilev in Ukraine, but the German army forced

the Jews back, shooting roughly 12,000 of them.

Antonescu sought the assistance of

Ambassador Killinger, arguing that the return of the Jews to Bessarabia was contrary to

36.

DGFP

, vol. 12, no. 614, p. 105.

37. Paul K. Schmidt,

Hitlers Interpreter

, ed. R.H.C. Steed (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. 206.

38. See footnote 32.

39. Jean Ancel, The Romanian Way of Solving the Jewish Question in Bessarabia and Bukovina,

June-July 1941,

Yad Vashem Studies

, 19 (1988), pp. 187-232.

40. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 1.

41. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law no. 10

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951), vol. 10, pp. 990-994 (special instructions

for Operation Barbarossa issued by the

Wehrmacht

High Command on May 19, 1941, including

Directives for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia).

42. Cable from Gen. Rioºanu to Gen. Antonescu, July 18, 1941, State Archives, fond Presidency of the

Council of Ministers, Cabinet, file no. 89/1941, p. 16.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the guidelines that the

Fuehrer

had specified in Munich regarding the treatment of the

eastern Jews.

It was clear that both Ion and Mihai Antonescu were not always ready to

heed the instructions of their German advisors, whose specific task was to help the

Romanians with certain migrations in territories under Romanian and German sovereignty.

Shortly before June 21, 1941, the Romanian Special Intelligence Service (

Serviciul

Special de Informaþii

SSI) created a select unit called the

E[alon Special

(Special

Echelon), which bore similarities to the

Einsatzgruppen

and was entrusted with the

mission of defending the rear of the Romanian army from espionage, sabotage, and

terrorist actions.

Like the

Einsatzgruppen

, the

E[alon Operativ

, as it was also called,

was divided into smaller

echipe

(teams). The Echelon was comprised of 160 elite men

and was soon assigned to Bessarabia. Its first operation was carried out in Iaºi, on July 29

and 30, 1941. From Iaºi, the Echelon moved on with the Romanian Fourth Army into

Bessarabia, where it collaborated with

Einsatzkommando

11B in the executions in B\l]i

and Chi[in\u. In fact, as soon as the Echelon and other Romanian military units involved

in the killings crossed the Prut River, they collaborated with the

Einsatzkommandos

Nonetheless, relations between the various units of

Einsatzgruppe

D and the Romanian

army, gendarmerie, police, and Special Echelon were far from ideal. The Germans were

content only when the Romanians acted according to their directives and were dismayed

at the disorder the Romanians displayed.

Himmlers emissaries, acting within the framework of the

Wehrmacht

, also continued

their missions in the Romanian-occupied territory of Ukraine known as Transnistria.

Representatives of the German and Romanian armies met on August 17, 1941, in Tighina

to discuss the boundaries of Transnistria and the distribution of responsibility therein.

Due to the inability of the

Einsatzgruppen

to keep up with the attacking forces and to

handle all the Jews at the same time, the Jews were not to be transferred across the Bug

river yet; instead, they were to be placed into labor camps until such time as they could

be moved east, following completion of military operations.

This agreement, con-

cluded on August 30, 1941, prevented the Romanian regime from forcing the remaining

Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina as well as the up to 200,000 Ukrainian Jews who had

survived the first wave of executions by

Einsatzgruppe

D across the Bug.

On August 7, 1941, Mihai Antonescu asked Himmler to send Gustav Richter, who

had returned to Berlin in July after great success, back to Bucharest.

Antonescu praised

Richters activity, stating that he hoped to work with Richter again,

[

]

ince the Jewish

problem requires an international, radical and final solution, particularly by using the

German experience in this field

Already, following Richters advice and under some

43.

DGFP

, vol. 13, no. 207, pp. 318-319.

44. Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Problema evreiascã în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri

(Bucharest:

Hasefer, 1996), no. 99, p. 265.

45. Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã

(Bucharest: Socec, 1948), vol. 2, p. 43 (testimony of Eugen

Cristescu, former head of SSI).

46. NO-2851, NO-2952, NOKW-3233.

47. NO-2651, NO-2934, NO-2939, NO-2949, NO-2950.

48. Tighina Agreement, concluded between General Hauffe and Gen. Nicolae Tãtãranu, August 30,

1941. Nuremberg Documents, PS-3319. Romanian version: Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 9, no. 83,

pp. 188-191. For German version, see

ibid.

, vol. 5, no. 62, pp. 59-63.

49. Luther to Killinger, August 27, 1941, Nuremberg Documents, NG-4962.

50. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 3-6.

FINAL REPORT

pressure from the German embassy, the Romanian authorities had set up the Central

Office of Jews of Rom^nia (

Centrala Evreilor din Rom^nia

; the Jewish Center) the

Romanian equivalent of the

Judenrat

, banned all Zionist activity, carried out a census of

persons of Jewish blood, and launched technical preparations for the deportation of

Romanian Jews to the Belzec death camp. Moreover, the large-scale massacres of Jews

and Antonescus tenacity in implementing the Final Solution in liberated Romanian

territory, and later in Transnistria, had aroused admiration among the Nazis and Hitler,

in particular.

On January 23, 1942, two days after the Wannsee Conference, Richter asked Mihai

Antonescu to put a halt to the emigration of Jews from Romania, given the impending

Final Solution of the Jewish problem in Europe. Mihai Antonescu consented in princi-

ple to the request, although ships carrying Jews continued to leave Romania.

However,

Ion Antonescu did not have patience to wait for the German outcome of the Final

Solution. At the Cabinet meeting of December 16, 1941, he stated that the question of

the Yids is being discussed in Berlin. The Germans want to bring the Yids from Europe

to Russia and settle them in certain areas, but there is still time before this plan is carried

out.

According to Radu Lecca, commissar for the solution of the Jewish problem and

Richters Romanian counterpart, when

[

Lecca

]

first met Richter and discussed the

reorganization of the Jews with him,

[

Richter

]

already had all the plans prepared.

late April 1942, Richter abandoned his anonymous status and going above the heads of

the Romanian government informed the Jews of Romania that their fate was sealed. He

published an article in the embassy newspaper advising the Jews not to seize upon false

hopes regarding the possibility of preventing the Final Solution. The Jewish problem

in Romania will be solved within the framework of Europe, stated Richter.

He also

focused his attack on the Zionist movement and Chaim Weizmann, president of the World

Zionist Organization; and indeed, over the coming months, he did not rest until he had

secured a ban on Zionist activity and the closure of the Zionist headquarters in Romania.

The negotiations regarding the European solution that is, regarding the Jews of

the

Regat

and southern Transylvania were conducted diligently and effectively. These

Jews were not slated for extermination in the eastern territories or in Russia, but in the

death camps in Poland. In June 1942, under the impact of impressive German victories

in the USSR and following the Romanian armys advance to the Caucasus and its

crossing of the Don River, Antonescu agreed to the Final Solution for Romanian Jews,

which entailed their deportation.

During July-October 1942, plans were drawn up for

the deportation of Romanian Jews to extermination camps in the General Government.

51. Goebbels,

op. cit.

, pp. 1659-1660.

52. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3, no. 311, pp. 494-495.

. Procesul marii trãdãri naþionale

(Bucharest, 1946), pp. 34-35.

54. Transcript of interrogation of Radu Lecca at Securitate in Bucharest, July 8, 1953, Interior

Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 123, p. 82.

55. Jüdische Fata Morgana,

Bukarester Tageblatt

, April 26, 1942; copy: Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3,

no. 360, p. 588.

56. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 53, p. 98.

57. Jean Ancel, Plans for Deportation of the Rumanian Jews and Their Discontinuation in Light of

Documentary Evidence (July-October 1942),

Yad Vashem Studies

, 16 (1984), pp. 381-420.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

By spring 1942 there were approximately 300,000 Jews left in Romania.

With the

exception of the town of Cern\u]i, Bessarabia and Bukovina were already

Judenrein

(cleansed of Jews).

Two German documents, dated July 26, 1942, and August 11, 1942, mentioned the

future deportations of Romanian Jews: the first, signed by Heinrich Müller, head of

Section IV B of the RSHA, was addressed to the German Foreign Office; the second, a

report by Martin Luther of the German Foreign office, was addressed to the

Reichsführer

-SS,

Heinrich Himmler.

During his interrogation in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann admitted

that he had actually authored the letter bearing Müllers signature.

The letter advised

Undersecretary Martin Luther, a departmental (Inland II) chief in the Foreign Office,

that the deportation of the Romanian Jews was to begin on September 10, 1942.

Gustav Richter left a detailed Nazi plan for the deportation of 250,000 Jews to the

Belzec camp in Poland for extermination, enumerating the principal elements of the

process: instructions for implementation, including logistics and operational planning;

measures to conceal and mislead in order to allay the fears of the Jewish population;

settling the legal problems between Romania and Germany; and the use of the local

Judenrat

. According to Richters plan, the deportees would lose their Romanian citizen-

ship upon crossing the border, and those unable to work would be subject to special

treatment. In line with the directive issued by the RSHA, Richter obtained a pledge in

writing from Mihai Antonescu, expressing his consent to the deportations.

The fact that

Richter took great pains to obtain a written pledge from Ion Antonescus deputy is

illustrative of the delicate situation of Eichmanns subordinates in German-allied coun-

tries, such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Italy, in which the Nazis could not enforce

deportations directly, but required the cooperation of the governments in question.

By August 19, 1942, preparations for the solution to the Jewish question in

Romania were complete with regard to both the political issues involved and the practical

steps to be taken. Richters plan was preceded by a lengthy period of negotiations, from

the end of December 1941 through July 1942. There were two versions of the plan: the

Romanian and the German.

On September 11, 1942, Lecca presented the Romanian

plan, also the product of negotiations with Richter, to Mihai Antonescu. This plan

confirmed the essential Romanian consent to the deportations, but established a series of

exceptions, while the German proposal was significantly more restrictive. It also pro-

vided for the deportation of Jewish former citizens of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and

Croatia, since they had lost their former nationality according to an agreement between

Germany and those countries.

Lecca added a stipulation to the Romanian plan, which allowed for the emigration to

Palestine of 3,000 Jews in exchange for a payment of two million lei. This payoff was to

be made to the Jewish Center in order to establish a fund supplying cheap credit to the

58. According to the May 1942 census of residents of Jewish blood, there were 292,192 Jews in

Romania.

59. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 41, p. 78, and nos. 104-105.

60. Minutes of Eichmanns pre-trial interrogation by the Israeli Police, Yad Vashem Archives, Police

dIsrael, Adolf Eichmann, pp. 1768-1771. Eichmann admitted that

Sonderbehandlung

(Special

Treatment), the term used by Müller, meant killing.

61. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 65, p. 120.

62. With respect to Richter and Leccas plan, see

ibid.

, vol. 3, pp. 391-398, 406-415.

FINAL REPORT

new Romanian enterprises, which will replace the Jewish ones.

The Nazis did not keep

their plan secret. Certain of its implementation, they hurried to announce the forthcom-

ing deportations in the August 8 edition of the

Bukarester Tageblatt

, a German newspa-

per published in Belgrade. When the trains to Belzec failed to start rolling, Richter

published another article in the same paper, entitled Servants of the Jews, in which he

denounced Baron Neumann (a wealthy converted Jew) and Wilhelm Filderman (head of

the Federation of Jewish Communities; FUCE) for trying to foil the deportation of

Jews by every means, rallying influential Romanian figures in politics and the economy

for this purpose.

Richter vehemently railed against those Romanians trying to prevent

the deportation of the Jews, claiming that Europe would be rid of Jews by the end of the

war and that Romanian relations with Germany would be damaged if they did not join the

common effort to deport the Jews. Richter sent this article to Eichmann on November 15,

1942, in explanation of his failure to deport Romanian Jewry.

In Fildermans opinion, the German threats actually helped the cause of Romanian

Jews because they provoked negative reactions among the ruling elite, who felt very

strongly about the independence of their country.

Thus, Richter and Leccas plans

failed, and the deportation of Romanian Jewry did not take place. Ambassador Killinger,

accompanied by Richter, visited Mihai Antonescu on November 26, 1942, to demand an

explanation for why the deportation of Romanian Jews to the General Government had

not begun. The Romanian foreign minister replied that Marshal Antonescu had decided

only to explore the possibility of an evacuation from Transylvania, but that the imple-

mentation had been postponed.

After Stalingrad, the Romanian government officially

informed Berlin that the only solution to the Jewish problem in Romania is emigra-

tion.

Antonescu did not yield to the Nazis despite intense pressure initially through

the German Ambassador and later during the April 1943 meetings with Hitler and

Ribbentrop to fulfill his commitment to deport Romanian Jews.

Thus, Antonescu and

his regime spared Jews in the

Regat

and southern Transylvania from the Nazis and the

Final Solution.

63.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 167.

64.

Bukarester Tageblatt

, October 11, 1942. See also Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 151, pp. 297-298.

65.

Ibid.

, vol. 4, no. 152, p. 302.

66.

Ibid.

, vol. 4, no. 186, p. 365.

67.

Ibid.

, vol. 4, no. 285, p. 524.

68. Andreas Hillgruber (ed.),

Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler

(Frankfurt: Graefe Verlag für

Wehrwesen, 1970), p. 233. The conversation with Ribbentrop took place in Salzburg on April 14,

1943. On October 8, 1942, Mihai Antonescu told Killinger: Marshal Antonescus opinion is that

at present the situation is too delicate to allow forceful action with regard to the Jews. U.S.

National Archives (NARA), RG 220, Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Killinger

cabled the German Foreign Office (December 12, 1942) that the Marshal refused to give his

consent to the radical solution of the Jewish problem since he has in the meantime learned that the

Jews were not Bolsheviks (Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 203, p. 399).

The June-July 1940 Romanian Withdrawal from Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina and Its Consequences on Interethnic

Relations in Romania

Introduction

Long after the end of the Second World War, the summer 1940 annexation of Bessarabia,

Northern Bukovina and the county of Herþa by the Soviet Union was still a taboo subject

in Romanian historiography. Gradually, however, as Romania loosened its relations with

Moscow, studies began to be published on this topic, along with research on interwar

Romania. As a result of the studies on Bessarabia and Bukovina, Romania became the

only country from the former Soviet bloc where research was published on the Ribbentrop-

-Molotov Pact. This matter, however, was largely subordinated to the problematic rela-

tionship between Romania and the Soviet Union. When bilateral relations deteriorated,

references would appear to the June 1940 Soviet ultimatum forcing Romania to relin-

quish sovereignty over the two provinces. When relations improved, communist Roma-

nian propaganda avoided talk about the ultimatum. Due to these vacillations, until 1989

the best studies of the annexation of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the county of

Herþa were written abroad.

After 1989, this omission of Romanian historiography was

partly rectified. From this point onward, both general and specialized research of varying

scholarly quality began to tackle the subject.

At the same time, a series of documents

1. Among the works analyzing the subject: Grégorie Gafenco,

Préliminaires de la guerre de lEst

(Fribourg, 1944; Romanian version, 1996); Platon Chirnoagã,

Istoria politicã ºi militarã a

rãzboiului României contra Uniunii Sovietice

(Madrid: Carpa]ii, 1965); Maria Manoliu-Manea

(ed.),

The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bassarabia and Bucovina

(Los Angeles: American

Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1983); Mihai Pelin, Sãptãmâna Patimilor, in Iosif

Constantin Drãgan (ed.),

Antonescu, Mareºalul României, ºi rãzboaiele de întregire

(Venice,

1988), vol. 1, pp. 29-130.

2. From the works published we note: Ion Constantin,

România, marile puteri ºi problema Basarabiei

(Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicã, 1995); Florin Constantiniu,

Între Hitler ºi Stalin. România ºi

Pactul Ribbentrop-Molotov

(henceforth: Constantiniu,

~ntre Hitler [i Stalin

) (Bucharest: Danubius,

1991);

idem

1941: Hitler, Stalin ºi România

(henceforth: Constantiniu,

1941

) (Bucharest: Univers

Enciclopedic, 2002);

idem

O istorie sincerã a poporului român

, 3

ed. (Bucharest: Univers

Enciclopedic, 2003); Valeriu Florin Dobrinescu,

Bãtãlia pentru Basarabia

(Iaºi: Moldova, 1990);

Valeriu Florin Dobrinescu and Ion Constantin,

Basarabia în anii celui de-al doilea rãzboi mondial

(Iaºi: Institutul European, 1995); Dinu C. Giurescu,

România în cel de-al doilea rãzboi mondial

(1939-1943)

(Bucharest: All Educational, 1999); Mircea Muºat,

Drama României Mari

(Bucharest:

Editura Fundaþiei România Mare, 1992); Ioan Scurtu and Constantin Hlihor,

Anul 1940. Drama

românilor dintre Prut ºi Nistru

(henceforth: Scurtu and Hlihor,

Anul 1940

) (Bucharest: Editura

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

from Romanian and foreign archives were published that enhanced the understanding the

events of June-July 1940.

Equally important were the revelations of published memoirs,

which proliferated in the post-1989 period.

Despite the richness of the research on Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the

county of Herþa, relations between ethnic Romanians and ethnic minorities (notably

Jews) for the June-August 1940 period remain under-researched. If before 1989 the topic

was not approached due to the ban issued by the communist regime, during the post-

communist transition it remained on the backburner despite the repeal of all official

bans.

Few scholars inside Romania addressed this topic.

Possible causes for the hesita-

tion of Romanian researchers to approach this subject may include limited access to

archives and especially the reluctance to deal with a painful and uncomfortable past that

contradicted a self-image forged during the years of communist rule. More recently,

however, as Romania has begun to integrate into European and Euro-Atlantic security

and political structures (namely, NATO and the EU), Romanian historiography has

become more interested in this subject as well as the broader issue of Romanian partici-

pation in the Holocaust a taboo for many decades. Gradually, the topic began to be

approached at scholarly conferences and in doctoral dissertations, books and scholarly

articles, and media broadcasts. The following chapter examines the withdrawal of the

Romanian civil administration and troops from Bessarabia and its impact on relations

between ethnic Romanians and the local Jewish population. It uses evidence from

Academiei de Înalte Studii Militare, 1992);

idem

Complot împotriva României. 1939-1947

(Bucharest: Editura Academiei de Înalte Studii Militare, 1994); Ion ªiºcanu,

Raptul Basarabiei

(Chiºinãu: Universitas, 1992);

idem

Uniunea Sovieticã România, 1940

(Chiºinãu: Arc, 1995).

3. Vitalie V\ratec and Ion ªiºcanu (eds.),

Pactul Ribbentrop-Molotov ºi consecinþele lui pentru

Basarabia. Culegere de documente

(Chiºinãu: Universitatea, 1991); Ion Mamina,

Consilii de

Coroanã

(Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicã, 1997); Florica Dobre, Vasilica Manea, and Lenuþa

Nicolescu,

Anul 1940. Armata românã de la ultimatum la dictat. Documente

, 3 vols. (Bucharest:

Europa Nova, 2000).

4. The following are among the most important memoirs: Carol al II-lea,

Între datorie ºi pasiune.

Însemnãri zilnice

, vol. 2:

1939-1940

, eds. Marcel-Dumitru Ciucã and Narcis Dorin Ion (Bucharest:

ªansa SRL, 1996); Raoul Bossy,

Amintiri din viaþa diplomaticã

, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Humanitas,

1993); Grigore Gafencu,

Jurnal. 1940-1942

(Bucharest: Globus, 1991); Paul Mihail,

Jurnal

(1940-1944)

(Bucharest, 1999); Constantin Pantazi,

Cu Mareºalul pânã la moarte. Memorii

(Bucharest: Publiferom, 1999); Constantin Sãnãtescu,

Jurnal

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1993);

Mihail Sebastian,

Jurnal. 1935-1944

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1996).

5. Among the notable exceptions, see: Dinu C. Giurescu, Evreii din România, 1939-1944, in

Hannah Arendt,

Eichmann în Ierusalim

Un raport asupra banalitãþii

rãului

(Bucharest: All,

1997); Mihai Pelin,

Adevãr ºi legendã

(Bucharest: EDART, 1994); Alex Mihai Stoenescu,

Armata, mareºalul ºi evreii. Cazurile Dorohoi, Bucureºti, Iaºi, Odessa

(Bucharest: RAO Interna-

tional Publishing Company, 1998).

6. For a notable exception, see: Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Evreii din România între anii 1940-1944

(henceforth: Benjamin,

Evreii

), vol. 1,

Legislaþia antievreiascã

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1993);

idem

Prigoanã ºi rezistenþã în istoria evreilor din România. 1940-1944. Studii

(Bucharest:

Hasefer, 2001). Among the scholars from abroad during this period: Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents

Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

, 12 vols. (Jerusalem: Beate Klarsfeld

Foundation, 1986);

idem

Contribuþii la istoria României. Problema evreiascã, 1933-1944

(hence-

forth: Ancel,

Contribu]ii

), 2 vols. (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); Radu Ioanid,

Sabia Arhanghelului

Mihail. Ideologia fascistã în România

(Bucharest: Diogene, 1994; English edition: Chicago,

2000);

idem

Evreii sub regimul Antonescu

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997).

FINAL REPORT

Romanias National Archives, the Romanian Military Archives, and the Archives of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further research in former Soviet archives is needed.

The Internal and External Circumstances

of the Annexation

of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

The International Context: Soviet-German Relations

(1939-1940)

The annexation of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the county of Herþa was a direct

result of the radical changes in the balance of power at the end of the thirties. These

changes determined that central and southeastern Europe would remain at the disposal of

the two totalitarian Powers, Germany and the USSR. On August 23, 1939, Germany and

the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression treaty, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty/

Pact. The Soviets demanded the addition of a secret protocol in which the two powers

divided up spheres of influence: central and southeastern Europe an area stretching

between the Baltic and Black Seas as well as Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were

assigned to the Soviet sphere; Lithuania and the town of Vilna were assigned to the

German sphere. Germany and the Soviet Union then divided Poland, roughly following

the line of the Narev, Vistula, and San Rivers. In southeastern Europe, with Germany

declaring complete disinterest for these regions, the Soviets claimed Bessarabia.

Here

it is worth nothing that the German version of the Pact referred to Romanian regions

to be ceded to the Soviet Union, whereas the Soviet version named only Bessarabia. The

Soviets would subsequently use the German version in June 1940 to make additional

requests for Northern Bukovina and Herþa County.

The Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty constituted the prelude to the Second World War,

which began on September 1, 1939, with Germanys attack on Poland. On September 28,

1939, during a visit to Moscow by German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, a

treaty of friendship and border recognition was concluded between Germany and the

Soviet Union; this treaty, however, made no changes to the initial agreement on south-

eastern Europe. During the following period, Germany and the Soviet Union took steps

to enforce their agreements on the respective spheres of influence. Moscow moved to

impose mutual assistance treaties (i.e., terms of occupation) on Estonia (September 28,

1939), Latvia (October 5, 1939), and Lithuania (October 11, 1939), which allowed the

Soviet government to send 85,000 troops to those countries. In contrast to the Baltic

States, Finland opposed Soviet demands on territorial revisions and refused to grant the

Soviet troops access to its facilities. Consequently, on November 30, 1940, the Red

Army attacked Finland. The war raged on until March 12, 1940, when the two countries

signed a peace treaty.

7. V\ratec and {i[canu,

op. cit.

, p. 5.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Internal and International Situation of Romania

(September 1939

June 1940)

The signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty worsened Romanias geopolitical situa-

tion, as it was consequently inserted between the two Great Powers, Germany and the

USSR, both of which though particularly the Soviet Union were hostile to Romania.

Faced with this situation, the Romanian Crown Council of September 6, 1939, decided

to proclaim the neutrality of Romania. At the same time, the government in Bucharest

tried to secure Romanian borders and avoid military confrontation by operationalizing

the Balkan bloc of neutral countries, the Balkan Agreement of 1934, and by attempting

to reach a non-aggression pact with the Soviets with the assistance of Turkish mediation.

There is evidence that the Soviets wanted to impose on Romania the Baltic model

mutual assistance treaties followed by swift occupation yet Finnish resistance during

winter 1939/1940 forced the Soviets to delay the application of this strategy.

The end of Soviet-Finnish hostilities in spring 1940 allowed Moscow to focus on the

Romanian case. On March 29, 1940, V.M. Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister,

informed Romanian authorities that the absence of a non-aggression treaty between the

two countries was because of the existence of an unsolved legal problem: i.e., that of

Bessarabia, whose annexation by Romania was never recognized by the Soviet Union.

He then added that the Soviet Union never considered the return of Bessarabia by

military means.

This sudden Soviet concern with Bessarabia signaled that Romania was

now a focus of the Kremlins attention. Through April and May 1940, Romanian-Soviet

relations became ever more strained; still, the uncertain developments on the Western

Front prompted caution in Moscow. When German victory seemed assured, Stalin

decided to occupy the Baltic countries and to directly address his issues with Romania.

Soviet preparations for combat soon began on June 9, 1940, when massive Soviet forces

were placed on Romanias northern and eastern borders.

Faced with German victory,

the Romanian government decided on

May 28, 1940, to intensify its rapprochement with

Germany, whom it considered the only power capable of containing the Soviets.

This

about-face in foreign policy was accompanied by an increased collaboration of the Royal

Dictatorship with the German-backed Iron Guard.

The Soviet Ultimatum to Romania (June 26-28, 1940)

On June 23, 1940, the day after the signing of the German-French truce, Molotov met

Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, and proposed to discuss the situation

of Bessarabia and Bukovina. The mention of Bukovina which was a former Habsburg

8. For a more detailed discussion, see Constantiniu,

1941

, pp. 94-98; and Vitalie Vãratec,

6 zile din

istoria Bucovinei (28 iunie 3 iulie 1940). Invazia ºi anexarea nordului Bucovinei de cãtre URSS

(Rãdãuþi-Bucovina: Editura Institutului Bucovina-Basarabia, 2001), pp. 12-26.

Idem

Preliminarii ale raptului Basarabiei ºi nordului Bucovinei, 1938-1940

(Bucharest: Libra,

2000), pp. 229-230.

10. Details in V\ratec and {i[canu,

op. cit.

, pp. 14-41.

11. Grigore Gafencu,

op. cit.

, pp. 18-19.

FINAL REPORT

territory incorporated into Romania in 1918 and not part of the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov

deal irritated the Germans, who opposed Molotovs terms. Negotiations were renewed

between June 24 and June 25, resulting in the Germans yielding to Soviet demands on

Bessarabia, yet maintaining their opposition to the cession of Bukovina. Faced with this

opposition, the Soviets compromised by asking only for northern Bukovina.

These negotiations fractured the German-Soviet relationship.

Arguably, the ensuing

tensions were at the heart of the secret German resolution to attack the Soviet Union. As

early as the beginning of July 1940, the German High Command drew up the first study

on a campaign against the Soviet Union, the Lossberg Plan. In any event, the Soviet-

-German negotiations sealed Romanias fate. The Kremlin decided to rapidly enforce the

negotiated terms of the Moscow agreement with Germany. On June 26, 1940, at 10 p.m.,

Molotov handed a note to Gheorghe Davidescu, chief of the Romanian diplomatic

mission in Moscow. The note demanded the return of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union

as well as the transfer of northern Bukovina to Soviet sovereignty. The answer from

Bucharest was expected the next day. But, due to faulty phone lines, the text of the

ultimatum did not reach Romania until the morning of June 27.

The situation was made

even worse by Davidescus refusal to take the map the Soviets had attached to the

ultimatum note. The map included Herþa in the Soviet claims, though it was not included

in the text of the ultimatum note. Since the Romanian government was not aware of this

map, the exact location of the new Soviet border remained unknown, with dramatic

consequences for the Romanian authorities and troops in Herþa.

The day of June 27, 1940, was tense for the Romanian government, as it became obvious

that Romania was militarily and politically isolated: Germany advised the Romanians to

yield to Soviet demands, Italy did the same, and the governments in Belgrade and Athens

insisted that Bucharest should not disturb regional peace through military resistance.

Only Turkey ready to enact the Balkan Pact, which provided for armed action against

Bulgaria in case of Bulgarian aggression promised to back Romania.

When the two

Crown Councils convened on June 27, the options available were stark: acceptance of

Soviet demands (surrender, in other words) or armed resistance. Hoping to maintain the

rest of Romanian territory, the majority of Council members decided to surrender.

The

Romanian government sent its official response to Moscow on June 28:

In order to avoid the grave consequences that might follow the use of force and the opening

of hostilities in this part of Europe, the Romanian government is obliged to accept the condi-

tions of evacuation indicated in the Soviet response.

The Romanian government did demand that the Soviet-imposed, four-day deadline

for evacuation be modified in order to ensure better organization of the operation. The

12. Constantiniu,

Între Hitler ºi Stalin

, pp. 104-105;

idem

1941

, pp. 114-115.

13. Texts of the notes of July 27-28, 1940, in Ioan Scurtu, Constantin Mocanu, and Doina Smârcea,

Documente privind istoria României între anii 1918-1944

(Bucharest: Editura Didacticã ºi Pedagogicã,

1995), pp. 529-530; Scurtu and Hlihor,

Anul 1940

, pp. 146-148.

14. Dobrinescu,

op. cit.

, pp. 148-150.

15. For the Crown Councils discussions, see Mamina,

op. cit.

, pp. 189-209.

16. Dobrinescu,

op. cit.

, p. 221.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Soviets rejected this demand. This decision to surrender has remained a controversial

topic in Romanian historiography. Before 1989 Romanian historians had, for the most

part, praised the realism of the adopted solution. Over time, however, the decision came

to be criticized.

Another important element of the Soviet ultimatum was the surprise it produced both

in the political establishment and in popular sentiment. The background of this surprise

was the rapid fall of France, Romanias long-time advocate, which was perceived as a

terrifying blow. Writing about the decision to surrender, Romanian diplomat Alexandru

Cretzianu mused:

It is enough to say that the king, the prime minister, and the military chiefs seem to have

lost, for a brief moment, their dearest illusions and, at the same time, their lucidity. They were

simply unable to find the necessary strength to face up to the disaster.

Yet, the fall of France and the shock it provoked did not make the decision to

surrender any less questionable, particularly as the same Romanian government had

issued categorical statements during the preceding months indicating that they would not

accept surrender without putting up military resistance; for example, on January 6,

1940, in Chiºinãu, King Carol II affirmed his resolution to protect Bessarabia at any

price.

Moreover, the government had been flooded with intelligence revealing Soviet

intentions, although the technical details of the aggression were not known; neverthe-

less, it remained passive. After the opening of hostilities on the Western Front, many

politicians and military commanders contented themselves to hope for WWI-type de-

velopments. As a result of the surrender, Romania lost 50,762 square kilometers

(44,500 km

in Bessarabia and 6,262 km

in Northern Bukovina). Of this land lost,

4,021,086 hectares were agricultural (20.5% of farmland in Romania). The ceded ter-

ritories were home to 3,776,309 people, of whom 53.49 percent were Romanians;

10.34 percent were Russians; 15.3 percent were Ukrainians and Ruthenians; 7.27 percent

were Jews; 4.91 percent were Bulgarians; 3.31 percent were Germans; and 5.12

percent were of miscellaneous ethnicity.

The annexation of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the county of Herþa by the

Soviet Union had important consequences for the domestic and international situation of

Romania. In foreign policy, Romania strengthened its relationship with Nazi Germany.

On July 1, 1940, the Romanian government gave up on the Anglo-French guarantees of

April 13, 1939. The next day, Carol II requested a German military mission to come to

Romania. Domestically, on July 4, 1940, a new government was formed, led by Ion Gigurtu,

a politician well connected to the government and big businesses of Nazi Germany. The

Iron Guard (the Legion) was represented in the new government by three officials: Horia

Sima, minister of religion and arts (though Sima would resign on July 8), Vasile Noveanu,

minister of treasury, and Augustin Bideanu, undersecretary of state in the Ministry of

Finance. The composition of the new government signaled that Romania was orienting

toward the Axis Powers. The goal of these changes was not the reinstatement of an old

foreign policy tradition, as the government alleged, but a desperate attempt of the Carol

II regime to avoid new territorial losses while preserving political power.

17. Alexandru Cretzianu,

Ocazia pierdut\

(Ia[i: Institutul European, 1998), p. 6.

18. Carol al II-lea,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, p. 85.

FINAL REPORT

The Evacuation of Romanian Military Units

from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

The Situation of Romanian Military Forces in Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina, June 1940

From September 1939, the majority of Romanian military forces were deployed between

the eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. Deployed here was the Army Group I

(which had subordinated the Third and Fourth Armies), the Mountain Corps with the

, 3

and 4

Cavalry Divisions, and eight fortification regiments. In fact, 65 percent

of Romanian military forces 1,200,000 troops were deployed on the Eastern front.

According to Operational Order no. 18 of June 15, 1940, the Third Army was to wage

war on the Ceremuº and Upper Prut rivers. The fallback position was along the Rodna

Mountains Little Siret Sihna Jijia line of defense, with a red line defense in the

Zupania Prislop Cârlibaba region. In Bessarabia, the Fourth Army was to defend the

Corneºti Lower Rãutul Dniester line. The defense of Northern of Bukovina and

Bessarabia was the responsibility of the same armies, which were augmented with

specially constituted army units.

The growing tension on Romanias eastern border made army commanders ask for

details on their missions in the event of Soviet aggression and the adoption of preliminary

measures to evacuate selected property and staff from Bessarabia. For example, on

June 12, 1940, the Fourth Army proposed that the families of officers, non-commissioned

officers (NCOs), and civil servants as well as the property of cultural institutions,

churches, factories and warehouses be sent to Romania. The government did not approve

these demands for political reasons.

At the same time, the Army High Command drew up a series of evacuation plans for

the territories between the Dniester and the Prut. The

Tudor

Plan was based on the

railway timetable during peacetime. It also called for the movement on foot of convoys

and evacuation caravans. The

Mircea

Plan, on the other hand, was based on the wartime

railway timetable, with caravans moving only during the night. These blueprints were not

connected to the international situation and were to be operationalized only in the event

special orders

[

were

]

issued.

According to the plans, prefects, recruiting centers,

police and gendarmerie as well as local priests were put in charge of the evacuation

operations. Orders were issued that military headquarters and administrative offices were

not to abandon the ceded territory until combat units were ready to launch complete

evacuation operations.

The civilian population could be evacuated as ordered, whereas

non-sympathizing ethnic minorities were slated to remain. The evacuation of reserv-

ists and paramilitaries was the first priority, and the evacuation of the civilian population

was to come before the evacuation of property.

Particularly problematic was that the two

19. Romanian Military Archives (henceforth: AMR), fond 948, 3

Section, Operations, file no. 1891,

f. 128-131.

20.

Ibid.

, file no. 1836, f. 23.

21.

Ibid.

, f. 24.

22.

Ibid.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

plans split a population of millions into privileged and pariah categories, with the latter

being denied the choices of regular citizens. Although the documents were technically

strictly secret, their content was largely known, especially those provisions concerning

ethnic minorities. This provoked distress among the ranks of ethnic minorities, and

particularly among the Jews. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Jews took part in

actions against Romanian authorities or the Romanian administration.

The Odessa Commission and the Soviet Advance

The Soviet ultimatum demanded that the Romanian troops evacuate the territory of

Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in four days, beginning on June 28. It also proposed

the establishment of a joint commission to discuss the problems concerning the Roma-

nian Army evacuation and the takeover by the Soviet troops. In its response, the Roma-

nian government accepted the idea of the commission and asked for an extension of the

evacuation deadline. On the same day, Gen. Florea Tenescu, chief of the General Staff,

appointed Gen. Aurel Aldea as the head of the Romanian government delegation in the

Romanian-Soviet evacuation commission. The second representative was Col. Hagi Stoica

(Ret.), ex-commissioner for Polish refugees. Among other duties, Aldea was charged

with drafting daily evacuation plans for the Romanian troops.

The Romanian delegation headed for Odessa, where the commission was to meet,

during the night of June 28. During the first meeting, the Romanian representatives

protested against the excessively fast advance of the Soviet troops and asked that a plan

be drawn up for the evacuation of Romanian troops and the advance of the Red Army

with the intent to separate the two armies by a days march. The Soviet representatives

rejected this proposal, arguing that the Romanian delegation had arrived too late. At the

same time, they delivered a draft agreement on the two armies march schedule to the

Romanian party and asked for the transfer of all responsibility for the evacuations to the

Romanian command, including responsibility for misunderstandings that might arise

between the Red Army and the Romanian army.

The Soviet party accepted a one-day

extension of the evacuation until the July 3, 1940, at 2 p.m., Moscow time. The Soviets

also demanded that the Romanians hand over maps concerning military and civilian

infrastructure in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Joint evacuation commissions were

to be set up on the Red Armys advance lines.

During the second meeting on June 30, 1940, Romanian negotiators made a series of

observations regarding the Soviet draft agreement, and the commission adopted the

evacuation plan of the Romanian troops from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. At the

same time, the commission drafted seventeen evacuation plans for the Romanian troops

and assigned a joint evacuation commission for each of them. Yet, as early as the night

of June 27/28, 1940, without waiting for the Romanian response, the Soviet troops

crossed the border at five points. On June 28, 1940, the Romanian cities of Cern\uþi,

Hotin, Bãlþi, Chiºinãu, and Cetatea Albã were already under Soviet occupation. Soviet

Commanders dispatched mobile units (motorized infantry and cavalry) to move quickly

toward the Prut River, in advance of the Romanian evacuating troops. The Soviet troops

23. Archives of the External Affaires Ministry (henceforth: MAE), fond 71/USSR, vol. 206, f. 2.

24.

Ibid.

, f. 6.

FINAL REPORT

would regularly establish checkpoints to disarm, threaten with death, and humiliate the

Romanian military.

As Soviet troops reached the Prut on June 30, 1940, and dug in, the

issue of the one-day march time between the two armies became meaningless a fact

expressed by Lieutenant-General Kozlov, the Soviet representative.

It was an accom-

plished fact that completely swept aside the Odessa Commission deal on the four-day

evacuation deadline. Needless to say, the faster-than-agreed Soviet army advance created

serious problems for the Romanian armys evacuation from Bessarabia and the Northern

Bukovina.

The Evacuation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

The first Soviet ultimatum of June 26, 1940, was preceded by Romanian army prepara-

tions for defensive combat (Mobilization Order no. 18). Yet, on June 28, 1940, at 7:00

a.m., Romanian commanders of Army Group One of the Third and Fourth Armies

received Order no. 6006 from the Romanian High Command, informing them of the

cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and ordering them to evacuate several

major cities (Cern\uþi, Cetatea Albã, and Chiºinãu) on the same day. Army commanders

were asked to take steps to prevent Romanian troops from opening fire on the Soviets or

reacting to Soviet provocations as well as to prevent the destruction of property. Com-

manders were also asked to contact Soviet troops and prepare Romanian army units to

move westward toward the Prut River in two to three hours.

The Soviets, however, displayed uncommonly aggressive tactics, which put Romanian

troops, especially those stationed in Bessarabia, in very dangerous or fatal situations.

Alexandru Cretzianu of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recorded: Continu-

ous waves of protest from the Chief of the Army High Command reported an increasing

number of incidents, which left numerous dead and wounded behind. Moreover, hav-

ing to obey the order not to defend themselves against Soviet aggression, some Romanian

army officers committed suicide. Therefore, the Romanian Army High Command

insisted that the order prohibiting the Romanian military to shoot back in self defense

be revoked.

The Cretzianu notes summarize the reports of Romanian field command-

ers about the humiliation,

abusive arrest,

and disarmament of the Romanian troops.

In general, most in the Romanian military showed competence, honesty and disci-

pline. On the other hand, however, there were many instances in which parts of the

Romanian military did not conform to these values or simply disintegrated. For example,

feeling they needed to protect their families a perception amplified by Soviet propa-

ganda many minority soldiers and Romanian natives from Bessarabia deserted their

units and returned home with their gear. As a consequence, Army Divisions 12, 15, 21,

26 and 27 lost more then half of their men because of desertions. On July 4, 1940, the

25. AMR, fond 948, file no. 527, f. 37 (Report of Captain C. Georgescu, 26

Infantry Division).

26. MAE, fond 71/USSR, file no. 98, f. 47.

27. AMR, fond Micro-films, roll P 21645, frame 399, file no. 948, file no. 1067, f. 54, 55.

28. Cretzianu,

op. cit.

, p. 79.

29.

Ibid.

, fond 948, file no. 155, fond 107, 109.

30.

Ibid.

, f. 108.

31.

Ibid.

, fond Micro-films, roll I.II, 2.1644, frame 104.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Third and Fourth Armies reported that 233 officers, 26 NCOs, and 48,629 soldiers did

not report for duty (of which only 5 officers, 6 NCOs and 42 soldiers had died).

The

scope of disintegration of some army units was so great that a large amount of war

materiel was simply abandoned behind the evacuation lines. Also, some army command-

ers were so surprised by the surrender and its terms that they did not draft any evacuation

plans. Sometimes there was absolutely no communication between entire army units.

Many commanders showed lack of leadership and military courage, and in many units

the evacuation resembled flight more than a consummate evacuation. On July 3, 1940,

at 2 p.m., the Soviets declared the new Romanian-Soviet border definitively closed.

At this point, the tragedy of the Romanian army and civil administration was nearly

over, and many were safely evacuated; still, a good number were trapped behind.

The

Romanian representatives on the Odessa Commission pleaded for the repatriation of

15,000 people and the return of abandoned army materiel captured by Soviet troops. As

the Soviet representatives on the Commission refused to give their written consent,

repatriation depended on the goodwill of local Soviet authorities, who had released only

3,000 people by the end of August 1940.

For many of those released, the condition of

liberation was to consent in writing to serve the interests of the Soviet Union.

The evacuation of the Romanian army from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina took

place in the absence of evacuation preparation, as on June 26 and 27, 1940, Romanian

field commanders received orders only on combat preparations. In addition to the

surprise of the decision to surrender, one can add the exceedingly short evacuation

period, the Soviet disrespect of evacuation deadlines, and the provocations and abuses by

the Soviet military as causes of the problems associated with the evacuation. The humiliation

of having to abandon Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina without a fight as well as the

severe terms of the surrender generated strong resentment in the ranks of the military

toward King Carol II and his regime; the army was demoralized and blamed politicians

for the debacle. In numerous reports and investigations it was pointed out that the order

to withdraw was received with bewilderment, disillusion, and concern by the military.

For example, one report stated:

The abandonment of Romanian territory without a fight disoriented both the officers and

the rank-and-file soldiers who, although aware of their inferiority in numbers and war material, had

resolved to resist at any price the Soviet army, whom they looked down on as badly trained.

Attitudes and Actions of the Jews during the Evacuation

of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and County of Herþa

One of the dominant myths in Romanian historiography about the period of June 28

July 3, 1940, was that the Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina behaved disloyally

toward the retreating Romanian troops and civilian administration. This belief, though

false, was used to justify subsequent anti-Jewish Romanian actions.

32.

Ibid.

, fond no. 3, file no. 1, f. 139; fond Micro-films, roll P.II.1.1124, frame 507.

33.

Ibid.

, roll P.II.2.653, frame 500.

34. MAE, fond 71/USSR, tome 99, f. 105.

35.

Ibid.

, fond 948, Section 1, file no. 155, f. 108.

FINAL REPORT

The Situation of the Jews of Romania (1919-1940)

On December 9, 1919, within the framework of the Versailles Treaty, the Romanian

government, together with France, England, Italy, and the United States, signed the

Treaty on Ethnic Minorities. This agreement obliged Romania to grant citizenship to all

ethnic Austrians and Hungarians born in former Habsburg lands that became part of

Romania in 1918 (Transylvania and Bukovina). The same document granted citizenship

to all Jews who then lived in Romania and who did not hold other citizenship. These

obligations were subsequently codified in the new Romanian Constitution (1923), which

prohibited discrimination based on religion, religious denomination, ethnic origins or

language (articles 7 and 8).

A new law was passed on February 25, 1924, to extend

citizenship to former citizens of the Habsburg and Russian empires who resided in

Transylvania, Banat, Criºana and Maramureº; it was extended to those in Bessarabia

between March 27 and April 9, 1918, and to those in Bukovina on November 28, 1918.

This legislation was in force for nearly a decade and a half. During this time, the Jewish

population participated freely in all domains of Romanian life.

At the same time, however, anti-Semitic currents became bolder. Their political

manifestations were the League of National Christian Defense (LANC), led by A.C.

Cuza and from 1930 the Iron Guard (also called The Legion of Archangel Michael).

Running under the name

Totul pentru }ar\

(Everything for the Motherland), the out-

lawed Iron Guard won 15.53 percent of the votes in the 1937 elections and was ranked

third on the political scene. Yet, none of the parties won more than 40 percent of the

votes (the minimum required by Romanian law), and King Carol II used the opportunity

to establish a personal dictatorship by appointing an outside party, the National Christian

Party (

Partidul Na]ional-Cre[tin

PNC), to form the government. The PNC was estab-

lished in 1935 through the merger of Cuzas LANC and nationalist Octavian Gogas

National Agrarian Party. This government, led by Octavian Goga, lasted forty-four days.

The Goga government instituted Romanias first official anti-Semitic measures. On

January 21, 1938, the Goga government issued State Decree no. 169 on the Revision

of Citizenship, which required Jews to register documents proving they had not

settled in Romania between 1918 and 1924 within twenty days of the publication of

nationality logs by the local municipalities. Even though in the Old

Regat

this

deadline was extended, it nevertheless proved to be far too brief for all Jews to

with the procedures committed many abuses. As a consequence, of 617,396 Jews

whose citizenship status was reviewed (84 percent of the 728,115 Romanian Jews),

225,222 lost their citizenship and were considered foreign residents. They were able

to remain in Romania with renewable one-year permits. A prelude to advancing

foreign and domestic anti-Semitism, the citizenship review severely affected the

situation of Romanian Jews and foretold a succession of anti-Semitic measures that

would lead to the tragedy of Romanian Jewry.

36. Scurtu, Mocanu, and Smârcea,

op. cit.

, p. 558.

37. Benjamin,

Evreii

, vol. 1,

Legislaþia antievreiascã

, pp. 26-27.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Jews and the Romanian Withdrawal from Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina

There are rich archival resources on the situation of the civilian population in Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina from June 28 to August 30, 1940. Numerous military records

(such as operation logs, reports, notes, and diaries) and civilian documents (administra-

tive reports, police reports, personal diaries) indicate that some Jews from Bessarabia

and Northern Bukovina participated in anti-Romanian/pro-Soviet actions during this

period. Scholars who emphasize the relevance of these documents point to such actions

as the flying of Soviet flags, rallies of support for the Soviet Union, desecration of

Romanian government signs, public monuments and Romanian Orthodox churches, par-

ticipation in Soviet actions to disarm Romanian soldiers and officers, confiscation of

Romanian government property, mistreatment of Romanian army personnel, and even

murder. It is also argued that these actions were more numerous in towns with large Jewish

populations (such as Cern\uþi, Cetatea Albã, Storojineþ, Hotin, Soroca, Chiºinãu, Bãlþi,

Ungheni, and Ismail) or in villages situated on the retreating routes of Romanian army units.

Some historians argue that the high number of such incriminating documents reflects

a historical reality: the Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were anti-Romanian.

However, a critical examination of the documents depicts something quite different than

the catastrophic picture presented to the public since the cession of Bessarabia and

Northern Bukovina. First, it is important to note that many of the so-called incriminating

documents contained generic evaluations and accusations about such collective entities

as the Jews from Bukovina, Jews from Chiºinãu, the Jewish population from

Bãlþi, and Jews and communists from Româneºti. Moreover, field reports do not

indicate any specific situations and give no names.

Second, given the dramatic circumstances in which these documents were written,

there were myriad instances of rumor spreading and exaggeration, as many in the

withdrawing army and civilian population saw communists, Jews, and Jewish

communists everywhere. Many times, these distortions were used to disguise the poor

organization of the withdrawal. For example, after Gen. Constantin Atanasescu aban-

doned his troops and fled from Tarutino to Galaþi (a city in the Old

Regat

), his actions

were blamed on ethnic minorities, including Jews; the cases of Gen. Ioan Ralcu and

Gen. Marin Popescu were similar.

Third, many Romanian historians popularized narratives of mystification to make the

1940 attacks against the Jews justifiable. For example, in his book on Marshal Antonescu,

historian Gheorghe Barbul invented the story of two Romanian officers caught up in the

events of 1940 and 1941: in the first, Captain Enescu, committed suicide after the

humiliation he was forced to endure by the Jews in Edineþ, Bessarabia, during the

withdrawal; in the second, Captain Niculescu, a witness to that event, swore revenge

and upon his return with the army to Edineþ in 1941 executed a number of Jews there;

when offered redemption on the battlefield by Antonescu, he gave his life in the siege of

Odessa.

Not only the story, but also the two protagonists were entirely fabricated.

38. Ancel,

Contribu]ii

. See also Alexandru ªafran,

Un t\ciune smuls fl\c\rilor. Comunitatea evreiasc\

din Rom^nia, 1939-1947

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), p. 18.

39. Gheorghe Barbul,

Memorial Antonescu. Al treilea om al Axei

(Ia[i: Institutul European, 1992), p. 131.

40. Pelin,

op. cit.

, pp. 88-101.

FINAL REPORT

Fourth, if the Jews were disloyal to Romania, they would not have withdrawn with

Romanian troops, as many did, especially those who were prosperous. Fear of Soviet

occupation was pervasive among ethnic Romanians and Jews alike. Unfortunately, some

Jews were prevented from joining the evacuation columns by the Romanian authorities,

who were enforcing the

Tudor

and

Mircea

evacuation plans. Fifth, ethnic Ukrainians in

Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were known to espouse pro-Soviet attitudes and gave

the Red Army a warm welcome. As these reports do not distinguish between Jews and

Ukrainians, it is impossible to evaluate the level of Jewish participation. However, it is

well known that only ethnic Germans, who were later re-settled, showed reserve, aware

that they enjoyed the protection of the Third

Reich

. Sixth, even some ethnic Romanians

welcame the Soviets in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Such was the case in the town

of Soroca, where local notables such as Mayor Gheorghe Lupaºcu, former prefect Petre

Sfeclã, National Renaissance Party (NRP) leader Alexandru Anop and school inspector

Petre Hriþcu organized a rally to welcome Soviet liberators. As King Carol II noted on

July 30, 1940, this was not an isolated case:

News from Bessarabia is even sadder. Unfortunately I was right about the so-called NRF,

as some of its leaders there seemed to have converted to Bolshevism and were among the first

to welcome the Soviet troops with red flags and flowers.

Confronted with an extremely serious crisis and doubting their regime could survive,

Romanian government officials turned the Jews into a political lighting rod, channeling

popular discontent toward the minority. Notable in this report is the reaction of the

Romanian press, whose rage was directed more toward Jews than the Soviets, the real

aggressors. Given that the Romanian press was censored in 1940, the government must

have played a role in this bias. A typical form of anticipatory scapegoating was to let

Jewish leaders know that the Romanian authorities might launch acts of repression

against the Jews.

In his memoirs, Chief Rabbi Alexandru ªafran noted that on June 26,

1940, minister of interior Mihail Ghelmegeanu asked to meet with ªafran and Filderman,

whereupon he politely asked them to warn the Jewish population in Bessarabia and

Northern Bukovina not to launch provocations against the Romanian military and civilian

authorities there.

After late June, Jewish leaders were denied access to high-ranking

Romanian officials.

The actions of the Jewish community leaders did not help. To express the Jewish

communitys disapproval of abuses committed against Romanian troops in Bessarabia,

the Federation of Jewish Communities decided to send the chief rabbi to deliver a speech

in the Romanian Senate. Despite the crisis resulting from the loss of territory, however,

the Romanian Parliament was not in session; so the Jewish position was instead made

public on July 3, 1940, the day of national mourning. The official document professed

the loyalty of the Jews from the Old

Regat

to Romania and its ideals and reminded

Romanians that Jews had given their lives as soldiers in Romanias war of independence

in 1877, the Balkan War of 1913, and the Great War.

At the same time, the July 10,

41. Carol al II-lea,

op. cit.

, p. 208.

42.

Ibid.

, p. 52.

43. ªafran,

op. cit.

, pp. 51-52.

44.

Apud

Stoenescu,

op. cit.

, pp. 106-107.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

1940, issue of the newspaper

Curierul israelit

included an article pointing out the

differences between the Jews from the Old Kingdom and those from the surrendered

territories. It also severely criticized the anti-Romanian attitudes of those Jewish citizens

who acted against Romanian authorities and troops during the evacuation.

The purpose

of these Jewish efforts was to diminish violence against the Jews living west of Prut and

to safeguard good relations with the Romanian population. The withdrawing Romanian

army in Bessarabia and Bukovina had to deal with both the aggression of Soviet troops

and the hostility among some of the population of Bessarabia, including some members

of the local Jewish communities. Upon this reality, Romanian authorities superimposed

the myth of collective Jewish guilt, resulting in a series of violent acts against the Jews

living in territories under Romanian sovereignty.

Anti-Jewish Violence in Dorohoi and Galaþi

The Romanian withdrawal from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was marked by a

series of aggressions toward the Jews. They took place both in the surrendered territories

and in the Old

Regat

province of Moldavia. The orders to commit violence against the

Jews and even to kill them were not given by the Romanian High Command or by other

high military structures. Rather, the situation started to unravel from below at the level

of small units or individuals. They were usually expressions anti-Semitism, of anger at

the humiliation endured during the withdrawal, or of the scapegoating syndrome,

which permeated popular opinion in Romania at the time, shaped as it was by a censored

popular press. These acts of physical violence had no specific motivation. They were

simply outbursts of rage against ordinary Jewish citizens who found themselves with-

drawing with the Romanian troops and civilian authorities.

The available evidence points to a number of killings committed against Romanian

Jews by the Romanian army. Thus, in Ciudei in Storojineþ county and in Zãhãneºti in the

county of Suceava, Maj. Vasile Carp, commander of the 86

Mountain Regiment ordered

the execution of several Jews. Romanian army troops also executed two Jews in Comãneºti

and one in Co[tina; another eight Jews suffered the same fate, and the list of murders

would continue.

Jewish soldiers serving in the Romanian army were not spared either.

On many occasions they were expelled from their units, humiliated, beaten, or even

killed for no reason. This is all the more surprising as there is no evidence that Jewish

officers abandoned their units during the withdrawal from Bessarabia and Northern

Bukovina, which stood in stark contrast with the behavior of many Romanian officers.

Also, the percentage of Jewish soldiers who deserted during the withdrawal was not

higher than that of their Romanian counterparts.

Another serious development observable until mid-July 1940 was the physical brutal-

ity committed by soldiers or civilians against Jews traveling by train in the eastern

Romanian province of Moldavia.

Sometimes, the victims were ethnic Romanians

45. Ancel,

Contribu]ii

, p. 251.

46.

Ibid.

, p. 251.

47.

Ibid.

, pp. 211-217. For the Carp case, see also AMR, fond 948, section 2, information, file no. 941,

1513.

FINAL REPORT

mistaken for Jews. The scope of violence committed on the trains was so great that the

government sent armed soldiers to patrol trains and railway stations, arrest stray soldiers,

and issue orders warning against the perpetration of such acts. As a consequence of these

measures, by mid-July, this form of violence subsided. Acts of destruction and pillaging

of Jewish property by the Romanian military were also widespread. For example, on July 2,

1940, in Siret, Moldavia, twenty-four Jewish stores were pillaged, causing damage

estimated at two million Romanian lei; and Jewish individuals were robbed and beaten,

as happened to Valerian Boca, former superintendent of the University of Cernãuþi.

Nevertheless, the most serious anti-Jewish actions of the Romanian army were the

killings in Dorohoi, which had a sizeable Jewish population, and Galaþi. The scope of

these killings almost equaled that of pogroms.

The murders in Dorohoi occurred against

the backdrop of Romanian-Soviet clashes caused by misunderstandings about the exact

location of the new Soviet-Romanian border. Two Romanian officers Captain Ioan

Boroº and Under-lieutenant Alexandru Dragomir, both of the 16

Artillery Regiment

died in the clashes. Yet, during the same skirmishes with the Soviets, a Jewish soldier

Iancu Solomon of the 16

Artillery Regiment was also killed as he attempted to protect

his commander. This heroic gesture, however, went unnoticed by the perpetrators of

the Dorohoi killings, most of whom were enrolled in the 3

Group Border Guards and

the 8

Artillery Regiment.

The attacks against Jews in Dorohoi began on July 1, 1940, during the funerals of

Captain Boro[ and private Solomon in the Dorohoi cemetery. Romanian soldiers mur-

dered the ten Jewish soldiers who attended the funerals on site. The carnage continued

in other parts of the city, as well, leaving several dozen more Jews dead. After this brief

episode, Romanian army soldiers went on a rampage in the city, killing scores of Jewish

civilians (the official body count was fifty-three murdered Jews). In addition to the

killings, many Dorohoi Jews were wounded. These attacks ceased only upon the inter-

vention of Gen. Constantin Sãnãtescu, commander of the 8

Army Corps, who repri-

manded Gen. Theodor ªerb, commander of the Corps of Border Guards. Sãnãtescu

remarked: I am surprised by these acts of banditry committed by what I thought were

elite units. He ordered an investigation to be conducted and the guilty to be punished.

The 8

Army Corps and Border Guards Corps subsequent investigation found that the

responsibility lay mainly with Captains Gheorghe Teoharie and Constantin Serghie.

Investigations also showed that the perpetrators purposefully distorted the facts by in-

venting stories about the Dorohoi Jews committing acts of aggression against the Roma-

nian army throughout the city and about rumors of a Soviet attack panicking the troops.

Yet, none of the perpetrators was court-martialed. The army instead dispensed adminis-

trative punishments (reassignment, brief arrest) to the officers and privates involved.

The Romanian army was responsible for an even higher number of civilian deaths

during the events that took place on June 30, 1940, in Galaþi, a Romanian city that was

an important evacuation center during the withdrawal from Bessarabia. More than 10,000

48. AMR, fond 948, section 2, Information file no. 941, f. 558-556.

49.

Ibid.

, f. 435.

50. For these cases, see Ancel,

Contribu]ii

, pp. 217-227; Stoenescu,

op. cit.

pp. 120-139;

Marius

Mircu,

Pogromurile din Bucovina ºi Dorohoi,

Viaþa literarã

(Bucharest, 1945).

51. AMR, fond, Border Guard Corps, file no. 2769, f. 851.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

evacuees of different ethnicities were then crowded into the city, and in the tense

atmosphere created by the evacuation, retreating Romanian army soldiers simply opened

fire on a crowd of civilians, killing roughly three hundred, most of them Jews. The stated

reason was that the civilians had disobeyed army orders or had broken off guarded

columns. The exact number of Jews killed in Moldavia during the withdrawal from

Bessarabia and Bukovina ranges between 136 (of which ninety-nine bodies were identi-

fied) to several hundred or even thousands.

There was not a high level of Romanian army leadership involved in the bloodshed.

Rather, the killings were a consequence of local initiatives. In fact, high-ranking com-

manders ordered an end to the anti-Jewish crimes. Like General Sãnãtescu, General

Aurelian Son, commander of 11

Army Corps, demanded on July 4, 1940, that his

subordinates:

...confront the excesses of the lower-ranking Romanian military and the Romanian population

against Jews, as they are signs of a real pogrom.

He went on to call on all army unit commanders to take all necessary measures to

calm the soldiers as well as the civilian population. Also, Colonel Mihai Chiriacescu,

chief of the General Headquarters of the same army corps, warned, The army must have

no other preoccupation but that of defending the country. He also ordered that during

the military education meetings with the troops, officers must insist that any action

directed against the Jews is prohibited and that perpetrators would be court-martialed.

Such interventions of the Army High Command structures made the violence stop,

but the relationship between Jews and the Romanian population remained irreparable,

even though the direct responsibility for these brutalities and killings belonged to isolated

groups or individuals; they occurred against the background of an anti-Semitic psycho-

sis, which scapegoated the entire Jewish community in Romania. This fixation was

encouraged by many Romanian civil and military authorities as well as the popular press.

Anti-Jewish Measures of the Gigurtu Government (July-August 1940)

After the surrender of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the county of Herþa, Romania

sped up its rapprochement with Germany. The surrender also radically affected the Carol II

regime, which chose to bring the Legion into the government. At the same time, the

absurd argument that the Jews were responsible for the surrender became a popular myth

among Romanians. These two developments accentuated the reactionary and anti-Jewish

character of the Carol II regime.

On July 4, 1940, the Gigurtu government was inaugurated and immediately pro-

ceeded to take discriminatory measures against the Jews, arguably to placate public

opinion, please the Axis Powers, and persuade Germany to guarantee Romanias national

security. Thus, on August 8, 1940, at the request of the new government, Carol II

proposed a bill (

decret-lege

) on the legal status of Jews residing in Romania. The bill

identified as a Jew any individual of the Judaic faith, including those born of mixed

52. This order was issued in a July 19, 1940, document.

FINAL REPORT

marriages. Jews were divided into three categories: (1) Jews who came to Romania after

December 30, 1918, (2) Jews who became citizens between 1879 and December 30,

1918, a category that included Jews decorated in Romanias wars (1877, 1913, 1916-1919)

and (3) individuals not belonging to any of the first two categories.

This bill literally excluded Jews from Romanian society by depriving them of the

rights and obligations they were previously allowed. For the first and the second catego-

ries, the obligation to serve in the army was replaced by an obligation to pay extra taxes

and to do community work. All Jews were prohibited from buying real estate in the

countryside and adopting Romanian names. Racial segregation of Jews was ordered in

the school system. Jews were to be terminated from all public institutions within a period

of three to six months (the firing of Jewish public servants had in fact begun in July 1940)

under threat of prison terms of up to two years. Mixed marriages were prohibited by law

and punishable by two- to five-year prison terms. The anti-Jewish legislation of the

Gigurtu government reflected the growth of anti-Semitism in Romanian society and the

amplification of this phenomenon generated by the evacuation of Bessarabia and Bukovina.

As Germany prepared to force Romania to cede Northern Transylvania to Hungary,

the Carol II regime further weakened national solidarity by waging a war against

Romanias Jewish citizens. The fall of the regime at the beginning of September 1940 led

to Antonescus even harsher dictatorship, to a clampdown on what little was left of civil

liberties under Carol II, and to a state-run genocide of the Jews. The beginnings of this

genocide can be located in the developments that occurred during the Romanian with-

drawal from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in the summer of 1940.

Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Official Rhetoric concerning

the Judeo-Bolshevik Danger:

Romanian Jews and Communism between 1938-1944

Introduction

Judeo-Bolshevism, one of the central themes

of fascist ideology, places the alliance

between Jews and communists at the origins of the communist movement and the

Bolshevik revolution. It considers Jews to be the true inspirers and culprits of undermin-

ing public order. Although it is a variant of an older conspiracy-theory view of history the

Judeo-Masonic plot narratives the theory of the Judeo-Bolshevik plot has an even

wider historical diffusion and greater political implications.

In the history of anti-Semitism, the Judeo-Bolshevik danger has been dealt with

from at least three different and complementary angles. The first is its treatment as an

epistemological formula, which places Judeo-Bolshevism into the cognitive structure of

pre-scientific (primitive) thought, which makes it a hyper-deterministic concept, as in

the diabolic causality, analyzed by Léon Poliakov.

The second analytical approach is

that of political history. This approach characterizes studies on revolutionary socialist

movements, their position with respect to anti-Semitism, and the problem of the eman-

cipation of the Jews. Finally, the theme of Judeo-Bolshevism is approached by studies on

the social history of the European Jewish communities from the point of view of the

effects of fascist and Stalinist violence. The steadfastness with which Jews are demonized

and blamed for all social crises indicates the reproductive force of certain archaic

stereotypes that cross the ages and render impotent scientific explanations. This stead-

fastness necessitates an analysis of the topic that is both historical and trans-historical.

The following chapter, therefore, will focus on three historically determined aspects of

the available literature on the period of Romanian history stretching from 1938 to 1944.

First, from the point of view of political history, it focuses on the fact that a number

of members of the Jewish minority in Romania joined labor movements during the

interwar period and regarded these allegiances as modes of emancipation and integration

in the social and political life of Romania. During the interwar years, due to its

multiethnic, atheist and internationalist character, the socialist movement placed itself

into the avant-garde of the modernization process in Romania.

It nevertheless must be stressed that militants of Jewish origin did not act as repre-

sentatives of the Jewish community, as religious belonging was meaningless in an atheist

La causalité diabolique: essai sur lorigine des persécutions

(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1980).

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

movement or party. The overrepresentation of ethnic minorities within the communist

parties of those years was a direct effect of the nationalist conflicts and discrimination

against minorities that plagued interwar Romanian politics. While generally favorable to

granting equal rights to the Jews, neither the Romanian socialists nor the Romanian

communists spared the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes in their discourse and imagery,

such as the caricatured representation of capitalism and the bourgeoisie in the form of the

Jewish usurer. It turned out that the critique of international plutocracy could turn into

a locus of encounter for nationalist and left wing positions. This locus later became the

breeding ground for Nicolae Ceau[escus nationalist-socialist regime.

Second, in terms of the history of political ideas, conspiracy theories on the world

Jewish plot (among which the Judeo-Bolshevik theory is but one variety) are the products

of a diabolical representation of history,

and the result of the secularization of religious

superstitions (Karl Popper). Diabolic causality systematically assigns to a group or

certain individuals the power to trigger malefic events because they would benefit these

groups or individuals. Diabolic causality is typical to primitive mentalities (Levy-Bruhl)

and is defined by scholars as pre-scientific or pre-logical (Leon Brunschvig). It demon-

strates the perpetuation of certain mystical forms of thought in modern society as well as

certain manifestations of intellectual regression in Soviet societies.

It is necessary to

distinguish between the reproductive capacity of such superstitions in any society and

their political operationalization in ideological constructions with criminal effects, such

as Judeo-Bolshevism.

Third, a major argument against the thesis of the Judeo-Bolshevik plot is the typically

nonviolent history of pre-Holocaust European Jewish communities. Contrary to the

anti-Semitic thesis, Jews were generally loyal to bourgeois democratic regimes. This

loyalty was based on the twin historical processes of social assimilation and social

mobility. The adherence to ideologies of revolutionary salvation was statistically negligi-

ble and in effect was a direct consequence of the growth of anti-Semitic political

nationalism in late nineteenth century.

Moreover, the Jewish habitus was character-

ized, in fact, by the absence of narratives of domination and by the delegitimation of

violent action, especially physical violence. The Jews relationship with violence, which

generated the fascist-Stalinist mentality during the thirties and the forties in Central

Europe, was lower in comparison to other ethno-religious communities.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the Jewish community censored violence relating

to many facets of social life: economic relationships, education, social status relation-

ships, neighborhood and interethnic relationships, marital or extramarital sexual rela-

tions, and forms of socialization (e.g., the relationship with the consumption of alcoholic

beverages). Together, all of these factors led to a form of collective censorship that

limited the violence in the Jewish community. The non-violent nature of the Jewish

community was largely due to the exemption of its male members from military service

and their ineligibility for military careers, which shielded the Jews from the ritual

exercise of combat experienced by other ethnic communities.

2. Mircea Eliades thesis on the terror of history can be cited among the examples.

3. Leszek Ko³akowski or Alexandre Zinoviev, quoted by Poliakov.

4. See for example, Victor Karady, Les Juifs et la violence stalinienne,

Actes de la Recherche en

Sciences Sociale

120 (December 1997), pp. 3-31.

FINAL REPORT

French sociologist Victor Karady, based on a thorough investigation, has described

the life of Hungarian Jews during the first half of the nineteenth century, which was

similar to Jewish life in Romania.

If the crimes and misdemeanors against the state were rather rare, physical aggression and

violence was even rarer among their population. The number of Jews who committed petty

crimes was proportionally smaller than in the general population and smaller still with regard

to violent crimes. This

[

self-

]

censorship of aggressiveness applied equally to physical damage

(arson) or burglary... which affect other peoples goods. The inclination of abstaining from

physical violence of any kind seems to be confirmed in a general way. The only important

exception is a duel, which belongs to the honor code of the elites, assimilated with the old

aristocracy but repressed by the penal code.

[

One

]

is right to see in the over-representation of the

Jews in duels the exception which confirms the rule. In short, violent crimes represent only

one-fifth (20.3 percent) of the infractions committed by the Jews in comparison to the

more-than-double proportion... (42.1 percent) of non-Jews... In this respect, we already evoked

family morality (and as a hypothesis, school education), their rapport with the state, toward

sexuality, toward their recreational activities, fields from which one could say that assimilated

Judaism from the period of the old Hungarian regime

[

until the war

]

is proof of a better control

of aggressiveness and the correlative impulses of a renouncement of using physical force.

The use of massive violence against Jews during the Holocaust led to deep identity

shifts in the Jewish psyche; the moral pact with the old society was torn and the

adoption of a radical strategy began: Zionist de-assimilation and, to a lesser extent and

for a shorter period of time, the adoption of socialism. In Romania, the de-assimilation

strategy was the dominant strategy after 1944 and was spurred by both the Holocaust and

the subsequent policies of forced assimilation and nationalist discrimination of the

Communist regime.

Characteristics of the Coverage of Judeo-Bolshevism

in the Wartime Press

A Single Discourse

The Romanian press between January 1, 1938, and August 23, 1944, was notable for its

ideological monotony: dailies and most magazines adopted the same normative stances

(the same opinions, vision, beliefs) and the same interpretations of domestic and inter-

national politics. The wide diversity of opinions that characterized the interwar Roma-

nian press gradually disappeared after 1938 and was soon replaced by a single opinion:

the opinion first of the Goga government, then of the Royal Dictatorship, and eventually

of the Antonescu governments.

Two days after its investiture, the Goga government (December 28, 1937 August 23,

1944) shut down democratic dailies such as

Adevãrul

Dimineaþa

, and

Lupta

, signaling

that press censorship was the new rule in town. Other radical changes came during the

Royal Dictatorship. When the king turned his Front of National Rebirth

(

Frontul Renaºterii

5. Karady,

op. cit.

, pp. 19-20.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Naþionale

) into the Party of the Nation, defined with unconcealed pride as a a single and

totalitarian party, in June 1940, he also issued a decree-law that explicitly criminalized

the advocacy, by word or in writing, of changing the political organization of the state

provided for under the decree-law establishing of the Party of the Nation.

Nichifor

Crainic, an influential intellectual and journalist with extreme-right views and the min-

ister of propaganda in 1940, completed what the National Christian government had

started, as he himself argued: Octavian Goga performed a splendid act of Romanian

justice when he suppressed

Adevãrul

Dimineaþa

, and

Lupta

. The rest could only be

achieved in 1940 when, as minister of propaganda, I eradicated all Jewish dailies,

weeklies, and monthlies in Romania. The holy right to speak for the Romanian nation

belongs exclusively to Romanians. We can speak for the foreigners in our country

because we are masters of this land.

Later, in 1942, in a triumphant survey of the Antonescu government, Mihai Antonescu

devoted a special chapter entitled National Propaganda, which provided statistics on

the regimes measures to repress freedom of speech: The healthy Romanianization of

the press has led to the suspension of 30 worthless journals, of which 12 were dailies and

18 were periodicals; 4 were foreign and 26 were Romanian; it also led to the suppres-

sion of 171 useless journals and the suppression of obscene magazines, and the waste of

forbidding their publication.

At the same time, the Ministry of Propaganda established

its own publications

Cuvântul Mareºalului cãtre sãteni

Basarabia

Bucovina

Transnistria

Argeºul

Pentru Jertfitori

Dacia Traianã

Soldatul

Der Soldat

, and

Il Soldato

which servitude to the government was of course total.

But, it was not only the government publications that reflected this monolithic politi-

cal discourse; it could also be found in seemingly independent, but in fact government-

-affiliated, widely distributed newspapers and magazines, such as

Curentul

Viaþa

Universul

G^ndirea

Convorbiri literare

Vremea (R\zboiului)

Revista Funda]iilor Re-

gale

. And clearly, the notorious extreme-right publications, such as

Porunca vremii

and

Sfarm\ Piatr\

spread the repressive government discourse. The leitmotif of this single

discourse adopted by the entire Romanian press of the time can be summarized in two

words: anti-democratic and pro-totalitarian. In the words of Pamfil ªeicaru, editor and

owner of

Curentul

the dominant idea during those years was that democracy

[

had

]

been

liquidated,

that a diametrically opposite political order in the vein of fascism or

6. Transformarea Frontului Renaºterii Naþionale în Partidul Naþiunii,

Universul

, 57, no. 170,

June 23, 1940, p. 1.

7. Nichifor Crainic, Dupã douãzeci de ani,

Gândirea

, 20, no. 10, December 1941, p. 515; not was

only the minister of propaganda adept at censorship, which he deemed a cause of national spiritual

health, but he was also a known intellectual figure of the time. Ion Al. Brãtescu-Voineºti, for

example, advocated for the necessity even during a time of peace, of an institution to discourage,

like in the past, ordinary people from becoming forgers of public opinion, this is used as a reason

to create a plan of reorganization of the censorship services and send it to the leader of the state:

see Ion Al. Brãtescu-Voineºti, Am vãzut pe Mare[alul,

Curentul

, 16, no. 5408, March 8, 1943,

pp. 1, 5.

8. Doi ani de guvernare a Mareºalului Antonescu. Expozeul d-lui prof. Mihai Antonescu la radio,

Viaþa

, 2, no. 501, September 10, 1942, p. 7.

9. Stat totalitar,

Curentul

, 13, no. 4458, July 11, 1940, p. 1; see also Vasile Netea, Stat ºi

Naþiune,

Vremea Rãzboiului

, 14, no. 646, May 3, 1942, p. 1; Nichifor Crainic, Aliaþii lui

Hitler (henceforth: Crainic, Alia]ii),

Gândirea

, 20, no. 7, September 1941, pp. 337-340.

FINAL REPORT

national-socialism

was going to replace democracy in the historical process of political

transformation that, from a Romanian point of view, was desirable, even imperative.

These premises were inevitably leading to the cult of the European figures who, through

their politics, embodied the new direction of history: Adolph Hitler, Mussolini,

Salazar, Ion Antonescu, and others. The Romanian media was not only full of praise for

these men,

but also for their opinions, speeches, and articles as well as those of their

deputies Goebbles, Alfred Rosenberg, Ribbentrop, Manfred von Killinger, and Count

Ciano, among others their works often reproduced in their entirety or summarized

generously and always exceptionally appreciated.

From Judeo-Democracy to Judeo-Communism/Judeo-Bolshevism

One of the frequently used arguments to demonize democracy at the time was that

democracy essentially meant the establishment of foreign and Kike rule, as Traian

Brãileanu, minister of national education, religion, and arts in the National Legionary

government put in during a press conference.

Frequently associated with the Judeo-

-masonry

and plutocracy

arguments, democracy appeared to these critics to be a

wholly Jewish idea or an idea employed to serve Jewish interests exclusively. According

to Nichifor Crainic: The fact that until recently Romanian nationalistic claims ended in

tragedy was due to international Jewish power, which was grafted onto Western democ-

racies and exercised genuine terror on those countries governments. In a way, we were

the vassals of this

Judeo-democracy

, and Romanian nationalism could not achieve any-

thing without the consent of Judeo-democracy

[

a.n.

]

The surviving Western democracies were presented the same, as being infiltrated and

controlled by the Jewish element. The American administration was described as a

puppet in the hand of the Jews,

as was the British government under the leadership of

10. Following are two editorials with very telling titles: Leonida C. Pop, Naþional-socialismul axa

de purificare a Europei,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 77, June 1941, p. 1; Mircea Pop, Actualitatea fascismului,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 214, November 2, 1941, p. 1.

11. It is very difficult to list all the articles published on this issue. Some self-evident examples are:

Adolf Hitler, sintezã a veacurilor,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 24, April 24, 1941, p. 5; Ion Bãleanu, Adolf

Hitler, omul providenþial al Europei,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 22, April 20, 1941, p. 6. Even in moderate

magazines one can find such examples: see C. Rãdulescu-Motru, Mareºalul Ion Antonescu,

Revista Fundaþiilor Regale

, 8, nos. 8-9, August-September 1941, pp. 243-248, in which the

Conducãtor

is described as Romanias savior.

12. The phrase is from Problema elitelor în Statul Legionar. Conferinþa d-lui prof. Traian Brãileanu,

ministrul Educaþiei Naþionale, Cultelor ºi Artelor (Conference held by Traian Brãileanu, minister

of national education, religion, and arts in the National Legionary government),

Curentul

, 14,

no. 4640, January 13, 1941, p. 3.

13. For example: General Bãgulescu, Caracatiþa iudeo-masonicã,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4648, Janu-

ary 21, 1941, p. 6; and Declaraþiile d-lui Prof. Ion Zelea Codreanu fãcute presei,

Curentul

13, no. 4525, September 16, 1940, p. 5.

14. For example: Între plutocraþie ºi comunism,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4839, August 6, 1941, p. 3.

15. Importanþa decretului-lege pentru exproprierea imobilelor urbane ale evreilor. Declaraþiile fãcute

presei de cãtre d. Nichifor Crainic, ministrul Propagandei,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 3, April 2, 1941, p. 7.

16. See, for example: Prietenii lui Roosevelt. Un reportaj de cifre ºi nume extrem de clare ºi nu

mai puþin semnificative,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 262, December 20, 1941, p. 7. Texts supporting such

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Winston Churchill.

In the view of many Romanian publications, Great Britains genu-

ine European spirit had been perverted by the influence of a non-European one: To-

days intercontinental war will have to decide between the European spirit

[

embodied by

Hitler

]

and the Anglo-Saxon one, which was also created by Europe, but was distorted

by Judaism. Victory, as in all ages, can belong only to Europe, which represents the

aristocracy of the spirit.

The Romanian press was flooded by the rhetoric of the Axis as defender of Europe,

particularly after June 1941. Typical of the Romanian representation of Europe and the

European spirit were such tropes as holy war, crusade, and victory of the Cross.

Against this rhetorical backdrop, Romania was considered to have a decisive role for the

history of the old continent,

a banality that was obsessively repeated in journals and

magazines.

The public discourse was saturated with sacrificial-triumphalist and heroic

references, constructing a salvationist mythology of the war waged by Germany and its allies.

The formation of the alliance between Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet

Union was seen as the key moment that led to a shift in focus from Judeo-democracy

to Judeo-communism. The Romanian press construed this military alliance through

what they perceived as the arch-commonality of the communist and capitalist worlds:

the Jewish element. In England, the diabolical work of the Jews were introduced to the

fortress in order to ruin it

...

The land of Carlyle, the apologist of heroism, has become

a jungle ruled by the soulless hordes of communist Judeo-Masonry.

In fact, the interconnection between Judeo-democracy and Judeo-communism

was an older idea in Romanian political culture, frequently cultivated in the thirties; so,

this sudden and quasi-total wartime switch had, in effect, been prepared earlier. Tudor

Teodorescu-Brani[te, a remarkable democratic journalist, noted this conflation of de-

mocracy and communism, which extremist spirits were already using aggressively, in the

last issue of

Adev\rul

to escape total censorship:

The fact that a significant part of public opinion today is lost and has repudiated liberty to

embrace dictatorship is not its fault, but is instead the fault of those who contributed to this

societal loss of direction. Let us not forget that for years moderate and sincere democrats were

points of view are very numerous. Sometimes they are borrowed from the German press (Puterea

realã în Statele Unite va fi acaparatã de evrei. Evreul Bernard Baruch,

Viaþa

, 2, no. 508,

September 17, 1942, p. 8) or from the Italian one (Virginio Gayda, Internaþionalismul american

nu este altceva decât un asalt disperat al iudaismului

[

editorial, published under the title Teze

italiene

]

Curentul

, 14, no. 4755, May 12, 1941, p. 1).

17. ªtefan Ionescu, Yankeii, lorzii ºi evreii,

Viaþa

, 1, nos. 259-260, December 18, 1941, pp. 1, 3.

18.

Ibid.

, p. 3.

19. A random example: Romania, ap\r\toarea Europei,

Curentul

, 16, no. 5354, January 1, 1943,

p. 1.

20. Romulus Dianu, Înþelegerea,

Curentul

, vol. 16, no. 535, January 17, 1943, p. 1.

21. Not only

Curentul

but also its director excelled at presenting Romanias war against the Soviet

Union in this light. At Stalingrad, he concluded in an editorial, in flagrant disagreement with the

reality on the front, the Germans and the Romanians represent the millenary tradition of military

honor that has changed the history of Europe (Pamfil ªeicaru, Profetului de la Stalingrad,

Curentul

, 16, no. 5374, February 2, 1943, p. 1). The director thus proved that he was consistent

with himself, for he had long considered Romania to be fulfilling a European mission in this

war;

idem

, Misiunea noastrã europeanã: faþa la Est,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4856, August 23, 1941,

p. 1.

22. Theo Maiorescu, Neomenie englezã... sau isterie iudaicã,

Viaþa

, 2, no. 530, October 9, 1942,

p. 3.

FINAL REPORT

labeled Bolsheviks, even though the labelers knew they talked about people committed to

freedom and legality within the limits of constitutional monarchy. In so doing, they sought to

compromise and put out any initiative of genuine and well-reasoned democracy.

Thus, democracy and communism seemed to many to be conceptually related and

organically linked: communism appeared to be little more than an elementary, radicalized

form of democracy.

The alliance between the Soviets and Anglo-Americans was seen as the ultimate,

irrefutable evidence of the essential resemblance between democracy and communism.

Despite passing misunderstandings between the two political orders and their differences

in form, which were sometimes acknowledged by the very people who emphasized the

similarities in their essence, as early as the forties, both were increasingly presented

as the work of the same author (Judaism), having the same goal (Jewish dominance), and

being deeply hostile to Europe. The official Nazi viewpoint, based on what Hitler called

the Judeo-Bolshevik plot and the anti-German plot organized by Jews and democrats

as well as Bolsheviks and reactionaries,

was therefore well received in the Romanian

press at the time.

The Judeo-Bolshevism Thesis

If the Judeo-democracy thesis was not very widespread in Romania during the interwar

years, that of Judeo-Bolshevism was much more popular. Yet in many contexts, the two

arguments were used interchangeably.

There was a sudden increase in the use of the Judeo-Bolshevism argument after the

June 1940 Soviet ultimatum, which resulted in territorial losses and Romania joining the

Axis in the war against the Soviet Union. If the representation of the Jews as being

disloyal and traitorous toward the Romanian state was not new, the punishment, which

began in January 1938, was justified after the 1940 territorial losses, and the media

perception of the Jewish minority, derived from the official one, was simplified even

more: the inclination toward communism was considered as defining for the Jews. The

journalistic discourse insinuated that there was an irresistible link between the Soviet

Union and the Jews from the Romanian state, especially those from Moldova, in keeping

with the position of the Romanian authorities.

Many in the press regarded the Soviet Union as a product of Jewish militancy. The

theory that the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution had been led by Jews knew many

versions: The Bolshevik revolution was prepared by Lenin and a long list of Kikes:

Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Uritzky... All these Russian names conceal those of Bronstein,

Radomirsky, Apfelbaum

...

The secret meeting of October 10, 1917, where the decision

23. Tudor Teodorescu-Braniºte, Criza democraþiei,

Adevãrul

51, no. 16,539, December 30, 1937,

p. 1.

24. A început rãzboiul de salvare a þãrilor din ghearele bolºevismului. Textul integral al Proclamaþiei

Fuehrer-ului adresate poporului german,

Viaþa

, no. 85, 1, June 25, 1941, p. 1. See also Hitlers

speech, The International Kike, England, and Soviet Russia,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 225, November 13,

1941, in which expressions such as Judeo-Bolshevism and Anglo-Kikishness abound.

25. Romulus Dianu, Capitalismul englez se bizuie pe bolºevism!...,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4798, June 26,

1941, p. 1.

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

was made to launch the armed revolt, included seven kikes, five Russians (three of whom

were married to Jewish women), and a Pole;

this all was regarded as the greatest

Jewish audacity of all time.

The regime thus installed could mean only Jewish domi-

nance; for example, the fact that the ferocious Stalin had the Jew Kaganovici as an

advisor was solid proof of the Cominerns orientation.

Mihai Antonescu himself paid

special attention to this topic when he stated, In the Soviet Union intellectuals are

slaves, peasants are stones, and Jews are masters.

In his turn, Nichifor Crainic, whose

political and journalistic position weighed heavily in the epoch, was never shy to speak

of Judeo-Russians and Judeo-Bolshevik Russia and to blame the loss of Bessarabia

and Bukovina on the Jews.

It was not only dailies that invoked Judeo-Bolshevism in reference to the Soviet

Union, but so did magazines and reviews with the most respectable pasts.

Convorbiri

literare

, for example, joined the general choir, using in its editorials phrases like the

Judeo-communist Bolshevism of the Soviet republics and the Judeo-Bolshevik Bela

Kun.

The editor-in-chief himself (I.E. Torouþiu) spoke of the apocalyptic confrontation

between the Judeo-Bolshevik super-state and the civilized peoples of Europe, in a genuine

crusade.

The Judeo-Bolshevik argument was, needless to say, widespread in journals

with a tradition of far right extremism (

Sfarmã Piatrã

Porunca vremii

In short, media

representations, always molded propagandistically, often made use of the terms Jew,

communist, and Bolshevik interchangeably, a fact that went unchallenged.

Under these circumstances, soon after the Soviet Unions extension up to the Prut

River, the Romanian Jews attraction to the Soviet state became a sort of leitmotif in the

contemporary press. In July 1940,

Curentul

published reports from the post-June 1940

Romanian-Soviet border, which described a continuous exodus of Romanian Jews toward

the newly-Sovietized Bessarabia: It is interesting to note that most people now crossing

the Prut are Jews, irrespective of social class or years of residence in the country. On

Portului Street I saw long columns of carriages full of luxury suitcases and chests filled

with fine clothes, expensive things, etc.; and near or beyond them, we saw groups of

26. A. Pomescu, Cea mai mare îndrãzneal\ a lui Israel,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4837, August 4, 1941,

p. 2.

27.

Ibid

. The theory that the communist revolution meant Jewish domination was abundant in the

Romanian press at the time; see also Cãtãlin Ropalã, Încercare de a pãtrunde sensul revoluþiei

comuniste,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 270, December 30, 1941, p. 5.

28. Alex. Hodoº, Rãzboiul pe care Israel îl va pierde,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4833, July 31, 1941, p. 1.

29. Douã concepþii,

Universul

, 59, no. 181, July 6, 1942, p. 3.

30. Crainic, Aliaþii, p. 337.

31. Pentru un nou rãsãrit,

Convorbiri literare

, vol. 74, no. 7, July 1941, p. 709. It is interesting to

note that the Romanian intervention in Hungary at the end of the World War I to suppress the

communist movement led by Bela Kun was now appreciated by many Romanian publications as

a kind of protochronic act in the fight against Judeo-Bolshevism. For example, Horia I. Ursu,

Rolul poporului român în apãrarea Europei,

Vremea Rãzboiului

, 14, no. 640, March 8,

1942, pp. 1, 14. The Romanian perception of the Hungarian revolution as having to do with

Judeo-Bolshevism was nothing new and even enjoyed a certain prestige, given that such an

interpretation had been proposed by important figures in Romanian culture like N. Iorga (see, for

instance, his articles: Bolºevism? O nouã formã a ºarlataniei imperialiste,

Neamul Românesc

vol. 14, no. 62, March 17, 1919, p. 1, or Bolºevismul unguresc,

Neamul Românesc

, vol. 14,

no. 63, March 18, 1919, p. 1).

32. Suflete închiriate,

Convorbiri literare

, 74, nos. 8-10 (August-October 1941), p. 949.

33. Alianþa judaismului cu bolºevismul,

Porunca vremii

, 11, no. 2299, August 9, 1942, pp. 1, 3.

FINAL REPORT

Jews who, judging by their clothes, were cultured people of a certain status.

The

author did not use the term Judeo-Bolshevik or Judeo-communist to designate the

travelers, but he was convinced that something irresistible attracted Jews toward the

Soviet world, something irrational, chimerical, befitting their spirit.

The belief that all of Bessarabian and Bukovinan Jewry celebrated Moscows annexa-

tion of the two regions, thus revealing their anti-Romanian, pro-Soviet sentiments, was

widespread and knew a variety of expressions, from blunt assertions to the presentation of

allegedly irrefutable evidence. For example, an article in

Via]a

(director: Liviu Rebreanu)

in November 1941 about the demographic problems of Chi[in\u and supposedly based on

unassailable statistical data (furnished, of course, by the Romanian authorities), asserted:

When Soviet Russia conquered Bessarabia last year, the city of Chi[in\u had 120,000 in-

habitants. Because for the Jews of Romania, the Bolshevik heaven represents a powerful point

of attraction, many Jews resettled in Bessarabia, so that under Bolshevik domination, Chi[in\u

reached almost one million inhabitants. After Chi[in\u was set on fire by the retreating

Bolsheviks, the city was left with 38,000 inhabitants. This was the number recorded by the

Romanian administration.

In the same order of ideas, the newspaper

Universul

(directed and owned by Stelian

Popescu) published, for instance, photographs of happy people with the following cap-

tion, Judeo-communist manifestation in Chiºinãu for the kidnapping of Bessarabia and

Northern Bukovina by the red beasts. The comment accompanying the photographs

pointed out once more, The hideous faces of those in the photographs are those of the

Jews of Chiºinãu. Although the images contained no clue, however small, to support

such identification, the authors certainty knew no bounds. The end of the article was an

encouragement for retribution: We recognize the difficult work of our authorities in

identifying those who were our enemies and assassins. But once identified and proven

that they participated in the unbelievable and awful horrors, no mercy.

No mercy had long been the underlying motto of the only political and journalistic

discourse in Romania. From the time of the Goga government, the anti-Jewish laws and

measures continued without interruption, taking away elementary political and civil

rights, with the press approving them every time, sometimes explicitly in journalists

comments,

other times implicitly, through popularization.

In such a political and

social climate the anti-Jewish acts, even when committed outside of the established legal

34. Exodul evreiesc din portul Galaþi continuã,

Curentul

, 13, no. 4470, July 23, 1940, p. 1.

35. Populaþia actualã a Chiºin\ului,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 225, November 13, 1941, p. 1.

36. Elefterie Negel, Bucuria evreimii la rãpirea Basarabiei,

Universul

, 58, no. 213, August 9, 1941,

p. 7

37. Pamfil ªeicaru, for example, commenting on the Goga governments law on the revision of

citizenship, excelled in the superlative: An act of decisive political importance, a testimony of

nationalist faith, a pledge of sincerity given to the country (...). It is the merit of the Goga

government to have fulfilled the Romanian sensibility through the decision to revise all citizenships

in order to exclude all who fraudulently sneaked in from the benefit of political rights, all who have

benefited from the moral defect of the state administration (...). It is an act of reassurance and

affirmation of our sovereignty (...), a safeguard for the future, the animation of the most righteous

of expectations. See Pamfil ªeicaru, O chezãºie a sinceritãþii,

Curentul

, 11, no. 3580,

January 20, 1938, pp. 1-2.

38. The Romanian press of the time offered constant support to the anti-Semitic policies of the regimes

between 1938 and 1944. The anti-Jewish laws and administrative measures were popularized and

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

framework, enjoyed a sort of legitimacy and, consequently, an implicit impunity. The

January 1941 pogrom perpetrated by the Legionnaires in the V\c\re[ti and Dude[ti areas

of Bucharest drew upon this kind of propaganda. Three weeks passed before the Roma-

nian press ran stories on the murders, plunders, arsons, and murders against the

innocent Romanian inhabitants, and particularly in the Jewish quarters of Dude[ti and

V\c\re[ti, where genuine pogroms were perpetrated.

An official communiqué re-

leased at the time reporting 236 dead, of which 118 were Jews ending with a sentence

suggesting mitigating circumstances for the perpetrators: More than half of the dead

were communists recruited from among the ranks of workers, craftsmen, traders, driv-

ers, apprentices, etc.

In other words, they deserved their fate

Journalistic references to Romanian Jews as promoters of communism increased

considerably after Romania joined the war against the Soviets in 1941. July and August

1941 issues of the newspaper

Curentul

described at length the destruction of Chi[in\u

and the burning of its cathedral, for which the daily undoubtedly blamed local pro-communist

Jews: Kikes, the great pioneers of communism, during their flight across the Dniester

did not forget to set fire to the dearest altar, not only of Bessarabia but of Romania

sustained on a regular basis by the media: the citizenship revision laws (for example: Isaia

Tolan, Revizuirea încetãþenirilor,

Curentul

, 11, no. 3581, January 21, 1938, p. 7); Decretul-

-lege pentru oprirea cãsãtoriilor între românii de sânge ºi evrei, Decretul-lege privitor la starea

juridic\ a locuitorilor evrei din România (

Curentul

, 13, no. 4483, August 11, 1940, p. 4); the

exclusion of Jewish lawyers from the bar and Jewish employees from the National Railroad

Company (CFR); the removal of all Jews from cultural institutions (Eliminarea evreilor din

teatre ºi orice formaþiuni artistice. Decizia Ministerului Cultelor ºi Artelor,

Curentul

, 13, no. 4520,

September 11, 1940, p. 1) or from the national education system (Lorin Popescu, 107 zile de

muncã în câmpul ºcolii, al bisericii ºi al artelor,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4630, January 1, 1941, p. 9);

the expropriation of Jewish rural and urban estates (Importanþa decretului-lege pentru expro-

prierea imobilelor urbane ale evreilor. Declaraþiile fãcute presei de cãtre d. Nichifor Crainic,

Ministrul Propagandei,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 3, April 2, 1941, p. 7); the decree-law establishing the

Jews duty to perform community work (Toþi evreii din Capitalã sunt obligaþi sã presteze

muncã în folos obºtesc,

Universul

, 58, no. 217, August 13, 1941, p. 3), the establishment of the

Jewish Center (

Centrala Evreilor din România

) (Spre rezolvarea problemei evreilor în

România,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 264, December 22, 1941, pp. 1, 3); the new status of Jewish doctors

(Organizarea ºi funcþionarea Colegiului Medicilor,

Universul

, 60, no. 270, October 3, 1943,

p. 7); the confiscation of Jews radios (Alex. Hodo[, Israel într-o nouã robie

[

henceforth:

Hodo[, Israel `ntr-o nou\ robie...

]

Curentul

, 14, no. 4871, September 7, 1941, pp. 1, 7); the

military taxes imposed on Jews (Evreii care locuiesc în strãinãtate vor plãti înzecitul taxelor

militare,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 215, November 3, 1941, p. 3), the law against camouflaging Jewish

interests (Numele persoanelor care au camuflat interesele evreie[ti,

Viaþa

, 2, no. 492,

September 6, 1942, p. 5); the increase in the price of bread for the Jews (

Porunca vremii

, 11,

no. 2307, August 20, 1942, p. 3); etc. Romanian newspapers also regularly reported, in detail

and sympathetically, on anti-Semitic measures instituted by other countries in an attempt to

demonstrate that what was happening in Romania was in line with what was happening in

civilized Europe (Evreii din Franþa în tabere de muncã,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 47, May 17, 1941).

Other papers printed abundant foreign anti-Semitic literature (

Porunca vremii

, for instance,

published Edouard Drumonts sadly famous book

La France juive

under the title

France Turned

Kike

as a serial in 1942).

39. Un rezumat complect asupra modului în care s-a desfãºurat rebeliunea,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4663,

February 7, 1941, p. 7.

40. Bilanþul rebeliunii,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4663, February 7, 1941, p. 8.

FINAL REPORT

itself.

Curentul

depicted events in Northern Bukovina in the same way. Even the

papers director, Pamfil {eicaru, who in his texts was generally reserved regarding

Judeo-Bolshevism, joined his colleagues in poisoning Romanian public opinion:

One year of Bolshevik occupation has taught Jews how to hate and commit acts of

unparalleled immorality, so that now the cohabitation of Jews and Romanians in Bessarabia

would be tantamount

[

]

provocation.

The year of Soviet occupation of Bessarabia was presented everywhere as the year of

Jewish occupation.

Via]a

, for instance, also wrote about the reign of the kike element

between the Prut and the Dniester; the newspaper maintained that in the Bessarabian

education system that the role of teacher was entrusted to the Jews, the majority

[

whom were

]

degenerate individuals from a moral point of view. The end of the article

formulated the following vengeful conclusion: They came

[

the Jews

]

; there they will

return while we Romanians will rebuild the nests spoiled by the year of Judeo-communist

occupation.

This media climate fit the intentions of the Antonescu government, which saw Jews

as sworn traitors. The first measure Ion Antonescu, Leader of the State, took once

Romania had entered the war was to remove the Jews from the rural areas of Moldova

convinced, of course, that they were all potential friends of the enemy; the newspapers

at the time printed the government press releases with titles in large red print.

That the

Antonescu government saw Romanian Jews and not just those in the rural areas as

sworn traitors was apparent a few days later when the press failed to show any signs of

horror, concern, or doubt when it coldly announced, Five hundred communist Jews

were executed in Iaºi, the brutal but predictable consequence of the Judeo-Bolshevik

mania brought to a climax. The official communiqué on the Iaºi pogrom pointed to Iaºis

Judeo-Bolshevik population, which was supposedly guilty of having shot at Romanian

and German troops, and urged ethnic Romanians to inform on Jews under threat of

execution: Whoever fails to reveal in due time these rioters against public safety and

order shall be executed together with their entire families.

By then, Judeo-communism had turned into an endemic political and media psy-

chosis. The official repressive measures reached a terrifying level of abuse and arbitrari-

ness. A communiqué released after the genocide of Iaºi informed the public opinion that

the authorities were determined to go even further: Any attempt to repeat these vile

aggressions shall be mercilessly repressed. For every Romanian or German soldier

41. Barbaria bolºevic\ a distrus capitala Basarabiei,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4832, July 30, 1941, p. 5;

C. Mironescu, Jidanii al\turi de tovarãºii bolºevici sunt autorii distrugerii Chiºinãului,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4837, August 4, 1941, p. 7; or Radian Eugen, Dinamitat ºi incendiat,

Chiºinãul nu mai este azi decât un imens morman de ruine. Cârdãºia jidanilor cu bolºevicii,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4843, August 10, 1941, p. 5.

42. Românizare ºi birocraþie,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4891, September 27, 1941, p. 1.

43. Savin Popescu Lupu, Jidovii apostoli. Cum au dãrâmat localurile de ºcoalã. Apostoli-felceri.

Despre imoralitatea evreicei învãþãtoare. Urmele jidovilor în ºcoli,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 271, December 31,

1941, p. 5.

44. There are countless articles praising this measure. To illustrate with two examples: A început

lupta pentru purificarea rasei,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4801, June 29, 1941, p. 3; and Evreii din

comunele rurale vor fi îndepãrtaþi. Comunicat,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 89, June 29, 1941, p. 1.

45. 500 de evrei comuniºti executaþi la Iaºi. Ei au tras din case focuri asupra ostaºilor germani

ºi

români. Comunicat,

Universul

, 58, no. 175, July 2, 1941, p. 1.

100

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

killed, fifty Judeo-communists will be executed.

The press only welcomed the reso-

lute manner in which Antonescus authorities intended to move against the treason

the Judeo-communists.

In such a context, the life of Bessarabian and Bukovinan Jewry became a nightmare.

All Jews here, wrote a war correspondent for

Curentul

, posted in Bessarabia, are

spies, they are all ready to sabotage any measure serving the national interest and would

give their lives to be able to contribute anything to the Bolsheviks success.

This was

why, the daily continued, the safety measures against these are getting harsher day by

day. Jews between the ages of 16 and 55 were evacuated from all boroughs and towns,

and from now on, their residence is in the camp.

With unrestrained satisfaction, the

war correspondent then described the tragedy of the Jews as he saw it: On the roads of

Moldova, I met numerous convoys of carriages and full trains of wandering Kikes... And

the women and elderly who remained in the boroughs and towns wore a distinctive patch

sewn on a yellow armband the Kikish yellow star. Their time has finally come....

Therefore, let us carry on this holy war with dignity, for it will bring us two final

victories: the defeat of Bolshevism and the destruction of Judaism.

The situation was the same in Bukovina, and the press did not hesitate to advertise

and support the measures taken by the Romanian administration there. Alexandru

Rio[anu, Ion Antonescus envoy to Bukovina, issued several ordinances establishing the

regime of the local Jews, such as the conditions in which they were allowed to travel and

buy supplies and the duty to wear the yellow star. One of these ordinances was publicized

through posters that read, The population shall be informed that... 50 Jewish leaders

from Cernãuþi were arrested and imprisoned, and they will guarantee with their lives and

belongings the complete silence of the Jewish population. If the Jews commit the slightest

act of violence against the Romanian or allied armies, all hostages shall be executed

immediately.

The anti-Semitic policies thus developed all the attributes of state terror-

ism, and the Romanian press regarded them as justified. The current and concrete acts

of justice concerning the Jews became genuine models of abuse or even crime, with the

press reporting them approvingly.

46. Pentru fiecare ostaº german sau român vor fi executaþi 50 iudeo-comuniºti. Comunicat,

Curentul

14, no. 4806, July 4, 1941, p. 1.

47. C. ªoldan, Trãdãri,

Universul

, 58, no. 178, July 5, 1941, p. 1.

48. Aurel Popoviciu, Evreii, uneltele

ºi

aliaþii bolºevicilor,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4809, July 7, 1941,

p. 7.

49.

Ibid.

, p. 12

50.

Ibid.

The cynical description of the situation of the Jews in Bessarabia can be found in a number

of articles. See, for example: C. Mironescu, Bolºevicii îndemnau la desfrâu tineretul din

Basarabia,

Curentul

, 14, no. 4843, August 10, 1941, pp. 1, 4.

51.

Apud

Noul regim al evreilor din întreg cuprinsul Bucovinei,

Universul

, 58, no. 211, August 7,

1941, p. 7.

52. See, for instance, the section on 5 comuniºti care pregãteau acte de sabotaj au fost condamnaþi la

moarte

ºi

executaþi,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 223, November 11, 1941, p. 6. The article presents the arrest,

on November 2, of a group of six communists, who were preparing acts of sabbtoage out of

which five were of Jewish origin (Paneth Francisc, Paneth Lili, Moses Francisc, Kornhauser

Adalbert and Iosipovici Ada) and one of Hungarian descent (Naghy Elisabeta), on their being

sentenced to death by the Court Martial of the Military Command of Bucharest three days later,

followed by their execution on November 7, 1941. Others were victims of the enforcement of the

Law of sabotage and illicit speculation, which targeted Jewish merchants.

101

FINAL REPORT

Solutions to the Judeo-Bolshevism Ideology

In the political and journalistic imagery outlined above, Judeo-communism appeared

to be the theory of absolute evil, which synthesized and amplified against the back-

ground of the ongoing war as a kind of ideological corollary, the defects of Jewishness

as perceived in traditional anti-Semitism. From this point of view, the ideas of Goebbels,

Nazi minister of propaganda, were echoed generously in the Romanian press at the time:

Kikes are the cause of war. This is why our treatment of them does not subject them to

any injustice. They deserve this treatment. It is the governments task to finish them off

for good;

or, It was the Jews who wanted this war... This may lead to serious

decisions, but that is of no consequence considering the size of the danger... By conceiv-

ing a plan of total destruction against the German people, they

[

the Jews

]

have signed

their own death sentence.

This theory was largely shared by the Bucharest regime. Antonescu himself con-

curred when he told Filderman: The war initiated by Judah against Germany now turns

against Judah himself.

In its turn, the Romanian press contributed to this atmosphere

with its articles, writing about the war of Jews

and the fact that todays war with all

its misfortunes was prepared, and its fire maintained, by the power of Jewry throughout

the world.

In the face of the type of Jewish danger, which defined the majoritys situation as

one of legitimate defense, the search for radical measures became imperative. When

reading the press of the time, one can see that the Final Solution to the Jewish

problem was often discussed and desired. Only by stepping over the corpses of

Judaism and Bolshevism, will humankind be able to find peace, prosperity, and the

53. Cum trebuiesc consideraþi jidanii. Consideraþiunile d-lui dr. Goebbels,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 230,

November 18, 1941, p.3.

54. Joseph Goebbels, Rãzboiul

ºi

evreii,

Viaþa

, 3, no. 738, May 10, 1943, p. 3 (reproduced

from

Das Reich

). Similar views, shared by other German or Italian officials, were also

promptly publicized in Romania. The war was unleashed by the Jews... It was only the

destructive hatred of the Jewish instinct that unleashed this war against creative Europe,

asserted the head of the press in Nazi Germany (see Alianþa plutocraþiei

ºi

bol[evismului tinde

la nimicirea Europei. Discursul d-lui dr. Dietrich la Congresul ziariºtilor europeni,

Viaþa

, 3,

no. 786, June 28, 1943, p. 8). His aide said the same thing: The Jew is the enemy of all

peoples... Judaism has been the factor on which this war has been founded, whose engine it is,

moreover (see Vice-ºeful presei Reichului despre problema evreiascã,

Universul

, 60, no.

276, October 9, 1943, p. 7). This stereotype was also imported from fascist Italy: The war

waged by the Axis is thus revealed as a fight for freedom from the yoke of banks and Judaism

(see Gayda,

op. cit.

, p. 1).

55. Presa germanã despre rãspunsul dat de Mareºalul Antonescu evreilor: Rãsboiul deslãnþuit de

Iuda împotriva Germaniei se întoarce acum împotriva lui însuºi,

Viaþa

, 1, no. 213, November 1,

1941, p. 8.

56. Ilie Rãdulescu, Rãzboiul evreimii,

Porunca vremii

, 11, no. 2320, September 4, 1942, pp. 1,

57. Alex. Hodoº, Ascultã, Israele! (henceforth: Hodo[, Ascult\, Israele!),

Curentul

, 14, no. 4857,

August 24, 1941, p. 1. See also Aurel Popovicius article cited above, pp. 7, 12.

102

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

spiritual mission conferred by Providence, wrote Ilie R\dulescu, director of the far-right

newspaper

Porunca vremii

A.C. Cuza, specialist for many decades on the Jewish

problem, often gave interviews or made statements in which he invoked the imperative

of a unitary solution

to the Jewish issue, such as the re-settlement of Jews in

non-European lands, like Uganda, Madagascar, Rhodesia or Palestine.

Curentul

often

dedicated articles to this topic, sometimes pleading for the mass expulsion of Jews

and

providing suggestions ostensibly motivated by humanitarianism for the location of

their re-settlement (e.g., Bolivia),

other times, hinting that the solution to the Jewish

problem will perhaps be of an heroic nature... to cure them and save the world order.

The newspaper

Unirea

embraced the same solution by formulating explicit threats in

case the Jews would not consent to their voluntary departure from Romania: It

hinges only on the... availability of the necessary instruments for liquidation plans to be

operationalized.

Between Myth and Reality: Jewish Participation

in the Communist Movement

First, the affiliation, support, or sympathy for a political party or civic organization

represents a freely-assumed individual act. This choice is the result of a combination of

various factors, such as internal economic and social stability, character of the political

regime, the international political situation, family affiliation, level of education, profes-

sional affiliation, intensity of religious feelings, affiliation with community or civic

structures, age, and residence. Therefore, when a non-democratic political regime prac-

tices overt ethnic and racial discrimination, those belonging to heavily-discriminated

communities tend to be more open to political parties or civic organizations that are most

focused on fighting the established system and/or the racial or ethnic policies applied by

the political regime. This type of individual political reaction should not be confused

with the reaction of the ethnic community.

Second, community civic structures have their own autonomy and identity. They

elaborate on specific reactions of members of the community in response to exceptional

historic situations. Within the context of non-democratic political systems (those that do

not recognize ethnic or religious communities or practice chauvinistic or anti-Semitic

58. Rãdulescu,

op. cit.

, p. 3.

59. Problema jidoveasc\ nu se poate rezolva decât prin aplicarea unei soluþii unitare. Importante

declaraþii fãcute ziarului

Curentul

, de dl consilier regal prof. A.C. Cuza,

Curentul

, 13, no. 4466,

July 19, 1940, p. 1.

60. D. prof. A.C. Cuza propune un congres anti-evreiesc. Trebuie gãsit un teritoriu în care sã fie

colonizaþi Evreii

[

interview

]

Curentul

, 11, no. 3603, February 12, 1938, p. 9.

61. Hodoº, Israel într-o nouã robie

62. Posibilitãþi de emigrare în Bolivia pentru evreii din România,

Curentul

, 11, no. 3626, March 17,

1938, p. 11.

63. Hodoº, Ascultã, Israele!.

64. X.Y.Z., Rezolvarea problemei evreieºti. Nimic nu va putea împiedica lichidarea ei categoricã

ºi

definitivã,

Unirea

(1941),

apud

Mihail E. Ionescu and Liviu Rotman (eds.),

The Holocaust and

Romania

(Bucharest, 2003), p. 313.

103

FINAL REPORT

politics that may lead to minority exclusion from the civic, economic, or political

community of rights and even to genocide) the representatives of civic community

structures may resort to liberation or rescue actions on behalf of and for the benefit of

their community; the efforts of Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, head of the Federation of Jewish

Communities in Romania, to prevent deportations and help the Jews who had already

been deported provide a good example. These attitudes are largely presented in the

chapter of this report entitled The Life of the Jewish Community under Ion Antonescu

and the Jewish Communitys Response to the Holocaust in Romania.

Third, between 1938 and 1944, the Communist Party in Romania had messages and

politically critical attitudes toward the anti-Semitic policies of the state during the dicta-

torial governments. In general, Romanian Communist Party (Partidul Comunist Rom^n

PCR) adopted the positions of the Communist International on issues related to

minorities or antifascism.

PCR documents from the 1938-1944 period from the Romanian National Archives

describe some of the party positions concerning the Jewish problem. From this perspec-

tive, three attitudes of the Communist Party appear. First, a direct rejection of the

discrimination and anti-Semitic political actions organized by the state; second, an

implicit reaction; and third, a reaction of trivialization of the Holocaust in Romania.

Clearly, with the exception of the last type of reaction, in any other situation the

messages of the PCR during those years would have been at least potential sources of

attraction for the Jews from Romania who lived under an acute feeling of multiple

insecurities. A few examples that illustrate Communist Party attitudes include

the cri-

tique of the Romanianization process

and a rejection of the alleged positive affect of this

process on the economic and social status of the Jews.

The Antonescu-Sima government instituted the Romanianization of personnel across the

entire country, based on law, to fire tens of thousands of Jewish and Hungarian workers and clerks

and replace them with their subordinates, especially with those originating from the ranks of

the refugees... In the Jewish and Hungarian businesses and foreign capital (except the German)

a few thousand highly-paid Romanianization commissars were nominated... Under the slogan

Romanianization of industry and commerce, the Legionnaires and their armed followers

began the expropriation of small and large Jewish stores all over the country with threats of death.

The Legionary regime led by General Antonescu and Horia Sima not only instigated division

but also divided, either by law or without the law, the belongings of the Jewish population.

The PCR also harshly criticized the violent anti-Semitism of the extreme right. In

January 1938, following anti-Semitic actions in Transylvania, the PCR felt obliged to

explain to the masses, using the Marxist repertoire, the meaning of periodical pogroms:

they are not accidents, but a product of the policies wished by the dictatorship of finance

capital

...

By informing the masses about the attitude of revolutionary workers, commu-

nists will raise sympathies for revolutionary workers organizations within minorities.

The filtering of anti-Semitism through the lens of class struggle and the radical opposition

65. Arhivele Naþionale ale României (ANR), fond CC/PCR-Cancelarie, no. 2520, file no. 5/1941,

Scrisoare despre înfrângerea rebeliunii legionare, Istoria Partidului Comunist Român (Institutul

de Studii Istorice [i Social-Politice de pe l^ng\ Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist Rom^n

ISISP documentary), vol. 5, doc. 3, De la regimul legionar la dictatura militarã, February 1941.

66. Istoria PCR, vol. 5, doc. 3, De la regimul legionar la dictatura militarã, February 1941.

104

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

between the bourgeoisie and proletariat led the PCR to criticize the political positions of

Jewish community leaders: At the same time the Communist Party must show, through

the facts (the speeches of Ely Bercovici, Filderman in the Parliament, the complete

absence of the Hungarian Party), all the cowardice and humiliations of the minorities

bourgeoisies and to unmask those who are the allies of the liberals: the Union of

Romanian Jews, the Hungarian Party that made alliances with the executioners of their

own people.

The antifascist documents or those against the dictatorial political regimes expressed,

among other things, the Communist Partys position in favor of equal rights for minori-

ties. Titles included: Defending nationalities rights and exposing the demagoguery of

the government on this issue

and Against the national policy of persecution, the

cancellation of the decrees on the revision of citizenship, and the cancellation of the law

for the protection of national labor... for equal rights to all people in Romania.

The Jewish problem was also present in the correspondence between the Romanian

Communists and their relations within the Third International. Typical is a letter written

after the Legionary rebellion:

[

]

he Iron Guard lost much of its influence and this rebellion opened the eyes of many

people. The murders, pillaging, and arsons that were committed have been underreported in

the press. On January 21-22, 1941, before the Iron Guard initiated serious attacks upon the

Board of Ministers, Antonescu did not interfere. Legionnaires sacked at will the Bucharest

districts of V\c\re[ti, O]e[ti, and others. On Domni]ei Street, Legionnaires organized genuine

orgies. A group of Jewish men and women were beaten to death with iron bars in the middle

of a circle of dancing Legionnaires. At the city slaughterhouse, the Jews were hung on

slaughterers hooks for cows, and we have photographs of those atrocities.

The PCR, through the civic association it controlled, allowed the Jews to militate for

specific objectives; for example, in the Union of Patriots, the PCR stated that The

Jewish group must have its own commission to allow the Jews to take care of purely

Jewish issues.

The PCR also organized networks of aid to the Jews from the Vapniarka camp in

Transnistria, where the majority of those detained were Jews and Communists.

It is

worth mentioning that in 1942 when the Romanian communists remained interned in the

67. ANR, file no. 3/1938, Instrucþiuni. Sarcinile PC din România faþã de agitaþiile anti-Semite.

68. ANR, file no. 13/1939, Scrisoare trimisã din þarã, informeazã despre acþiunea întreprinsã de

Secretariatul PCR cu prilejul Consfãtuirii reprezentanþilor partidelor politice din România, 16 mai

1939, May 19, 1939.

69. ANR, file no. 11/1938, Platforma Contra pericolului crescut de fascism

ºi rãzboi, pentru unirea

poporului român cu popoarele conlocuitoare. Cãtre toþi cetãþenii dornici de pace, democraþie ºi

progres. Cãtre poporul român ºi

popoarele conlocuitoare din România, May 1938.

70. ANR, file no. 5/1941, Scrisoarea tov. Zimmer adresatã tov. Draganov despre înfrângerea rebeliunii

legionare, March 1941.

71. ANR, file no. 28/1943, Proces verbal încheiat în ºedinþa CC/PCR din 29-30 august 1943, în care

s-a analizat situaþia internaþional\ ºi

locul României în cadrul acesteia, sarcinile PCR în etapa

actualã precum

ºi raporturile dintre Uniunea Patrioþilor, PSD etc., August 30, 1943.

72. ANR, file no. 39/1943, Proces verbal întocmit în ºedinþa CC/PCR din 3 oct. 1943 intitulat

ªedinþa

Sergiu

where mention is made to Frontul Plugarilor ajutã regulat Vapniarka, inv. 2348, file

no. 3/1943, Corespondenþa unor evrei deportaþi în Transnistria, 1943.

105

FINAL REPORT

T^rgu-Jiu camp, over 400 Jewish communists were deported to Vapniarka. Because they

were fed peas for cows, most of them returned to Romania paralyzed. Over forty

Romanian communists of Jewish origin who had been sentenced to prison were moved

from Vapniarka to the Rybnitsa prison. Only three of them survived.

At the same time, however, there were instances in which the PCR did not adopt a

direct position about the Holocaust, instead talking indirectly about atrocities or putting

Jewish victims under the more generic rubric of cohabiting nationalities. Although its

indictment of the Antonescu regime was made clear in a document issued in the after-

math of the Iaºi pogrom, which acknowledged the poverty, hunger, forced labor,

serfdom, destructive war in the interest of German fascists, internments in concentration

camps and mass executions of Jews and Romanian patriots, the PCR confined itself to

referring to the Jewish victims there as the 2,000 patriots from Iaºi, whose murder

may not deter the Romanian people.

A report of the Central Committee Secretariat of the PCR of May 20, 1938, described

the difficult situation of Jews following the Citizenship Revision Law, without naming the

Jews at all, although the law was directed at them:

The royal dictatorship wages savage terror on cohabiting nationalities through its citizen-

ship revision bill, which stripped the citizenship of tens and thousands of people. By barba-

rously applying the law of national labor protection, thousands more men and women lost

their jobs. The royal dictatorship runs a chauvinist policy of stirring Romanian people against

cohabiting people and thereby endangers the security of the country in the case of aggression

of fascist countries against Romania.

A document of the PCR Central Committee following the Legionary rebellion de-

fined the Legionary movement as stirring and feeding wild chauvinism in the Romanian

people, by stirring hate among nationalities, by forcing workers to work between twelve

and sixteen hours a day for miserable wages, by fomenting pogroms against the revolu-

tionary working class and the oppressed nations.

Fourth, as sociologist Andrei Roth has shown, during the interwar years, Jews were

over-represented in the Romanian Communist Party. This means that their proportion

was higher than the proportion represented by the Jewish minority as a demographic

group versus the entire population. In spite of this, writes Roth, this over-representation

of Jews in the communist movement does not mean that the majority of the Jews were

communists or that the majority of the communists were Jews. For example, in 1933,

the Jews represented 4 percent of the population, and at the same time, in the Communist

Party, which had 1,665 members, they represented 18.22 percent (303 communists in a

community of over 750,000 Jews). The Jews represented the third ethnic group after the

Hungarians (26.8 percent) and Romanians (22.65).

Between 1933 and August 23,

1944, the number of party members changed. According to a CC/PCR document, in

73. Istoria PCR, doc. 7, Platforma-Program din 6 septembrie 1941 intitulatã: Lupta poporului român

pentru libertate

ºi independenþã naþionalã, elaborated by CC/PCR, September 1941.

74.

Ibid.

75. ANR, file no. 32/1941, Circularã a CC/PCR în care se enumerã sarcinile organizaþiilor de partid

dupã rebeliunea legionarã, February 1941

76. Dinu C. Giurescu, Evreii români, 1939-1944,

Realitatea evreiascã

, no. 51, 1997.

106

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

1940 the party allegedly had between 3,000 and 4,000 members; by August 23, 1944,

they numbered only around 1,000.

Judeo-communism was propaganda meant to divide people. It was not based on PCR

membership statistics or on its political strength. PCR membership between 1938 and

1944 was very small. Together with its sympathizers, the communists could not count on

more than 4,000 people. Moreover, between 1924 and August 23, 1944, the PCR was

outlawed and had extremely limited resources for influencing the political actions taken

by those in power. Romanian Magyars and Jews joined the PCR because, at that time, the

party was militantly antifascist, both ideologically and programmatically, and it made

many pro-minority overtures. The PCRs attitude concerning the minorities was in

accordance with the thesis of the Third International and stipulated, in general, the

principle of self-determination.

Fifth, the Jewish population suffered during the occupation of Bessarabia and Bukovina

by the Soviet army and administration during the summer of 1940. There are statistical

data and nominal lists concerning the deportation of the Jewish citizens of Bessarabia and

Bukovina. The deportations were made on the basis of the ideological criteria of the

class struggle. Under these circumstances, Jews in the Zionist movement, considered

by the Soviets to be a bourgeois political organization, as well as those belonging to the

petty bourgeoisie (tradesmen) and traditional parties of Romania were deported. The

following statistics concerning the deportation or detention of the Jewish population by

the Soviet authorities between 1940 and 1941 are derived from data from Chiºinãu:

Locality

People deported

Jews deported

Percentage of jews deported

Chiºinãu

589

158

26.82

Bãlþi

291

116

39.86

Bender

203

31.52

Briceni

39.13

Lipcani

51.42

Cahul

149

30.20

Cãlãraºi

51.66

Bravicea

50.00

Cimiºlia

22.38

Total

1 468

479

32.62

Conclusions

This chapter argues that the tropes of Judeo-Bolshevism and Judeo-communism

were expressions of totalitarian anti-Semitic and nationalist propaganda during the years

of 1938 to 1944, and they continue to be today. They are far from being mere conceptual

77. For the number of Communist Party members between 1933 and 1945, see Ioan Chiper, Consideraþii

privind evoluþia numericã

ºi

compoziþia etnicã a PCR, 1921-1952,

Arhivele totalitarismului

, 6,

no. 21, 4/1998.

78. D. Boicu (ed.),

Cartea memoriei, catalog al victimelor totalitarismului comunist

(Chiºinãu:

{tiin]a, 1999).

107

FINAL REPORT

points of reference for clarifying and evaluating the genesis and the transformations of

Romanian communism. These two expressions became widely used instruments of the

nationalist chauvinist repertoire, fashioned to avoid confrontation with real political and

economic problems and to channel support toward a primitive and rigid social disposi-

tion fed by ethnocentric and racist ideas. The facile activation of such attitudes, through

anti-Semitic slogans derived from the strategy of scapegoating, incited irrationality

and divided people. The only real reason for such expressions is a mental propensity, be

it individual or collective, to react to these slogans in a predictable manner: the dehu-

manization and punishment of a human collectivity.

Membership in a political party or movement is an act of individual will that is

determined by historical, national, and international circumstances, social and familial

milieux, and education. The overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the left political

movements during the interwar years was strongly influenced by the rise of fascism and

Nazism in Europe.

While studies on the impact and perception of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth have become

more accessible, those concerning the complex relationships between political parties

and community institutions, or the implication of people and personalities belonging to

various ethnic communities in the political arena, still represent an understudied chapter.

The Holocaust in Romania

The National Legionary State and Its Attempt to Solve

the Jewish Question

According to Antonescus supporters, the leadership of the Legion had three objectives

in terms of the Jews: to take revenge, instill terror, and acquire property.

In order to

reach these objectives, the Guard had to control the states repressive functions. The

National Legionary government of September 14, 1940, had fifteen ministers appointed

by the Legionary movement. Additionally, by September 20, 1940, Legion members also

held the key position of prefect in forty-five counties.

The Legionnaires started abusing Jews (through beatings, abusive arrests, torture,

massive lay-offs from the civil service, economic boycotting of Jewish businesses, and

vandalism of synagogues) immediately after they entered the government.

The Jewish

community was worried by the rapid fascization of much of Romanian society. This

process was visible in public statements made by intellectuals as well as anti-Semitic

outbursts in the ranks of labor unions and professional associations with which Jews were

affiliated.

The Instruments of Legionary Terror

When the Iron Guard came to power, the organizational infrastructure for carrying out its

plans was already in place. Its most dangerous instrument was the Legionary Police,

an organization modeled on the Nazi paramilitary units. Formally established on Sep-

tember 6, 1940, to defend the new regime and oppress its adversaries, its leaders saw it

as a Romanian version of the German SA. Antonescu himself blessed the organization at

the beginning. It is also important to point out that in late October 1940, Himmler sent

representatives of the

Reich

Main Security Office (

Reichssicherheitshauptamt

RSHA),

headed by Heydrich, to Romania in order to establish a liaison with the Legionary

1. In September 1941, the Antonescu regime published two volumes of investigative work that

revealed the criminal and terrorist character of the Legionary movement. The report was entitled

Pe marginea prãpastiei, 21-23 ianuarie, Bucure[ti, 1941

(henceforth:

Pe marginea prãpastiei

)

(Bucharest:

Monitorul Oficial

and Imprimeriile Statului and Imprimeria Centralã, 1941).

2. Auricã Simion,

Regimul politic din România în perioada septembrie 1940 ianuarie 1941

(Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1976), pp. 68, 76.

3. Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã: Suferinþele evreilor din România, 1940-1944

, vol. 1,

Legionarii ºi

Rebeliunea

(Bucharest: Diogene, 1996), pp. 56-57.

110

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

movement. Although German intelligence indicated that the Legion was not pleased by

this visit, the eventual outcome was an organization modeled largely on the structural

and functional blueprints of the SS.

With regard to its personnel, it is worth noting that

in September 1940, the official publication of the Antonescu regime described the

Legionary Police as an assembly of unskilled, uneducated, ruthless and underprivileged

people.

The Legionnaires also colonized the Ministry of Interior and occupied key

positions in the National Police Headquarters (

Direc]ia General\ a Poli]iei

). Another

direct terror organization controlled by the Legion was the Corps of Legionary Workers

(

Corpul Muncitoresc Legionar

CML), a so-called labor union established in 1936 and

strengthened after King Carol II banned unions proper. After September 1940, this

organization was reorganized in the form of a paramilitary unit (

garnizoan\

Students represented another recruiting pool for the Legions death squads. Since its

establishment in the early twenties, the National Union of Christian Students (NUCS)

unequivocally held the banning of Jewish students from universities as one of its main

objectives. After September 1940, NUCS became an actual terrorist organization con-

trolled by the Legion. The head of this student organization, Viorel Trifa, was a

Nazi-educated student leader. This was a new student organization modeled on the

leadership system of German students so that the organization would fit into the authori-

tarian structure of the new Romanian state.

The Iron Guard also recruited from

middle school and high school students who had been instilled with the imagery of the

slain Codreanu as a kind of Orthodox saint and guardian of the Romanian people. The

Legion failed to make the army join its ranks, yet many retired army officers did offer

their skills to assist in organizing the Legions paramilitary units.

Legion leaders or-

dered these organizations and groups of individuals to commit murder, taking care to absolve

them of their responsibility by inundating them with religious language and symbols.

Likewise, clergymen who joined the Legion granted these proselytes moral absolution,

while Legion leaders told them that the time of revenge on all the opponents of the Iron

Guard was near.

Finally, it should be stressed that while the Legion controlled the

county

Prefecturi

as well as the Ministry of Interior and the Bucharest Police Headquar-

ters, Antonescu controlled the army, the gendarmerie, and the Intelligence Service.

The Anti-Jewish Attacks Orchestrated by the National Legionary State

On November 27, 1940, several Legionary terror squads carried out revenge for the

assassination of C.Z. Codreanu. These actions were directed against leaders of the Royal

Dictatorship and against Jews. As a result, sixty-five former leaders of the Royal Dicta-

torship were murdered in their Jilava prison cells. Two days later, Legion assassins shot

former prime minister Nicolae Iorga. These events poisoned the Legions relationship

with Antonescu, and particularly his relationship with Horia Sima, the commander of

4. Wilhelm Hoettl,

The Secret Front: The Story of the Nazi Political Espionage

(London, 1953), p. 178.

Asasinatele de la Jilava, Snagov ºi Strejnicu, 26-27 noiembrie 1940

(Bucharest:

Monitorul Oficial

and Imprimeriile Statului, 1941), p. 166.

6. Horia Sima,

Era libertãþii. Statul naþional-legionar

(Madrid: Editura Mi[c\rii Legionare, 1982),

pp. 137-139.

7. Simion,

op. cit.

, pp. 92, 96.

Pe marginea prãpastiei

, vol. 2, pp. 85-87

111

FINAL REPORT

the Legion. The revenge against Jews commenced with illegal fines and taxes and

progressed to random searches and arrests, robberies, deportation from villages, torture,

rapes, and Nazi-style public humiliation, and they increased in number as the day of

open confrontation with Antonescu neared. On November 29, Antonescu ordered the

Legionary Police to disarm.

The intended effects of his order, however, were attenuated

by the minister of interior, who ordered the transfer of competent staff from the

Legionary police to regular police units.

The Evacuation and Expropriation of Rural Jews

The deportation of Jews from villages in many regions of Romania is of particular

importance, as the isolation of Jews from the rural population always figured high in the

anti-Semitic narrative of the Legion and the Legions intellectual references.

In addi-

tion, the deportation aimed to seize Jewish property. These actions were illegal, even by

the standards of the anti-Semitic legislation adopted by the National Legionary govern-

ment. The deportation campaign was well planned, and the deportation order was issued

verbally by the interior minister.

The campaign started in October 1940 and basically

ended two months later in December. Local Legion commanders were the chief organ-

izers. Jews were deported from dozens of villages where they had lived for more than a

hundred years.

Specially-established commissions for the administration of Jewish

property took part in the expropriation proceedings before county courts.

In smaller

villages, the robbers whether they were Legionnaires or ordinary citizens were

unconcerned about the illegality of their actions. Only in larger villages and small towns

did they bother to force Jews to sign sales contracts, and the agreement to sell was

sometimes obtained after the owner had been illegally detained.

As a consequence of these actions, Jews residing in the countryside became refugees

in county capitals, where they took up residence with Jewish families that were them-

selves subject to robberies. Some of the elderly deportees were veterans of Romanias

wars, who proudly wore their military medals. By mid-December 1940, the Legion-

naires were confident enough to start robbing Jews in Bucharest of their property. Homes

and other immovable property were prized. After severe beatings Jewish owners reluc-

tantly signed sales contracts and requests for the termination of rent contracts.

The

deportees never returned to their homes, as Antonescu himself agreed that deportation

was desirable. Out of 110,000 Jews residing in the countryside, about 10,000 of them

became refugees.

9. Simion,

op. cit.

, p. 400;

Pe marginea prãpastiei

, p. 201.

10.

Ibid.

, p. 13.

11. Sima,

op. cit.

, pp. 251, 253; Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 203.

12.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, p. 203.

13.

Ibid.

, p. 152.

14. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

(hence-

forth: Ancel,

Documents

) (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), vol. 2, no. 37, pp. 75-76.

15. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 152; for the list of the villages,

ibid.

, pp. 152-153.

16.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 42, p. 84.

17. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 1, no. 138, p. 556; Alexandru ªafran,

Memorii

(Jerusalem, 1991), p. 55.

112

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Army units located far from Bucharest also took part in the Legions anti-Jewish

actions. On Yom Kippur (October 12) in 1940, for example, army personnel participated

in a Legion-organized day of terror in C^mpulung Moldovenesc, a town controlled, in

effect, by Vasile Iaºinschi, the Legionary minister of labor, health, and social welfare.

Thus, Colonel Mociulschi, commander of the local army base, ordered army soldiers to

prevent Jews from entering or leaving their homes while police and Legionary squads

burgled and pillaged. The booty was collected in the local Legion headquarters. Later,

the local rabbi, Iosef Rubin, was tortured and humiliated (he was made to pull a wagon,

which his son was forced to drive), and the synagogue was vandalized and robbed.

A particularly harsh episode was the forced exile and even deportation of what the

regime called foreign Jews (roughly 7,700 people in 1940). Antonescu gave the order

and set a two-month deadline for all foreign Jews to leave Romanian territory.

Hundreds

of them were subsequently arrested and their property confiscated. The arrested were

then taken to Dorne[ti, a new customs point on the Soviet border, where they were forced

to walk on Soviet territory. Since Romanian authorities did not inform the Soviets about

this, the Soviet border patrol shot to death dozens of these foreign Jews. After similar

episodes were repeated, the Romanian authorities decided to intern the survivors in the

C\l\ra[i-Ialomi]a camp in southern Romania.

The Bucharest Pogrom

The fate of Romanian Jews during the brief term of the National Legionary government

depended on the developments in the power struggles taking place within the Legion as

well as between Antonescu and the Legion. Various Nazi officials, including representa-

tives at the German embassy in Bucharest, German intelligence officers, and members of

the German minority from Transylvania, indirectly contributed to the fate of Romanian

Jews through their influence on relations between Antonescu and the Legion.

As the Legion grew rich by taking possession of most Jewish property, Marshal

Antonescu and his supporters began to perceive the Legion as a threat. The Marshal

agreed that Jews should lose their property, yet he did not agree with the means and pace

of expropriation. Neither did he agree with the fact that an organization and individuals,

rather than the Romanian state and Romanian people, benefited from these actions. This

conflict demonstrates that the confrontation between the Legion and Antonescu was not

a confrontation between a gross, violent anti-Semitism and a compassionate, humane

attitude, or between a savage form of nationalism and a form of opportunistic anti-Semitism.

Rather, the Legionnaires wanted everything, and they wanted it immediately; Antonescu,

while sharing the same goal, intended to achieve it gradually, using different methods.

The Marshal stated this clearly in an address to Legion-appointed ministers: Do you

really think that we can replace all Yids immediately? Government challenges are

addressed one by one, like in a game of chess.

By early January 1941, Antonescu was

18. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 1, no. 138, p. 556; ªafran,

op. cit.

, p. 55.

19.

Pe marginea prãpastiei

, vol. 1, p. 164

20. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 102, p. 344.

21.

Pe marginea prãpastiei

, vol. 1, pp. 178, 184.

113

FINAL REPORT

convinced that the Legions actions no longer served the interests of Romanian nation-

alism and that the Legion had become an instrument of extortion for its own members.

On January 14, 1941, Antonescu met Hitler in Obersalzberg and obtained agreement

on his plan to do away with the Legion.

The days preceding the Legionnaire rebellion

against Antonescu and the pogrom that occurred simultaneously were marked by strik-

ingly vehement anti-Semitic statements from the Legions propaganda apparatus. The

Legionary movements print media, while avowing its support of Nazi Germanys

anti-Semitic policies with increasing frequency, indicated in detail what was soon to

follow on the day of reckoning.

The rebellion began when armed Legionnaires

occupied the Bucharest Police headquarters, local police stations, the Bucharest City

Hall, several ministries, and other public buildings. When army soldiers attempted to

regain control of these buildings, the Legionnaires opened fire on them. Although Hitler

had granted him a free hand, Antonescu maneuvered cautiously in order to avoid

irritating the Nazi leadership in Berlin and to let the Legionnaires compromise them-

selves through their own actions.

This strategy included keeping the army on active

defensive. Until the evening of January 22, the armys actions were limited to returning

fire when shot at first and to encircling sites controlled by Legionnaires. This allowed the

Iron Guard to kill Jews and to pillage or burn their property unimpeded in several

counties of Bucharest. As a result, Jewish homes and businesses over several kilometers

on Dude[ti and V\c\re[ti streets were severely damaged. The army offensive ended the

rebellion on the morning of January 24.

At this point it was clear that the Bucharest pogrom was part of a Legion-drafted plan

and not the manifestation of a spontaneous outburst or the strategic exploitation of a

moment of anarchy. The pogrom was not a development isolated from the terrorist

atmosphere and policy typical of the National Legionary State, but the climax of the

progression. The army did not take part in the Bucharest pogrom. The perpetrators came

from the ranks of organizations controlled by the Legion: Legion members and mem-

bers of terrorist organizations, police from the Ministry of Interior and the

Siguran]\

(the

security police), and Bucharest

Prefectur\

personnel. Many ordinary civilians also

participated.

The minister of interior ordered the burning of Jewish districts on January 22, 1941;

this signaled the beginning of the pogrom.

Yet, the attack on the two Jewish districts as

well as on neighboring districts inhabited by Jews had, in effect, been launched at noon

the day before. Moreover, by January 20, 1941, the Legion had already started to launch

mass arrests of Jews, taking those apprehended to the Bucharest

Prefectur\

Almost two

thousand Jews, men and women from fifteen to eighty-five years old, were abusively

22. Sima,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, p. 282.

23.

Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945

, from the Archives of the German Foreign

Ministry,

series D (1937-1945), vol. 11, no. 652, pp. 1089-1191 (henceforth:

DGFP

24.

Cuvântul

, January 21, 1941.

25. Mihail E. Ionescu, Tehnica ºi resorturile teroarei în perioada dictaturii legionar-antonesciene, în

Împotriva fascismului

(Bucharest, 1971), p. 202; N. Mareº, Note despre asasinarea lui Madgearu

ºi Iorga, 4 decembrie 1942, CC/PCR Archive, fond 103, file no. 8218, p. 3.

26. S. Palaghiþ\,

Garda de Fier. Spre Învierea României

(Buenos Aires, 1951), p. 147.

27. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 77.

114

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

detained and then taken to the Legions fourteen torture centers (police stations, the

Bucharest

Prefectur\

, the Legion headquarters, Codreanus farm, the Jilava town hall,

occupied Jewish buildings, and the Bucharest slaughterhouse).

The arrested included

wealthy Jews and employees of Jewish public organizations.

The Bucharest slaughterhouse was the site of the most atrocious tortures. On the last

day of the rebellion, fifteen Jews were driven from the

Prefectur\

to the slaughterhouse,

where all of them were tortured and/or shot to death. Antonescu appointed a military

prosecutor to investigate the events. He reported that he recognized three of his acquaint-

ances among the professionally tortured bodies (lawyer Millo Beiler and the Rauch

brothers). He added, The bodies of the dead were hanged on the hooks used by

slaughterers.

Mihai Antonescus secretary confirmed the military prosecutors de-

scription and added that some of the victims were hooked up while still alive, to allow

the torturers to chop up their bodies.

Evidence indicates that the CML actively participated in the pogrom torturing,

killing, and looting. The Engineer G. Clime CML headquarters was a particularly

frightening torture center. There, CML teams tortured hundreds and shot dozens of men

and women.

Also, members of the CML selected ninety Jews of the two hundred who

had been tortured in the CML torture centers and drove them in trucks to the Jilava

forest. After leaving the trucks, these Jews were shot from a two-foot distance.

Eighty-six

naked bodies were found lying in the snow-covered forest, and the mouths of those with

gold teeth were horribly mutilated.

Rabbi Tzwi Gutman, who was shot twice, was

among the few who did not die in this massacre.

His two sons were killed. In all, 125 Jews

were killed during the Bucharest pogrom.

The Bucharest pogrom also introduced the

chapter of mass abuse of Jewish women, who were sometimes raped in the presence of

their families.

In addition to the slaughter, there were also severe Legionary attacks on synagogues

during the Bucharest pogrom. The assault began in the afternoon of January 21, cli-

maxed during that evening, and continued the next day. This was a predictable turn of

events because, since its establishment in 1927, Iron Guard rallies typically ended in acts

of vandalism directed against synagogues. The Legionnaires attacked all synagogues at

the same time, burning Torah scrolls, pillaging religious objects, money, furniture and

valuables, and vandalizing the interior of the synagogues. In some instances, the Legion-

naires began their attacks during the prayer, which happened at the Coral Temple (those

who were present at the time were taken to Jilava and killed). In the end, the perpetrators

set the synagogue on fire, and two burnt entirely to the ground. One of these was the

Cahal Grande Synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Europe. When fire brigades

alarmed that the fire might reach adjoining buildings came to put it out, they were

28.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, p. 186.

29. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 72, pp. 195-197;

Jurnalul de dimineaþã

, no. 57, January 21, 1945.

30. Gh. Barbul,

Mémorial Antonescu Le troisième homme de lAxe

(Paris: Couronne, 1950), vol. 1, p. 106.

31. Memo of the Federation, March 8, 1941.

32. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 72, pp. 195-197;

Jurnalul de dimineaþã

, no. 57, January 21, 1945.

33. Memo of the Federation, March 8, 1941, p. 297.

34.

Ibid.

, pp. 298-304.

35.

Ibid.

, p. 291. The list of victims can be found in the

Revista cultului mozaic

, no. 592.

36. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 72, p. 197

115

FINAL REPORT

prevented from doing so by the Legionnaires overseeing the scene.

Antonescus mili-

tary prosecutor who investigated the events gave a graphic description of what he saw:

The Spanish Temple seemed like a giant torch that lugubriously lit the capitals sky. The

Legionnaires performed a devilish dance next to the fire while singing The Aria of

Legionnaire Youth and some were kicking three naked women into the fire. The wretched

victims shrieks of despair tore through the sky.

Finally, the Legionnaires, their affiliated organizations, and regular mobs all partici-

pated in destroying and pillaging Jewish commercial and private property during the

pogrom. Some homes were burned down or completely demolished. In total, 1,274 buil-

dings commercial and residential were destroyed.

The Federation of Jewish Com-

munities in Romania evaluated the damage to be worth 383 million lei (this sum also

includes the damage to synagogues).

After the Legionary rebellion was put down, the

army found 200 trucks loaded with jewels and cash.

The Political and Ideological Foundations

of the Antonescu Regime (February-June 1941)

The Antonescu regime arose against the backdrop of tumultuous political and social

developments in Romania during the thirties. The national-totalitarian regime, the

regime of national and social restoration, as Antonescu described it, was an attempt to

realize nationalist ideas and demands, which preceded the 1940 crisis, when Romania

was thrown into turmoil after being forced to cede parts of its territory to its neighbors.

However, even as this crisis precipitated Antonescus rise to power, his regime owed its

existence to Nazi rule in Eastern Europe.

The Antonescu regime, which was rife with ideological contradictions and was

considerably different from other fascist regimes in Europe, remains difficult to classify.

It was a fascist regime that dissolved the Parliament, joined the Axis Powers, enacted

anti-Semitic and racial legislation, and adopted the Final Solution in parts of its

territory. At the same time, however, Antonescu brutally crushed the Romanian Legion-

ary movement and denounced their terrorist methods. Moreover, some of Romanias

anti-Semitic laws, including the Organic Law, which was the basis for Antonescus

anti-Semitic legislation, were in force before Antonescu assumed power. And, the re-

gime did succeed in sparing half of the Jews under its rule during the Holocaust.

The political and ideological foundations of Antonescus regime were established

earlier by prominent Romanian intellectuals, extremist right-wing and traditional anti-Semitic

movements, nationalist politicians who opposed democracy in Romania, and nationalist

37. Memo of the Federation, March 8, 1941, p. 304.

38. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 72, p. 197.

39. The list of burned buildings can be found in Carp,

op. cit.

, pp. 243-244.

40. Memo of the Federation to Antonescu (April 1, 1941), p. 339.

41.

Ibid.

, p. 377.

42. Letter dated June 23, 1941, from Antonescu to leaders of the opposition, Bucharest State Archive;

I.C. Drãgan (ed.),

Antonescu, Mareºalul României, ºi rãzboaiele de reîntregire

(Venice: Centrul

European de Cercet\ri Istorice, 1988), vol. 2, p. 213.

116

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

organizations and political parties that arose in the thirties under King Carol II. Even

prior to these developments, the Romanian system of parliamentary democracy had been

destabilized and its principles challenged from various quarters. Antonescu did not

redefine the goals of Romanian nationalism; rather, he sought to achieve them. Thus, it

appears that the political philosophy of the new regime, its methods of rule, and its

ideological-intellectual matrix were distinctly Romanian and not imported from Germany;

and they were inextricably bound with the local hatred of Jews.

Likewise, the underlying principles of Antonescus ethnocratic state were conceived

earlier in 1932 by Nichifor Crainic, the veteran Christian-nationalist and anti-Semitic

combatant who would serve for a brief spell as Antonescus minister of propaganda, and

by Octavian Goga, leader of the National Christian Party with A.C. Cuza.

Crainic

insisted that his program was an elaboration of the Romanian nationalism formulated as

early as 1909 by one of Romanias outstanding intellectuals, Nicolae Iorga: Romania

for Romanians, all Romanians, and only Romanians. The cosmopolitan, multi-cultural

foundation of the democratic state, Crainic pointed out, cannot create a nation-state.

Crainics concept of an ethnocratic state was also based on the fundamental principle that

the Jews pose a permanent threat to every nation-state.

His call for the nationalization

of Jewish property as well as other practical ideas, were translated into anti-Semitic

statutes under Antonescu and served as benchmarks for Antonescus policies. The core

of the Romanian rendition of fascism, as reflected in Antonescus regime without the

Legionnaires, consisted not only of anti-Semitism, but also the rejection of fundamental

Western philosophies: liberalism, tolerance, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of

the press, freedom of organization, open elections and civil rights.

After the Legionary rebellion was put down, the Antonescu regime considered itself

to be the successor of the political, cultural, and spiritual ideas of the anti-Semitic

nationalism of the Goga government. In short, the Antonescu regime adopted the objec-

tives of this Romanian fascist ideology rather than drawing upon the principles of

National Socialism. Antonescus regime without the Legionnaires did not negate the

anti-Semitic legacy of the Legionary movement

and did not cease the state onslaught on

the Judaic faith and values or on humanist values. Rather than negating the anti-Semitic

legacy of the Legionary movement, the Antonescu regime made it clear that it would

continue the anti-Semitic policies of the National Legionary government.

An anti-Semitic

journal even warned the Jews who felt relieved after the repression of the Legionary

rebellion to stop deluding themselves, because the repression was not ordered by

Antonescu to soothe the Jewish community.

The nature, timing and span of Antonescus policies vis-à-vis the Jews depended

solely on his own initiatives. After the repression of the Legionary uprising and at the

very beginning of his term as sole Leader (

Conducãtor

) before he accepted Hitlers

arguments about the necessity of the Final Solution Antonescu outlined the blueprints

43. See Gogas speech and political program,

Timpul

, January 2, 1938.

44. Nichifor Crainic,

Programul statului etnocratic

(Bucharest: Colecþia Naþionalistã, 1938), pp. 3-5,

12.

45. See Crainics statement to the press:

Timpul

, January 4, 1941.

46.

Porunca vremii

, March 7, 1941.

117

FINAL REPORT

of his policies vis-à-vis the Jews in the Old

Regat

and southeastern Transylvania. The

basic principles of these policies were valid until the beginning of the war against the

Soviet Union and were published in the press, which advocated a radical solution to the

Jewish issue inspired by the tenets of radical nationalism, and threatened that any

other approach should be considered a betrayal of Romanianism.

The main components

of this policy as it was implemented during the following months were: continuing

Romanianization using state-sanctioned means (legislation, trials, expropriations) rather

than terror; the gradual elimination of Jews from the national economy (based on his

assumption that Jews had great economic power, which led to undue influence in other

realms); and the integration of anti-Jewish repression in the regimes official plans,

designed to lead to such aspects of national rejuvenation as the creation of an (ethnic)

Romanian commercial class and of an (ethnic) Romanian-controlled economy. At the

beginning of his term Antonescu adopted a cautious attitude:

I will solve the Jewish problem simultaneously with my reorganization of the state by

gradually replacing Jews in the national economy with Romanian public servants. The Legion-

naires will have priority and time to prepare for public service. Jewish property shall be largely

nationalized in exchange for indemnities. The Jews who entered Romania after 1913 shall be

removed as soon as this becomes possible, even though they have since acquired citizenship.

Jews will be allowed to live, yet they will not be allowed to capitalize on the resources of this

country. Romanians must benefit first. For the rest, this will be possible only if opportunities

remain.

Like the 1937 Goga government, Antonescu also waged a symbolic war against

Judaism, which the regime, the press, and some Romanian Orthodox Church clergy

portrayed as satanic, deviant, and anti-Christian. Additionally, Jews were directly blamed

for causing the regimes domestic difficulties ensuring the general welfare of the

citizenry.

The Antonescu regime was not revolutionary in terms of its intellectual proponents

or the composition of the civil service. Basically, with few exceptions, the civil servants

of past regimes of all political stripes (including high-ranking civil servants, such as

ministers), the professional class, middle class, and academics showed growing support

for the regime. Motivated by their fear that the Romanian economy would otherwise fall

into Nazi hands, even Liberal Party members joined in this effort (Antonescu appointed

a Liberal Party member as minister of the economy). This widespread collaboration of

mainstream Romanian politicians and intellectuals does not, however, mean that all

Romanians identified with the anti-Semitism of the Antonescu regime. The anti-Semitic

press indicated the existence of several pockets of intellectual resistance in the Roma-

nian majority which rejected the regimes onslaught against the Jews.

Ultimately, Antonescus regime was not the embodiment of the most intense Roma-

nian extremist anti-Semitism and nationalism. During the Second World War, there were

even more extremist anti-Semitic political groups, such as the Legionnaires, who were

47.

Timpul

, February 20, 1941.

48.

Timpul

, September 30, 1940.

49. Filderman, Draft of Memoirs, Yad Vashem Archive, P-6/58, p. 151.

50.

~nvierea

, April 27, 1941.

118

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

ready to act on their hatred and exterminate the Jews. Unlike them, Antonescu was also

guided by strategic considerations, at least in regard to the Jews in the

Regat

and southern

Transylvania, since he understood their usefulness to Romania. Moreover, even his anti-

-Semitic legislation excluded specific categories of Jews, such as decorated and reenlisted

soldiers, considered to have made a real contribution to the welfare of Romania.

Forced Labor under the Antonescu Regime

The Antonescu regime continued the forced labor campaign started under the National

Legionary State. Jews were ordered to pay the so-called military taxes officially levied

because Jews were exempt from mandatory army service and to do community work

under army supervision.

In total, 84,042 Jews, aged eighteen to fifty, were registered to

supply free labor.

Some Jews were ordered to work in their own towns, which was

usually an opportunity for public humiliation, while others had to work in labor camps

on construction sites and in the fields, under military jurisdiction. Jewish labor detach-

ments were used to build an extra set of railway tracks between such far-away towns as

Bucharest and Craiova, Bucharest and Urziceni, or Bumbe[ti-Livezeni-Petro[ani.

Life and work conditions in these camps were horrendous.

Medical assistance was

scarce and hygiene precarious. The sick and the crippled were sometimes forced to work

and, as the mobilization was done in haste and with little bureaucratic organization,

many workers had to wear their summer clothes until December 1941, when labor camps

were temporarily closed. In some camps, Jews had to buy their own tools and pay for

their own food, and livable accommodation was provided only when guards and admin-

istrators were bribed. When work needed to be done around villages, rural notables

(priests, teachers) usually expressed fear that Jews would be placed in peasant homes,

concerned as they were about the destructive influence Jews might have on peasants.

Explicit orders were given that accommodation for Jewish workers could not be provided

within a three-kilometer radius around Romanian villages.

In exchange for an official ransom, Jews declared useful to the economy were

exempted from forced labor and allowed to have jobs. As the decision to grant useful

status to a Jew was an important source of corruption, top military and civilian

leadership vied for control of the revision process the review of the situation of

working Jews, which began in March 1942. The civilian bureaucracy, led by Radu

Lecca who headed the government department charged with solving the Jewish is-

sue, temporarily won the power struggle over the military, which nevertheless contin-

ued to be involved. This was, in fact, a state-sanctioned mechanism of extortion that

enriched army and civilian bureaucrats who were empowered to establish the amount

of the ransom. It resulted in the strengthening of the culture of bribery in the Romanian

administrative and military systems, which contrasted violently with the tough stance

51. Instructions on the Decree no. 3984 of December 5, 1940,

Monitorul Oficial

, 113 (July 14, 1941),

pp. 5-8.

52. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 21, p. 251.

53. For an extended description, see

ibid.

, vol. 3; Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, pp. 190-197.

119

FINAL REPORT

of the regime.

It was also decided that the ones unable to work or pay a high ransom

were to be deported.

In June 1942, the Chief of Staff ordered that Jewish workers who

committed certain breaches of work and discipline (lack of diligence, failure to notify

changes of address, sexual relations with ethnic Romanian women) were to be deported

to Transnistria along with their families.

Those Jews in labor detachments often met

with severe punishment, such as whipping and clubbing.

In the end, the essence of the revision was that the labor camp system was

considered to be damaging to the economy. So, beginning in 1942, labor detachments

became the preferred system. However, this reorganization of the Jewish compulsory

labor system was also an abysmal failure, even according to a report of the Chief of Staff

issued in November 1943, which

concluded that the Romanian economy could not do

without the skills of the Jewish population.

This episode in the life of Romanian Jewry

left deep social scars. Many careers were ruined, the education of Jewish youth was

interrupted, old Jewish authority structures and practices broke down, and the corruption

of the exemption system undermined upright social mores. Many became very sick or

crippled and dozens, maybe hundreds, perished.

The Evacuation of Jews from Small Towns and Villages

during the Antonescu Regime

Ion Antonescu continued what had begun under the National Legionary State: the

evacuation of Jews from villages and small towns. On June 18, 1941, he ordered these

Jews to be moved to county (

jude]

) capitals and borroughs. Some of these capitals had

only a meager Jewish presence, so the rural Jews were crowded into warehouses,

abandoned buildings, synagogues, Jewish community buildings, and other precarious

forms of accommodation. The local Jewish communities could not cope with the needs

of the evacuated rural Jews, whose household belongings had been confiscated upon

deportation.

Male Jews, eighteen to sixty years old and living in the area between the Siret and

Prut Rivers, were ordered to be interned in the T^rgu-Jiu camp in southern Romania.

The Jews evacuated from Dorohoi and southern Bukovina as well as the survivors of the

Iaºi death train were interned in other southern Romanian camps in the counties of

Romanaþi, Dolj, Vlasca, and Cãlãraºi-Ialomiþa. Many Jews were declared hostages by

order of Antonescu himself.

Antonescu ordered his chief of staff to set up several

54. For a description of the scope and form of corruption practices in the exemption system, see the

memoirs of Radu Lecca himself:

Eu i-am salvat pe evreii din Rom^nia

(Bucharest: Roza

Vânturilor), pp. 180-181.

55. Government press release,

Universul

, November 24, 1941.

56. Instrucþiuni generale ale M.St.M., no. 55500, June 27, 1942; Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 21,

pp. 32-44.

57. Note of Antonescus Military Cabinet, November 17, 1943, Romanian State Archives in

Bucharest, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Military Cabinet, file no. 4/1943, p. 167.

58. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 210, p. 497.

59.

Ibid.

, no. 166, pp. 451-452.

120

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

temporary labor camps in southern Romania.

As one intelligence officer later stated,

this was part of a larger strategy to remove Moldavian Jews through deportation and

extermination.

The property of the evacuated Jews was nationalized, and some of it

was simply looted by locals. During the evacuation, villagers often openly expressed

their joy at the Jews departure and insulted, humiliated, or attacked them. On several

occasions the deportation trains stopped in the same train stations as military trains on

the way to the front, and many soldiers used the opportunity to show their approval of the

deportation or to use violence against the Jews.

By July 31, 1941, the number of evacuees had reached 40,000 people.

Four hundred

forty-one villages and small towns were thus cleansed.

Jews were forced to wear a

distinctive patch beginning in July/August, though Antonescu repealed the measure on

September 9, 1941, after Fildermans protests. The revocation, however, did not apply to

Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria, for whom a special degree was

issued.

The obligation to wear the distinctive badge revealed Romanians anti-Semitism,

as numerous ordinary people displayed excessive zeal in making sure their Jewish compa-

triots wore their patches, and wore them properly.

As the deportations had a grave

impact on the economic life of many villages and towns, Antonescu grew concerned by

September 1941 and took steps to divide Jews into two categories: useful and use-

less to the economy. This represented his first step away from complete Romanianization:

There are certain Jews who we cannot replace... We forced between 50,000 and 60,000

Jews out of villages and small towns, and we moved them into cities where they are now

a burden to the Jewish communities there, since they have to feed them.

The Iaºi Pogrom: The First Stage

of the Physical Destruction of Romanian Jewry

The evacuation of Jews from Iaºi where 45,000 Jews were living on June 29, 1941

was part of a plan to eliminate the Jewish presence in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

Moldavia.

Cleansing the land meant the immediate liquidation of all Jews in the

countryside, the incarceration in ghettos of Jews found in urban centers, and the deten-

tion of all persons suspected of being Communist Party activists. It was the Romanian

60. Summary of the government session of July 22, 1941, Archive of the Ministry of Interior, file

no. 40010, vol. 11, p. 27.

61. Testimony of Col. Traian Borcescu, chief of the SSI counterespionage division, November 12,

1945,

ibid.

, file no. 108233, vol. 24, p. 122 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives

[

henceforth: USHMM

]

, RG 25.004M, microfilm 47).

62. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 197, p. 492.

63.

Ibid

., vol. 3, no. 368, pp. 598-611.

64. Decree no. 3303/1941 of the General Chief of Staff, August 8, 1941, NDM, Fourth Army

Collection, file no. 79, p. 138.

65. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3, no. 62, p. 115.

66. Minutes of the September 9, 1941, government session, NDM, file no. 40010, vol. 77, p. 52.

67. Telephone Communication from prefect of Iaºi, Captaru, to Ministry of Interior in Bucharest,

June 29, 1941. Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 40010, vol. 89, p. 478; a copy can be found

in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 36.

121

FINAL REPORT

equivalent of the Final Solution. The pogrom against the Jews of Iaºi was carried out

under express orders from Ion Antonescu that the city be cleansed of all Jews and that

any Jew who opened fire on Romanian or German soldiers should be eliminated without

mercy. Section Two of the General Headquarters of the Romanian army and the Special

Intelligence Service (SSI) laid the groundwork for the Iaºi pogrom and supplied the

pretext for punishing the citys Jewish population, while German army units stationed in

the city assisted the Romanian authorities.

On June 27, 1941, Ion Antonescu issued the formal order to evacuate Jews from the

city via telephone directly to Col. Constantin Lupu, commander of the Iaºi

garrison.

Lupu was instructed to take steps to cleanse Iaºi of its Jewish population.

On the

night of June 28/29, as army, police, and gendarmerie units were launching the arrests

and executions, Antonescu telephoned again to reiterate the evacuation order. Lupu made

careful note of his mission:

Issue a notice signed by you in your capacity as military commander of the city of Iaºi,

based on the existing government orders, adding:

In light of the state of war... if anyone opens fire from a building, the house is to be

surrounded by soldiers and all its inhabitants arrested, with the exception of children. Follow-

ing a brief interrogation, the guilty parties are to be executed. A similar punishment is to be

implemented against those who hide individuals who have committed the above offenses.

The evacuation of the Jewish population from Iaºi is essential, and shall be carried out in full,

including women and children. The evacuation shall be implemented

pachete-pachete

[

batch

by batch

]

, first to Roman and later to Târgu-Jiu. For this reason, you are to arrange the matter

with the Ministry of Interior and the county prefecture. Suitable preparations must be made.

Before these orders were issued, an understanding was reached with the commander

of the German army corps (the

Wehrmacht

) in Iaºi about the methods to be employed

against the Jews. But Colonel Lupu was unable to control the situation and faithfully

carry out Antonescus order, and was therefore stripped of his post on July 2, 1941.

During his court-martial by the Fourth Army Corps in January 1942, the order he had

received from the Marshal and his deputy, Mihai Antonescu, came to light.

The expulsion of the Jews from Moldavia was part of a larger plan, influenced by the

belief of Ion and Mihai Antonescu in the German armys ultimate victory, which would

also encompass the physical extermination of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina.

The

first step of this plan, according to Ion Antonescus order to General Steflea, then chief

of the army general staff, was to identify all Yids, communist agents, or their sympa-

thizers, by county

[

in Moldavia

]

so that the Ministry of Interior could track them,

restrict their freedom of movement, and ultimately dispose of them when and how Ion

68. Lupu to Gen. Antonescu, July 25, 1941, Romanian State Archives, fond Presidency of the Council

of Ministers, file no. 247/41, f. 10.

69. Telephone order, June 28/29, 11:00 p.m. Investigative file in matter of Col. (res.) Constantin

Lupu, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233, vol. 28, p. 183; copy in USHMM,

RG 25.004M,

roll 48.

70. Testimony of Col. Traian Borcescu, November 12, 1945. Ministry of Interior Archives, file

no. 108233, vol. 24, p. 122; copy in USHMM, roll 47. Ion Antonescu explicitly referred to this

unwritten plan in the directives he sent from the front to Mihai Antonescu on September 5, 1941;

see I. Antonescu to M. Antonescu, September 5, 1941, Archvies of Office of Prime Minister, file

no. 167/1941, pp. 64-65.

122

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Antonescu chose.

The second step was to evacuate Jews from all villages in Moldavia,

and to intern some of them in the Târgu-Jiu camp in southern Romania.

The final step

was to provide grounds for these actions by transforming Iaºis Jews into potential

collaborators with the Soviet enemy, thereby justifying retaliatory action against rebels

who had not yet rebelled. To achieve this, Antonescu issued a special order, which was

relayed by the security police (

Siguranþa

) to police headquarters in Iaºi on June 27,

1941: Since the

Siguran]\

headquarters has become aware that certain Jews have

hidden arms and ammunition, we hereby request that you conduct thorough and meticu-

lous searches in the apartments of the Jewish population...

On the basis of Antonescus order to General Steflea, directives were issued to the

Ministry of Interior, which commanded the gendarmerie and police, and the Ministry of

Propaganda, headed by Mihai Antonescu. These directives were then translated into an

actual plan of operation by military command structures (Military Cabinet and Section

Two) and the SSI in coordination with the two ministries. Antonescus second order to

Colonel Lupu to evacuate all 45,000 of the citys Jews and his authorization to execute

any Jew who attacked the army, in effect gave the gendarmerie and police

carte

blanche

to torture and murder Jews and to evacuate thousands of them by rail to southern

Romania.

The SSI, by order of Antonescu and the General Staff, established a special unit

shortly after Antonescus meeting with Hitler on June 11, 1941. Operation Echelon

No. 1 (

Eºalonul I Operativ

) also known as the Special Echelon consisted of some

160 people, including auxiliary personnel, selected from the most talented, reliable, and

daring members of the SSI. Their assignment was to protect the home front from acts

of espionage, sabotage, and terror.

The Echelon left Bucharest for Moldavia on

June 18, accompanied by a Romanian-speaking officer from the Intelligence Service of

the German army, Major Hermann Stransky, who served as liaison between the

Abwehr

and the SSI.

On June 26, anti-Semitic agitation in the local press suddenly intensified. At the same

time, the police were flooded with reports from Romanians claiming that Jews were

signalling enemy aircraft, hiding paratrooper agents, holding suspicious gatherings, and

the like. The emergence of this psychosis was no accident; it was contrived by the

Section Two and the Special Echelon. The scheme behind the pogrom was explained in

advance to the 14

Division headquarters and the commanders of the police and gendar-

merie.

On June 26, against a backdrop of threats issued in the local press by General

Stavrescu, commander of the 14

Division, Romanian soldiers (many of whom were

71. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 39.

72. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 136, pp. 414-415.

73. Order to Iaºi police headquarters from

Siguranþã

, June 27, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file

no. 40010, vol. 89, p. 283; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 36.

74. Testimony of Cristescu, July 4, 1947, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233, vol. 54, p. 226;

Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 42-43. It is plausible that

Einsatzgruppe

D served as a model for

this special unit; for more information on the temporary deployment of

Einsatzgruppe

on Roma-

nian territory in Bessarabia, see: Jean Ancel, The Jassy

[

Iaºi

]

Syndrome (I) (henceforth:

Ancel, Jassy Syndrome),

Romanian Jewish Studies

, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 36-38.

75. Affidavit of Col. Captaru, May 1946, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233, vol. 36, p. 46;

copy in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 43.

123

FINAL REPORT

inebriated)

began to break into Jewish flats near their camps on the outskirts of the city.

Although some who joined in the rioting or looting were former Legionnaires and their

followers as well as supporters of Cuzas anti-Semitic movement, most were civilians

who armed themselves or were given weapons in advance of the anti-Jewish actions.

Other signs of impending violence included the mobilization of young Jews to dig

huge ditches in the Jewish cemetery about a week before the pogrom

and the marking

with crucifixes of houses inhabited by Christians.

The next stage of preparation

began on June 27, when authorities officially accused the Jews of responsibility for

Soviet bombings. All heads of administration in Iaºi convened at the palace of the

prefect ostensibly to reach decisions regarding law and order to deploy the forces that

were to participate in the pogrom. False attacks on soldiers were then organized to rouse

the soldiers anger and create the impression of a Jewish uprising and the need for strict

measures against it. Jewish guilt was thus already a

fait accompli

. At 9:00 p.m. on

June 28, an air alert was sounded and several German aircraft flew over the city, one of

them signaling with a blue flare. Shots were immediately heard throughout the city,

chiefly from the main streets where army units marched their way to the front.

The

numerous shots fired wherever there were soldiers posted in full battle dress created the

impression of a great battle, and Romanian military men accompanied by armed civilians

began their attack on wealthy Jews residing in the city center where the false shootings

had taken place.

Pillaging, rape, and murder of Jews began in the outskirts of Iaºi on the night of

June 28/29. Groups of thugs broke into their homes and terrorized them. The survivors

were taken to police headquarters (

Chestur\

). Organizers of the pogrom, such as General

Stavrescu, reported that the Judeo-communists and Soviet pilots, whose planes had

been shot down, had opened fire on the Romanian and German soldiers. In response,

Romanian troops and gendarmes surrounded the buildings from which the shots had

been fired, along with entire neighborhoods, and evacuated those arrested men, women

and children to police headquarters. The guilty were also executed on the spot by the

German/Romanian forces that captured them.

Romanian officials who were either

unaware of the plan or knew only part of it, recounted the start of the pogrom differently.

For example, Nicolae Captaru, prefect of the county of Iaºi, who had no knowledge of

the plan, reported to the Ministry of Interior: There are those who believe that the

shots were the act of organized individuals seeking to cause panic among the army units

and civilian population... According to the findings gathered thus far, it has been shown

that certain individuals are attempting to place the blame on the Jews of the city with the

76. Excerpt of Iaºi pogrom trial, June 26, 1946, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233, vol. 1,

section 2, p. 11; copy in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 47.

77. Testimony of Natan Goldstein, n.d.

[

August 1945

]

, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233,

vol. 31, part 1, p. 62; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 41; Testimony of Gheorghe

Leahu, October 29, 1945, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233, vol. 26; copy in

USHMM, roll 48.

78. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, no. 44, p. 110.

79.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 43, p. 108.

80. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 9, p. 35.

81. Report on pogrom, June 30, 1941, by Stavrescu to Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Interior

Archives, file no. 40010, vol. 89, pp. 475-476; copy located in Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, no. 39, p. 93.

124

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

aim of inciting the Romanian army, the German army, and also the Christian population

against the Jews in order to provoke the mass murder of Jews.

Those participating in the manhunt launched on the night of June 28/29 were, first

and foremost, the Iaºi police, backed by the Bessarabia police and gendarmerie units.

Other participants were army soldiers, young people armed by SSI agents, and mobs who

robbed and killed, knowing they would not have to account for their actions. The

implementation of the Iaºi pogrom consisted of five basic elements: (1) spreading

rumors that Jews had shot at the army; (2) warning the Romanian residents of what

was about to take place; (3) fostering popular collaboration with the security forces;

(4) marking Christian and Jewish homes; and finally (5) inciting rioters to murder, rape,

and rob.

Similar methods were used in the pogrom plotted and carried out by Romanian

units in Dorohoi one year earlier in July 1940.

In addition to informing on Jews, directing soldiers to Jewish homes and refuges, and

even breaking into homes themselves, some

Romanian residents of Iaºi also took part in

the arrests and humiliation forced upon the convoys of Jews on their way to the

Chestur\

The perpetrators included neighbors of Jews, known and lesser-known supporters of

anti-Semitic movements, students, poorly-paid, low-level officials, railway workers,

craftsmen frustrated by Jewish competition, white-collar workers, retirees and mili-

tary veterans. The extent to which they enlisted in the cause of thinning Iaºis Jewish

population as the pogrom was described at a Cabinet meeting in Bucharest

is a topic

in and of itself, and worthy of separate study. War criminals among Romanians numbered

in the hundreds, and not all of them were located and identified after the war.

The idea of the pogrom crystallized in the headquarters of the General Staff and its secret

branch, Section Two, and in the SSI. These offices collaborated with the

Wehrmacht

Romania and the headquarters of the German 30

Army Corps in Iaºi. During the course

of the pogrom, Romanian authorities lost control of events, and the city of Iaºi became

a huge area in which the soldiers of both armies, the gendarmes, and Romanian policemen

and civilians organized and unorganized hunted down Jews, robbed them, and killed

them. This temporary loss of control and the fear of Antonescus reaction to it led the various

branches of the Romanian regime to fabricate excuses for their ineffectiveness in the final

hours of the mayhem, casting the blame on each other and, together, on the Germans.

The German soldiers in Iaºi acted on the basis of an understanding with the Romanian

army.

They were divided into cells and sent out to arrest Jews, assigned to escort

convoys, and stationed at the entrance to the

Chestur\

. They, too, broke into homes

82. Report of Captaru to Interior Minister, June 29, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 40010,

vol. 89, p. 482.

83. 360 policemen gathered in Iaºi to be deployed in Chiºinãu and in other Bessarabian cities after the

liberation of the province. Most of them had served in Bessarabia before 1940.

84. Ancel, Jassy Syndrome, pp. 43-46.

85. Protocol from November 13, 1941, Cabinet meeting, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 40010,

vol. 78, p. 13; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 35.

86. List of 286 civilian participants in Iaºi pogrom, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 108233,

vol. 40, pp. 115-127; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 43. The list does not include

army personnel, gendarmes, and ordinary police, nor does it identify all the criminals.

87. See USHMM, RG 25.004M, file no. 108233.

88. Affidavit of Capt. Ioan Mihail, January 25, 1942, in Lupu file, Ministry of Interior Archives, file

no. 108233, vol. 29, p. 221; copy in USHMM, roll 48. Mihail served as interpreter during

conversation with General Salmuth.

125

FINAL REPORT

either with Romanian soldiers or alone and tormented Jews there and during the forced

march to the

Chestur\

. They shot into crowds of Jews and committed the same acts as

their Romanian counterparts. In addition, they photographed the pogrom, even going so

far as to stage scenes. It is important to note here that the units of

Einsatzgruppe

although they operated in territories reclaimed by Romania after June 22, 1941, did not

operate in Romania itself and thus did not participate in the Iaºi pogrom nor did any

other SS unit.

Antonescus administration did not allow the SS or Gestapo to operate on Roma-

nian territory after the Legionnaires revolt. The representatives of Himmler and of

the Foreign Department of the Nazi Party were forced to leave Romania in April

1941; they were joined, at Antonescus request, by the known Gestapo agents in

Romania.

The Iaºi Death Trains

On June 29, 1941, Mihai Antonescu ordered the deportation of all Jews from Iaºi,

including women and children.

The surviving Jews were taken to the railway station and

were beaten, robbed, and humiliated along the way.

Moreover, the Iaºi sidewalks were

piled with dead bodies, and the deportees had to walk over some of them along the street

leading to the station.

Once they were at the station, the deportees were forced to lie

face-down on the platform and in the square in front of the station. Romanian travelers

stepped on them as Romanian and German soldiers yelled that anyone raising his or her

head would be shot.

Finally, Jews were forced into freight train cars under a volley of

blows, bayonet cuts, clubbings and insults. Many railway workers joined the pandemo-

nium, hitting the deportees with their hammers.

The intention of extermination was clear from the very beginning. As it was later

established in the Iaºi trials, the train cars in which Jews were forced had been used for

the transport of carbide and therefore emitted a stifling odor. In addition, although no car

could accommodate more than forty people, between 120 and 150 Jews many of them

wounded were forcibly crammed inside. After the doors were safely locked behind

them, all windows and cracks were sealed.

Because of the summer heat and the lack

89. This conclusion is based on an examination of the reports of the

Einsatzgruppe

. See Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, and Helmut Krausnick and Hans Heinrich Wilhelm,

Die Truppe des Welt-

anschauungskrieges, die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-1942

(Stuttgart:

Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1981), pp. 195-200. See also Ancel, Jassy Syndrome.

90. Letter from Himmlers office to Ribbentrop, April 2, 1941,

DGFP

, vol. 7, no. 258, pp. 443-444.

91. Major Pl\[nil\ to Military Court, September 13, 1941, Ministry of the Interior,

Arhiva Operativã

file no. 108.233, p. 344.

92. Diary of Hirsch Zielle submitted to the Peoples Court, 1944, Archives of the Ministry of Interior,

vol. 37, p. 25; USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 3.

93. Testimony of Jean Haimovici, 1945, Archives of the Ministry of Interior, vol. 37, p. 49; USHMM,

RG 25.004M, roll 48.

94. Testimony of Manase Iscovici, September 7, 1944,

ibid.

, vol. 42, p. 403; USHMM,

ibid.

, roll 43.

95. Bucharest Tribunal Indictment, June 26, 1948, Archives of the Ministry of Interior, vol. 1, p. 59;

USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 47.

126

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of air, people would first go mad and then perish, according to a survivor.

The

deportation train would ride on the same route several times.

The second train to leave Iaºi for Podu Iloaiei was even more crowded (about 2,000 Jews

were crammed into twenty cars). The last car contained the bodies of eighty Jews who

had been shot, stabbed, or beaten.

In the summer heat, those crammed inside had to

wait for two hours until departure. During the night, one survivor recounted, some

of us went mad and started to yell, bite, and jostle violently; you had to fight them, as

they could take your life; in the morning, many of us were dead and the bodies were left

inside; they refused to give water even to our crying children, whom we were holding

above our heads.

When the doors of the train were opened, the surviving few heard the

guards calling on them to throw out the dead (because of the stench, they dared not come

too close. As it happened on a holiday, peasants from neighboring villages were brought

to see the communists who shot at the Romanian army, and some of the peasants

yelled, Kill them! Whats the point of giving them a free ride?

In the death train that left Iaºi for C\l\ra[i, southern Romania, which carried perhaps as

many as 5,000 Jews, only 1,011 reached their destination alive after seven days.

100

(The

Romanian police counted 1,258 bodies, yet hundreds of dead were thrown out of the train on

the way at Mirce[ti, Roman, S\b\oani, and Inote[ti.)

101

The death train to Podu Iloaiei (15

kilometers from Iaºi) had up to 2,700 Jews upon departure, of which only 700 disembarked

alive. In the official account, Romanian authorities reported that 1,900 Jews boarded the train

and only 1,194 died.

102

In total, up to 14,850 Jews were killed during the Iaºi pogrom. The

Romanian SSI acknowledged that 13,266 Jews died,

103

whereas the figure advanced by

the Jewish Community after carrying out its own census was 14,850.

104

In August 1942,

the army labor recruiting service in Iaºi reported that it could not find 13,868 Jews.

105

The Romanian Authorities and Solving the Jewish Problem

in Bessarabia and Bukovina

The special delegates of the

Reich

s government and of Mr. Himmler, as Mihai

Antonescu described them, arrived in Bucharest in March 1941 to discuss the fate of

Romanian Jewry. The delegation was comprised of several SS officers, a member of the

96. Testimony of Iancu Florea Rîmniceanu, June 18, 1948, Archives of the Ministry of Interior, vol. 1,

p. 699; USHMM,

RG 25.004M, roll 47.

97. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, p. 33.

98. Testimony of David Bandel, 1944, Archives of the Ministry of Interior, vol. 45, pp. 338-339;

USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 47.

99. Testimony of Israel Schleier, 1945,

ibid.

, vol. 24, p. 85.

100. Inventory, July 7, 1941, Archives of the Ministry of Interior, file no. 108233, vol. 37, p. 281.

101. Telephone Report no. 6125, July 1, 1941,

ibid.

, file no. 40010, vol. 89 (page no. illegible);

Report of Triandaf, July 1, 1941,

ibid.

, vol. 30, p. 217 (copy in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 49).

102. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, no. 64, p. 141.

103. Report of SSI Iaºi, July 23, 1943, Consiliul Securitãþii Statului, documentary fond, file no. 3041,

p. 327; Cristian Troncotã,

Eugen Cristescu, asul serviciilor secrete româneºti. Memorii

(Bucharest:

Roza Vânturilor, 1997), p. 119.

104. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 49.

105. Report of Georgescu to Romanian government, November 8, 1941, Romanian State Archives,

fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet collection, file no. 86/1941, p. 251.

127

FINAL REPORT

Gestapo, Eichmanns special envoy to Romania and the future attaché in charge of Jewish

affairs at the German Legation. They formally demanded, Mihai Antonescu would

later claim, that the control and organization of the Jews in Romania be left exclusively

to the Germans, as Germany was preparing an international solution to the Jewish

question. I refused.

106

But this was a lie; not only had Mihai Antonescu accepted, but

he bragged in government meetings that he and the

Conduc\tor

had consented. During

their third meeting on June 12, 1941, in Munich, Hitler revealed the Guidelines for the

Treatment of the Eastern Jews (

Richtlinien zur Behandlung der Ostjuden

) to Antonescu.

The Romanian leader later mentioned the document in an exchange of messages with the

German Foreign Office;

107

and Mihai Antonescu noted that he had reached an under-

standing with Himmlers envoys regarding the Jewish problem in an August 5 govern-

ment session. The agreements with the SS concerning the Jews in Bessarabia and

Bukovina were acknowledged during talks between Mihai Antonescu and Nazi foreign

minister

Joachim von

Ribbentrop at Hitlers Zhytomyr headquarters on September 23,

1942, when Ribbentrop asked Mihai Antonescu for continued Romanian cooperation to

exterminate the Jews in the Old Kingdom and southern Transylvania. Mihai Antonescu

agreed to deport the Jews of Romania and replied that in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

Transnistria an understanding had been reached with the SS for the execution of these

measures.

108

The adoption of the Final Solution was apparent in the

Conduc\tor

s rhetoric. On

June 22, 1941, he boasted that he had approached with courage the Romanianization

process,

109

disowned the Jews, and promoted cooperation with Germany in keeping with

the permanent interests of

our vital space

[

emphasis added

]

110

Anticipating Germanys

victory, Romanias leaders informed the government (on June 17/18, 1941) of their plans

for the Jewish population in the two provinces. The leadership left no doubt about the

significance of the order to cleanse the land. Mihai Antonescus July 3, 1941, speech

at the Ministry of Interior was distributed in limited-edition brochures entitled, Guide-

lines and Instructions for the Liberation Administration. Guideline 10 revealed the

regimes intentions regarding the Jews: This is the... most favorable opportunity in our

history... for cleansing our people of all those elements foreign to its soul, which have

grown like weeds to darken its future.

111

He elaborated on this theme during the Cabinet

session of July 8, 1941:

At the risk of not being understood by traditionalists... I am all for the forced migration of

the entire Jewish element of Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be dumped across the

border... You must be merciless to them... I dont know how many centuries will pass before

the Romanian people meet again with such total liberty of action, such opportunity for ethnic

106. M. Antonescu to Romanian legation in Ankara, March 14, 1944, Romanian Foreign Ministry

Archives, Ankara file, vol. 1, pp. 108-109.

107.

DGFP

, vol. 13, no. 207, pp. 318-319.

108. Note on Mihai Antonescus conversation with Ribbentrop, September 23, 1942, in United

Restitution Organization,

Dokumentensammlung

, Frankfurt,

1960, vol. 3, p. 578.

109. Romanianization was the Romanian equivalent of Aryanization.

110. I. Antonescu to I. Maniu, June 22, 1941, in Drãgan,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, no. 13, p. 197.

111. M. Antonescu, Pentru Basarabia ºi Bucovina. Îndrumãri date administraþiei dezrobitoare

(Bucharest, 1941), pp. 60-61.

128

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

cleansing and national revision... This is a time when we are masters of our land. Let us use

it. If necessary, shoot your machine guns. I couldnt care less if history will recall us as

barbarians... I take formal responsibility and tell you there is no law... So, no formalities,

complete freedom.

112

Policies and Implementation of Ethnic Cleansing

in Bessarabia and Bukovina

The order to exterminate part of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina and deport the rest

was given by Ion Antonescu of his own accord under no German pressure. To carry out

this task he chose the gendarmerie and the army, particularly the

pretorate

, the military

body in charge with the temporary administration of a territory. Iosif Iacobici, the chief

of the General Staff, ordered the commander of the General Staffs Second Section,

Lt. Col. Alexandru Ionescu, to implement a plan for the removal of the Judaic element from

Bessarabian territory (...) by organizing teams to act in advance of the Romanian troops.

Implementation began July 9. The mission of these teams is to create in villages an

unfavorable atmosphere toward the Judaic elements, thereby encouraging the population

to... remove them on its own, by whatever means it finds most appropriate and suited to

the circumstances. At the arrival of the Romanian troops, the feeling must already be in

place and even acted upon.

113

Sent by the General Staff, these teams indeed instigated

Romanian peasants, as many Jewish survivors, astonished that old friends and neighbors

had turned against them, later testified. The army received special orders via General

Ilie ªteflea, and its pretor, General Ion Topor, was in charge of their execution.

114

The special orders were reiterated every time military or civil authorities avoided

liquidating Jews for fear of the consequences or because they did not believe such orders

existed. In Cetatea Albã, for example, Major Frigan of the local garrison requested

written instructions to execute the Jews. The Third Army pretor, Colonel Marcel Petalã,

traveled to Cetatea Albã to inform Frigan of the provisions regarding the Jews in the

ghetto. The next day, 3,500 were killed.

115

The Romanian Army

The first troops to enter Bukovina were primarily combat units: a cavalry brigade as well

as the 9

, 10

, and 16

elite infantry battalions (

Vân\tori

), followed immediately by the 7

Infantry Division under General Olimpiu Stavrat. The route these units followed was

112. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 6, no. 15, pp. 199-201.

113. Plan de înlãturare a elementului evreiesc din teritoriul Basarabiei, NDM, Fourth Army Collec-

tion, roll 781, file no. 0145-0146, n.p.

114. For the Romanian armys enforcement of the special orders, see Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii la

istoria României. Problema evreiascã

(henceforth: Ancel,

Contribu]ii

) (Bucharest: Hasefer,

2001), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 119-125.

115. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 15, p. 214.

129

FINAL REPORT

crucial to the fate of the Jews in northern Romania, where some of the largest Jewish

settlements Her]a, Noua Suli]\, Hotin and Lipcani comprising thousands of inhabit-

ants, were concentrated.

116

The execution of the special orders was carried out by only a

very small number of soldiers under Pretor Vartics command. These actions were

recorded by Dumitru Hatmanu, the pretors secretary who accompanied the unit, and

can thus be retold with great precision.

117

The first killings took place at Siret (southern Bukovina), five kilometers from the

new border with the Soviets. The Jews of the town were deported on foot to Dorne[ti,

twelve kilometers away. Dozens of Jews who were not able to walk the elderly and some

crippled remained behind with a few women to care of them. These Jews were driven

to a valley not far from town, where the women were raped by several soldiers of the

Division. The elderly were brought to Division headquarters and accused of espio-

nage and attacking the Romanian army. That same day, all of them were shot at the

bridge over the Prut in the presence of the inhabitants of Siret, who had been brought to

the execution site.

118

On July 3, in the Bukovinan village of Ciudei, 450 local Jews were shot.

119

Later that

day, two hundred Jews of Storojine] were gunned down in their homes. On July 4, nearly

all Jews of the villages of Ropcea, Iord\ne[ti, P\tr\u]i, Panca, and Brosc\u]i, which

surrounded the town of Storojine],

were massacred with the active collaboration of local

Romanians and Ukrainians.

120

The radius of murder was extended on July 5 to include

thousands of Jews in the villages of St\ne[ti, Jadova Nou\, Jadova Veche, Coste[ti,

Hlini]a, Budine], and Cire[ as well as many of the surviving Jews of Her]a, Vijni]a and

Rostochi-Vijni]a.

121

The slaughter of Cernãuþis large Jewish population, which would

last for days, also began on July 5, as the combined German-Romanian armies entered

that city.

122

Her]a was conquered by the 9

Battalion on July 4/5, after a successful incursion.

The Jews who came to welcome the soldiers were met with beatings and forced to

undress. On the same day, the 7

Division, under the supervision of General Stavrat and

his aide, entered Her]a. Vartic immediately named a new mayor and formed a civil

guard whose unique function was to identify the Jews and round them up with the help

of the army. A total of 1,500 Jews were assembled in four synagogues and a cellar by

patrols of soldiers and the civil guard who severely beat the victims.

123

The round-up of

116. Crimes committed by Romanian troops who occupied Northern Bukovina as well as crimes at

Siret are described in detail in Charge Sheet against General Stavrat, in Ancel,

Documents

vol. 6 (henceforth: Charge Sheet). This information is confirmed by suvivors memoirs and

numerous testimonies in the Yad Vashem Archives (henceforth: YVA), Collection 0-3. Another

important source is Hugo Gold (ed.),

Geschichte der Juden in der Bukowina: Ein Sammelwerk

2 vols. (Tel Aviv:

Olamenu, 1958).

117. Charge Sheet, p. 425.

118.

Ibid.

See also Gold,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, pp. 105-108.

119. See Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, pp. 145-153. See also Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 29.

120.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 30.

121.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, pp. 30-31. See also: Marius Mircu,

Pogromurile din Bucovina ºi Dorohoi

(Bucharest: Glob, 1945), pp. 23-51; and Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, p. 148.

122

See chapter 20, about the the fate of Cernãuþi Jews in Ancel,

Contribuþii

, vol. 1, part 2, pp.

230-278.

123. Charge Sheet, p. 426.

130

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the Jews was completed rapidly with the aid of a local fiddler who was familiar with the

Jewish homes.

124

The new local authorities and the army representative compiled a list of

suspects and the next day, July 6, a selection of Jews to be shot was made pursuant to

the orders of the army.

125

A member of the civil guard identified the suspected Jews.

The civil guard also forcibly removed young Jewish girls from the synagogues and

handed them over to the soldiers, who raped them. Jews primarily women with small

children and the elderly were brought to a mill on the outskirts of the city and shot by

three soldiers.

126

The shooting of this large group posed certain technical problems, as no

thought had been given to the need for graves. Therefore, after the execution, a heap of

corpses lay in a pool of blood, guarded by a soldier, who from time to time fired shots

with his rifle when one of the dying moved.

127

Conversely, a smaller group of thirty-two

Jews, mainly young men, was brought to a private garden where they were forced to dig

their own graves. They were then lined up facing the graves and shot dead. In addition

to larger actions, there were countless instances of individual terror and murder. For

example, the rabbi of the community was murdered in his home together with his entire

family; a five-year-old girl was thrown into a ditch and left to die; and a soldier, who

had just participated in the massacre of the thirty-two Jews, then proceeded to shoot a

young mother solely for personal gratification.

128

Any survivors were later deported to

Transnistria.

129

The 16

Batallion, followed immediately by the 9

and 10

Battalions, occupied

Noua Suli]\ on July 7, 1941. After only one day, 930 Jews and five Christians lay dead

in the courtyards and streets.

130

On July 8, the 7

Division entered the city and found it

in a deplorable state. Pretor Vartic took command and detained 3,000 Jews in a distill-

ery.

131

Additionally, fifty Jews were shot at the behest of Vartic and with the approval

of Stavrat allegedly in retaliation for an unidentified Jew

[

who

]

had fired a gun at the

troops.

132

While Lieutenant Emil Costea, commander of the military police, and an-

other officer refused to kill Jews, several gendarmes from Hotin quickly murdered

eighty-seven in their stead.

133

Despite Russian resistance, the scope of the task, and challenging physical terrain,

Bessarabian Jewry suffered the greatest losses to the Romanian campaign to cleanse the

land. On July 6, just one day after the Romanian re-conquest of Edine]i, some five

hundred Jews were shot by the troops, and sixty more were murdered at Noua Suli]\. July 7

marked the liquidation of the Jews of P^rlita and Bãlþi, and on the following day thousands

of Jews were shot in Briceni, Lipcani, F\le[ti, M\rcule[ti, Flore[ti, Gura-Kamenca and

124.

Ibid.

, p. 426

125.

Ibid.

, pp. 426-427.

126.

Ibid

., p. 427.

127.

Ibid.

128.

Ibid.

, p. 427.

129.

Ibid.

, p. 427.

130.

Ibid

., p. 429. See also: Testimony of Steinberg, in YVA, Romanian Collection 0-11/89. This

account is confirmed also by two other testimonies in YVA, 0-3/1915, 3446.

131. Charge Sheet, pp. 429-430.

132.

Ibid.

, p. 430.

133.

Ibid.

, p. 431.

131

FINAL REPORT

Gura-C\inari.

134

By July 9, the wave of exterminations implemented by the combined

German-Romanian forces had reached the Jewish settlements of Plasa Nistrului (near

Cernãuþi), Zonlachie, Rapujine] and Cotmani in Northern Bukovina, and dozens of small

villages became

Judenrein

(cleansed of Jews).

135

On July 11, Linc\u]i and the village of

Cepel\u]i-Hotin were cleansed of their Jewish inhabitants.

136

On the same day,

Einsatz-

gruppe

D began its activities at Bãlþi.

137

On July 12, the 300 Jews of Clim\u]i-Soroca were

shot.

138

July 17 marked the onset of the extermination and deportation of the tens of

thousands of Jews of Chiºinãu. Several thousand Jews, perhaps as many as 10,000, were

killed on that single day.

139

In the month of July, the

Einsatzgruppe

also shot 682 Jews in

Cernãuþi, 551 in Chiºinãu, and 155 in Tighina, and by August 19 it had murdered

4,425 Jews in the area between Hotin and Iampol.

140

The liquidation of Bessarabias

greatest Jewish center had thus begun and would continue until the last Jew was extermi-

nated or deported in late October 1941. The slaughter of the Jews of Cetatea Alb\

(southern Bessarabia) followed approximately the same pattern. This was the general

itinerary of the first phase of the Romanian Holocaust, implemented with the aid, but not

under the coercion, of the German Eleventh Army and

Einsatzgruppe

The Gendarmerie

The gendarmerie was ordered to cleanse the land a few days before June 21, 1941, in

three places in Moldavia: Roman, F\lticeni, and Gala]i.

141

On June 18 and 19, the

gendarmerie legions to be deployed were told about the special orders. The inspector

general of the gendarmerie, General Constantin (Piki) Vasiliu, instructed the officers in

Roman: The first measure you must undertake is

cleansing the land

. By cleansing the

land we understand:

exterminate on the spot all Jews in rural areas; imprison in

ghettos all Jews in urban areas; arrest all suspects, party activists, and people who held

134. The fate of the Jews of Briceni, Lipcani, Fãleºti, Mãrculeºti and Floreºti has been described in

Jean Ancel and Théodor Lavi (eds.),

Pinkas Hakehilot. Rumania

(

Encyclopedia of Jewish

Communities: Romania

) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1980), vol. 2. See also: Bill of Indict-

ment against the Perpetrators of the Iaºi Pogrom, YVA, 0-11/73; and Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6,

no. 39, pp. 410-411.

135. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 35; see also Addendum to Jacob Stenzlers deposition, YVA 0-11/89,

PKR III, pp. 261-262.

136. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 35. The shooting of the Jews of Cepel\uþi-Hotin is better known due to

the testimony of Eng. Leon {apira, a native of this town; see: YVA, Romanian Collection 0-11/

89, PKR III, pp. 116-117.

137.

Einsatzgruppe

D carried out the orders regarding the extermination of the Jews. On June 21, 1941,

the entire

Einsatzgruppe

D left Dueben and reached Romania on June 24. See Ereignissmeldung

UdSSR (detailed reports of

Einszatzgruppe

D actions in the USSR, quoted from the Nuremberg

trial), no. 37, July 29, 1941, regarding the killings in Bãlþi. Copy in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5,

no. 16, pp. 23-24.

138. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 36.

139.

Ibid.

, p. 36. See also Jean Ancel, Kishinev, in Ancel and Lavi,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, pp. 411-416.

140. Raul Hilberg,

The Destruction of the European Jews

rev. ed.

(New York: Holmes & Meier,

1985), vol. 2, p. 768.

141. Jean Ancel,

The Romanian Way of Solving the Jewish Problem in Bessarabia and Bukovina,

June-July 1941,

Yad Vashem Studies

, 19

(1988), pp. 207-208.

132

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

accountable positions under the Soviet authority and send them under escort to the

legion.

142

As one of his subordinates recorded later, the commander of the Orhei

gendarmerie legion told his subordinates to exterminate all Jews, from babies to the

impotent old man; all of them endanger the Romanian nation.

143

On July 9, the

administrative inspector general of the new Bessarabian government reported to the

governor, General C. Voiculescu, from Bãlþi county, that the cleansing of the land

began as soon as the gendarmes and police arrived.

144

In Roman, the Orhei Legion was given the order to cleanse the land by its

commander, Major Filip Bechi. He spoke frankly, saying that they were going to

Bessarabia, where one must cleanse the terrain entirely of Jews.

145

He made a

second announcement to the chiefs of the sections that the Jews must be shot.

146

Some days later, on the orders of Bechi and under the supervision of his deputy,

Captain Iulian Adamovici, the Orhei Legion was dispatched to the frontier village of

Ungheni.

Platoon leader Vasile Eftimie, secretary of the legion and commander of the Security

Police Squad, mimeographed and distributed to all section and post heads the orders for

cleansing the land as they had been elucidated at Roman.

147

The Orhei Legion then

crossed Bãlþi county on foot, and on July 12 arrived at C^rnova, the first village of Orhei

county, where the gendarmes began shooting the local Jews. The route of the Orhei

Legion, which can be precisely determined, serves as an example of the way the order

was issued and implemented. In rural areas, the gendarmes were the principal executors

of the orders for cleansing the land. The majority had served in the same villages prior

to 1940, and their familiarity with the terrain and the Jewish inhabitants facilitated their

task. The inspector general of Bukovina, Colonel Ion M^necu]\, and General Ion Topor

in Bessarabia headed the gendarmerie. The territory was apportioned among the legions,

each headed by a colonel or lieutenant colonel. The gendarmerie command, aware of the

scope of its task not only the murder of the Jews, but also the identification and arrest

of suspects, deserters, stranded Soviet soldiers, partisans and parachutists, among others

reinforced the gendarmes with reserves of young soldiers mobilized to serve for a limited

period in the gendarmerie rather than in the regular army. Young local men, aged

eighteen to twenty-one, known as the premilitary, were also placed at the disposal of

the gendarmerie after a short training period. A network of informers, which had kept an

eye on the population since 1940, also served the gendarmerie, as did local volunteers

who helped identify, arrest, and murder Jews.

148

On their arrival in the villages, the gendarmes first would arrest the Jews. Most of

these arrests were carried out with the assistance of the local population and informers.

On some occasions, even the local priests came to the aid of the gendarmerie.

149

As a rule,

Jews turned over to the gendarmes by the army had no chance of survival and were shot

142. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 6, nos. 41 and 43, pp. 444-445.

143.

Ibid.

, vol. 6, no. 43, p. 477.

144. Popescu to Voiculescu, July 9, NDM, Fourth Army Collection, file no. 0473, roll 655.

145. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, p. 207.

146.

Ibid.

, p. 207.

147.

Ibid.

, no. 41, p. 445.

148.

Ibid.

, vol. 6, no. 43, pp. 512-513.

149.

Ibid.

, pp. 458, 461.

133

FINAL REPORT

immediately.

150

Strange as it may seem, the most serious problem for the murdering

gendarmes was burying the victims,

not

killing them, which was considered to be

clean work.

151

A report sent by the chief of the Security Police and SD to Ribbentrop,

on October 30, 1941, stated:

The way in which the Romanians are dealing with the Jews lacks any method. No objec-

tions could be raised against the numerous executions of Jews, but the technical preparations

and the executions themselves were totally inadequate. The Romanians usually left the victims

bodies where they were shot, without trying to bury them. The

Einsatzkommandos

issued

instructions to the Romanian police to proceed somewhat more systematically in this matter.

152

But despite German protests, the system of forcing Jews to dig their own graves was

generally not adopted since the gendarmes used deceit and subterfuge to kill with speed,

thus precluding any forewarning by making the victims dig pits. However, they often

made use of trenches (antitank and others) left from the Soviet prewar days, making

civilians cover the slain bodies with earth before the next batch of victims was brought

to the execution site. The Prut and R\ut Rivers, and the Dniester in particular, became

the execution and burial sites favored by the gendarmes as well as by the Romanian and

German armies. The first 300 Jewish victims from Storojine] were pushed into the water

by the gendarmes and shot, while some sixty Jews managed to save their lives by

swimming to the opposite bank of the Dniester.

153

On August 6, the gendarmes of the 23

Police Company shot 200 Jews and threw their bodies into the Dniester.

154

Members

Einsatzgruppe

D shot 800 Jews on the bank of the Dniester on August 17 because they

were unable to return to Bessarabia by crossing the river as they had been ordered.

155

The

Jews of Noua Suli]\, who reached the bank of the Dniester on August 6, saw the river

covered with the floating bodies of the last victims.

156

In the summer and fall of 1941, on the roads and in the fields of Bessarabia, Jews walked

in rows, accompanied by gendarmes and followed by peasants, who were mobilized by

gendarmes, clerks, and village mayors, carrying shovels and spades, all going to the execu-

tion fields. They waited patiently until the gendarmes had shot the Jews, then buried them

and returned home with the victims clothes and other personal effects; the valuables

and money were taken by the gendarmes. Quite often the gendarmes would get drunk and

revel all night after such a days work. In the village of Grigoriefca, in L\pu[na county,

they so indulged after murdering 60 Jewish men and before liquidating another 140 the

next day; a few gendarmes remained in the killing field to guard the corpses.

157

Back in Bucharest, after the liberation of Bessarabia and Bukovina and before charg-

ing on Odessa, Antonescu outlined his ideas concerning his war against the Jews:

The fight is bitter. It is a fight to life or death. It is a fight between us and the Germans,

on the one hand, and the Jews, on the other... I shall undertake a work of complete cleansing,

150.

Ibid.

, p. 449. See also

ibid.

, no. 42, pp. 470-471.

151.

Ibid.

, vol. 6, pp. 211 and 498.

152. Nuremberg Documents, NO-2651; Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, p. 499.

153. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, nos. 20-26, pp. 37, 65-70.

154. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 35, p. 42. See also Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, nos. 23-24, pp. 67-69.

155.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 38.

156.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, nos. 20-26, pp. 37, 65-70.

157. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 6, no. 37, p. 341.

134

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of Jews and of all others who have sneaked up on us... Had we not started this war to

cleanse

our race of these people

who sap our economic, national, and physical life, we would be cursed

with complete disappearance... Consequently, our policy in this regard is to achieve a

homog-

enous

whole

in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Moldavia, and... in Transylvania.

Do not think that when I decided to

disinfect

the Romanian people of all Jews, I did not

realize I would be provoking an economic crisis. But I told myself that this was the war I was

leading. And as in any war, there are damages to the nation. But if I win this war, the nation

will receive its compensation. We are undergoing a crisis because we are removing the Jews...

Should we miss this historical opportunity now, well miss it forever. And if the Jews win the

war, well no longer exist

[

emphasis added

]

158

Implementation of the Arrangements

Although Mihai Antonescu had concluded the

Abmachungen

(the understandings regard-

ing field cooperation) with the SS (i.e.,

Einsatzgruppe

D, which was active in the

Romanian troops operation area) and with other German bodies, relations between the

various units of

Einsatzgruppe

D and the Romanian army, gendarmerie, police, and

Special Echelon were far from ideal. The Germans were content only when the Roma-

nians acted according to their directives. Whenever their Romanian comrades deviated

from the plan whenever they failed to remove all traces of the mass executions and

instead left corpses unburied, whenever they plundered, raped, or fired shots in the

streets or received bribes from Jews the Nazis fumed. Their letters, protests, and orders

in this regard decried the lack of organization and planning,

not

the crimes themselves.

On July 11, 1941, for example, the commander of

Einsatzkommando

10b (a sub-unit of

Einsatzgruppe

D) reported the plunders at F\le[ti (where all the Jews were shot) and

noted, the measures taken against the Jews before the arrival of the

Einsatzkommando

lacked any planning.

159

Each time such actions were taken, not only against the Jews but

also against the Ukrainians of Bukovina and Bessarabia, the Germans hastened to ob-

ject.

160

The RSHA went so far as to claim that the solution to the Jewish problem between

the Dniester and the Dnieper had been placed in the wrong hands.

161

The Hasty Deportations

In late July and early August, on the heels of the

Wehrmacht

, German extermination

units were advancing rapidly in Ukraine, rounding up and gunning down tens of thou-

sands of Ukrainian Jews. Under these circumstances, lacking coordination with the

German army,

and based only on the talks between Hitler and Antonescu in Munich on

June 12, the Romanian army began to deport tens of thousands of Jews who had been

158. Council of Ministers session, September 5, 1941, in Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Problema evreiascã în

stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri

(Bucharest:

Hasefer,

1996), no. 109, pp. 298-299.

159. Nuremberg Documents, NO-2934, 2939.

160. Nuremberg Documents, NO-2651, 2934, 2938, 2949, 2950.

161. Nuremberg Documents, NO-52 (Ereignissmeldung UdSSR) and NO-4540.

135

FINAL REPORT

arrested in boroughs and on the roads to the other side of the Dniester in that area that

would soon become Transnistria. This action commenced the moment the troops reached

the Dniester. Toward the end of July, the Romanian army concentrated about 25,000 Jews

near the village of Coslav, on the Dniester.

162

Some had been marched from Northern

Bukovina and others were caught in northern Bessarabia, particularly in and around

Briceni.

On July 24, shortly after the German-Romanian forces had entered Ukraine, these

Jews were sent across the river. The Romanian soldiers did not provide the convoys with

food or drinking water and imprisoned the Jews in an improvised camp surrounded by

barbed wire in the middle of a plowed field. Whoever attempted to escape was shot. The

weak died of hunger. At this stage, the German officers ordered the convoys to head for

Moghilev. Romanian gendarmes also pushed thousands of Jews through Rezina and

Iampol and across the Dniester, although Transnistria was still under German military

occupation. The German military authorities started forcing the Jewish columns back to

Bessarabia. In response, General Antonescu ordered that any penetration into our

territory be strictly forbidden. The Jews who have crossed and will further attempt to

cross the border should be considered spies and executed.

163

The

Conduc\tor

s repre-

sentative in Bukovina, Alexandru Rio[anu, reported on July 19 that, in accordance with

the telegraphic order received, the Jews recrossing the Dniester were executed accord-

ing to the order I gave upon my arrival.

164

The commander of the Romanian Fourth

Army instructed his units and the gendarmerie to force back all Jews identified as

returning from Ukraine.

165

The Romanian soldiers continued to drive convoys of Jews from northern Bessarabia

to the Dniester, ordering nightly stopovers used for plunder and rape, and then shooting

hundreds to convince the rest to cross makeshift bridges. Hundreds of Jews were pushed

into the Dniester; whoever attempted to climb out was shot. Hundreds more were

gunned down on the riverbanks and cast into the dark waters, which had started to

overflow after the heavy rains. The transfer of the convoys from one place to another

created an additional problem, which the

Romanian General Staff had not foreseen and

which angered the Germans, i.e., thousands of Jewish bodies were strewn everywhere,

signaling the routes and attracting Bessarabian peasants, who eagerly stripped the corpses

and yanked out gold teeth.

On July 30, the German Eleventh Army Command requested that the Romanian

General Staff stop pushing Jews across the Dniester. At Iampol there are several thou-

sand Jews including women, children, and old men whom the Romanian authorities

have sent across the Dniester. These masses are not being guarded, and their food

supplies have not been ensured. Many have started to die of hunger... the danger of

disease is increasing. Accordingly, the German Army Command has taken measures to

162. Report of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers re: 30,000 Jews in Hotin and Bukovina,

August 11, 1941, Bucharest State Archives, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet

Collection, file no. 76/1941, p. 86; copy in USHMM, RG 25.002M, roll 17.

163. Antonescu to Orhei police, August 6, 1941, National Archive of the Republic of Moldova,

Directorate General of the Police, Security Archive (henceforth: Chiºinãu Archive), collection

229, subcollection 2, file no. 165 (henceforth: 229-2-165), p. 79.

164. Telegram, Rioºanu to Ion Antonescu, July 19, 1941, Bucharest State Archives, Presidency of the

Council of Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 89/1941, p. 15.

165. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 10, no. 27, p. 83.

136

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

prevent

[

]

Jews from being

[

sent

]

across the Dniester.

166

In practical terms, these

measures meant shooting thousands of Jews on the riverbanks.

As stated, Antonescu protested to Ambassador Killinger about the German armys

return of Jews to Romanian territory, claiming it contravened Hitlers statements in

Munich. Foreign Office officials in Berlin dared not ask Hitler what he had told

Antonescu, instead insisting that the official transcript of the talks... contains nothing

in this regard.

167

Nevertheless, Ambassador Karl Ritter, a member of Ribbentrops

office admitted the possibility that the problem of the Eastern Jews had also been

discussed, and therefore recommended that General Antonescus request that the Jews

not be pushed back into Bessarabia should be taken into account.

168

On August 4, most

of the huge column of Jews pushed by the gendarmes across the Dniester was concen-

trated in Moghilev. For three days, the Germans conducted selections and shot the old

and sick, while the young were forced to dig graves. German and Romanian soldiers

murdered some 4,500 Jews. The convoy was driven further along the Ukrainian bank of

the Dniester. With each stop, the number of Jews grew smaller from executions, exhaus-

tion, illness, and infant starvation. On August 17 the convoy returned to Bessarabia at

Iampol, by crossing a narrow pontoon bridge made by the Romanian army. Of a convoy

of up to 32,000 Jews, somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 were killed on the Ukrainian

side of the Dniester, and most of the survivors were imprisoned in the Vertujeni camp.

169

Transit Camps and Ghettos

War Headquarters concluded that until the status of the Ukrainian territory to be given

to Romania was established, the deportations had to stop. Consequently, temporary

camps and ghettos were set up in Bessarabia. The special order for this project, given on

August 8, regulated the imprisonment regime, delegated responsibilities, and stressed

that the Jews would not be maintained at the states expense. Before leaving for Chiºinãu,

Bessarabias governor, General Constantin Voiculescu, was summoned by the

Conduc\tor

who outlined his policy in the two provinces and issued several unwritten orders. The

first problem the governor had to solve was the Jewish matter. Voiculescu subsequently

reported to Antonescu: In this order of ideas, upon seeing the Jews swarming all over

Bessarabia, particularly in Chiºinãu, within no more than five days since the arrival of

the undersigned in Chiºinãu, I ordered the setting up of camps and ghettos.

170

166. Eleventh Army Command to General Headquarters, July 30, 1941, NDM, Fourth Army Collec-

tion, file no. 781, p. 136; copy, USHMM, RG 25.003M, roll 12; copies in Jean Ancel,

Transnistria

1941-1942: The Romanian Mass Murder Campaign

(henceforth: Ancel,

Transnistria

)

(Tel Aviv: Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, 2003), vol. 2, no. 10, and USHMM,

RG 25.003M, roll 12.

167.

DGFP

, vol. 13, 1 (1979), no. 207, p. 264.

168.

Ibid.

, no. 332, p. 431.

169. National Police Headquarters report to Central Information Service, August 27, 1941, Bucharest

State Archives, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 71/1941, p. 91.

Regarding this convoy, see also: correspondence between General Headquarters and the army

pretor, in Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 104-106.

170. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 10, no. 61, p. 143.

137

FINAL REPORT

Ghettos were new for Romania. Therefore, Presidency advisor St\nescu traveled to

Warsaw to study the concentration structure in the German quarters and use their

experience.

171

Warsaw was an excellent model: its ghetto became the largest in the

world, packed with up to 350,000 Jews awaiting extermination. Even before St\nescus

return, the military commander of Chiºinãu City, Colonel Dumitru Tudose, followed

Voiculescus guidelines. On August 12, Tudose proudly reported: I have purged the

city of Jews and enemy remains, giving it a Romanian and particularly Christian face. I

have organized the Jewish ghetto such that these elements no longer pose any present or

future danger.

172

Pending the resumption of deportations, the Romanian authorities set up several

dozen camps and ghettos, from which the Jews were evacuated to seven larger camps,

and established the ghetto of Chiºin\u. By late August there were already about

80,000 Jews in these ghettos: 10,356 at Secureni; 11,762 at Edine]i; 2,634 at Limbenii

Noi; 3,072 at R\[cani; 3,253 at R\u]el; 22,969 at Vertujeni; 11,000 at M\rcule[ti;

11,525 in Chiºinãu; and 5,000-6,000 in smaller facilities in southern Bessarabia.

173

At the end of August, Voiculescu informed the press, The Jewish problem has been

solved in Bessarabia. Today, in the Bessarabian villages there are no longer any Jews,

while in towns, ghettos have been set up for those remaining.

174

The first phase of

extermination was executed in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina under Antonescus

direct command. General C. Niculescus Committee for the Investigation of Irregulari-

ties in the Chiºinãu ghetto (formed at Antonescus request to probe the rapid and

inexplicable enrichment of certain officers and the failure to confiscate deportees

gold) found that between the establishment of the camps after the cleansing of the

land and the beginning of the deportations, 25,000 Jews died of natural causes,

escaped, or

were shot.

175

The fate of the survivors of the first wave of extermination in both provinces was

decided by Ion Antonescu and announced to the military. This operation, too, lacked

written orders, initially leaving no traces and assigning no responsibility. But corrup-

tion in the Romanian military and civil government led to occasional investigations at

the request of Antonescu and other high-ranking officers responsible for the campaign.

The resulting reports disclosed almost all the secret orders, including the verbal ones.

Thus, the Antonescu regime failed to conceal its culpability for the imprisonment of

the survivors in camps and ghettos, the reign of terror therein, and the eventual

deportations. Conditions in these camps characterized by forced labor, corruption,

hunger, plunder, suffering, rapes, executions, and epidemics accounted for tens of

thousands of deaths.

176

171. Telegram, M. Antonescu to I. Antonescu, Bucharest State Archives, Presidency of the Council of

Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 167/1941, p. 42.

172. Tudose to administration of Bessarabia, August 12, 1941, NDM, file no. 656, p. 13.

173. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 5, pp. 52, 99, 131-133, and vol. 10, pp. 100-102, 138.

174.

Curentul

, August 27, 1941.

175. Niculescu Commission, Report 2, December 1941, Chiºinãu Archive, 706-1-69, pp. 48-49. The

report recorded 75,000-80,000 Jews in Bessarabia at the end of August.

176. See chapter 18, Lag\re [i ghetouri `n Basarabia [i `n Bucovina de Nord, chapter 19, Ghetoul

Chi[in\u, and chapter 20, Cern\u]i, in Ancel,

Contribuþii

vol. 1, part 2, pp. 143-278.

138

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Deportations from Southern Bukovina and Dorohoi County

The deportation of Bukovinan Jews was the outcome of the two Antonescus decision to

carry out ethnic cleansing. Transcripts of the government meetings of June 25, 1941, and

October 6, 1941, document this decision.

177

In 1941 and 1942, 21,229 Jews from south-

ern Bukovina were deported.

178

The best researched is the deportation of Jews from the

county of Dorohoi. Despite his promise to Filderman on September 8, 1941, that he

would treat

Regat

Jews differently than non-

Regat

Jews, Antonescu nevertheless ordered

the deportation of Dorohoi Jews soon thereafter, followed by the Jews from C^mpulung,

Suceava, and R\d\u]i counties.

179

This sent shockwaves through the Romanian Jewish

community. Upon learning of the deportation, the civilian population in Dorohoi promptly

pillaged Jewish property and moved into their homes (even so, 244 out of 607 Jewish

homes remained empty; there were too few Romanians in the town).

180

Prior to the

deportations, county authorities themselves (the prefect and mayor) pleaded with the

government to remove the Jews citing concerns of the citizenry.

181

Filderman tried hard to reach Antonescu, yet he failed. The chairman of the Roma-

nian Supreme Court, Nicolae Lupu, relayed his memo to the

Conduc\tor

on December 3,

1941. Antonescu hypocritically declared to Lupu that he was deeply moved by the

deportations, that he had ordered an investigation, and that he would order the return of

the deportees.

182

No such investigation was conducted, no Jew returned home by Decem-

ber 1943, the prefect of Dorohoi was promoted, and only the last deportation train was

stopped.

Tighina Agreement

On August 30, Transnistrias status was finally resolved: the province was transferred

to Romania, in keeping with Hitlers promise to Antonescu. General Nicolae T\t\ranu

of Romanian War Headquarters and General Arthur Hauffe of the

Wehrmacht

signed

the Agreement for the Security, Administration, and Economic Exploitation of the

Territory between the Dniester and the Bug and the Bug-Dnieper. Paragraph 7 re-

ferred to the Jews in the camps and ghettos of Bessarabia and Bukovina and the Jewish

inhabitants of Transnistria: The evacuation of the Jews across the Bug is not possible

now. They must, therefore, be concentrated in labor camps and used for various work

until, once the operations are over, their evacuation to the east will be possible.

183

The

177. Benjamin,

op. cit.

no. 95, p. 242, and no. 113, p. 326.

178. Archive of the Ministry of Defence, fond central,

Problema evreiascã

, vol. 21, p. 131; Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, pp. 196-197.

179.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, no. 74, p. 132.

180.

Ibid.

, vol 5, no. 145, p. 265.

181.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, no. 74, p. 143.

182.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, no. 258, p. 425.

183. Gosudartsveni Archiv Odeskoi Oblasti, Ukraina (State Archive of Odessa County, Ukraine)

(henceforth: Odessa Archive), collection 2361, subcollection 1c, pp. 45-46; German version:

Nuremberg Documents, PS-3319.

139

FINAL REPORT

agreement thus confirmed that the final goal was to cleanse Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

Transnistria of Jews.

At the end of August, Antonescu met at Tighina with Governors Voiculescu of

Bessarabia, Corneliu Calotescu of Bukovina, and Gheorghe Alexianu of Transnistria.

Voiculescu summarized the event: I was given instructions as to how the operation of

driving the Jews across the Bug should be carried out.

184

Antonescu made War Head-

quarters responsible for the deportation, under Topor. There would be no administrative

formalities, no nominal lists of deportees, only strictly numerical groups. Major Tarlef

of the Romanian General Staff relayed an unwritten order that any document found upon

the Jews should be confiscated. Jews indeed arrived in Transnistria with no identity;

their papers had been burned at the crossing points over the Dniester. Colonel Ion

Palade

succinctly told the gendarmerie officers in charge of transferring the convoys from the

camps to the Dniester: By order of War Headquarters, Jews who cannot keep up with

the convoys, due to exhaustion or sickness, shall be executed.

185

To this end, a local

gendarme was to be sent ahead two days before each convoy set out to ensure (with the

assistance of the gendarmerie precincts along the deportation route and the premilitary

youth) that every ten kilometers there would be graves for about 100 people, where

those who could not keep pace with the convoy could be gathered, shot, and buried.

Antonescu scheduled the first deportations for September 15, 1941. Beforehand, War

Headquarters made an urgent request to Topor for a report on the exact status of all

Jewish camps and ghettos in Bessarabia and Bukovina, including numbers of Jews and

guard units.

186

These reports reveal no German military involvement. The Dniester was

crossed at five points, listed here from north to south: Atachi-Moghilev, Cos\u]i-Iampol,

Rezina-R^bni]a, Tighina-Tiraspol, and Olãneºti-Iasca. Most Jews were deported through

the first three points. The deportations commenced September 16, with the Jews in the

Vertujeni camp and concluded by the end of December. Palade and his subordinates

relayed the verbal order concerning the assassination and plundering. The commander of

the 60

Police Company, who supervised the deportation to Atachi, requested a written

order. Capt. Titus

Popescu replied: Regarding the Jewish matter we do not work with

written documents.

187

On October 6, Ion Antonescu updated the government on the ethnic cleansing in

Bessarabia: As far as the Jews are concerned, I have taken measures to remove them,

completely and for good, from these regions. The measures are under way. I still have

about 40,000 Jews in Bessarabia who will be dumped over the Dniester in a few days

and, circumstances permitting, dumped further over the Urals.

188

According to the

gendarmerie inspector general in Bessarabia, the deportations proceeded in the most

perfect order and quietly.

189

Both before and during the deportation, hundreds of Jews

died every day of hunger, thirst, beatings, and torture; women and girls who resisted

184. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 10, no. 61, p. 139.

185. Niculescu Commission, report no. 2, p. 54.

186. Inspectorate General of Transnistria to Topor, September 11, 1941; Carp,

op. cit.

, pp. 122-123.

187. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 110, p. 170.

188. Benjamin,

op. cit.

, p. 326.

189. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 44, p. 101.

140

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

rape were killed; many Jews were murdered during searches for their valuables. Even

before the convoys headed for the Dniester, bodies were everywhere, and additional

corpses were left on the roadsides during the deportation. The method of

plunder and

assassination was such that peasants would approach a gendarme in the escort, indicate

a Jew with attractive clothing or footwear, and propose a price, usually 1,000-2,000 lei.

After briefly haggling, the gendarme would shoot the Jew, and the peasant would pay the

agreed amount and quickly strip the body.

The official plundering of the Jews was ordered by Antonescu and facilitated by the

National Bank of Romania. On October 5, the Marshal demanded the

exchange

of all

jewelry and precious metals owned by the Jews

vacating

Bessarabia and Bukovina

[

emphasis added

]

190

Other orders provided for the exchange

191

of Jewish-owned lei

into rubles, then German occupation marks (RKKS). On November 17, after the first

phase of this plunder, the National Bank hastened to inform the finance minister: As the

seizure of valuables from the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina is over, please dispatch

your delegate to witness the opening of the boxes containing these objects in view of

taking their inventory.

192

Antonescus handling of the Jews did not escape Hitlers attention. Several days

before the signing of the Tighina Agreement on August 30, he told Goebbels: Regard-

ing the Jewish problem, it can be established that a man like Antonescu acts in this field

in a more extremist manner than we have done so far.

193

According to reports, 91,845 Jews

were deported from Bukovina,

194

55,867 from Bessarabia, and 9,367 from Dorohoi. In

Transnistria, the Germans caught 11,000 Jews who had tried to flee the Romanian and

German armies.

195

The rest were slaughtered, mainly by German soldiers.

In the meantime, the Romanian authorities did their best to mislead Western powers

about their ethnic cleansing. On November 4, after meeting with Ion Antonescu and

Mihai Antonescu and protesting the anti-Jewish atrocities, U.S. Ambassador Franklin

Mott Gunther reported to the State Department in Washington:

I have constantly and persistently drawn the attention of the highest Romanian authorities

to the inevitable reaction of my government and of the American people to such an inhuman

treatment, including the unlawful killing of innocent and defenseless people, by describing in

detail the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews of Romania. My observations triggered

expressions of regret from Marshal Antonescu and the ad-interim PM, Mihai Antonescu, for

the excesses committed by mistake or by irresponsible elements and

[

promises

]

of future

temperance... The systematic extermination program continues, though, and I dont see any

hope for Romanian Jews as long as the current regime controlled by the Germans stays in

place.

196

190. Davidescu to Voiculescu and Calotescu, Chiºinãu Archive, 1607-1-2, p. 171.

191. This exchange was, in fact, seizure.

192. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 114, p. 179.

193. Joseph Goebbels,

Tagebücher 1924-1945

(Munich: Piper, 1992), vol. 4, pp. 1059-1060.

194. Calotescu to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, April 9, 1942, Foreign Ministry Ar-

chive, Central Collection, vol. 20, pp. 130-131.

195. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, nos. 39, 41, 43, 46, 55, pp. 95-97, 99, 104;

DGFP

, series D, vol. 13,

no. 207, pp. 318-319.

196. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3, no. 221, p. 339.

141

FINAL REPORT

Transnistria: Ethnic Dumping Ground

The territory between the Dniester and the Bug, with which Hitler rewarded Antonescu

for Romanias participation in the war against the Soviet Union, was dubbed Transnistria.

According to the Soviet census of 1939, the areas population exceeded three million

people comprised mostly of Ukrainians and Russians, about 300,000 Moldavians (Roma-

nians), 331,000 Jews, and 125,000 Germans. Jewish men, who for the most part did not

think of themselves as Soviet citizens, had been drafted into the Soviet army, but not all

had reached their units. Part of the Jewish population did not evacuate or run off with the

Soviet forces, although doing so would have increased their chances of survival. But,

they knew little about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and the Germans swift advance

from Lvov to the Black Sea prevented a number of them from escaping.

The occupation regime (excluding not-yet-occupied Odessa) was inaugurated at

Tiraspol on August 9, 1941. Heading the government was law professor Gheorghe

Alexianu, a friend and former colleague of Mihai Antonescu and well-known anti-Semite.

Transnistria was divided into thirteen counties, each run by a prefect; all prefects were

colonels or lieutenant colonels in the army or gendarmerie. These counties encompassed

sixty-four districts, each administered by a pretor. At the beginning of the war, Antonescu

believed Transnistria would be occupied indefinitely. In the government session of De-

cember 16, 1941, he told Alexianu to govern there as if Romania had been ruling these

territories for two million years. What will happen afterward, well see... You are the

sovereign there. Force people to work with a whip if they dont understand otherwise...

and if necessary, and there is no other way, prod them with bullets; for that you dont

need my authority.

197

Alexianu boasted to Antonescu that the administration followed

the

Fuehrer

s principle (

Führerprinzip

): One man, one guideline, one accountabil-

ity. The will of the

Conduc\tor

, of the armys commander in chief, transmitted to the

farthest bodies.

198

Transnistrias official currency was the RKKS, a worthless bank note

used throughout the Soviet territory occupied by the Germans. The exchange rate was

initially 60 lei or 20 rubles to the mark. Against this background, the true dimension of

the plunder of the Jews even before deportation becomes clearer. The National Bank

of Romania confiscated Jewish money, replaced it with rubles at an absurd exchange rate,

and then confiscated the rubles in exchange (sometimes) for RKKS.

Early in the war, the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies operated in Transnistria. Even

more than the gendarmes and police, the army was responsible for retaliation, imprison-

ment, and persecution of local Jews. Officers initiated direct measures against the Jews,

closely supervising implementation by the civil authorities, and even the gendarmes.

When such orders were improperly executed, the officers requested the punishment of

those at fault. In the early stages of the occupation, between August and late September

1941, Romanian forces cooperated with the German army and the

Einsatzgruppen

who, in the estimation of Ohlendorf, murdered about 90,000 in killing Jews.

199

197.

Procesul marii trãdãri naþionale

(Bucharest, 1946), pp. 148-149.

198. Alexianu to Antonescu, September 12, 1941, Odessa Archive, 2242-1677, pp. 18-19b.

199.

Nuremberg Military Trials

, vol. 4, case 9, p. 168.

142

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Gendarmerie units that had cleansed the land in Bessarabia and Bukovina were

attached to Romanian armies and spread across Transnistria. The gendarmerie chose

where the deportees crossed the Dniester. They also attended to the transportation,

discipline, and surveillance of the Jewish population, i.e., the removal of the Jews from

densely populated areas and their settlement in sparsely populated areas in other

words, the marching of convoys of both deported and local Jews to the camps on the

Bug.

200

The dreaded Ukrainian police or, more accurately, the Ukrainians armed by the

Romanians also played an important role in the administrations crimes during the

winter of 1941/1942 in the concentration camps along the Bug. These men guarded the

ghettos and camps throughout Transnistria and entered the ghettos whenever necessary

to help carry out the various actions dictated by the Romanian authorities, primarily the

mass executions.

Daily Life in Transnistria

As of December 24, 1941, there were 56,000 Romanian Jews in Moghilev county, close

to the Dniester. More Jews survived here than in the other counties. German involvement

was less frequent, and, especially in the town of Moghilev, the Jewish community was

better able to organize itself. Although especially numerous in the counties of Moghilev

and Balta, deported Romanian Jews found themselves in 120 localities throughout all the

counties in Transnistria; some of these received one to six deportees, while others ended

up with thousands, and living conditions were extremely cruel. For example, a number

of the Jews of Moghilev were deported to {argorod and other nearby localities where

their lot was awful. M. Katz, former president of the Jewish Committee of the town,

related the following:

[

]

n the town of Konotkauti, near {argorod,

[

there was

]

a long and dark stable standing

alone in a field. Seventy people were lying all over the place, men, women, children, half-naked

and destitute... They all lived on begging... In the ghetto of Halcintz people ate the carcass of

a horse which had been buried... The authorities poured carbonic acid on it, yet they contin-

ued eating it... The Jews in Grabvi] lived in a cave... They couldnt part from the seven

hundred graves of their loved ones... I found similar scenes at Vinoi, Nemerci, Pasinca,

Lucine], Lucincic, Ozarine], Vindiceni: everywhere men exhausted, worn out; some of them

worked on farms, others in the tobacco factory, but the majority lived on begging.

201

The Jews deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina typically died as a result of typhus,

hunger, and cold. Food distribution was erratic. Many lived by begging or by selling their

clothes for food, ending up virtually naked. They ate leaves, grass, and potato peels and

often slept in stables or pigsties, sometimes not allowed even straw. Except for those in

the Peciora and Vapniarka camps and in the Rybnitsa prison, the deported Jews lived in

ghettos or in towns, where they were assigned a residence, forced to carry out hard labor,

and subjected to the natural process of extermination through famine and disease. This

200. Tasks of Transnistrian police, December 1941, Odessa Archive, 2242-4-5c, p. 3.

201. Julius Fisher,

Transnistria: The Forgotten Cemetery

(South Brunswick, NJ: T. Yoselof, 1969),

p. 105.

143

FINAL REPORT

natural selection ceased toward the end of 1943, when Romanian officials began

changing their approach toward the deported Jews.

In January 1942, the typhus epidemic reached major proportions. In }ibulovca (Balta

county) 1,140 out of 1,200 deportees died during the winter of 1941-1942.

202

January 20, 1942, of the 1,200 Jews interned since November 1941, only 100 men, 74

women, and 4 children survived, most of these suffering frozen extremities. With money

or clothes, some were able to purchase permission to live in the village.

Of the 9,000 Jews in {argorod (Moghilev county), 2,414 caught typhus and 1,449

died of it. In June 1942, the epidemic ended, but it broke out again in October. By then,

however, the community was prepared for it, taking efficient measures to delouse the

area. Ninety-two cases of typhoid fever appeared, though with a negligible mortality

rate, as well as 1,250 cases of severe malnutrition, of which fifty proved irreversible.

203

Hygienic conditions were very bad in the town of Moghilev, as well. As of April 25,

1942, there were 4,491 recorded cases of typhus, 1,254 of them deadly. The Moghilev

Health Department estimated that there were 7,000 cases of typhus at a certain point

throughout the city. During the winters the extreme cold made it impossible to bury the

corpses, which only continued to spread the epidemics. In addition to disease and the

dearth of adequate food, clothing, and shelter, forced labor was often imposed on the

deportees in Transnistria. In Ladijin, for example, 1,800 Jews from Dorohoi and Cernãuþi

were used for work in a stone quarry under very harsh conditions.

204

There were two camps in Transnistria, Vapniarka and Peciora. In September 1942

almost 2,000 Jews (communist sympathizers or people who had applied to emigrate to

the USSR under the population transfer in 1940) were deported to Transnistria. Some of

them were killed upon arrival, but about 1,000 went to the Vapniarka camp where they

were fed a variety of pea (

Tathyrus savitus

) that is not fit for humans. As a result, 611 inmates

became seriously ill, and some were partially paralyzed.

205

The other Transnistrian camp,

Peciora, displayed the phrase death camp on its signpost above the entrance.

206

General

Iliescu, inspector of the Transnistrian gendarmerie, had recommended that the poorest

be sent there, since they were going to die anyway, and it was not intended that anyone

survive Peciora.

207

Peciora was the most horrific site of Jewish internment in all of

Transnistria, as Matatias Carps research showed:

Those who managed to escape told incredible stories. On the banks of the Bug, the camp

was surrounded by three rows of barbed wire and watched by a powerful military guard.

German trucks arrived from the German side of the Bug on several occasions; camp inmates

were packed into them to be exterminated on the other side... Unable to get supplies, camp

inmates ate human waste, and later

[

fed

]

on human corpses. Eighty percent died and only the

twenty percent who

[

fled when the guard became more lax

]

survived.

208

Testimonies of the Peciora survivors also report cases of cannibalism in this camp.

202. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, fond 40012, vol. 1, roll 28.

203. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 325.

204.

Ibid.

, 3, p. 280.

205.

Ibid.

, pp. 201, 376-377.

206.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 285.

207.

Ibid.

, p. 285.

208.

Ibid.

, p. 368.

144

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Local Jews

Following the first wave of executions upon the occupation of the province, the surviving

local Jews returned to their destroyed and ransacked houses. According to gendarmerie

and government reports, of the 331,000 Ukrainian Jews counted during the census of

1939, at least 150,000 and perhaps over 200,000 were still alive in Transnistria then,

including up to more than 90,000 in the district of Odessa. Upon entering the district

capitals, the Romanian army followed by the gendarmerie units and then the prefects

immediately and energetically identified all Jews for purposes of imprisonment in ghet-

tos and camps.

209

On August 4, 1941, the Fourth Army informed all military units, the gendarmerie,

and the police that the Jews in the towns and villages of Ukraine will be gathered in

ghettos.

210

This decision was made by Antonescu, conveyed through War Headquarters,

and signed by General T\t\ranu: To prevent any act of sabotage and terrorism by the

Jews, we have taken the measure of imprisoning them in ghettos and using them for

labor.

211

Upon arrival in the District capitals, the prefects ordered the Jews to register

with the new authorities and move into the ghettos, abandoning their homes. On Septem-

ber 3, for instance, Colonel Vasile Nica, prefect of Balta, gave all kikes three days to

move to the ghetto (composed of four streets). He imposed forced labor on all Jews

between the ages of fourteen and sixty and ordered them to wear yellow badges: Any

kike from the town of Balta, the county, or anywhere else who is found in Balta is

to be sent to the ghetto. Similar ghettos will be set up in other towns of the district. Any

insubordination, attempted rebellion, or terrorism by a kike will be punished with his

death and that of another twenty kikes.

212

Deportations and Death Marches

On September 30, 1941, the commander of the Fourth Army posed the question to the

General Staff: What is there to be done with the

civilian

Jews of Transnistria?

213

Antonescus answer was clear: All the Jews in Transnistria will be immediately impris-

oned in the camps on the Bug established by the governor of Transnistria... Their estates

will be taken over by the local authorities.

214

In early October, Antonescu ordered the

deportation which meant extermination of the Ukrainian Jews to the Bug and the

expropriation of their property. Not only Ukrainian Jews were deported to the Bug.

Eichmanns envoy, Richter, announced to his superiors that Antonescu had decided to

209. Military Command of Transnistria, Order no. 1, Odessa Archive, 2730-1-1.

210. Fourth Army, Order no. 209.221, August 4, 1941, Chiºinãu Archive, 693-2-299, p. 26.

211. Fourth Army to General Headquarters, NDM, Fourth Army Collection, file no. 781, p. 162.

212. Nica, Order no. 4, September 3, 1943, Odessa Archive, 2358-1-2, p. 4. The order was issued in

Romanian and Russian.

213. Telegram, Fourth Army to General Headquarters, September 30, 1941, NDM, Fourth Army

Collection, file no. 779, p. 164.

214. General Headquarters to Fourth Army, October 6, 1941, NDM, Fourth Army Collection, file

no. 779, p. 165.

145

FINAL REPORT

concentrate near the Bug 110,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina, in view of

exterminating them.

215

Their transfer and eventual execution fell to the Government of

Transnistria, which had gendarmerie units and occupation troops at its disposal. Alexianu

described the operation to the Fourth Army commander on October 11:

As to the given instructions, all the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina are being evacuated

from these provinces to the region west of the Bug, where they will stay this fall until in

accordance with the agreement concluded with the German state we are able to dump them

east of the Bug. Over 15,000 Jews have entered Transnistria so far... The rest, up to the

approximately 150,000 envisaged for this fall, will arrive soon.

216

The Romanian authorities took no responsibility for the Jews subsistence, both

during the deportation and in the camps and ghettos. The Jews will live on their own,

it was written. Yet, they were to be used for agricultural or any other work, and the

gendarmes mercilessly shot dead any laggards.

217

Each convoy was first plundered by the gendarmes. Young women and girls in each

convoy were raped, particularly by the officers, who chose stops where they could

organize orgies. Gangs of Ukrainians attacked the Jewish convoys as well killing,

looting, and sometimes even stripping hundreds of Jews bare and leaving them to freeze

to death. The convoy commanders were not responsible for Jews lives, only for their

transfer these Jews had no name or identity. Ukrainian volunteers (later called the

Ukrainian police) accompanied the convoys, exhibiting even greater cruelty than the

gendarmes. Unfamiliar with the area, the gendarmes relied on these volunteers, assign-

ing them partial escort and guard duties.

Einsatzgruppe

D had armed some Ukrainians,

who assisted in murdering tens of thousands of Jews.

The transfer of the Jews toward the Bug in convoys of thousands continued apace

throughout October, November, and December 1941 in total disarray. Thousands of Jews

were left in towns or villages that had not been slated to house ghettos or temporary

camps. Monitoring the deportation as if it were a military operation, Antonescu remarked

in a government session that he had enough trouble with those I took to the Bug.

Only

I know how many died on the way

[

emphasis added

]

218

On November 9, Vasiliu, the

gendarmerie inspector general, reported to the

Conduc\tor

that the first stage of the

deportations from Bessarabia and Bukovina was over: 108,002 Jews had been relocated

as in the annexed table. A map accompanying the report indicated that the Jews had been

taken to three areas near the Bug: 47,545 to the north, in Mitki, Peceora, and Rogozna;

30,981 to the center, in Obodovka and Balanovka; and 29,476 in Bobric, Krivoi-Ozero,

and Bogdanovka.

219

Richters sources proved accurate: Antonescu had indeed concen-

trated 110,000 Jews Romanian citizens near the Bug, intending to kill them.

Meanwhile, Antonescu ordered the SSI to investigate why all the Jews had not been

evacuated east of the Jmerinka-Odessa railway, near the Bug. The investigation revealed

215. Richter to RSHA, October 11, 1941, Nuremberg Documents, PS-3319; copy in Ancel,

Docu-

ments

, vol. 5, no. 87, p. 110.

216. Alexianu to Fourth Army commander, Odessa Archive, 2242-2-76.

217. Guidelines Concerning the Organization of the Convoys, September 6, 1941, Odessa Archive,

2242-2-680, p. 50.

218. Benjamin,

op. cit.

, no. 119, p. 337.

219. Vasiliu to Antonescu, December 15, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archive, file no. 18844, vol. 3.

146

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

that in December 1941, 79,507 Jews deported west of that line from Romania were still

alive.

220

But at the beginning of the Romanian occupation, 150,000 to 200,000 Ukrainian

Jews were still alive in Transnistria, too.

Golta County Massacres

The German occupation authorities refusal to receive and execute the Romanian and

Ukrainian Jews deported to the Bug forced the Transnistrian administration to resolve the

matter on its own. The murder of Ukrainian and Romanian Jewry took place in Golta

county, near the Bug, from the end of December 1941 until May 1942. Under prefect and

gendarmerie Lieutenant Colonel Modest Isopescu, Golta became known as the King-

dom of Death, site of the three largest extermination camps Bogdanovka, Domanovka,

and Akmechetka and dozens of smaller ones. Imprisoned in these camps were about

10,000 local Jews, 30,000 from Bessarabia (particularly the Chiºinãu ghetto), and

65,000-70,000 from Odessa and the counties in southern Transnistria. Even before the

extermination campaign, so many died every day that Isopescu ordered gendarmes and

municipalities to bury the dead kikes two meters underground. Those buried at half a

meter will be reburied deeper. All sick, old, and infant kikes will be sent to Bogdanovka.

221

By mid-November 1941 Bogdanovka had become a human garbage dump.

When taking over the county, Isopescu wrote, he had found several camps of Jews

gathered from the neighboring boroughs (i.e., Ukrainian Jews), but most were sent

from across the Dniester (i.e., deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina). In early

October, about 15,000 Jews had gathered (i.e., been imprisoned) in the village of

Vazdovka, in the Liubashivka subdistrict, and another 3,000 in Krivoi-Ozero and

Bogdanovka. Those in Vazdovka were hit by typhus and about 8,000 died, Isopescu

reported. The mayor and the infantry regiment staying in the village requested that the

camp be moved, because it posed a constant danger of infection. Weakened by hunger

and contaminated with typhus, the Jews could not bury the corpses, and the soldiers and

villagers refused to come near the camp.

222

Isopescu transferred the roughly 10,000 Jews remaining in Vazdovka and Krivoi-Ozero

to swine stables of the sovkhoz

[

state agricultural farm

]

in Bogdanovka. But even

before the transport of kikes from Vazdovka had arrived, about 9,000 kikes were sent

from Odessa, so that today, with what was already there and what has arrived now, there

are 11,000 kikes in the kolkhoz

[

collective agricultural farm

]

stables, which can hold

only 7,000 pigs.

223

Isopescu continued, Today the mayor and the head of the kolkhoz

came to me in despair for they have been told that another 40,000

[

Jews

]

are coming

from Odessa. Since the sovkhoz can no longer accommodate them all, and those outside

the stables are killing those inside to take their place, while the

[

Ukrainian

]

police and

the gendarmes are overwhelmed by the burials, and as the water of the Bug is being

220. Military Cabinet report, January 4, 1942, Bucharest State Archives, Presidency of the Council of

Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 86/1941, pp. 325-327.

221. Isopescu to Bivolaru, November 4, 1941, Derjavnii Archiv Mikolaisvoi Oblasti, Ukraina (Central

Archive of Nikolaev County) (henceforth: Nikolaev Archive), 2178-1-66, p. 90.

222. Isopescu to Government of Transnistria, November 13, 1941,

ibid.

, p. 155.

223.

Ibid.

, p. 151b.

147

FINAL REPORT

drunk, the epidemic will soon spread throughout the region.

224

More than 67,000 Jews

were concentrated at Bogdanovka and partially at Domanovka, together with 29,479

deported from Bessarabia, as stated in a Romanian gendarmerie report.

225

To understand the details mentioned by Isopescu, it must be recalled that the first

frost of 1941 came on November 4, and temperatures continued to drop, plummeting to

35° C in December. Those who were unable to sneak into one of the filthy stables,

which were teeming with lice and feces, would freeze to death during the night; hence

the fierce competition for a place in the stables. The overcrowding in the camp peaked,

and most Jews were sick with typhus. Five hundred Jews died daily at Bogdanovka, while

another 200 perished each day at Domanovka. Both Isopescu and Alexianu hoped the

Germans would take the Jews and exterminate them on their own side of the territory. As

the governor reported to Antonescu on December 11, 1941: In view of solving the

Jewish problem in Transnistria, we are currently holding talks with the German authori-

ties about dumping

[

the Jews

]

over the Bug. At certain points, such as Golta, some Jews

have already started crossing the Bug.

We shall not have peace in Transnistria until we

have enforced the provision of the Hauffe-T\t\ranu agreement concerning the dumping

of the kikes over the Bug

[

emphasis added

]

226

The military units quartered in the Golta district

requested that the Prefecture move

the local camps, but there was no place available for this purpose.

227

Antonescus Ukraine

ended at the Bug, and by mid-December, immense masses of Jews alive, dead, and

dying were concentrated in the camps at Bogadanovka and Domanovka: Isopescus

worst nightmare had come true. He estimated 52,000 living Jews in Bogdanovka and

about 20,000 in Domanovka. Some crowded into stables (of which there were no more

than fifty), pigsties, and barracks, while others stayed outside, spread over three kilometers

along the west bank of the Bug. The silos were full of bodies, and both the living and

dead were packed into the stables and barracks in the deadly cold of winter.

Antonescu ordered the murder of the more than 70,000 surviving Jews at Bogdanovka

and then at Domanovka. In the Cabinet session of December 16, Alexianu informed the

Marshal that 85,000 Jews carried typhus in the villages where the Jews came. I must

disinfect them, or theyll infect everybody. Antonescus recommendation was brief:

Let them die.

228

Another factor in the decision to execute tens of thousands of Jews and

burn their bodies was the nature of relations with the German occupation authorities in

Ukraine and the

Einsatzgruppe

s dissatisfaction with Romanian disorganization and,

particularly, their failure to bury corpses. Berezovkas Landau subdistrict was home to

tens of thousands of local Germans

Volksdeutsche

and tens of thousands more lived

on the eastern bank of the Bug, in the Nazi-occupied part of the former Soviet county of

Nikolaev. On February 5, 1942, Gebietskommissar

Schlutter of Nikolaev, Isopescus

German counterpart, warned Alexianu about the immense epidemiological catastrophe

created by the Romanian authorities on the banks of the Bug. The Germans did not

224.

Ibid.

, pp. 151-151b.

225. Vasiliu to Antonescu, December 15, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archive, file no. 18844, vol. 3.

226. Alexianu to Antonescu, December 11, 1941, Odessa Archive, 2242-1-677, p. 197.

227. Georgescu to Golta prefecture, Nikolaev Archive, December 4, 1942, 2178-1-12, p. 22.

228. Government session, December 16, 1941, Ministry of Interior, Operative Archive, file no. 40010,

vol. 78, p. 358.

148

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

request the killing of the Jews, but possibly the transportation of the Jews so far inside

Transnistria that their crossing the Bug would become impossible.

229

Although the Nazi authorities across the Bug clearly wanted the Romanians to solve

their own Jewish problem, Alexianu countered that the Tighina Agreement obligated

the

Germans

to liquidate the Jews concentrated near the Bug: We shall answer that in

keeping with the Tighina Agreement of August 30, 1941, art. 7, until the Jews of

Transnistria are evacuated east of the Bug when operations allow, we are keeping them

here and cannot return them inland, in view of dumping them over the Bug. Please

advise whether the convention can be applied.

230

As the Romanian reply was delayed,

Schlutter sent another telegram reiterating his evacuation request: Every day a number

of Jews die and are buried superficially. This absolutely impossible situation poses an

imminent danger to the German villages of Transnistria and the neighboring territory of

the German commissariat of Ukraine. To save the troops, the German administration,

and the population, you are hereby asked to take rigorous measures.

231

What was our

answer? Alexianu jotted on the translated telegram. His deputy, Secretary General

Emanoil Cercavschi, wrote back: We answered Commissioner General Oppermann

that we have taken measures to burn the Jewish corpses.

232

Assisted by local gendarmes, Ukrainian policemen brought from Golta county shot

about 48,000 Jews at Bogdanovka. The massacre began on December 21 and continued

until the morning of December 24. After a break for Christmas, the executions resumed

on December 28 and continued until December 30, only to start anew on January 3,

lasting until January 8, 1942. The Jews were forced to undress and then shot in the back

of the neck by killers drunk on Samagoon, a local liquor made from beets.

233

Any gold

teeth were removed with rifle blows or tongs, and rings were cut off, together with

fingers if necessary. The bodies were immediately burned by a team of 200 young Jews

selected for this work, 150 of whom were eventually shot, as well. One survivor

described the process in this way: We would make piles for burning the corpses. One

layer of straw, on which we placed people

[

in a space

]

about four meters wide, more than

one man high, and about ten meters long. On the sides and in the middle we put

firewood, and then again one layer of people and a layer of straw with firewood. We

would light one pile and prepare another, so it took about two months to turn our

brothers to ashes. In terrible frosts we would warm up by the hot ashes.

234

At Domanovka, a Jewish borough on the road connecting Odessa to Golta, there were

about 20,000 Jews from Odessa and the borough environs. Between January 10 and

March 18, 1942, local Ukrainian police and the Romanian gendarmes killed 18,000.

229. Telegram, Schlutter to Alexianu, February 5, 1942 (German version and Romanian translation),

Odessa Archive, 2242-1-1486, pp. 180-180b.

230.

Ibid.

231. Telegram, Schlutter to Alexianu in Tiraspol, February 14, 1941 (German version and and Roma-

nian translation), Odessa Archive, 2242-1-1486, pp. 200-200b.

232.

Ibid.

233. This mass execution and burning of bodies was detailed during Isopescus trial in 1945. That

description has been confirmed by Romanian documents in the archives at Nikolaev and Odessa.

See

Actul de acuzare, Rechizitoriile ºi replica acuzãrii la procesul primului lot de criminali de

rãzboi

(henceforth:

Actul de acuzare

) (Bucharest: Editura Apãrãrii Patriotice, 1945).

234. Testimony of Haim Kogan, April 24, 1963, YVA, PKR-V, no. 4, p. 70.

149

FINAL REPORT

Although the corpses were initially buried, they were subsequently unearthed and burned

in order to avert the threat of disease. Pretor Teodor Iliescu reported:

At Domanevka

[

sic

]

there is a Jewish camp that poses a constant danger to the authorities

and the local population... due to the filth the Jews live in and the insects they are full of,

which constitute the best environment for the spread of typhus, cholera, and other diseases.

Since in this village a significant number of Jews have been shot and buried in graves... no

more than half a meter deep, and that will jeopardize public health once the snow melts and

the water infiltrates them... kindly order the relocation of the camp to Bogdanovka... They

cannot produce anything, and

due to lack of hygiene, about thirty to fifty are dying every day...

235

Isopescu noted his decision on the margin of the report: Proceed in accordance with

Order no. 23. Burn the corpses

to prevent the extension of the epidemic.

236

Akmechetka was located on the Bug, 18 kilometers (11 miles) south of Bogdanovka,

18 kilometers north of Domanovka, and 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the city of Golta.

Although documents describe it as a village, Akmechetka was actually a large pig farm.

Far from other populated areas and strictly guarded, Isopescu handpicked Akmechetka

in early March 1942 to accomodate Jews who could not work or serve any other

function, including the the eldery and children.

237

Healthy Jews were also sent there as

punishment for disobedience, resisting rape by gendarmes and Romanian government

personnel or refusing to surrender valuables, for example. Several hundred orphans

joined these prisoners, and Akmechetka soon housed 4,000 Jews.

The camp, occupying only part of the farm, consisted of four pigsties completely

exposed to the wind, snow, and rain and one long warehouse. Boards divided the sties

into sections, and approximately 1,000 people were crowded into each. The warehouse

was reserved for the orphans. Akmechetka was surrounded by three rows of barbed wire

and deep trenches and was guarded by Ukrainian police subordinated to Romanian

gendarmes.

238

The main purpose of the camp was extermination via isolation. Food was

extremely scarce, and Jews there lay for entire days on the ground or on beds and could

[

longer

]

move.

239

After several weeks, most died of starvation, and the rest were

utterly exhausted.

240

At first one prisoner was to maintain order in the camp. This task

became unnecessary, however, since the Jews were too weak to escape. The external

guard was also relaxed, and Ukrainian policemen entered the camp only occasionally to

conduct routine inspections. Romanian gendarmes bought Jews clothing in exchange for

a few potatoes and the Ukrainian policemen followed suit, though this business was

prohibited. Driven by hunger, most inmates were soon nearly naked, covered in rags or

thick wrapping paper. The few Jews chosen by policemen in the winter of 1942 to work

in the camps and in the area did so barefooted.

241

235. Iliescu to Golta Prefecture, March 19, 1942, Nikolaev Archive, 2178-1-58, pp. 358-358b.

236.

Ibid.

237. Ilia Ehrenburg and Vasili Grossman,

Cartea neagrã

(Bucharest: Institutul Român de Documentare,

1946), p. 103.

238.

Actul de acuzare

p. 30.

239.

Ibid.

, pp. 70-71.

240. Carp,

op. cit.

p. 225.

241. Testimony of Golda Israel, July 14, 1994, recorded by Ancel.

150

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Starvation was not the only killer in Akmechetka. Most prisoners became infected

with typhoid fever and suffered from dysentery and furunculosis. Malaria and tetanus

claimed lives, as well. The Jews in Akmechetka received no medical treatment. Of the

approximately 4,000 Jews initially sent to the camp, only several hundred were still alive

in May. Despite the high death rate, there were usually a few hundred Jews in the camp

at any given time since, as of April, Isopescu directed all the human garbage Jews

regularly sent by the government to Akmechetka, the kingdom of death. There was

another typhus outbreak in the area that month, and on May 24 Isopescu sent a telegram

to the gendarmerie headquarters in Transnistria: Instead of the Bogdanovka camp, I

have reserved Akmechetka, also located in the Domanovka subdistrict, for the Yids. I

therefore request that you send no more Yids to Bogdanovka but

[

rather

]

to Domanovka,

and from there they will be escorted to the Akmechetka camp.

242

Akmechetka struck terror in the hearts of all the Jews in Golta the survivors of the

Romanian mass murders as well as the more recently arrived deportees, who trickled into

the area until early 1943. The deputy prefect used the name Akmechetka to extort money

from the Jews sent directly from Romania to Golta in the summer of 1942. His threat

could be summed up in one sentence: Akmechetka awaits you.

243

The Odessa Massacres

The ordeal of the 120,000 Odessan Jews rivaled that in the camps on the Bug. Contrary

to Romanian propaganda, the Jews who numbered from 70,000 to 120,000 when

Odessa was captured were no darlings of the Soviet regime. As the siege wore on,

anti-Semitism increased, particularly in working-class neighborhoods, peaking on the eve

of the evacuation of Odessa. In mid-September, after German planes dropped anti-Semitic

leaflets over the city, young hooligans in one such district organized anti-Jewish

rallies,

chanting the old Czarist slogan: Strike the Jews and save Russia.

244

The 10

Infantry Division entering the city October 16, 1941, was ordered to gather

all the Jewish men aged 15-50 and the Jews who had fled from Bessarabia.

245

Some

murders took place near the port and included victims who had not managed to board the

last boats leaving Odessa. On October 17, the Romanian military authorities called for

a census, leading to the establishment of several registration and classification centers

around the city. On October 18, Romanian soldiers began taking hostages, especially

Jews. Some were dragged from their homes, while others were arrested upon reporting

to the checkpoints. The municipal prison was turned into a large camp of Jews. From

October 18, 1941, until mid-March 1942, the Romanian military in Odessa, aided by

gendarmes and police, murdered up to 25,000 Jews and deported over 35,000.

242. Cable no. 3572 from Isopescu to Gendarmerie headquarters in Transnistria, May 24, 1942,

Nikolaev Archives, 2178-1-4, p. 478.

243.

Actul de acuzare

p. 71.

244. Alexander Dallin,

Odessa, 1941-1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory under Foreign Rule

(Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1957), p. 42.

245. Jipa Rotaru

et al.

Mareºalul Ion Antonescu. Am fãcut rãzboiul sfânt împotriva bolºevismului

(Oradea: Cogito, 1994), p. 177.

151

FINAL REPORT

On the evening of October 22, the center and right wings of the Romanian military

general headquarters exploded, killing sixteen Romanian officers (including the citys

military commander, General Ion Glogojanu), four German naval officers, forty-six

other members of the Romanian military, and several civilians.

246

The command of the

Tenth Division had formerly served as NKVD (the Soviet secret police) headquarters.

Warnings had been issued as early as September that the fleeing communist units not

only mined certain buildings and locations, they installed explosives inside certain

objects and even toys.

247

Immediately upon learning of the disaster, Antonescu ordered

General Iosif Iacobici, chief of staff and commander of the Fourth Army, to take drastic

punitive measures.

248

That night, Iacobici cabled Antonescus Military Cabinet, inform-

ing them that he had begun to act: As a retaliatory measure, and as an example for the

population, I have taken steps to hang a number of suspected Jews and communists in the

town squares.

249

That same night, Iacobici sent General Nicolae Macici, commander of

the Fourth Armys Second Army Corps to Odessa. General T\t\ranus deputy, Colonel

St\nculescu, delivered Antonescus Order no. 302.826 to Trestioreanu demanding im-

mediate retaliatory action, including the liquidation of 18,000 Jews in the ghettos and the

hanging in the town squares of at least 100 Jews for every regimental sector...

250

At noon, St\nculescu again cabled T\t\ranu, reporting about the punitive measures:

Retaliatory action has been taken within the city via shooting

[

and

]

hanging, and

notices warning against terrorist acts have been posted. The execution of the Jews in the

ghettos is well under way...

251

Jews were rounded up and brought to these sites by the

army, the gendarmerie, and the police (who had come from Romania). The major

executions were carried out in neighboring Dalnic or enroute to Dalnic; tens of thou-

sands of Jews were brought there for this purpose. Although the Germans had offered to

send in an SS battalion to assist in dismantling mines and ridding Odessa of Jews and

Bolsheviks, the Romanian authorities chose to act alone.

252

The executed, including

hostages and locals who had disobeyed orders, were given no trial and were hanged from

balconies overlooking the main streets. After the explosion, long lines of poles were

erected along the trolley tracks leading out of town.

253

Some 10,000 Jews who were

arrested were jailed, but not immediately executed. General Iacobici hastened to send the

Military Cabinet a status report detailing the retaliatory actions taken, which included

executions by shooting and by hanging, and the posting of notices warning anyone who

246. See list of victims and casualty figures (apparently provisional), October 24, 1941, NDM,

pp. 673-679.

247. Circular from Transnistrian police headquarters (signed by Alexianu), September 22, 1941,

Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1067.

248. Cable from the Military Cabinet to Fourth Army headquarters, October 22, 1941, NDM, fond

MApN, Fourth Army; copy in USHMM, RG 25.003M, roll 12, Fourth Army Collection, file

no. 870, p. 634. From January 27 to September 22, 1941, Iacobici had served as minister of

national defense, later doubling as chief of staff and commander of war headquarters. On

September 9, Antonescu appointed him commander of the Fourth Army as well, after General

Nicolae Ciupercãs unsuccessful storming of Odessa.

249. Cable from Iacobici to the Military Cabinet, October 22, 1941,

ibid.

, p. 633.

250. Cable from Stãnculescu to Tãtãranu, October 23, 1941,

ibid.

, pp. 654-656.

251. Cable from Stãnculescu to Tãtãranu, October 23, 1941,

ibid.

, pp. 651-653.

252.

Ibid.

253. Dallin,

op. cit.

, p. 77.

152

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

would dare attempt such acts of terrorism.

254

By the next morning, hundreds of Jewish

corpses hung in the town squares and at intersections.

255

The carnage did not end there. At least 25,000 Jews were driven into fields by

gendarmes. One of the few survivors of this trek, then a girl of sixteen, reported that her

convoy was so huge that she could not see its beginning or its end.

256

Some 22,000 Jews

of all ages were packed into nine warehouses in Dalnic, a suburb of Odessa, an operation

that continued past nightfall on October 23. The massacre proceeded as follows:

One by one, the warehouses were riddled with machine gun and rifle fire, doused with

gasoline and ignited, except for the last warehouse, which was blown up. The chaos and the

horrifying sights that followed cannot be described: wounded people burning alive, women

with their hair aflame coming out through the roof or through openings in the burning

storehouses in a crazed search for salvation. But the warehouse

[

s were

]

surrounded on all sides

by soldiers, their rifles cocked. They had been ordered not to let a single civilian escape. The

horror was so great that it deeply shocked everyone there, soldiers and officers alike.

257

Trucks carrying gasoline and kerosene were parked outside the warehouses. These

buildings were ignited quickly, one after the next, since the soldiers had to be protected.

The troops then retreated about 50 meters (about 55 yards) and encircled the area to

prevent escape. A Romanian officer described what he saw:

When the fire broke out, some of those in the warehouse who were lightly wounded or still

unharmed tried to escape by jumping out the window or exiting through the roof. The soldiers

were ordered to immediately shoot at anyone who emerged. In an attempt to escape the agonies

of the fire, some appeared at the windows and signaled to the soldiers to shoot them, pointing

to their heads and hearts. But when they saw the guns pointed at them, they disappeared from

the window for a brief moment, only to reappear a few seconds later and signal to the soldiers

once again. Then they turned their backs to the window in order not to see the soldiers

shooting at them. The operation continued throughout the night, and the faces visible by the

light of the flames were even more terrifying. This time, those who appeared in the windows

were naked, having stripped off their burning clothing. Some women threw their children out

the window.

258

One warehouse was selected to fulfill Antonescus express desire to blow up a

building packed with Jews.

259

The explosion occurred on October 25, 1941, at 5:45 p.m.,

precisely when the Romanian army headquarters in Odessa had exploded three days

earlier. The force of the blast scattered body parts all over the area surrounding the

warehouse. Officers Deleanu, Niculescu-Coca, Radu Ionescu, and B\l\ceanu all shot

254. Report from Iacobici to the Military Cabinet, October 23, 1941, NDM, Fond Fourth Army, roll 12,

file 870, pp. 664-665.

255. Dallin,

op. cit.

p. 77.

256. Testimony of Milea Morduhovici, August 31, 1995, recorded by Jean Ancel, to be submitted to

YVA (henceforth: Morduhovicis testimony). Morduhovici contracted typhus at the Bogdanovka

camp and fled toward Odessa. She made it home, where she convalesced with the help of a

Russian physician. In February 1942, she was deported again by train with her family.

257. Report from Iacobici to the Military Cabinet, October 23, 1941,

ibid.

, pp. 662-663. Cable

no. 302.861, from Iacobici to War Headquarters in Tighina,

ibid.

, pp. 664-665.

258. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, no. 122, pp. 210-211.

259. Order no. 563 (302.858), October 24, 1941, NDM, Fourth Army Collection, file no. 870, p. 688;

copy in USHMM, RG 25.003M, roll 12.

153

FINAL REPORT

Jews who attempted to escape and even threw Soviet hand grenades into the warehouses.

Some horrified soldiers and even officers did their best not to shoot the human flames.

Many of us, the officers who could not bear these sights, tried to hide, and they

threatened us because of this.

260

German sources an officer in the

Abwehr

visited

Odessa in late October and prepared a detailed report on the explosion of the Romanian

headquarters there confirm the scope and nature of the Romanian operation in Odessa.

Yet, these sources emphasize that Soviet agents had planted the mines, rather than

emphasizing the Romanian reprisals against the Jews.

261

Toward the end of November, the Romanians brought prisoners of war to Dalnic to

dig pits next to the warehouses, remove the corpses using hooks or various other means,

and bury them. After the liberation of Odessa, the Communist Partys district commit-

tee, Obkom, reported that in the nine pits there were more than 22,000 bodies there,

among them children who had died of suffocation. Some bodies bore bullet wounds,

severed extremities, or shattered skulls.

262

At a Cabinet meeting on November 13, the

Conduc\tor

casually asked the governor of Transnistria if the retaliatory actions against

the Jews of Odessa were severe enough, to which Alexianu replied that many were killed

and hanged in the streets.

263

The first Jewish deportee columns originating from Odessa set out on foot from

Dalnic toward Bogdanovka in late October 1941, passing through Berezovka in early

November.

264

Jewish villagers along the deportation route were forced into these huge

convoys as well. They were later split into smaller, more manageable groups and es-

corted by Romanian gendarmes with the eager assistance of Ukrainian and Russian police

who had offered their services just ten days after the Romanians occupied Odessa.

The convoys were marched along the Odessa-Berezovka road for several days. After

a day or two in Berezovka, they continued on foot to Mostovoye and from there on to

Domanovka by way of Nikolaevka. For two weeks, the convoys trudged some 200 kilometers

(124 miles) to Bogdanovka, mostly in pouring rain and freezing cold. They received no

food or water, and any stragglers were shot by gendarmes. At night, the Jews were taken

into the fields where they were forced to remain on the muddy ground, and the women

and girls were raped by the gendarmes and the Ukrainian militia. The gendarmes,

seeking mainly jewelry and gold, conducted searches and seized anything of value,

including clothing. In the mornings, the convoy would regroup, and the gendarmes

would shoot whoever did not or could not get up, leaving the corpses unburied. Despite

the trail of bodies marking the deportation route, the convoys actually swelled along the

260.

Actul de acuzare

, p. 53

261. Bericht über Wahrnehmungen in Odessa, November 4, 1941, U.S. National Archives, RG 242,

T 501, roll 278.

262. Communist Party of the Ukraine, Odessa County Committee (Obkom), Final Register and Gen-

eral Data of the Regional Commission to the Extraordinary State Commission on the Damage and

Victims of the Fascist Occupation of the Region during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1944),

December 31, 1944, Communist Party Archives in Odessa, II-II-52, p. 22.

263.

Actul de acuzare

, pp. 64-65.

264. Until the opening of the former Soviet archives (1993) and the discovery of Milea Morduhovici

(see footnote 256), virtually nothing was known about this chapter in the liquidation of the citys

Jews. The description of the march from Dalnic to Bogdanovka in October-November 1941 is

based on Morduhovicis account.

154

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

way by absorbing Jews from the county of Odessa.

265

The grouping of these Jews along

the roadside was one of the gendarmes first assignments upon arrival in the district.

266

The second stage of the deportations those carried out by train began on January 12,

1942, when 856 Jews departed for Berezovka. Gendarmerie headquarters estimated that

40,000 Jews remained in Odessa.

267

Petal\, deputy head of the Odessa Evacuation

Office, oversaw the operation there, and Ciurea, his civilian counterpart, stationed

himself at the Prefecture in Berezovka to direct matters from the field. Colonel Matei

Velcescu, head of the Central Bureau for the Evacuation of the Jews from Odessa,

coordinated the various authorities in Odessa in order to expedite the deportations. The

heads of

[

the municipality, police, army, military, court, and railroad

]

were assigned

specific tasks involving the roundup, housing, and transfer of the Jews, for which they

were given the necessary manpower in the field.

268

Each transport began with a random selection of 1,000-2,000 Jews from among those

who had reported or been brought to Slobodka as well as from those brought before the

deportation committees in Odessa. These Jews were promptly robbed by representatives

of the authorities and by an emissary of the Romanian National Bank, who had come

from Bucharest for this purpose.

269

The gendarmes then pushed and shoved their charges

onto the freight platform in Sortirovka (Sortirovocnia), some 10 kilometers (6 miles)

from the ghetto and even farther from the deportation centers in the city. The deportations

began in 20

C (4

F) weather and continued despite blizzards, even when temperatures

dropped to 35

C (

F).

270

The only interruptions were caused by suspensions in rail

service due to the extreme cold, the low-grade coal powering the locomotives, and the

huge snowdrifts blocking the tracks. Until late January, the Jews were transported in

trains provided by the Germans through the

Wehrmacht

Liaison Headquarters in Tiraspol.

271

The Jews were transported in boxcars, carrying some 120 people each. There were

so many Jews in the railway car that it was hard to keep your feet on the floor.

272

Hundreds froze to death in the ghetto, on the way to the train station, or waiting on the

loading platform for the trains. Hundreds more perished while sleeping in the streets of

the ghetto when there was no room in the houses. Fearing a typhus epidemic, the

administrations Health Department and the Romanian armys medical personnel ordered

all dead bodies to be removed from the city.

273

Thus, the frozen corpses were also loaded

onto the trains. With no room to lay them on the floor of the cars, the bodies had to be

265. Commander of Berezovka gendarmerie legion to the prefect, January 31, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2361-1-39, p. 15; Morduhovicis testimony.

266. Commander of Berezovka gendarmerie legion to the prefect, January 31, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2361-1-39, p. 15.

267. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 133a, p. 216.

268. Affidavit of Velcescu, April 1, 1950, in Pantea file, p. 171.

269. Cable from Alexianu to the Civilian-Military Cabinet, January 13, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2242-11486, p. 36.

270. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, no. 137, pp. 221-222.

271.

Wehrmacht

Liaison Transnistria Headquartes to Alexianu, February, 1, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2242-1-1084, p. 2.

272. Starodinskii,

Odesskoe Getto

, p. 35; and Ehrenburg and Grossman,

op. cit.

, p. 98.

273. Tãtãranu, Tifosul exantematic in Transnistria, April 1942, Nikolaev Archives, 2178-1-424, pp. 4-5

(henceforth: Tãtãranu report).

155

FINAL REPORT

placed upright the frozen dead alongside the living and those who perished en route.

On February 13, 1942, Colonel Velcescu reported that 31,114 had been evacuated by

train to Berezovka

274

These Jews were shot by local German extermination units in

cooperation with Romanian gendarmes, and their bodies were burnt by the Germans.

In all, 35,000 Jews out of 40,000 were deported, as stated by Dr. T\t\ranu in April

1942.

275

According to Vidra[cu, 20-25 percent of the deportees froze to death before and

during the deportations.

276

This figure might have been much less had greedy gendarmes

and other officials not stripped the Jews of their property, their clothing, and especially

their coats (particularly those made of leather or fine fabrics). The gendarmes and

soldiers who brought the Jews to Sortirovka referred to the deportation train as the

hearse. A Romanian officer who rode this train on January 18 (in a special car

provided for the military) recorded his impressions:

It was a terrible winter, the kind one encounters only in Russia... It was twilight. Some

1,200 women, children, and old people from Odessa were brought to the train station under

armed German guard. (...) On three sleds, towed by women, lay five old people who had

forgotten to die at home... The Jews were allotted ten boxcars; that is, 120 people to a car. On

the cars was written: 8 horses or 40 people; nevertheless, 120 were forced in. They were

shoved, prodded with metal rods, jammed into the cars, but they got in. (...) During the

loading an old man and three women died. Their bodies were still loaded onto the train... That

dismal night, a bundle

[

suddenly

]

fell from one of the cars... and hit the platform with a sound

like a stone shattering. A few bits scattered here and there on impact. They were pieces of a

frozen baby

[

who had fallen

]

from his mothers arms... The mother lost her mind and stood

wailing on the platform, clawing her face... Then the train began moving forward. Toward

death. It was a funeral train, a hearse.

277

Major Apostolescu, a General Staff emissary sent by the Romanian army to oversee

the deportation and confiscation, reported on January 18, 1942, that Romanian gen-

darmes had been in charge of the operation and that some of the Jews are dying in train

cars due to the cold. The officer attested that ten Jews had perished in the first transport

and sixty in the second on account of the bitter cold and harsh blizzards.

278

In addition,

having departed without any food, Jews were dying from hunger on the way from the

ghetto to the train station. All the Jews, the officer noted, were either old men, children

under the age of sixteen, or women: There are no men younger than 41 years of age and

very few between 41 and 50. All are in miserable condition, clearly proving that they are

the poorest Jews in Odessa. Among his recommendations: In light of the

[

harsh

]

weather, which is completely unsuitable for transport, and the impression made

[

on me

]

by the considerable number of Jews dying in the ghetto, en route

[

to the loading

platform

]

and on the trains, it would perhaps be better if there were no transports on

274. Velcescu to Alexianu, Odessa Archive, 2242-1-1487, pp. 132-132b.

275. Tãtãranu report, p. 4.

276. Affidavit of Vidraºcu, June 17, 1950, copy in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 30; Bogopolskis

testimony. She testified that temperatures dropped to 40° C (40° F) during the deportations.

277. V. Luduºanu, Trenul-dric,

Curierul israelit

9 (November 12, 1944).

278. Report by Apostolescu with letter to Polichron, January 18, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1486,

pp. 10-11.

156

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

those days when it is too cold... The Jews must be forbidden to take

[

with them

]

family

members who have fallen

[

dead

]

in the ghetto or on the way.

279

Despite the cold, German railway workers (until January 31) and gendarmes accom-

panying the transports picked through the Jews belongings in search of valuables. The

platform was littered with pillows, blankets, coats, and overshoes that the Jews had not

been allowed to take with them. The gendarmes shot anyone who tried to run along the

platform, usually attempting to rejoin family in another car. All the while, German

soldiers photographed the scene. The trip to Berezovka, added the Romanian officer who

rode the train, took all night instead of the usual three hours. During the lengthy

stopovers, he heard the desperate cries of the deportees.

280

Once the car doors closed,

absolute darkness prevailed. At Berezovka, according to the officer cited above, the dead

brought from Odessa and another fifty who died in transit were removed from the train.

While still at the station, the bodies were arranged in a pyre, sprayed with gasoline, and

set alight.

281

It was impossible to dig a mass grave, since the ground was frozen solid,

so the bodies instead were burned in another effort by the Hygiene Service to avert a

typhus epidemic.

Many Jews who had survived all the horrors of Odessa finally broke down at

Berezovka. The sight of the bodies ablaze made it clear for the first time that they

themselves were doomed. The fire and stench of the night snuffed out the last of their

will to live: The boxcar door creaked open, and we were blinded by the scarlet flames

of the funeral pyres. I saw people writhing in the flames. There was a strong smell of

gasoline. They were burning people alive.

282

Most Jews thrown on the pyre were already

dead, but some only appeared that way because they were frozen stiff; the heat of the

fire revived them briefly before taking their lives.

Not all the transports were deposited at Berezovka. An unknown number were taken

farther north to Veselinovo, a relatively large German-Ukrainian borough controlled by

special units of the local SS.

283

In both Veselinovo and Berezovka, Romanian gendarmes

waited for the deportees, clubbing them to hurry them along. The gendarmes ordered the

Jews to remove the bodies from the train and arrange them in piles, though the deportees

were half-frozen themselves. The unloading took place in a nearby field. At Berezovka

and Veselinovo, the convoys were divided arbitrarily, without regard for family unity, and

immediately sent off on foot in different directions. The Jews were allowed no rest.

On January 17, five days into the operation, Transnistrian gendarmerie commander

Colonel Emil Broºteanu sent a progress report to the administration in Transnistria and

to gendarmerie headquarters in Bucharest. This document sheds light on the technical

aspects of the deportation:

I have the honor of informing you that, on January 12, 1942, the evacuation of the Jews

from Odessa began. In accordance with the order issued by the Transnistrian administration,

the Jews about to be evacuated have been assembled in the ghettos after each

[

Jew

]

has

279.

Ibid.

, p. 11.

280. Ludu[anu,

op. cit

281.

Ibid.

282. Ehrenburg and Grossman,

op. cit.

, citing a witness, p. 100.

283. Commander of

Wehrmacht

Liaison Transnistria Headquarters to Headquarters of Romanian Third

Army in Tiraspol, March 20, 1942, Special Archives in Moscow, 492-1-5, p. 262.

157

FINAL REPORT

appeared before the Committee for the Assessment of Property (Jewelry) and surrendered his

money in return for RKKS.

Convoys of 1,500-2,000 individuals are put together inside the ghetto and loaded onto

German trains. They are transported to the Mostovoye-Veselyevo

[

Veselinovo

]

region, in the

Berezovka district.

From the Berezovka station, they are escorted to the relocation area. To date, 6,000 have

been evacuated, and the transports are continuing daily.

It is very difficult to find shelter for them in the relocation villages, since the Ukrainian

population does not accept them; consequently, many end up in the stables of the collective

farms.

Because of the freezing temperatures (which sometimes reach 20° C) and the lack of

food, and

[

because of

]

their age and miserable condition, many die along the way and freeze

where they fall.

The Berezovka

[

gendarmerie

]

legion has been recruited for this operation, but due to the

severe cold, the escort personnel must change off frequently.

Bodies are strewn along the route

[

and

]

buried in antitank trenches. We are rarely able to

recruit local people to bury the bodies, since

[

the locals

]

try as much as possible to avoid such

operations. We shall continue reporting on the progress of the operation.

284

Gendarmerie headquarters repeated the above almost verbatim in its first summary

report on the operation, updating only the number of deportees: As of January 22,

12,234 Jews have been evacuated out of a total of 40,000.

285

The depleted convoys proceeded to various destinations. An estimated 4,000-5,000

Jews were sent to Bogdanovka, where the liquidation operation had been completed but

the body burnings were still at their height. Some of the new arrivals were taken straight

to the pit, shot, and burned. Other Jews were brought to Domanovka, where P\dure was

conducting selections and separating out the expert craftsmen. Tens of thousands of

Odessa Jews brought to these two camps in November 1941 had already been slaugh-

tered. At Domanovka, the liquidations continued, and the latest convoys met the same

fate as those before.

Several transports were directed to the local state farms, which had passed into

Romanian hands wherever uninhabited by German villagers. The bulk of the convoys,

however, were led to improvised camps in ethnic-German villages in Berezovka. The

march to these camps was prolonged in order to thin the ranks along the way, or, as one

survivor put it, so as many as possible would die a natural death.

286

Convoys sent to

camps 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the Berezovka train station were walked in circles

for three days in the frozen, snow-covered wasteland, with most of the exhausted adults

and children expiring in the fields. Each convoy was robbed by the gendarmes, who

seized anything that appeared valuable: They took our last possessions from us. By the

time we reached Domanovka, we were paupers.

287

284. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 129, p. 222.

285. Report: December 15, 1941, to January 15, 1942, by Gendarmerie Headquarters in Transnistria,

ibid.

, no. 133a, p. 216.

286. Ehrenburg and Grossman,

op. cit.

, p. 99.

287.

Ibid.

, p. 98.

158

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Berezovka Massacres

Transnistria contained the largest concentration of

Volksdeutsche

(ethnic Germans) in the

Ukraine. A census conducted by the Nazis in early 1943 registered 130,866 Germans

living in the region, compared with 169,074 in the entire

Reichskommissariat

Ukraine.

288

Some 100,000 of those in Transnistria were scattered among the villages and towns

ringing Odessa. Under the Soviets, Greater Odessa had encompassed almost all of

southern Transnistria.

289

The local Germans in the Odessa area constituted some forty

percent of the Soviet Germans under Nazi occupation. Based on the Nazis wartime

figures, Transnistria comprised more than thirty German villages whose populations

exceeded 1,000 each.

290

Convoys of Jews from Bessarabia were marched past German villages north of the

Dniester estuary, northwest of Odessa and east of Tiraspol. Likewise, convoys deported

on foot from southern Transnistria to the county of Golta passed dozens of German

communities. One witness described the thirst for Jewish blood among the SSs new

German recruits, who shot into crowds of Jews.

291

Another Nazi body operating among

the ethnic Germans in and around Odessa was

Einsatzgruppe

D, numbering some

500 men. Secondary units reached the area in late August 1941 after conducting exter-

mination campaigns in Bukovina and Bessarabia.

292

Einsatzkommando

12 terrorized the

regions of Bergdorf-Glückstahl, east of the town of Dubossary; Hoffnungstal, in the

counties of Tiraspol and Ananyev, north of the town of Katarzi; and Speyer-Landau, in

the eastern section of Berezovka County, near the Bug.

Einsatzkommando

11b operated in the Seltz region (southeast of Tiraspol, near the

Dniester); in the German-populated area known as Kutshurgan, south and southwest of

the Ukrainian town of Rasdelnia, on both sides of the railroad tracks leading there; in

the Gross-Liebenthal region, southwest of Odessa, near the border with Bessarabia; and

around occupied Odessa. As shown above, Odessa itself was left to the Romanians. The

Einsatzgruppen

quickly moved on to Simferopol and the Crimea. While still in the

vicinity, though, the

Einsatzgruppen

organized the new administration, handled matters

of health and education, and issued certificates attesting to German bloodlines. In

October,

Einsatzgruppe

D departed from most of Transnistria and moved on to the

288. Figures from the 1943 census of ethnic Germans, cited in Meir Buchsweiler,

The Ethnic Germans

in the Ukraine toward the Second World War

(in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Diaspora Research Institute,

Society for Jewish Historical Research, 1980), pp. 345-348. This research, together with docu-

mentation uncovered following the opening of the archives in Russia and the Ukraine, has helped

to provide a more complete picture of the extermination of Odessa Jewry in Berezovka.

289. K. Stumpp, Verzeichnis der deutschen Siedlungen in Gebiet Odessa (mit Karte) (Survey of the

German settlements in the Odessa county

[

with map

]

), in

Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus

Russland

(

Homeland Book of the Germans from Russia

), 1956, pp. 181-193. Identification of the

German villages is problematic, since the Soviet regime renamed some as part of Russification,

while the Nazis and, to a certain extent, the Romanian occupation authorities used the

German place names predating the 1917 revolution.

290. See Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

291. Testimony of Malca Barbãlatã of Bolgrad, recorded in Nahariya, April 3, 1967, YVA, PKR/V,

pp. 1263-1265.

292. Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

, p. 267.

159

FINAL REPORT

Crimea, but the Dubossary area retained a small secondary unit, known as

Nachkommando

SS, to continue liquidating the Jewish population.

293

A third Nazi body operating in the region was the

Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle

(VoMi),

which served as a liaison office for ethnic-German affairs. The VoMi organized the

local Germans into cogs in the extermination apparatus. Heinrich Himmler instructed the

VoMi to exercise control over the local Germans in the occupied areas of the USSR.

294

In Transnistria, the VoMi set up the

Sonderkommando

Russland

(SkR), an extermination

unit composed of local German SS men.

295

Oberführer

(Commander) Horst Hoffmeyer,

who was promoted to

Brigadierführer

(SS brigade commander) on November 9, 1943,

set up headquarters in the German town of Landau, in Berezovka county. Landau was

situated in the middle of a densely German region near the Bug. Secondary units moved

into Halberstadt, a German village east of Landau on the Bug, and elsewhere. The

original VoMi was comprised of the eighty men who founded the SkR; but, by late 1942

their ranks had swelled to 160 all SS agents. The German areas were divided into

eighteen sub-regions, each headed by an SS man assisted by at least three SkR mem-

bers.

296

The SkR began operating in Transnistria on September 20, 1941.

297

Even before any

agreements had been signed with the Romanian authorities, the unit set up a state-

-within-a-state and recruited the local population for service to the

Reich

. Aside from

their patrols, even the Romanian gendarmes had no access to the region under SkR

control. This territory was in addition to the German villages and towns, since the

Germans had seized or demanded and received some of the land that had been theirs

prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. For this reason, the German villages (actually a

minority within a large Ukrainian area) dominated more than their actual territory and

created German pockets where Himmlers henchmen reigned. The county of Berezovka

was comprised of forty-two such villages including twelve in the Berezovka subdistrict,

thirteen in Mostovoye, and twelve in Landau that numbered some 16,200 Germans.

298

The status of the German communities in Transnistria was negotiated in Bucharest

and Odessa. Correspondence between German Ambassador Manfred von Killinger and

Antonescu in November 1941 made it clear to the Romanians that the VoMi alone would

represent the ethnic Germans in Transnistria. Alexianu and his prefects were to cooper-

ate with Hoffmeyer and the sub-regional commanders regarding the Germans.

299

Alexianu

and Hoffmeyer met on December 8 in Odessa, and on December 13 in Tiraspol they

officially established the state-within-a-state already operating in Transnistria. In the

293. Liaison Headquarters in Tiraspol to Transnistrian government, April 3, 1942,

ibid.

, 2242-1-1086,

p. 64.

294. Heinrich Himmler, Erfassung der deutschen Volkszugehörigen in der Gebieten der europäischen

Sowietunion (The census of German nationals in the European regions of the Soviet Union),

July 11, 1941, Nuremberg Documents, NO-4274.

295. Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

, p. 274.

296.

Ibid.

297.

Ibid.

, p. 274.

298. List of German villages in Berezovka, complied by the prefecture, early 1942, Odessa Archives,

2242-1-1087, p. 114; list of German communities in the county, n.d.

[

late 1941

]

, Odessa

Archives, 2361-1c-2, p. 240.

299. Correspondence between Killinger and M. Antonescu, November 14-15, 1941, Odessa Archives,

2359-1-24, p. 3.

160

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

end, the Romanian government recognized the self-defense units armed and trained by

the SS headquarters of the VoMi and subject solely to its orders.

300

With the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union, an exchange of letters

between the Transnistrian administration and the

Gebietskommissar

(county head) in

Nikolaev was revealed. Contrary to what was previously believed, the convoys trans-

ported mainly from Odessa to Berezovka and Veselinovo were not directed immediately

to the German villages there; rather, these Jews were marched straight to the Bug with

the aim of getting them to the other side, come what may. On February 5, Gebiets-

kommissar Schlutter in Nikolaev sent prefect Loghin of Berezovka a telegram warning of

the ecological catastrophe wrought by the Romanians:

Some 70,000 Jews have been concentrated on the

[

Romanian

]

side of the Bug, approxi-

mately 20 kilometers

[

12 miles

]

into

[

Transnistria

]

, opposite the towns of Nikolaevka and

Novaya Odessa, which lie about 60 kilometers

[

37 miles

]

north of Nikolaev on the Bug. Rumor

has it that the Romanian military guard has been removed, so the Jews are being left to their

fate and are dying of starvation and cold. Typhus has spread among the Jews, who are trying

in every way to exchange articles of clothing for food. In so doing, they are also endangering

the German territory, which can easily be reached by crossing the frozen Bug River. The

Gebietskommissar

of Nikolaev requests that a decision be made as soon as possible regarding

the fate of

[

these

]

Jews. They can be led so deep into Transnistria that crossing the Bug will

become impossible for them. The

Gebietskommissar

asks to be apprised of what is being done

by the Romanian side.

301

The governors reply, written in the margins of the prefects letter, asserted that the

existing agreement had to be honored:

Send a cable stating that, in accordance with Article 7 of the Tighina Agreement of

August 30, 1941, the Jews of Transnistria shall be deported east of the Bug when

[

military

]

operations so permit. We are holding them here in preparation for crossing the Bug and cannot

return them further inland

[

inside Transnistria

]

. Request that we be informed if implementa-

tion of the agreement is possible.

302

Schlutter indeed received such a telegram from Acting-Governor Emanoil Cercavschi-

-Jelita.

303

The message, which was worded in accordance with the written instructions of

Alexianu, explained that the assembling of the Jews in concentration camps (

Kon-

zentrationslagern

) along the Bug was being done in accordance with the Tighina Agree-

ment (Article 7) signed by General Hauffe: For technical reasons, the telegram

stated, the transfer of the Jews deeper into Transnistria is not possible at present.

304

February 16, Alexianu received a translation of a second telegram and inquired: What

300. Romanian version of the understanding, Tiraspol, December 13, 1941, Odessa Archives, 2359-1-24,

pp. 4-8; German version, U.S. National Archives, T 175, roll 194, 233076-2733072.

301. Telegram from Schlutter, February 5, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1486, pp. 180-180b;

Romanian translation, presented to Alexianu is found on p. 179.

302. Loghin to Alexianu, February 8, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1486, p. 178

303. Telegram from Cercavschi to Schlutter, February 14, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1486,

p. 177.

304. Romanian translation of Oppermanns telegram, Alexianus comment of February 16, and

Cercavschis response of February 18, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1486, p. 199.

161

FINAL REPORT

answer was given? Cercavschi replied: We responded to Generalkommissar Oppermann

that we were taking steps to burn the Jewish

bodies.

305

Alexianu and Hoffmeyer met periodically to make practical arrangements and moni-

tor the killings, burials, and burnings. These arrangements were concluded orally, and

the Romanians generally avoided mentioning burning the bodies or mass executions in

the documents sent to the Germans. However, in the margins of letters, reports, and

telegrams, there are comments and instructions referring to the burning, to corpses

strewn in fields, to agreements allowing the Romanians to drive convoys of tens of

thousands of Jews across the Bug. On the agenda of a March 7 meeting between the two,

was a discussion of Rastadt, in the Berezovka district Jews shot and left unburied.

306

Once cooperation became routine with regard to the exterminations in Berezovka

and once most of Odessa Jewry was dead Eichmann produced a memo-cum-study on

the Deportation of Romanian Jews to the

Reichskommissariat

Ukraine.

307

In this docu-

ment, the foremost Nazi expert on the liquidation of Jews contrasted the German and

Romanian methods of genocide. Eichmann praised the Romanians desire to eliminate

their Jews but did not welcome the Romanian operation at present. He agreed with the

deportations in principle but criticized the disorderly and indiscriminate evacuation

of thousands of Jews to the

Reichskommissariat

Ukraine, which threatened not only the

German forces but also the local residents with epidemics, insufficient food, and other

hazards. Eichmann explained: Among other things, these unplanned and premature

evacuations of Romanian Jews to the occupied territories in the east pose a serious threat

to the deportation

[

operation

]

presently being carried out among the German Jews. For

these reasons, I request that the Romanian government be approached to put an immedi-

ate end to these illegal transports of Jews.

308

If the Romanians continued deporting Jews across the Bug, Eichmann proposed that

the SD (the Nazi security service) be given a free hand to deal with the situation.

However, Eichmann, although a high-ranking RSHA official, had no jurisidiction over

the security police in the Ukraine, the

Einsatzgruppen

, or the VoMi; only Himmler

did.

309

In Bucharest, Killinger met with Mihai Antonescu, who then summoned Alexianu

for an update, promising an early response.

310

The Foreign Office in Berlin replied to

Rosenberg on May 12 that it had appealed to the Romanian government. The embassy in

Bucharest cabled back that Alexianu would soon report to Mihai Antonescu, after which

the deputy prime minister would clarify the Romanian position. Nevertheless, a

German Foreign Office official added, 28,000 Jews have been brought to German

305.

Ibid.

One difficulty in seeking documentation concerning the murder of Jews in the archives of

the Transnistrian administration stems from the fact that such documents were not filed separately and

are scattered among hundreds of thousands of pages of correspondence related to other matters.

306. Problems discussed at meeting in Odessa, March 7, 1942, between the Governor and

Oberführer

Hoffmeyer, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1085, p. 4. Page 5 of this document is entitled, The

Responses to the Requests of the German Delegation, but mentions no decision about the

corpses in Rastadt.

307. Eichmann to the Foreign Office, April 14, 1942, Nuremberg documents, NG-4817.

308.

Ibid.

309. Transcript of the pre-trial interrogation of Eichmann by the Israeli police, YVA:

Police dIsrael,

Adolf Eichmann, Tonbandskription und Maschine

pp. 1123-1125, 3038

310. Rademacher to Eichmann, Berlin, May 12, 1942, Nuremberg Documents, NG-4817.

162

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

villages in Transnistria. They have since been eliminated.

311

This figure represented the

bulk of the Odessa Jews deported by train.

It is now known that 14,500 Jews one transport of 6,500 and another of 8,000 all

from Bessarabia and Bukovina were taken as close possible to the Bug in the area of

Nikolaev and driven across the river into German hands. Once on German territory, they

were apparently murdered by the local Germans, who were organized into Nazi bands on

both sides of the Bug. The German authorities did not want masses of dying Jews in the

vicinity, since there was a sizable German presence on both sides of the river.

312

Accord-

ing to the Nazi census of 1943, the Nikolaev district (under Soviet administration) was

home to 27,078 ethnic Germans.

313

After the attempt to foist the Jews of Odessa upon the

Germans aroused such strong opposition, the transports to Voznesensk were discontin-

ued. The convoys reaching Berezovka and Veselinovo were marched to another area not

far from the Berezovka-Veselinovo line within a triangle of sorts formed by Berezovka,

Mostovoye, and Lichtenfeld and Rastadt.

The convoys trudged for days over the snow-covered plateaus to the Bug during the

brutal winter of 1941/1942. Along the way, the gendarmerie sergeants were re-routed,

thereby sparing a few fortunate Jews who never reached the German villages. These Jews

have testified to the weeks of aimless trudging in circles. The cold was intolerable, yet the

deportees had no shelter; convoys were left in the fields to fend for themselves, while

the gendarmes hurried off in search of the nearest village.

314

The Jews had nowhere to run

in the little German kingdom by the Bug, and most Ukrainians did not want or dare to help

them. As Schlutter reported in telegrams, the Jews were left unguarded, and many perished

every day. The dead remained in the fields; the problem of burial arose only in the spring.

315

Most convoys were eventually directed to Ukrainian villages in the Berezovka district,

where the Jews were housed in unused stables, storage sheds, and other structures on

farms. Others ended up in the ruins of villages emptied by war and by the SkRs

evacuation of Ukrainian villagers. The gendarmes moved on, leaving the Ukrainian

militia to guard the deportees. News of their fate was not long in coming. The few

gendarmes scattered among the hundreds of villages primarily oversaw farming and were

too small in number to maintain order. Moreover, as noted by an SS officer at SkR

headquarters in Landau, the Romanians did not wish to get their hands dirty;

316

even

their mass exterminations in the kingdom of death relied on the Ukrainian militia.

Thus, the convoys were dispersed outside Berezovkas German villages so others would

do the dirty work.

The first known extermination of the Jews deported from Odessa took place on

January 31, 1942, in the village of Podoleanca, near the German enclave of Novo

311. Rademacher to the Ministry of Eastern Occupied (Soviet) Territories, May 12, 1942,

ibid.

312. Protocol of conversation between Davidescu and Stelzer, March 13, 1942, Foreign Ministry

Archives, roll 6, p. 58; copy in USHMM, RG 25.006M, roll 6. Stelzer asked that the Romanians

cease pushing Jews onto the German side of the Bug, since 14,500 had already crossed the river,

and another 60,000 in the Berezovka county were to follow.

313. Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

p. 347. The Soviet census of 1926 found 30,911 Germans there, constitut-

ing 6.2 percent of the population (see

ibid

., map no. 3).

314. See The Killing Grounds in Berezovka County, in Ancel,

Transnistria

, vol. 1, pp. 313-320.

315. Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

, p. 322.

316.

Ibid.

, p. 322.

163

FINAL REPORT

America, north of Veselinovo and Rastadt. Ten German civilian police

Selbstschutz

took 200 Jews out of

[

Podoleanca

]

, led them to the outskirts of the village, and shot them

dead. The dead were burned, and their belongings taken to Novo America.

317

The Jews

of Odessa learned what was to be their fate on February 1 from Major Ion Popescu, the

gendarmerie commander in Berezovka: The Rastadt police shot 130 Jews from the

village of Novaya Uman, burned the bodies, and divided the spoils among the inhabitants

of the German villages.

318

Two weeks later, Popescu reported:

The gendarme legion in Mostovoye informs us that the Jews in the work camp at Gradovka,

800 in number, were shot to death by the German police from the village of Rastadt. In

addition,

[

the legion

]

reports that there is no room for the Jews being exploited

[

for work

]

the villages of Dvoreanka, Kriniski, Cudznea, Maitova, Cotonea, and Ripeaki.

[

The legion

]

proposes that approval be granted for the transfer of the 650 Jews located in the villages to the space

now available in the village of Gradovka, where they can be housed under good conditions.

319

Over the next few months, gendarmerie bulletins referred to thousands of Jews

slaughtered by the SkR and the

Selbstschutz

. The Romanians transported the Jews and

prevented their escape; whereas, the

Selbstschutz

, under SkR orders, carried out the

extermination. The gendarmerie assembled Jews wherever the German death squads

could operate as quickly and efficiently as possible. The victims belongings fell to the

executioners. Unlike the Romanians, the Germans burned the bodies immediately to

avert epidemics. The SkR appealed to the Romanian authorities to block the convoys

passage through or alongside German villages.

320

On March 9, German death squads from Mostovoye and Zavadovka murdered 772

Jews from the Jewish camp in the village of Cihrin. On March 13, outside the German

village of Cartaica, seventeen Germans from SS units gunned down 650 Jews from the

Julievka camp. Before the execution, the Jews were stripped down to their shirts, and

their valuables, money, and clothing were taken by the German police to the village of

Cartaica. The corpses of the victims were burned.

321

On March 16, it was reported that

120 Jews from the Catousea camp had been liquidated by an SS police unit consisting

of sixteen Germans from the German village of Nova Candeli, east of Berezovka; these

Jews, too, were robbed just before their death. This report reveals the degree of

Romanian-German cooperation in exterminating Jews: Following the executions,

300 panic-stricken Jews fled the Lisinovka camp, but

[

]

he gendarme legion was

ordered to capture them and return them to the camp.

322

In short, the gendarmerie held

the Jews in place, while the SkR killed them.

317. Intelligence Report no. 82, from Popescu to Gendarmerie Headquarters in Transnistria and to the

prefect of Berezovka, February 11, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2361-1-7, p. 101.

318. Popescu to the Berezovka prefect, February 1, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2361-1-7, p. 96.

319. Popescu to the Berezovka prefect, February 17, 1942, Odessa Archives, 2361-1-7 p. 98.

320. See SkR request not to lead a Jewish convoy through the German village of Cartaica, and a report

on the murder and body burning of sixty Jews in the village of Mikhaylovka, Odessa Archives,

2361-1-7, pp. 102-105.

321. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, no. 144, p. 226. Original report reprinted in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5,

no. 144, p. 263. The reports published in Carp,

op. cit.

, are among the summaries Bro[teanu

sent his superiors in Bucharest. These dispatches were presented at the trials of the Romanian war

criminals in 1945-1946.

322.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, no. 145, pp. 226-227. See original in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 145, p. 264.

164

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

On March 18, it was disclosed that 483 Jews brought to

[

Bernadovka

]

from Odessa

had been murdered by a German police unit from that village.

323

This time the SkR did

not have to travel, since the gendarmes led the Jews straight to the scene. And in late

May, the new gendarmerie commander, Colonel M. Iliescu, reported that SS police from

Lichtenfeld had murdered 1,200 Jews brought to the Suha-Verba collective farm.

324

Since we now have all the gendarmerie reports on the liquidation of Odessa Jewry, we

know that the SkR relayed the following to the RSHA in Berlin, almost as an after-

thought: As of early May, the 28,000 Jews transported to the German villages in

Transnistria have been exterminated, hence the disappearance of most Odessa Jews

deported by train. Not one survivor has been found. The German natives of this region,

who escaped to Germany, the United States, and Canada, have never admitted to geno-

cide. The West German State Attorneys Office asserted in 1961 that no Jew in the

German settlement areas is known to have survived the VoMi era.

325

In September 1942, 598 Jewish men, women, and children mostly Bessarabians

were deported from Bucharest to Mostovoye. And in early October, 150 Jews allegedly

communists were also transported to Transnistria. Handed over by the gendarmerie

there to the German death squad in Rastadt, the first group was immediately shot dead.

Only sixteen survived.

326

In May 1942, the Army Headquarters asked the

Conduc\tor

whether the German policemen (SkR) are allowed to shoot thousands of Jews in the

Berezovka district and burn their corpses. Antonescu responded: It is not the armys

job to worry about this matter.

327

During the summer of 1943, the Rastadt death squad executed more than 1,000 Jews

assembled in the village. Apparently for the first time, a witness survived to describe the

killings. We therefore have the only known testimony apart from gendarmerie reports

concerning the extermination method used by the

Selbstschutz

under VoMi command.

Jews handed over to the SkR were herded by the Romanian gendarmes into the courtyard

of the Berezovka Gendarme Legions headquarters. Told they would be transferred to

Mostovoye, the deportees were instead brought to Rastadt. The village, according to the

aforementioned witness, stood on a hill near Mostovoye:

When we arrived there... we found a large convoy. We were ordered to remove our clothes

and, at the same time, to hand over anything we had of value... Afterward they told us to line

up facing pits, where we saw something black. It was tar. We were on the slope, while the

Germans crowded together on the hilltop in their black clothes with the shiny armbands... We

stood there, thousands

[

actually hundreds

]

of Jews in the open field... Meanwhile the beasts

became drunk and began abusing all the pretty girls and women. They created a small wave of

panic by shooting several small children, whom they had wrenched from their mothers

bosom. And then, drunk, their consciences no longer functioning, they began mowing down

row after row of people, under orders from a commander. The shots were accompanied by

323. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, no. 146, p. 227.

324.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, no. 147, p. 227. See original in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 153, p. 274.

325. Quoted in Buchsweiler,

op. cit.

p. 317.

326. General Inspectorate of Gendarmerie to Ministry of Interior; list of 598 Jews deported in

Transnistria, having requested repatriation in the USSR in 1940; list of 18 Jews of the previous

list who were alive as of September 1, 1943, Ancel,

Documents

vol. 5, nos. 211-212, pp. 442-454.

327. Note from Military Cabinet and Antonescus remarks, May 12, 1942, Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5,

no. 30, p. 193.

165

FINAL REPORT

sounds of screeching and wailing that echoed throughout the German settlement. For

[

the

Germans

]

, it was entertainment, a celebration. People fell, one after another or several at a

time, into the prepared pits. These filled up

[

quickly

]

, since they were quite shallow; they

were dug to be long rather than deep. At about 6 in the evening, the killing ended. Two

[

Jews

]

remained standing. One was tied to a car and dragged across the ground at high speed, and the

other was run over by a speeding motorcycle driven by a drunken Nazi officer. All this took

place before our eyes. (...) The Germans had set the corpses on fire, and they burned like

straw, since

[

the Germans

]

had poured kerosene on them, and there was tar at the bottom of

the pit. There was great rejoicing in the Nazi camp.

328

Immediately after the war, Soviet sources estimated that 20,000 Jews were murdered

this way in Rastadt and Suhaia (Suha) Balca, a sovkhoz

north of Mostovoye.

329

The threat

of epidemics prompted the burnings, and the tar was apparently intended to avoid

contaminating water sources. The Romanian practice of throwing corpses into the Bug

had sparked intense criticism from local German officials, since the river provided

drinking water. Evidently, the Germans started torching the bodies in the mass graves in

the summer of 1942 or even later. Until then, corpses may have been cremated in

specially constructed facilities.

Rumors of body burnings by local Germans reached Alexianus interrogators in April

1946, prior to his trial in Bucharest. The killing of Jews was not their focus, but they did

ask the former governor where these atrocities had occurred. He replied:

[

Jews

]

were

burned at Rostov. The Germans buried the corpses in antitank trenches. Afterwards they

brought gasoline, and the bodies were burned.

330

Alexianu, a professor of law who

corrected every typographical error in his affidavits, confused Rostov with Rastadt.

Rastadt was a German village in Transnistria to which Jews were brought by the Roma-

nian gendarmes who reported directly to him; Rostov was a Russian city some 750 kilometers

(466 miles) to the east. No one noticed this mistake, though in February 1942

Alexianu and Hoffmeyer had discussed the problem of the Jews shot to death and left

unburied in Rastadt.

The Transfer of Jews to SS Units across the Bug

In their haste to liquidate Ukrainian Jewry, by the spring of 1942 the Germans found

themselves short of slave labor to construct the

Durchgangstrasse IV

, the strategic

highway linking Poland to southern Ukraine. Therefore, the Transnistrian administration

began providing deportees from Romania as well as local Jews to the Nazi regime in

Ukraine and to SS squads of local Germans. The highway stretched from Lvov to Stalino,

north of the Sea of Azov, and east of Rostov (the gateway to the Caucasus Mountains and

Stalingrad). It also passed through Bratslav (west of the Bug) and through Nemirov,

Gaysin, Ivangorod, and Kirovograd (east of the Bug). Thousands of Romanian Jews

perished in the labor camps in these towns. SS squads periodically crossed over to the

328. Testimony of Max Haimovici, n.d.

[

1961

]

, YVA, 0-33779, pp. 23-25.

329. Ehrenburg and Grossman,

op. cit.

, p. 105.

330. Transcript of Alexianus interrogation, April 14, 1946, p. 12, Ministry of Interior Archives, file

no. 40010, vol. 45, p. 246.

166

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Romanian side of the Bug and brought back with them thousands of Jews at a time to

work on the highway. Ukrainian militia and volunteers from Lithuania helped to guard,

and later to liquidate, Jews on the German side of the river. The Jews supplied by the

Romanians, and ultimately delivered to their deaths, totaled at least 15,000.

331

In August 1942, the prefect of Tulcin (and former prefect of Berezovka), Loghin,

sought Alexianus permission to hand over 5,000 Jews to the SS for construction of the

Nemirov-Bratslav-Seminki-Gaysin segment of the highway. The prefect asked that the

governor accede to this request from the headquarters of the SS squads, since he

himself did not need those Jews for any large-scale project in his district and did not want

to continue feeding them.

332

Alexianu approved the transfer.

333

The first delivery

consisted of some 3,000 Jews, most of whom had been deported from Cernãuþi two

months earlier. On August 18, an SS unit headed by SS

Hauptsturmführer

(Captain)

Franz Kristoffel transferred them to the German side. The children and elderly were put

to death first, and by October 1943 most of the Jews had been killed even those still

able to work.

On August 2, 1942, 200 Jews working on farms in Tulcin were handed over to the

Germans and loaded onto trucks for the journey across the Bug. Fifty-two children were

saved when their parents threw them off the vehicles: Jews and local farmers brought the

youngsters to the Tulcin ghetto. The Romanian authorities overlooked the rescue in

exchange for a large sum of money. By the time the children reached the ghetto on foot,

they were orphans.

334

Another 100 deportees from Cernãuþi were entrusted to the Ger-

mans on March 1, 1943. A survivor described his transfer to the work camp at Seminki,

near Bratslav:

It was known that the Germans in the labor camps across the Bug and at the... work sites on

[

the Romanian

]

side, such as Seminki and Bratslav used bestial methods to kill many of the

Jewish deportees turned over to them. For this reason, the deportees considered their transfer

to the Germans a final and irreversible death sentence. On the Romanian side, they tortured us,

starved us, and let us freeze to death, but there was always some chance we might survive.

335

The German work camps across the Bug merit a separate study. Since the opening of

the archives in Ukraine, we can examine the role of the Romanian authorities in transfer-

ring Jews to the SS units in the

Reichskommissariat

Ukraine. The administration in

331. See The Transfer of Jews to SS units across the Bug, in Ancel,

Transnistria

, pp. 322-330.

332. Telegram from Loghin to the governors Cabinet, August 5, 1942,

ibid.,

Odessa Archives,

2242-1-1088, p. 150.

333. Alexianu to Gendarmerie Headquarters in Transnistria, August 11, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2242-1-1088, p. 151; Administration approval to Loghin, August 11, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2242-1-1088, p. 148.

334. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 300. The prefect of Tulcin, who issued the directive to hand over the 200

Jews, was Col. Constantin Nãsturaº, a Romanian poet better known by his pen name, Poian\

Volburã.

335. Testimony of Shimon Rosenrauch of Cernãuþi, November 1959, YVA, 03-1536, pp. 7-8. Jewish

artist Arnold Dagani, who fled back to Transnistria just prior to the last killing action,

faithfully described the interraction between the German-speaking Jews and their killers in the

camps across the Bug; Dagani,

Groapa este în livada de viºini

(Bucharest: n.p., 1947);

published in German as

Lasst mich leben

(

Let me live

), trans. Siegfried Rosenzweig (Tel Aviv:

n.p., 1960).

167

FINAL REPORT

Transnistria understood the significance of this act, and no Jews were handed over

without Romanian approval. Alexianu saw these transfers both as liquidation and a

means of threatening the deportees: work or else. On September 20, 1942, in Odessa,

the governor told the Eighth Conference of Prefects and senior administration officials:

Prefects who have Jews and Gypsies must put them to work somewhere, in accordance

with the directive

[

Order no. 23

]

and the orders given. Those who do not wish to work

shall be transferred to the other side of the Bug. There,

[

the Germans

]

are willing to

accept them.

336

Prefect Isopescu of Golta could not fulfill the German request for Jews, because he

like his neighbors to the east had exhausted his supply in the spring of 1942. In

March 1943, he wrote to Alexianu: The German authorities across the Bug are asking

us to provide 2,000-3,000 Jews to work for them in exchange for food. Request approval

in principle and permission for the county of Berezovka to give us a certain number of

Yids from the camp at Mostovoye, since we do not have enough. We wish to send those

who refuse to work, the suspicious, and the useless. Alexianu authorized the transfer of

deportees from Mostovoye, Slivina, and Vapniarka. Everyone knew these Jews would

never return.

337

Another project was the construction of a new bridge over the Bug, linking southern

Transnistria with the

Reichskommissariat

Ukraine. The Romanian segment of the bridge

connected Trihaty and the town of Ochakov, and construction was entrusted to German

firms from the

Reich

. Work began in spring 1943 and concluded that December. Four

thousand Jews, mostly deportees from Romania, were turned over to SS squads and held

in three camps on the Romanian side of the Bug (Trihaty, Varvarovka, and Kolosovka)

and two on the German side (Kurievka and Matievka). Initially, the Germans requested

1,500 civilian workers; Antonescu himself decided to provide Jews.

338

The Romani-

ans dispatched Jewish youth and craftsmen from the counties that still actually had Jews:

Moghilev, Tulcin, Balta, Jugastru, and R^bni]a. Balta released more than 800 Jews to the

Germans: 700 unskilled workers and 130 professionals.

339

Moghilev sent several ship-

ments, totaling 829 Jews.

340

Tulcin supplied 1,000-2,000 and others as needed.

341

Even the county of Golta was asked, in a letter from the governor, to place at the

Germans disposal all

[

remaining

]

Gypsies aged 20-40 along with all able-bodied

Jews.

342

In October 1943, approximately 2,000 Jews were still alive in Golta; the

administration mobilized only fifty, as the rest

[

were

]

sick and crippled.

343

The Roma-

nian Railway Authority in Transnistria handed over 400 fit and healthy Jews recruited

336. Report no. 8 from the Eighth Conference of Administration Heads in Transnistria, September 20,

1942, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-22, p. 69.

337. Isopescu to Alexianu, March 24, 1943, Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1496, p. 161. The governor

wrote his approval in the margins.

338. Office of the Prime Minister to Alexianu, May 13, 1943, Odessa Archives, 2264-1c-40, p. 157.

339. Administration to German Liaison Headquarters in Transnistria, June 24, 1943, Odessa Archives,

ibid.

, p. 18.

340. Administration to German Liaison Headquarters in Transnistria, June 10, 1943, Odessa Archives,

ibid.

, p. 166.

341. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, no. 215, p. 386.

342. Administration to Isopescu, August 7, 1943, Nikolaev Archives, 2178-1-372, p. 7.

343. Head of the Labor Authority in Golta County to Isopescu, October 27, 1943,

ibid.

, 2178-1-372.

168

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

from the ghettos to maintain its Juralevka-Tulcin line. The administration ordered that

these Jews shall be made available to

Einsatzgruppe

Russland/Süd.

344

After a medical

exam, they were handed over to the gendarmes. That October, a gendarmerie representa-

tive transferred them to the

Sonderkommando

in Varvarovka, and they proceeded to lay

railroad tracks between Kolosovka and Trihaty. By early December, about 100 strong

laborers remained. The Railway Authority engineer who had approved their departure

two months earlier now requested that the survivors undergo an immediate physical

examination by a certified Romanian physician, and that all the sick and those unequipped

to withstand the winter be returned to whichever ghetto they had come from, with

others sent in their place.

345

Romanian and German Plans to Eliminate the Jews

from the

Regat

and Southern Transylvania

From February 1941 to August 23, 1944, the lives of Romanian Jews depended solely on

the wishes of Antonescu and his assessment of how the Jewish presence could serve

Romanian national interests. With the arrival in April 1941 of the Nazi advisor for Jewish

affairs, Gustav Richter, the approach to the Jewish question in Romania changed. In

his first report, Richter outlined future policy options; but he did so without taking into

account the character of the country to which he had been sent, the personality of the

Romanian dictator, and the special relationship between Hitler and Antonescu. He also

did not realize the extent of German dependence on Romanian oil and wheat.

346

German Ambassador Killinger informed Berlin at the end of August 1941

that

Antonescu had concentrated 60,000 Jewish men from the

Regat

for forced labor and that

he intended to send them to the east to areas just now occupied.

347

This information

seriously worried German authorities responsible for the annihilation of the Jews. It was

the first hint that Antonescu was determined to immediately solve the Jewish problem in

the

Regat

, too. According to an internal memo of the German Foreign Office sent to a

director of the

Reichsbank

, it was decided that deporting all Romanian Jews would hurt

Romanias economy and the commitments the country had taken on vis-à-vis the

Reich

since Jews still held key positions in the economy.

Moreover, Aryanization was still in

its early stages, and many Romanians had been drafted. It went on to warn that deporting

the Jews would have a deleterious effect on the exchange of merchandise and on the new

German business initiatives.

348

The German Legation acted immediately, and about a week after Antonescu gave his

order to concentrate and deport 60,000 Jews, Mihai Antonescu was asked to work

344. Constantin Sidorovici to Berezovka Prefecture, October 1, 1943, Odessa Archives, 2361-1-591, p. 92.

345. Maintenance supervisor of Romanian railway in Transnistria, to the inspector-general of the

railroad, December 15, 1943, Odessa Archives, 2361-1-592, p. 4.

346. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 2, no. 129, pp. 401-403.

347. Nuremberg Documents, NG-3989, September 1, 1941; copy, in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3, no. 51,

p. 102.

348. German Foreign Office in Berlin to Inspector Hoppe of the

Reichsbank

, Berlin, August 12, 1941,

NG 3106.

169

FINAL REPORT

toward removing the Jewish elements only in a slow, systematic manner.

349

Unsigned

editorials reflecting the official government position appeared in the Romanian press at

the end of October 1941. They informed Romanians that the Jewish question had

entered the final stage of solution, and no one in the world nor any miracle could prevent

its solution. The government announced that Romania is counted among the nations

prepared to cooperate resolutely in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem not only

the local one, but also the European one.

350

Antonescu pledged to expel every Jew from

Romania: No one and nothing can stop me, as long as I live, from carrying out the task

of purifying

[

ourselves

]

from the Jews.

351

Speaking to his ministers, he summarized the

wars internal goals: Gentlemen, as you know, one of the battles that I have promised

to wage is that of changing the face of this nation. I will turn this nation into a

homogeneous group. Anything foreign must leave slowly... any dubious Jewish element,

all the Jewish communists, are destined to go back where they came from. I will push

them to the Bug and from there they will move on...

352

In mid-1942, Antonescu truly believed that victory would be achieved that very year

and that at issue was the final, large-scale effort to bring about the collapse of the USSR.

His policy toward the Jews stemmed from this belief. He wanted to succeed in making

Romania homogeneous, as he had promised the ministers; this included not only the

Jews, but also the Gypsies, though the Jews were his greatest concern. Toward the end of

that summer he began to prepare the plan to deport

all

the Jews of southern Transylvania.

On July 10, 1942, the head of the

Conduc\tor

s Military Cabinet presented to the

minister of interior Antonescus decision that in order to make space, to offer shelter,

and to house the Romanian refugees from Northern Transylvania, the government

should prepare an estimate of the Jews currently living in southern Transylvania and to

investigate the sending to the Bug of all the Jews of

[

southern

]

Transylvania,

with the

exception of

intellectuals essential for our needs (physicians, engineers, and the like) and

industrialists required for running various industrial installations.

353

In summer and autumn 1942, the following groups were on the verge of deportation:

most of the remaining Jews in Cernãuþi and southern Transylvania; people who had

broken the laws and orders of forced labor; Jewish communists, or whomever the

regime defined as such, and their sympathizers; new converts to Christianity; Jews who

had requested in autumn/winter 1940 to be repatriated to Bessarabia after the region had

be forcibly annexed to the USSR; and the Roma. Thus, some 95,000-100,000 Jews were

destined for Transnistria. This plan, however, was not implemented.

Simultaneously, negotiations with Gustav Richter and the German government on the

general deportation of Romanian Jewry to the Belzec camp in Poland were nearing their

conclusion. These negotiations were held in secret to avoid arousing panic among the

349.

Ibid.

350. Rezolvarea problemei evreieºti,

Unirea

, October 10, 1941; copy in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3,

no. 208, p. 318.

351. Raspunsul d-lui Mareºal Antonescu la scrisoarea profesorului I. Gãvãnescu,

Curentul

, Novem-

ber 3, 1941; copy in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 3, no. 219, p. 332.

352. Stenogram of government meeting, October 11, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file no. 40010,

vol. 11, p. 47; copy in USHMM

RG 25.004M, roll 32.

353. Colonel Radu Davidescu to the Minister of Interior, July 10, 1942, State Archives, Prime

Ministers Office, Cabinet, file no. 104/1941, p. 61; copy in USHMM, RG 25.002M, roll 18.

170

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Jews and to keep from opposition circles particularly from the chairman of the

Romanian National Peasant Party, Iuliu Maniu, and his colleagues any hint of the

negotiations on the deportation of the Jewish population. When the impending deporta-

tion became publicly known, Maniu did indeed intervene to prevent it.

354

Final destination: Belzec

The Belzec extermination camp in the Lublin district of Poland, in which Jews were

killed by means of a diesel engine that issued carbon monoxide, had been selected by the

RSHA and the German Foreign Office to serve as a mass grave for Romanian Jewry. In

June 1942 the camp was refurbished, and its capacity for extermination was enhanced

with the construction of six gas chambers larger than the previous three; they could now

hold 1,000-1,200 victims at a time (half of the daily transport of 2,000 people) and kill

them in 20-30 minutes.

355

By September 1942 it was possible to exterminate a daily

transport of 2,000 Romanian Jews in about three hours.

Richter was not aware that Ion Antonescu had been told directly by Hitler about the

Final Solution, or that he and Mihai Antonescu as well as all Romanian diplomatic

missions in the

Reich

and German-occupied countries knew of the extermination camps

in Poland. The Romanian concept for deportation to Transnistria disturbed Richter and

ruined his plan and that of his superiors, since it agitated the Jews and propelled them to

turn for help to Romanian statesmen who had served in previous administrations.

356

The first notice about the Romanian agreement for deportation to Belzec is dated July

26, 1942. The chief of the Gestapo and head of Section IV of the RSHA, Gustav Müller,

informed Undersecretary Martin Luther of the Foreign Office that the deportation of

Romanian Jews in special trains to the East was about to begin on September 10, 1942.

Müller expressed the hope that there would be no opposition from the Foreign Office to

this action.

357

During his interrogation in Jerusalem, Eichmann confessed that he had

personally worded the letter bearing the signature of his superior, Müller.

358

On August 11,

Luther indicated to Müller that the Foreign Office had no opposition to the deportation

of the Romanian Jews to the

East

and that the person handling Jewish problems in

Bucharest, Radu Lecca, would be coming to Berlin to discuss in person the conditions

for the planned deportation.

359

Luther also noted: Mihai Antonescu agreed, in accord-

ance with the will of Marshal Antonescu, that the German authorities will carry out the

evacuation of the Jews from Romania and immediately begin the transports from the

counties of Arad, Timi[oara, and Turda.

360

354. Regarding Iuliu Manius and fellow NPP members successful intervention against the deporta-

tion of the Romanian Jews, see Ancel,

Contribuþii

, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 245-248.

355.

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust

(Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem,

Sifriyyat ha-Poalim

, 1990),

pp. 190-93.

356. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 10, no. 99, p. 242.

357.

Ibid.

, vol. 4, no. 41, p. 78.

358. Stenogram of Eichmanns interrogation by the Israel Police, YVA, pp. 1768-1773. Eichmann

admitted that the term

Sonderbehandlung

(special treatment) that appears in the correspond-

ence on the treatment of Jews in Romania meant execution.

359. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 56, pp. 104-105.

360.

Ibid.

vol. 4, no. 60, p. 111.

171

FINAL REPORT

This is the first mention of the existence of a written commitment that Mihai

Antonescu wrote on behalf of Ion Antonescu. At the same time, Emil von Rintelen of the

German Foreign Office wrote a memorandum to his superior, Luther, about the prepa-

rations for the deportation of the Romanian Jews. In accordance with RSHA instructions,

Mihai Antonescu sent his agreement to the deportations in writing, and Rintelen added

a photocopy of the agreement.

361

During Adolf Eichmanns trial in Jerusalem, he stated

that Richter had received instructions to obtain such a commitment in writing.

362

August 23, Eichmann summoned Richter to Berlin to participate in a meeting that would

take place on August 29 at RSHA headquarters.

363

The President of the Council of Ministers prepared a detailed plan regarding the

deportation operations, which should include the entire Jewish population, stipulating

very few exceptions.

364

The deportation was ordered by Antonescu and mapped out in

the minutest detail by the Ministry of Interior, based on the indications given by Mr. Mihai

Antonescu.

365

Radu Lecca succinctly summarized the Antonescu regimes intention:

to evacuate to Poland all Jews found to be useless in the field of national work.

366

Thus,

the Romanianization Ministry eagerly anticipated the lodgings it would obtain following

the decongestion of the capital, i.e., of the Jewish lodgings emptied by expulsions and

emigrations.

367

Except for 17,000 Jews considered useful to the national economy or possessing

special privileges, the Antonescu regime agreed to the deportation of the entire Jewish

minority of Romania 292,149 people, according to a May 1942 census to the Belzec

death camp. While the Romanian press was completely silent about anything related to

the deportation of Jews, the German press was not.

368

It must be noted that local

commanders of the police as well as the

Siguran]\

pointed out that the deportation of the

Jews would ultimately be harmful to Romanian interests in Transylvania. The

Siguran]\

in Timi[oara reported that the citys Jews had been in a panic and had been preparing to

sell property from the moment they learned of the possible deportation.

369

On September 22, Mihai Antonescu left to meet with Hitler, Ribbentrop, and German

army commanders in Vinnitsa. These meetings turned out to be decisive for the fate of

the Romanian Jews. In September 1942, Mihai Antonescu feared not only for the fate of

Northern Transylvania, but for the Antonescu regime in general. He had come to

Vinnitsa to ask Hitler for political guarantees (the return of Northern Transylvania)

and the completion of equipping the Romanian divisions

with arms. All of his requests

were rejected, except for a personal promise from Hitler guaranteeing the borders of

Romania. Ribbentrop asked Mihai Antonescu to honor the commitment he had given in

writing to Eichmanns emissary in Romania to turn over the Jews of Romania to the

361. Ancel,

Documents

vol. 4, no. 65, p. 120.

362. Eichmanns Interrogation, YVA, p. 2217.

363. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, no. 71, p. 131.

364.

Ibid.

, no. 85, pp. 165-167.

365.

Ibid.

, no. 119, pp. 252-253.

366.

Ibid.

, no. 138, p. 276.

367.

Ibid.

368. Rumänien wird judenrein,

Bukarester Tageblatt

August 8, 1942.

369. Report by the

Siguranþ\

in the Timiºoara County on the Jewish Problem, n.d.

[

September 1942

]

Securitate, file no. 2710, vol. 23, pp. 239-40.

172

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Nazis.

370

At the same time,

the Romanian demands were rebuffed one by one, and even

the promises by Keitel and Hitler to provide arms remained empty. Moreover, Mihai

Antonescu returned without any promise about the future of Northern Transylvania.

Romania had given everything and received nothing. Hungary gave only a part of her

army and had not yet

turned over its Jews.

Mihai Antonescus meeting with Hitler in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, on September 22-23,

approached military issues as well as the deportation of Romanian Jews. Mihai Antonescu

felt this meeting was so important that he decided to forgo its protocol. The German

minutes of these talks reveal that Ribbentrop requested that Mihai Antonescu continue

the work of exterminating the Jews, as he had in the past. Mihai Antonescu met three

times with Ribbentrop in Vinnitsa, where the issue of hastening the annihilation came up

explicitly, and he did not reject the Final Solution. It was at these same meetings,

however, that his faith in Germanys ability to win the war was shaken.

371

Later, in a government meeting held on October 13, 1942, Mihai Antonescu an-

nounced a change in policy regarding the Jews: transports of Jews across the Dniester

were to be suspended.

372

On the surface it seemed that Mihai Antonescu in saying that

one must act systematically had adopted Richters suggestions word for word; in

fact, he meant something completely different. Antonescu referred instead to the revoca-

tion of authority to deport Jews by the General Staff, Ministry of Interior, and all other

offices that had dealt with the Jews, their property, and their labor. Words such as

deporta-

tion

evacuation

, and

transport

would henceforth disappear from official communiqués.

The link between the cessation of the deportations to Transnistria and the suspension

of the deportation to Poland was put in writing by the deputy director-general of

Antonescus Cabinet, Gheorghe Basarabeanu, on November 4, 1942, in a note to the

Romanian Railway Administration (CFR). In response to a query from the head of the

CFR as to whether or not the Jews of Romania would be deported to the General

Gouvernement, Besarabeanu replied: At the Ministers Council of October 13, 1942,

we decided to stop the deportation of the Jews.

373

The plans suspension resulted not

from some latent humanity but from the realization that German and Romanian interests

no longer coincided: the Romanian army was in a difficult position at Stalingrad, and

despite all material (food, oil, natural resources) and human sacrifices Hitler would

never return Northern Transylvania to Romania. Romania, it seemed, had given every-

thing and received nothing, while Hungary had given little, had not yet renounced its

Jews, but had retained Transylvania.

370. Protocol of talk between Ribbentrop and Mihai Antonescu on September 23, 1942 (German

version, selections), September 28, 1942 (Frankfurt: United Restitution Organization

[

URO

]

Sammlung, 1960), vol. IV, no. 13, p. 578.

371. Regarding the rejection of the German plan for the Final Solution

in Romania, see Ancel,

Contribuþii

, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 208-274.

372. Stenogram of government meeting on October 13, 1941, State Archives, Collection of the Prime

Ministers Office, Cabinet, file no. 473/1942(II), pp. 859-860.

373. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 10, no. 96, p. 236.

173

FINAL REPORT

The Situation of Jews Living Abroad

The Romanian Foreign Ministry suffered from the legal chaos emerging from the contra-

dictory instructions of the Antonescu administration concerning the legal status of the

Romanian Jews living abroad. According to international convention, Romanian consu-

lates were expected to protect Romanian citizens abroad, regardless of their national-

ity. In May 1941 this protection was withdrawn from the Jews whose citizenship had

been revised as well as from Jews born in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (now

held by the USSR); in summer 1942 Romania backtracked and once again treated Jews

born in Bessarabia and Bukovina as its citizens.

374

In January 1942, Romanian Jews in Amsterdam had to declare their assets before the

upcoming deportations. The Romanian Consulate requested instructions on February 12

and learned that General Vasiliu opposed their repatriation.

375

In March, Romanian

citizens of Jewish ancestry in Germany and Austria were forced to wear the yellow star

under orders from the Gestapo. This discriminatory measure applied to Croatian and

Slovak (not to mention German and Austrian) Jews, but not to Hungarian, Bulgarian,

Turkish, Italian, or Swiss. Furthermore, Romanian Jews in Berlin had to hand over furs,

wool items, typewriters, bicycles, and cameras. The Romanian consulates in Berlin and

Vienna, assured by German officials of the existence of an agreement between the

Romanian and German governments, requested clarification from the Romanian Ministry

of Foreign Affairs, which in turn requested the same from the German Legation in

Bucharest.

376

While this bureaucratic exchange continued, in occupied Bohemia and

Moravia the first Jewish families with Romanian passports were interned at Theresienstadt.

377

In a July 1942 meeting in Berlin with Counselor V\leanu, Kligenfuss, a German Foreign

Office official, asserted that Ion Antonescu had agreed with Ambassador Killinger that

Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry in Germany and the occupied territories should be

treated in the same fashion as German Jews.

378

German Legation Counselor Steltzer did

the same in Bucharest on August 8, in his meeting with Gheorghe Davidescu from the

Romanian Foreign Office. As early as November 1941 Killinger told

Auswärtiges Amt

that Antonescu had approved the intention of the

Reich

to deport Romanian Jews under

German jurisdiction to eastern ghettos together with German Jews; the Romanian

government had stated no interest in bringing Romanian Jews back to Romania.

379

In the course of a discussion held on August 10, 1942, between Mihai Antonescu,

Radu Lecca, and Richter, Richter alluded to the approval Ion Antonescu had originally

given to Killinger. Mihai Antonescu concluded:

We have to realize that Romania has no interest in seeing Romanian Jews who have settled

abroad returning. Henceforth the following instructions should be followed:

374.

Ibid.

, p. 131.

375. USHMM, RG 25.006M, fond Germany, vol. 33, roll 18.

376.

Ibid.

, fond Germany, vol. 32, roll 17; Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 10, pp. 792-793; Calafeteanu,

Regimul cet\]enilor rom^ni de origine evreiasc\ afla]i `n str\in\tate `n anii dictaturii antonesciene,

Anale de Istorie

, 5 (1986), p. 130.

377. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 10, pp. 182-183; Calafeteanu,

op. cit.

, p. 130.

378.

Ibid.

, pp. 131-132.

379.

Ibid.

174

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

As regards German Jews living among us, the expired German passports should be can-

celled and replaced with provisional certificates. It should be made obligatory for real property

to be declared and

[

the documents

]

kept strictly up to date.

With regard to Romanian Jews in Germany, the Protectorate, and in the General Gouvernement,

as well as those in the occupied territories, word will be sent to the Berlin Legation and the

concerned consular offices that the measures to be undertaken have been agreed upon with the

Romanian Government. The issue that interests us is the real estate of Romanian nationals

abroad, the administration of this property, and the various means of liquidating it. The Berlin

Legation and its subordinate Consulate is asked to draw up a register...

380

The direct impact of the agreement as well as Mihai Antonescus exchanges with Richter

on August 10

was the deportation of nearly 1,600 Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry

living in Germany and Austria (our last statistics, for 1939, indicated 1,760, of whom

618 were in the former Austria

381

); of an unknown number from occupied Bohemia and

Moravia, Poland, and Holland; and of 3,000 more from France. Most perished in

concentration camps.

382

According to the September 1942 estimates of the Romanian

chargé daffaires in Berlin, M. St\nescu, most Romanian-Jewish residents of Germany

had already been deported.

383

On October 15, 1942, all Romanian Jews in Prague were

arrested.

384

The massive deportation of Romanian Jews from France began in late Sep-

tember 1942. (Deportations of Romanian Jews had taken place before that time, as well.)

More than 3,000 Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry were deported between March 27,

1942, when the first convoy with a Romanian Jew left France, and September 25, 1942,

when the thirty-seventh convoy left, this time filled mostly with Romanian Jews. A number

of Romanian Jews found themselves among 2,000 of their co-religionists deported from

Malines, Belgium.

385

On March 25, 1943, a sweep of Romanian Jews in Vienna be-

gan;

386

a round-up of Croatian, Slovakian, and Romanian Jews began in Berlin on April 6;

Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Swedish Jews went untouched.

387

With Mihai Antonescus

approval, the Romanian legation in Berlin began granting entry visas and requesting the

German authorities to provide Romanian Jews with the same treatment as Hungarian Jews.

388

Because of the change in the Romanian government policy concerning the protection

of the Romanian Jews abroad at the end of spring 1943, the German occupation authori-

ties in France and Belgium stopped arresting Romanian Jews. Twelve of the latter were

repatriated from Belgium.

389

In November 1943, the arrests of Romanian Jews in France

did resume, but only briefly; on November 8 the Romanian Ambassador in Vichy

affirmed that all arrests had ended, and all Romanian Jews were required to return to

Romania by December 31.

390

On December 3, the same representative interceded with

380. USHMM, RG 25.006M, fond Germany, vol. 32, roll 16; Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 9, p. 421.

381. USHMM, RG 25.006M, fond Germany, roll 16.

382. Jean Ancel, Simpozion ºtiinþific româno-israelian, Ierusalim, 12-14 ianuarie 1986 (hence-

forth: Ancel, Simpozion),

Analele de istorie

, 3 (1986), p. 139.

383. Calafeteanu,

op. cit.

, p. 133.

384. USHMM, RG 25.006M, fond Germany, vol. 32, roll 17.

385.

Ibid.

, fond Belgium, vol. 28, roll 15.

386. USHMM, RG 25.006M, fond Germany, vol. 32, roll 17.

387.

Ibid.

, fond Germany, vol. 32, roll 16.

388.

Ibid.

389.

Ibid.

, p. 135.

390.

Ibid.

, p. 136.

175

FINAL REPORT

the German police chief in Lyon to cease interfering with repatriation.

391

It is estimated

that more than 4,000 Romanian Jews in France survived as a result of such diplomatic

interventions, several hundred being repatriated on a train that crossed

Reich

territory.

392

In fact, even though the repatriated Jews were supposed to be deported to Transnistria,

Ion Antonescu consented to their remaining in Romania.

393

Statistical Data on the Holocaust in Romania

and the Territories under Its Control

In 1930, 756,930 Jews lived in Greater Romania. They comprised 4.2 percent of the

countrys eighteen million inhabitants. By 1940 slightly fewer than 800,000 Jews lived

in Romania according to the director-general of the Central Institute of Statistics of

Romania. This number, from the yearly updates published by the Institute, is based on

the results of the 1930 census.

394

Archival materials collected both before and after the

opening of archives in the former communist countries have been used to evaluate the

number of Jewish victims, deportees, and survivors; this includes data from Romanian

archives as well as from Soviet archives (Chiºinãu, Odessa, Nikolaev, Moscow-Ossobi).

Copies of the original documents can be found in the archives of the United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. In addition to the information these

documents provide regarding the fate of Jews under Romanian rule, they also reveal that

the Antonescu regime carefully monitored the extermination process.

The Number of Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina in August 1941

Bessarabia

. At the end of August in 1941, after the order to cleanse the land had been

issued and partially carried out, the Romanian gendarmerie counted 55,887 Jews left in

Bessarabia and Bukovina. However, there were other Jews not included in the count.

The

disorder that took place in the Chiºinãu ghetto the pillage of Jews for personal rather

than state profit angered Antonescu, who ordered the establishment of an investigative

commission led by Colonel Niculescu.

395

The commissions report

containing the Antonescu

administrations orders to kill the Jews, basically confirms the number of Jews counted

in Bessarabia (55,867 Jews, not including the county of Hotin), and also mentions

25,000 other Jews who died a natural death, escaped or were shot.

396

The total number

of Jews found there, then, amounted to roughly 80,000.

391. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 4, p. 702.

392. Ancel, Simpozion, pp. 138-139.

393.

Ibid.

394. Sabin Manuilã, Consideraþiuni asupra prezentãrii grafice a etnografiei României, filed with

Academia Românã,

Memoriile Secþiunii Istorice

, 3

series, vol. 21, memo 14, annex 3.

395. Niculescu Commission, report no. 2, December 1941, Chiºinãu Archive, 706-1-69, p. 49.

396. Carp,

op. cit.

vol. 3, no. 19, pp. 62-63; copy in Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, no. 124, p. 193.

The original document can be found in the Central Archive of the Republic of Moldova, 106-1-69,

pp. 48-55.

176

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

By the end of July 1941, before the official surrender of Transnistria to the Romanian

administration, Romanian soldiers and gendarmes concentrated tens of thousands of Jews

in northern Bessarabia and began forcing them to leave Bessarabia by crossing the

Dniester River, shooting hundreds of them and throwing their bodies into the river. Up

to 32,000 Jews were forced to cross the Dniester by late July/early August 1941. This

figure is derived from various reports and orders the gendarmes were given to prevent

the return of these Jews to Bessarabia. Of the roughly 32,000, a mere 12,600 escaped;

they were subsequently pushed back to Bessarabia from Ukraine via Cos\u]i and in-

terned in the Vertujeni camp.

397

At least 8,000 and up to

20,000 Jews were killed on the

Ukrainian side of the Dniester by German and Romanian soldiers.

398

Thus 32,000 Jews

must be added to the roughly 80,000 found in Bessarabia by the Romanian army. This

amounts to 112,000 Jews living in Bessarabia at the time of its occupation. But this figure

is incomplete. In Ukraine, as of August 16, 1941, the German army had captured at least

11,000 Jews trying to flee to Russia.

399

Therefore, at the beginning of the Romanian

occupation of Bessarabia, there were at least 122,000 Jews.

Bukovina.

According to an April 9, 1942, report by the governor of Bukovina,

103,172 Jews lived there before the deportations, and there were 11,923 Jews living in

Dorohoi.

400

In total, there were 170,962 Jews living in Bukovina and Bessarabia at the

beginning of deportations and after the implementation of the order to cleanse the land.

The Number of Jews Killed during the Cleansing of the Land

in the Transit Camps and during the Deportations

The exact number of Jews killed from the beginning of July to the end of August 1941

remains unknown, as does the number of Jews who managed to escape to the Soviet

Union. What is known from government documents is that most Jews from villages and

397. Contemporary Romanian documents discuss the 1941 deportation of roughly 30,000 Jews across

the Dniester. See, for example: SSI Report: more than 30,000 Jews from Hotin county and

Bukovina, National Archives, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Antonescu Administration,

file no. 76/1941, p. 86 (copy in USHMM, RG 25.002M, roll 17). This report states, from

among those sent to the other side of the Dniester by the officials, some return, but the officials

keep sending over other Jews. It also asks the General Headquarters for urgent clarification on

the status of the Jews as of August 18, 1941. On August 19, the SSI reported that the 30,000 Jews

were interned in a camp and that none... returned west of the Dniester (

ibid.

, p.

91). On

August 27, the General Police Headquarters reported that the German Army returned 12,600

Jews to Bessarabia in two convoys and they were then interned in the Vertujeni camp (

ibid

., p. 91).

These were the only survivors of the hasty deportations. The remaining were shot, mostly by

the German army.

398. Raportul Direcþiei Generale a Poliþiei cãtre Serviciul Central de Informaþii, August 27, 1941,

Arhivele Naþionale, Preºedenþia Consiliului de Miniºtri, Cabinet Antonescu, file no. 71/1941,

p. 91. Regarding this convoy, see also the correspondence between General Headquarters and the

army pretor, see Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 104-106.

399. Killinger to Foreign Office in Berlin, August 16, 1941, Documents on German Foreign Policy,

series D, vol. 13, no. 207, pp. 318-319.

400. Reports to Presidency of the Council of Ministers, 1942, Foreign Ministry Archive, Problem 33,

vol. 22, p. 130; copy in USHMM, RG 25.006, roll 11.

177

FINAL REPORT

towns in southern Bukovina and in Bessarabia were murdered by the Romanian army and

local population. Likewise, it is known that

Einsatzgruppe

D killed thousands of Jews in

Cernãuþi and Bessarabia. The only figures about the number of Jews murdered are those

mentioned in Romanian documents: up to 25,000 in Bessarabia (the Nicolescu report)

and up to

20,000 during the hasty deportations.

401

Additionally, the rescuer Traian

Popovici refers to roughly 15,000 Jews murdered

by their neighbors and the Romanian

army in the villages and towns of Northern Bukovina.

402

More than 45,000 Jews though

probably closer to 60,000 were killed in Bessarabia and Bukovina.

The Number of Jews Deported

There were 147,712 Jews deported in 1941, according to the reports of the governors of

Bukovina and Bessarabia to the Ministry for the Administration of Bukovina, Bessarabia,

and Transnistria (CBBT). Out of these, 91,845 were from Bukovina (including the

counties of Hotin and Dorohoi) and 55,867 were from Bessarabia.

403

It is possible that the real number was higher. The December 15, 1941, report of Gen.

C.Z. Vasiliu, inspector-general of the gendarmerie, indicated that 108,002 Jews from

Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported to three counties (

jude]e

) in eastern Transnistria

along the Bug River: 47,545 were interned in Tulcin; 30,981 in Balta; and 29,476 in

Golta.

404

On December 24, 1941, the SSI reported to Antonescu that in western

Transnistria west of the Jmerinka-Odessa railroad, to be more precise there were

56,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina and a small number of Jews in other coun-

ties.

405

These two reports were drafted around the same time and discuss two different areas

of deportation. They suggest that in December 1941 there were at least 164,000 Roma-

nian Jews in Transnistria. To this figure must be added 6,737 Jews deported in 1942

4,290 from Bukovina,

406

231 from Bessarabia, and 2,216 from the

Regat

and southern

401. National Police Headquarters report to Central Information Service, August 27, 1941, Bucharest

State Archives, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 71/1941, p. 91.

Regarding this convoy, see also: correspondence between General Headquarters and the army

pretor, in Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 104-106.

402.

Ibid.

vol. 3, p. 182.

403. Reports to Presidency of the Council of Ministers, 1942, Foreign Ministry Archive, Problem 33,

vol. 22; copy in USHMM, RG 25.006, roll 11.

404. Report of Vasiliu, December 9, 1941, Archive of the Ministry of Interior, file no. 18844, vol. 3;

copy in USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 64. Gustav Richter, Eichmanns envoy in Romania, reported

on October 17, 1941, that Antonescu had sent 110,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina into

Transnistria along the Bug River, in order to exterminate them; Nuremberg Documents,

PS-3313, Der Prozes gegen die Hauptkriegverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof

Nürnberg, vol. 31 (Nuremberg: n.p., 1949), pp. 183-184. Germans refused to receive Jews

across the river, and these 108,002 Jews subsequently disappeared from all documents and

statistics on deportees.

405. Report from the SSI to the Prime Ministers office on the transfer of Jews, December 24, 1941,

State Archives of the Prime Ministers Office, Military Cabinet Collection, file no. 86/1941,

pp. 325-327; copy in USHMM, RG 25.002M, roll 18. These other counties were: Iampol

(262 Jews), R^bni]a, (427 Jews), and Tiraspol (70 Jews).

406. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 1, no. 43, p. 287.

178

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Transylvania.

407

After this deportation, only 17,159 Jews were left in Bukovina (not

including the Dorohoi district), of which 16,794 lived in Cernãuþi. Together with the

Jews in Dorohoi they formed a Jewish population of 19,475 people.

408

In all, the total

number of Jewish deportees from Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dorohoi and the

Regat

was

between 154,449 (147,712 plus 6,737) and 170,737 people (164,000 plus 6,737).

The Number of Romanian Jews Who Survived in Transnistria

On November 15, 1943, an official report sent to the Presidency of the Council of

Ministers of the Romanian government indicated that 49,927 Jews were alive in Transnistria,

of which 6,425 were originally from the

Regat

409

The conclusion that can be drawn is

that until November 15, 1943, between 104,522 and 120,810 Romanian citizens of Jewish

descent died in Transnistria.

The Fate of Local Jews in Transnistria

According to the 1939 Soviet census, 331,000 Jews lived in Transnistria, of whom 200,961

resided in Odessa.

410

The Romanian occupation authorities found between 150,000

and

200,000 Jews in Transnistria. According to Romanian and Soviet sources, up to

25,000 Jews were shot, hanged, or burned alive in Odessa. Soviet authorities reported

that they had exhumed 22,000 bodies in Dalnic alone.

411

Additionally, there were Jews shot

in the street and elsewhere who could be added to this number. According to the prefect

of Golta, Modest Isopescu, approximately 10,000 local Jews were killed in Golta county

at the beginning of November 1941 before the establishment of the Bogdanovka camp.

412

In January and February 1942, between 33,000 and 35,000 Jews were deported by

train from Odessa to Berezovka.

413

Of these, 28,000 were executed by the SS. Thousands

of Jews (maybe around 30,000) from the city and county of Odessa were marched to

407. Regarding the deportations from Bessarabia, see

ibid.

, vol. 1, pp. 153-154. Regarding the

deportations from Bukovina, see

ibid.

, vol. 1, pp. 215, 217.

408.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 43, p. 287.

409. Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Number of Jews in Transnistria on November 15, 1943,

by areas of origin (Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dorohoi, and the

Regat

), Foreign Ministry Archives,

Jewish Problem, vol. 22, p. 589.

410. Mordechai Altshuler (ed.),

Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR, 1939

(Jerusalem:

Hebrew University Press, 1993), pp. 11, 21, 23. Transnistria included the Odessa

oblast

(county)

and part of the Vinnitsa

oblast

. There were 233,155 Jews in the Odessa county and 141,825 in all

of Vinnitsa county. But at least 43,444 lived on the German side of Vinnitsa, reducing Transnistrias

local Jewish population to 331,636 on the eve of the war. The city of Odessa alone numbered

200,961 Jews.

411. Odessa County Committee (Obkom) Report on the Damage and Victims of the Fascist Occupation

Regime (1941-1944), December 31, 1944, Communist Party Archives in Odessa, II-II-52, p. 22.

412. Report from Isopescu to the Government of Transnistria regarding the transports of the Jews, with

a request that the government stop sending them, November 13, 1941, Nikolaev Archives,

2178-1-2, p. 151.

413. Prefect of Odessas report to the Government of Transnistria at the conclusion of the deportation

operation: 32,643 Jews deported (Odessa Archives, 2242-1-1487, pp. 190-193); Report of Major

179

FINAL REPORT

Bogdanovka in late 1941.

414

There were 32,433 Jews evacuated from Transnistria who

were probably deported to Golta and liquidated there. According to German documen-

tation, the testimonies of survivors, and the Romanian trial records, 75,000 Jews (most

of them locals) were murdered in Bogdanovka, Domanovka, and Akmechetka in late

1941 and early 1942. In September 1942, the secretary general of the Government of

Transnistria acknowledged that 65,000 local Jews had disappeared (code for killed) from

the county of Odessa.

415

In addition, according to a Romanian report 14,500 local Jews from

Transnistria were forced across the Bug River, where they were killed by the Germans.

416

The Soviet authorities estimated that 150,038 Jews were murdered in the counties of

Golta and Berezovka.

417

On November 1, 1943, Third Army Headquarters recorded

70,770 Jews living in Transnistria, of whom 20,029 were local Jews.

418

Based on these

numbers, between 115,000 and 180,000 local Jews were murdered or perished in

Transnistria. At the end of the Romanian occupation, only 20,000 local Jews were left in

Transnistria. At least 15,000 Jews from

Regat

perished during the Holocaust (in the

pogrom of Iaºi and the deportations to Transnistria).

Various researchers have calculated different estimates of the death toll of Romanian

and Ukrainian Jews under Romanian administration during the Holocaust. Dinu C.

Giurescu counts at least 108,710 Romanian Jews who died in Transnistria; but this

number does not take into account the Ukrainian Jewish victims or the Jews killed on the

spot in Bessarabia and Bukovina. According to Dennis Deletant, between 220,000 and

270,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews perished in Transnistria, while Radu Ioanid

asserts that at least 250,000 Jews died under Romanian jurisdiction. Matatias Carp

mentions 264,900 Romanian Jews missing, but this does not include Ukrainian Jewish

victims. Raul Hilberg cites the destruction of 270,000 Jews under the Romanians, as does

Mark Rozen, who counts roughly 155,000 Romanian Jews and 115,000 Ukrainian Jews

killed in Transnistria. Finally, Jean Ancel maintains that 310,000 Jews perished in

Transnistria alone, and to this must be added another 100,000 Jews killed in Bessarabia

and Bukovina during the 1941 campaign in these provinces.

419

In summary, the total number of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews who perished in

territories under Romanian administration is between 280,000 and 380,000.

doctor Gheorghe Tãtãranu, director of Transnistrias Health Department on the typhus epidemic

in the region, 35,000 Jews evacuated from Odessa, Nikolaev Archives, 2178-1-424, p. 8.

414. Commander of Berezovka Gendarme Legion to the prefect, January 31, 1942, Odessa Archives,

2361-39, p. 15.

415. Gendarmerie commander in Transnistria to Transnistria Government, September 11, 1942,

ibid.

p. 161.

416. Minutes of talks between Davidescu and Steltzer, March 13, 1942, Foreign Ministry Archive,

Problem 33, vol. 16, p. 58; copy in USHMM, RG 25.006M, roll 6.

417. Note from Odessa section of Soviet Communist Party, December 31, 1944, Odessa CPSU

Archive, 2-2-52, p. 25.

418. Special Archives in Moscow, 493-1-6, p. 187; Ancel,

Documents

, vol.

7, no. 393, p. 547.

419. Dinu C. Giurescu,

România în al doilea rãzboi mondial

(Bucharest: All Educational, 1999),

pp. 70, 91; Dennis Deletant, Ghetto Experience in Golta, Transnistria, 1942-1944,

Holocaust

and Genocide Studies

, vol. 18, no. 1 (2004), p. 2; Radu Ioanid,

The Holocaust in Romania: The

Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944

(Chicago: Ivan R.

Dee, 2000), p. 289; Hilberg,

op. cit.

vol. 3, p. 1220; Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 19; Marcu

Rozen,

The Holocaust under the Antonescu Government: Historical and Statistical Data about

Jews in Romania, 1940-1944,

rev. ed. (Bucharest: ARJVH, 2004), p. 109; Ancel,

Transnistria

vol. 1, p. 531.

The Exclusion of Jews from Romanian Society

during the Antonescu Governments

with and without the Iron Guard: Anti-Semitic Legislation,

Romanianization and Expropriation

Marshal Antonescu on Romanianization

When he assumed power in September 1940, Ion Antonescu outlined his policy priorities

and stressed, The program I will submit to your collective judgment is rooted entirely

in the tenets of integral nationalism.

According to the

Conduc\tor

, integral national-

ism meant intolerance of ethnic pluralism and the elimination of foreigners, espe-

cially Jews, from all facets of Romanian society as part of a project of ethnic homogenization

of the Romanian nation. Integral nationalism was the foundation of the Romanianization

program adopted by Antonescu, and the anti-Jewish measures he signed into law were

the main instruments for conducting the process. According to Mihai Antonescu, the

enforcement of this legislation contributed to the shedding of the foreign plague from

Romanian ownership structures and cracked down on Jewish domination in Romanian

economic life.

Outlined by Antonescu as early as September 1940, Romanianization was presented

as a large-scale national-social reform, and it would outlast Antonescus removal of

the Legion from government. Immediately after the repression of the Legionary rebel-

lion in 1941, Antonescu declared:

This state shall base its policies on the primacy of Romanianism in all domains of life. I

pledge to unhesitatingly enforce all reforms necessary for the elimination of foreign influences

and the safeguarding of our national interest. The struggle of the grand German National

Socialist revolution and fascist achievements shall serve as guideposts of experience to be

adapted to Romanian needs in order to graft on our realities the new world supported by the

achievements in organization of these peoples.

Antonescus Romanianization policies were not the outcome of a decision made in the

context of the necessities of war. Rather, they expressed his adherence to the doctrine of

extreme right nationalism rooted in the developments in Romania during the second half

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 206, September 6, 1940, p. 5114.

2. Mihai Antonescu,

Doi ani de guvernare, 6 septembrie 1940 6 septembrie 1942

(Editura Naþionalã

Dacia Traianã), p. 150.

3. Ion Antonescu,

Declaraþiile domnului General Ion Antonescu fãcute presei

(Bucharest: Tipografia

MAN, 1941), p. 15.

182

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of the nineteenth century. For him, Romanianization was a crucial problem, the corner-

stone of the new state he intended to create.

To this end, the

Conduc\tor

announced he would issue laws outlining the main

principles of Romanianization and the stages in which this process would unfold.

Antonescu never claimed that he would use violent, revolutionary means to achieve the

objectives of Romanianization. Rather, in order to avoid an economic collapse, he

envisioned Romanianization more as a gradual, staged process, in contrast to the Iron

Guards brutal, corrupt approach.

However, it is evident that Antonescu differed from

the Legion only with respect to the methods, and not the desirability, of Romanianization.

Yet, the legislation and civilized means promised by Antonescu were no less abusive

in terms of the dispossession of Jewish property and rights.

The Racial Nature of Anti-Jewish Legislation Passed

between 1940 and 1944

The first law to frame the new legal status of Jews in Romania and express integral

nationalism and Nazi-style political racism was signed on August 8, 1940, by King

Carol II, Ion Gigurtu, President of the Council of Ministers, and I.V. Gruia, minister of

justice and law professor at the University of Bucharest.

This decree-law excluded the

Jews from many of the benefits of citizenship granted to them by the 1923 Constitution

by legally and politically distinguishing between Romanians by blood (

rom^ni de

s^nge

) and Romanian citizens. Emphasizing the significance of blood and race to

the nation and state was a basic principle of the Nazi worldview.

According to this first law, the concept of the nation can now be construed less as a

legal or political community and more as an organic, cultural community based on the

law of blood, from which an entire hierarchy of political rights emerges; for the law of

blood contains all cultural, spiritual and ethical opportunities The defense of Roma-

nian blood constitutes the moral guarantee for the acknowledgement of supreme political

rights.

In the Romanian context, the laws of blood referred to ethical, spiritual, and

cultural characteristics, rather than to physical characteristics. On the basis of these

general considerations, the law regulated the legal status of Jews in Romania with regard

to their participation in religious, political, and economic life. It did not attempt to

deprive the Jews of citizenship, since in the new context Romanian citizenship was

irrelevant.

4. Stenograma Consiliului de Cabinet din 7 februarie, 1941, in Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Evreii din

România între anii 1940-1944

, vol. 1,

Legislaþia antievreiascã

(henceforth:

Legislaþia

) (Bucha-

rest: Hasefer, 1993), no. 92, p. 291.

Ibid.

6. Decree-law no. 2650, in

ibid.

, no. 3, pp. 37-50.

7. Lucy S. Dawidowicz,

Rãzboiul împotriva evreilor. 1933-1945

, trans. Carmen Paþac (Bucharest:

Hasefer, 1999), p. 83.

8. See footnote 6.

183

FINAL REPORT

The Classification of Jews in Romania

The August 8, 1940 law placed Jews into three categories. The first

category included

Jews who had entered Romania after December 30, 1918; these Jews were subject to

major prohibitions. The second category was comprised of those Jews who had been

naturalized on individual basis until December 30, 1918, who had served in the army in

either the 1877-1878 war of independence or World War I, war orphans, and the

descendents of the excepted categories of Jews. But Jews in neither of these categories

were considered to be part of the national community, and they were subject to restric-

tions on owning property in rural areas and in qualifying for public service jobs. Most

Jews in Romania fell into the third category.

These were the Jews who had become

citizens according to decree-laws of 1919. Jews in the first and the third categories were

prohibited from taking public service jobs, buying property, pursuing military careers,

becoming lawyers or notaries public, being appointed members of a corporate board,

owning businesses in rural areas, liquor stores, movie theaters, publishing houses,

publications, and Romanian media outlets. All Jews were prohibited from taking Roma-

nian names.

Jewish religion and spiritual life were not considered to be integrated into

the Romanian religious and spiritual community to which Jews were ordered to pay

respect.

The law defined Jews by merging in the spirit of the Nuremberg laws the

dual criteria of ritual and ancestry: a person was considered to be a Jew if he or she

practiced Judaism or was born to parents of the Judaic faith, even if the same person had

converted to Christianity or was an atheist. One could be considered Christian only if his

or her parents had converted prior to the birth of the child.

The Antonescu Regime and the Jews

Although hostile to the Royal Dictatorship, Antonescus regime did not abrogate this

1940 law. On the contrary, he used its principles as the ideological foundation for its

anti-Jewish laws. Moreover, defining the Jew remained an essential problem in the

context of the anti-Jewish legislation under Antonescu, too, even though that definition

ultimately changed. For example, the new regime decreed that a person with even one

Jewish parent, irrespective of whether that parent had converted to Christianity before

the childs birth, would be considered a Jew, as the mystery of baptism could not change

the destiny of Jewish blood.

Under Antonescu, every law included a special article on the definition of a Jew, and

the criteria varied from one law to the next. The criterion of having at least one Jewish

parent (regardless of whether one or both parents were Christians at the time of the

Ibid.

10.

Ibid.

11.

Ibid.

12.

Ibid.

13.

Ibid.

14. Ioan Cezar Duma, Criteriul sângelui,

Pandectele românizãrii

, 1, no. 10 (November 8, 1941),

p. 306.

184

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

childs birth) was preserved in the law nationalizing urban buildings and Jewish rural

property. According to the laws on the situation of the Jews in the educational system and

the Romanianization of forced labor in industrial enterprises, persons born to both

Jewish parents or only a Jewish father were defined as Jewish, whereas the decree-law on

doctors professional associations defined Jews as an ethnic group of the Mosaic reli-

gion or converts to Christianity. In contrast, the law on military obligations of Jews

preserved the definition from the August 8, 1940, law, which held that Jews were those

born to Jewish parents or a Jewish father, while the decree-law annulling apprenticeship

contracts deemed a person Jewish simply by virtue of having only one Jewish grandpar-

ent either maternal or paternal (i.e., the grandparent practiced Judaism or married into

a family that did).

By defining Jewishness in different laws, the Romanian government demonstrated

that political racism was at the heart of anti-Jewish legislation. Jews were not punished

for what they did, but for what they were. Jewishness itself was the mark of inferiority

and having it was criminalized. Accordingly, the government adopted measures to ex-

clude Jews from Romanian society and defend the Romanian blood. In order to ensure

that this defense would have a real effect, the Antonescu regimes prohibited marriage

between Romanians by blood and those whom it defined as Jews. Also, Jews were

prohibited from conversion to the Christian faith. These measures were taken because

the ethnic being of the Romanian nation must be protected against mixing with Jewish

blood.

The same motivation was used to prohibit Jews from hiring Romanian servants.

On December 16, 1941, Ion Antonescu signed the law mandating a census of ethnic

Jews. This law ordered that the Jews be counted in order to provide the government with

a complete statistical picture of the Jewish presence in all domains of life and to enable

a comprehensive definition of Jewishness one that would conform to Romanias na-

tional interest and racial principles.

But the racial character of the anti-Jewish legislation was not defined only through the

laws that expressly provided for the defense of Romanian blood, but also in regulations

on the definition of the Jew and the discrimination of Jews relative to other ethnic groups

in Romania. This body of laws adopted by the Antonescu regimes fit the framework of

racial laws that entered into force at the beginning of the forties in those European

countries that became part of the political system of the continental Holocaust.

Statutory Exclusion of Jews

from the Economic, Cultural, and Public Life in Romania

Propaganda supporting the exclusion of Jews from Romanian society increased tremen-

dously during the early thirties. Extremist journals, such as

Sfarm\ Piatr\

Porunca

vremii

, continuously denounced the Jewish invasion in various domains of life and

exposed Jews who adopted Romanian names or pseudonyms. Nevertheless, at the end of

15. Decree-law no. 711, March 7, 1941, in

Legislaþia

, no. 33, p. 120.

16. Decree-law no. 504, March 8, 1944, in

ibid.

, p. 262.

17. Arhiva Naþionalã Istoricã Centralã (ANIC), fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet,

file no. 107/1991, p. 161.

185

FINAL REPORT

1937 anti-Semitic propaganda was not a state endeavor. It would become so only during

the Goga government (December 1937 February 1938)

. The Gigurtu government

passed the first law that was based on the principles of Nazi-style political racism in

August 1940.

The proclamation of the National Legionary State in Romania in Septem-

ber 1940 led to the promulgation of Romanianization laws. During the period when Ion

Antonescu governed with the Iron Guard (September 1940 January 1941), acts of

terror against the Jewish population and extensive theft of Jewish property by the

Legionnaires accompanied the anti-Jewish legislation.

The Expropriation of Jewish Property Located in Rural Areas

Romanianization of the Jewish property through legislation began with the expropriation

of rural Jewish property. What distinguished the Antonescu legislation on rural property

(the laws of October 4, 1940, November 12, 1940, and May 4, 1941) from the August 8,

1940, Gigurtu law was that the latter allowed Jewish landowners to sell their property to

blood Romanians, with the Romanian state having first bid in the case of multiple

offers.

The laws under Antonescu, on the other hand, ordered the nationalization of

rural Jewish property upon the official publication of these laws in

Monitorul Oficial

Among the types of rural property subject to expropriation were arable and infertile

land, hay lands, orchards and vineyards, animal farms and animal stock, vegetable

gardens, pastures, forests, ponds, lakes, cereals in stock, tools, mansions and all build-

ings, railways and other means of transportation, and agricultural, food-processing, and

lumber-processing equipment. In short, these laws prohibited Jews from acquiring or

owning any form of rural property on Romanian territory. Together with the deportation

of Jews who lived in the countryside to the cities, the expropriation of rural Jewish

property ensured the complete Romanianization of Romanian villages.

As a result of

their enforcement, the Romanian state became the owner of 40,035 hectares of land

worth 5,063,364,350 lei, 47,455 hectares of forests worth 2,585,980,700 lei, and 323 cereal

mills and breweries, as well as other industrial equipment important to the rural economy,

worth 1,851,341,940 lei.

In terms of Jewish property in the territories liberated by Romanian troops after

Romania entered the war (June 22, 1941), a special law was adopted on September 3,

1941, which ordered the nationalization of Jewish possessions in Bessarabia and North-

ern Bukovina without any notice or any other formalities.

By implementing this law,

the Romanian state became the new owner of 27,091 hectares of arable land and 141 pieces

of agricultural equipment.

The property of the Jewish deportees to Transnistria from

18. Decree-law no. 169, January 21, 1938, in

Legislaþia

, no. 1, pp. 21-32.

19. Decree-law no. 2650, August 8, 1940, in

ibid.

, no. 3, pp. 37-50.

20. Decree-law no. 3347, October 4, 1940, in

ibid.

, no. 18, pp. 82-84; Decree-law no. 1120, May 2,

1941; Decree-law no. 3347,

Monitorul Oficial

, October 5, 1940; and no. 3810,

Monitorul Oficial

November 17, 1940,

apud

Legislaþia

, no. 39, pp. 144-147.

21. Radu Ioanid,

Evreii sub regimul Antonescu

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997), p. 34.

22.

Trei ani de guvernare

6 septembrie 1940 6 septembrie 1943

(henceforth:

Trei ani de guvernare

)

(Bucharest, 1944), p. 144.

23. Decree-law no. 2507, September 3, 1941, in

Legislaþia

, no. 46, pp. 164-165.

24.

Trei ani de guvernare

, p. 145.

186

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the counties of Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Suceava, Dorohoi, Rãdãuþi were legally de-

clared abandoned property and given to the National Center for Romanianization (NCR)

for clearance.

The Romanianization of Jewish Capital

and the Case of Commercial and Urban Property

Knowing that the Romanianization of trade and industry could not be achieved overnight,

the Antonescu regime did not pass a comprehensive law for the expropriation of Jewish

industrial and trade enterprises in the Old

Regat

and southern Transylvania. The strate-

gists of Romanianization viewed the process as a gradual one, which required the

preparation of the Romanian element to occupy the spaces in the economy that would

soon be vacated by Jews and also required the accumulation of capital necessary for the

takeover. The replacement of the Jews could take place only then.

The first step of the Romanianization process was to take an inventory of Jewish trade

and industrial property. The next step was to create a control mechanism over the stock

and fixed capital of Jewish companies. Then, by the Decree-law no. 3361 of October 5,

1940, the government established a new position: Romanianization commissioner;

this marked the beginning of total government control over Jewish property. Most of the

people appointed as Romanianization commissioners were Legionnaires. They were

charged with organizing an economic system that would be subordinated to the national

interest and to the primacy of Romanian ethnicity by formal Romanianization the Jewish

companies. Although he prided himself on this institutional control mechanism borrowed

from the Nazis, Ion Antonescu cautioned during a government meeting of December 13,

1940, that it could also lead to what he called a catastrophe.

Indeed, the system did become abusive, with many commissioners blackmailing

owners. As a consequence, the Romanianization commissioners were replaced with civil

servants from the Ministry of National Economy as of January 18, 1941, according to

Decree-law no. 562.

The prospect of an economic disaster was avoided by stopping the

disorderly transfer of ownership over trade and industrial goods.

Government control

over Jewish trade and industrial property was further enhanced when Decree-law no. 51

of January 20, 1942, which instituted government control over corporate boards, entered

into force. Special controllers supervised the Romanianization of capital, the labor

supply, and distribution at the company level. Each Jewish company was thus affected.

Through Decree-law no. 351 of May 2, 1942, the NCR exercised control over

company incorporation as well as mergers and acquisitions.

The government had

25.

Legislaþia

, no. 73, pp. 227-228.

26.

Ibid.

, no. 13, pp. 68-69.

27. Lya Benjamin,

Problema evreiasc\ `n stenogramele Consiliului de Mini[tri, 1940-1944

(Bucharest:

Hasefer, 1996), no. 60, p. 168 (henceforth: Benjamin,

Stenograme

28.

Legislaþia

, no. 28, pp. 101-103.

29.

Ibid.

, p. 101.

30.

Ibid.

, no. 28, p.101.

31. Titus Dragoº,

Rom^nizarea. ~nf\ptuiri. 6 decembrie 1941 6 decembrie 1942

(Bucure[ti, 1942),

p. 52.

187

FINAL REPORT

priority in cases of public auction or private sale of the Jewish property that was

prohibited from changing ownership without authorization from the Ministry of National

Economy. Decree-law no. 196 of March 13, 1942, prohibited Jews from concealing

their capital and other property under Romanian names. Jews were required to declare all

property in enterprises whose Jewish capital was more than twenty-five percent and had

been transferred to Romanian individuals or companies or to Romanian institutions

within thirty days of the publication of the law.

At the same time, the law allowed for

commercial partnerships between Jews and Romanians with the expectation that com-

mercial partnerships would create better opportunities than expropriation. The Romanian

Ministry of Justice wrote, A partial or total expropriation at the beginning of the

Romanianization process would have provoked a gap in the life of businesses, which

would have led to stagnation, and we want to avoid that gap.

It was thus possible to

identify each share by name and to verify if the transfer of Jewish property to Romanians

was based on authorizations required by the laws in force at that time. On the basis of

Decree-law no. 196, the government registered 50,000 statements on company owner-

ship, of which 2,902 were for limited liability companies and 42,747 for individual

companies.

Registration of Company Stock

The decree-law of March 3, 1941,

was aimed at the expropriation of Jewish capital and

required the registration of stock in the owners name, which facilitated the nationaliza-

tion of stock owned by Jews.

On March 25, 1941, the government issued a new law

requiring the extension of this government control to limited liability companies. Subse-

quently, 432,811 shares evaluated at 191 million lei were nationalized.

The measure

affected 2,639 industrial and trade companies. Dozens of limited liability companies

having a capital base estimated at 840 million lei were transferred into Romanian

hands.

The aim of this control was to stop and suppress the development of Jewish and

foreign capital (with the exception of German and Italian capital) and to enhance the

capital endowment of ethnic Romanians. The government subjected those Jews, who due

to temporary state economic interests were left in possession of their commercial prop-

erty, to a continuous state of uncertainty. They were sometimes accused of abusive

commercial practices or sabotaging Romanianization, which resulted in serious admin-

istrative, non-judiciary punishments for the owner and his family. Typical in this regard

32.

Ibid.

, p. 52.

33.

Legislaþia

, no. 62, pp. 195-198.

34. See footnote 32.

35. Decree-law no. 533 of March 3, 1941,

loc. cit.

, no. 32, pp. 117-119.

36. Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii la istoria României. Problema evreiascã

, trans. Carol Bienes (Bucharest:

Hasefer, 2001), vol. 1, part 2 (

1933-1944

), p. 68.

37.

Curierul israelit

, Organul Uniunii Evreilor Români, 34, series 2, no. 3 (October 1, 1944), p. 6.

38. A. Simion,

Preliminarii politico-diplomatice ale insurecþiei române din august 1944

(Cluj-Napoca:

Dacia, 1979), p. 122.

188

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

was the following order of the President of the Council of Ministers to the Ministry of

Interior:

By order from the Marshal we have the honor to ask you to order that all Jews who break

legal provisions on prices and restrictions on the sale of certain products be deported at the

Bug River.

This measure is aimed both at combating disobedience of the law and the elimination of

parasitic Judaic elements who live off breaking domestic law from crowded urban areas. Their

deportation shall be conducted on the basis of a decree or resolution drafted jointly by the

Ministry of the National Economy and the Undersecretary of State for the Supply of Army and

Civilian Population. From this point of view, the Ministry of Interior shall only carry out the

actual deportation.

Deportation formalities shall be kept to a minimum, and in the case that the above-mentioned

type of Judaic element is caught red-handed, his entire family shall be deported with him

without trial. The Marshal wishes that the decree or resolution should be applied retroactively

and that no mercy shall be shown toward these elements. The required decree or resolution

shall be presented to the Marshal no later than July 25, 1942.

Chronology of the Romanianization

of Jewish Urban Trade and Industrial Property

1940

October 2: Jews may not rent pharmacies (Decree-law no. 3294).

November 19: Jews may not sell merchandise produced under state monopoly

(Decree-law no. 3758).

November 19: The Romanianization of movie production companies, movie theaters

and tour operators (Decree-law no. 3850).

December 3: Nationalization of all ships belonging to Jewish companies and indi-

viduals.

1941

March 1: Beginning of Romanianization of the steel trade and steel production

(Decree-law no. 491).

March 14: Beginning of Romanianization of the leather trade and leather production

(Decree-law no. 655).

May 2: Nationalization of bakeries, pasta factories, and equipment of cereal

mills, breweries, drug factories, and mining and oil drilling companies (Decree-law

no. 1120).

39. ANIC, fond Ministry of Justice, Judiciary Direction, file no. 154/1942, pp. 1-2.

40.

Legislaþia

, no. 11, pp. 64-65.

41.

Ibid.

, no. 11, pp. 64-65.

42.

Ibid.

, no. 17, pp. 79-81.

43.

Ibid.

, no. 22, pp. 21-22.

44. See

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 51, March 1, 1941, p. 260.

45.

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 62, March 14, 1941, p. 530.

46.

Legislaþia

, no. 39, pp. 144-147.

189

FINAL REPORT

October 9: Nationalization of Jewish mortgage credits as well as Jewish hospitals and

Jewish health centers.

By August 1, 1943, the NCR had taken over 564 mortgage

credits worth 180 million lei.

November 28: Beginning of Romanianization of Jewish pharmacies, drug ware-

houses, and pharmacy offices (Decree-law no. 3275).

1942

August 6: The town of Panciu (a center of the brewing industry) was declared an

ethnically pure Romanian city.

1943

November 10: Nationalization of the

Rom^nia Mare

mill in Bucharest, along with all

its buildings, equipment, tools, merchandise, raw materials, and animals (Resolution

no. 969 of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers).

The government established the Romanian Credit Institute, an institution annexed to

the Undersecretary of State for Romanianization, Colonization, and Inventory, to address

the perceived urgency of Romanianization, which demanded immediate capitalization of

the new owners (April 29, 1941).

The Romanian National Bank (

Banca Na]ional\ a

Rom^niei

) helped the effort with a credit of 3 billion lei.

The Legionary Approach

After September 1940 the Legionnaires occupied numerous Jewish factories, workshops,

and stores at gunpoint. They forced the owners to sign sale contracts or mere receipts for

transfer of ownership. Official statistical data concerning Romanian territory (except

Bucharest) showed that Jewish property worth 1 billion lei was sold for 216 million lei,

of which only 52 million was actually paid and most of this money had been robbed

from the Jews.

In addition, the Legionnaire robberies caused damages to Jewish prop-

erty amounting to 380 million lei.

After the removal of Legionnaires from power in January 1941, the property abu-

sively taken from the Jews by the Legionnaires was transferred to the Chamber of

Commerce as part of the process of Romanianization instead of being restituted to its

47.

Ibid.

, p. 138.

48.

Ibid.

49.

Ibid.

, no. 52, pp. 175-177.

50.

Ibid.

, no. 70, p. 222.

51.

Ibid.

, no. 83, pp. 253-255.

52.

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 100, April 30, 1941.

53. Dragoº,

op. cit.

, p. 78.

54.

Curierul israelit

loc. cit.

55.

Ibid.

190

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

owners. The Legionnaires who could prove that they had acquired Jewish property in

accordance with the laws of the time remained the lawful owners of that property.

Romanianization through Company Closure

Because of the many restrictive measures in force, most Jewish companies (15,987 out

of 20,140) were shut down by their owners or ex officio by the Chamber of Commerce

between September 6, 1940, and June 1, 1943.

Romanianization by Consent

According to data used by Mihai Antonescu, 149 Jewish businesses were sold to Roma-

nian owners between December 1941 and July 1942.

In general, the sales were disad-

vantageous to Jews, who had to sell thriving businesses at ruinous prices.

Romanianization angered the representatives of Romanias historical parties, the

National Peasant Party and the National Liberal Party. In December 1940, C.I.C.

Br\tianu, head of the National Liberal Party, wrote to Ion Antonescu, The closing of

Jewish businesses (which Romanians cannot afford to buy) and the terror spread by

irresponsible youth

[

i.e., the Legionnaires

]

force many industrialists and retailers to sell

their businesses for little money to minority shareholders subsidized from abroad or by

foreign organizations. Instead of nationalization we are witnessing a de-nationalization

that makes things worse in the economy. Every day I learn that companies belonging to Jews

and other people passed to German or

Siebenburgische

[

Transylvanian

]

Saxon hands.

Romanianization of Jewish Buildings in the Cities

Jewish buildings in cities were nationalized by law on March 28, 1941. The measure was

regarded by the Antonescu regime as a measure to improve national security and make

Romania stronger, a way to honor the old traditions of Romanian Christian nationalism

and culturally unite the country with the new European celebration of national freedoms.

The declared objective of this law was to breathe a nationalist Christian spirit into state

policies on private ownership. In more concrete terms, it meant the consolidation of an

ethnic Romanian middle class, which the regime saw as the foundation of an authentic

[

step toward

]

national state building.

Article 1 of the March 28 decree-law mandated the nationalization of all immovable

property situated in urban areas belonging to Jewish companies and individuals. Article 19

prohibited Jewish individuals and companies from acquiring ownership of such property.

Moreover, the decree-law forever prohibited Jews from acquiring property in Romania,

except in situations in which the law would provide for their concentration in specific

56.

Stenograme

, pp. 199-200.

57.

Curierul israelit

loc. cit.

58.

Ibid.

59. Simion,

op. cit.

, p. 119.

60.

Legislaþia

, no. 35, pp. 122-131.

191

FINAL REPORT

urban centers. However, in contrast to the nationalization of Jewish rural property, which

allowed no exceptions, in this case several categories of Jews were exempted from the

provisions of the law: Jews naturalized through individual acts of Parliament up to

August 15, 1916; decorated Jewish war veterans; war orphans who had been baptized

Christians twenty years before, if married to ethnic Romanians; Jews baptized as Chris-

tians for over thirty years; and the descendants of the preceding categories. These

exemptions were to be granted on an individual basis by the Council of Ministers.

The large majority of the Jews who did not benefit from exemptions were forced to

transfer ownership of the property in question, which had to be free of mortgage and any

other financial obligations, to the NCR. In return, the NCR was to provide reimburse-

ment with a three percent interest rate; but payment of this reimbursement was post-

poned until the end of the war. The law was subsequently changed, however, and the

requirement to issue notice of property transfer was dropped, as it had been the right of

the previous Jewish owner to use the property; he henceforth became a tenant and could

be evicted at any moment.

As a consequence of the enforcement of this statute,

75,385 apartments assessed at 50 billion lei were nationalized by December 1943,

and

38,202 appeals were filed in court by those who thought they belonged to the exempted

categories. Only 2,016 of these appeals were resolved.

In Bessarabia and Northern

Bukovina, 9,281 urban properties and 8,973 rural properties (with 16,779 annexes)

belonging to Jews were also nationalized.

Romanianization of Property Belonging to the Jewish Communities:

Statutory Romanianization

On June 20, 1942, the Antonescu regime issued a law that modified previous statutes on

expropriation of Jewish immovable property. This law decreed the nationalization of all

immovable property belonging to Jewish communities, with the exception of synagogues,

Jewish cemeteries, and temples built to serve as synagogues.

Subsequently, on Novem-

ber 9, 1943, a law was issued stipulating that abandoned Jewish cemeteries were to be

transferred to the ownership of local municipalities.

On the basis of Decree-law no. 499 of July 3, 1942, the Council of Ministers adopted

many resolutions on the expropriation of Jewish property in all counties of Romania

between 1942 and 1944.

Between July 14, 1942, and August 23, 1944, the Antonescu

regime expropriated 1,042 Jewish community buildings, including temples, synagogues,

schools, hospitals and clinics, orphanages, cemeteries, ritual bathhouses, administrative

buildings, and rabbis homes.

Additionally, even before Decree-law no. 499 went into

effect, Legionnaires and then various departments of the government (e.g., Defense and

Labor) had already requisitioned numerous buildings of the Jewish community.

61. Decree-law no. 903, October 9, 1941,

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 240, October 10, 1941, p. 6079.

62.

Legislaþia

, no. 99, p. 344.

63.

Trei ani de guvernare

, p. 146.

64.

Ibid.

65.

Legislaþia

, no. 67, pp. 217-220.

66.

Ibid.

, no. 82, pp. 252-253.

67.

Ibid.

, appendix, pp. 429-485.

68.

Ibid.

, no. 99, p. 345.

192

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The National Center for Romanianization: Its Role in Romanianization

and the Administration and Liquidation of Expropriated Jewish Property

Romanianization, a complex process, required an adequate institutional framework,

which was based on cooperative efforts by the Ministry of the National Economy, the

Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, and the Ministry of Interior. The government also

established certain special institutions, such as the Division for Romanianization, Colo-

nization and Inventory and the National Center for Romanianization (NCR; established

in May 1941).

The NCR was a specialized institution directly subordinated to the Presidency of the

Council of Ministers, and its main function was the expropriation of Jewish property. The

establishment of the NCR centralized all Romanianization activities and bureaucratically

structured the supervision of expropriation as well as the administration and liquidation

of the expropriated property. The NCR was a repressive institution that approached the

Jewish population with a police mentality. It used the services of paid informers and

projected discretionary power with regard to Jewish properties. The NCR made high

profits for the government (about 2 billion lei a year) from renting out the nationalized

Jewish property, and it also liquidated nationalized Jewish property through sale.

When Decree-law no. 231 of February 2, 1944, entered into force the NCR appeared

ready to assume further functions in the planned colonization of territories newly occu-

pied by the Romanian army.

However, on September 1, 1944, the NCR was downgraded and became an adminis-

trative agency subordinated to the Office for the Liquidation of the NCR and of the

Settlement of Migration Problems (Decree-law no. 445).

The total value of nationalized Jewish property including extorted property, which

was subsequently sanctioned by the judiciary and the executive was roughly 100 billion lei

(in 1941, one U.S. dollar was worth 110 lei, and in 1943 one U.S. dollar was worth 400 lei).

Romanianization of the Labor Force. The Ghettoization

of Jewish Independent Professionals

The exclusion of Jews from various types of jobs began in 1937 with the inauguration of

the Goga government; however, the process gained a powerful momentum during the

Antonescu regimes, when Jews were excluded from all fields of work. Even though some

69. Decree-law no. 231, February 2, 1944, in

ibid.

, no. 86, pp. 259-261.

70. Ancel,

op. cit.

, p. 51.

193

FINAL REPORT

of the measures taken were sometimes self-contradictory and were temporarily post-

poned, the active Jewish population experienced a period of sharp professional degrada-

tion to an extent that was specific to countries that imposed legal racial discrimination.

Independent artists were the first to be affected by the legalized discrimination. On

September 8, 1940, the Ministry of Religion and Culture issued Resolution no. 42181,

which stipulated that all state and private theaters and opera houses were obliged to

dismiss Jewish actors and singers.

A subsequent decision allowed Jewish performers to

be hired by private Jewish theaters.

The new laws then began to target the professions.

For example, Jews were forbidden to practice as pharmacists (through the laws of

October 2, 1940, and November 21, 1941).

The August 8, 1940, law forbade Jewish

attorneys belonging to categories 1 and 3 from practicing law and forced them to

liquidate their businesses in six months, while the Antonescu governments October 16,

1940, decree-law went even further, excluding Jewish lawyers from the second category,

as well. They had the right to work, but only for Jewish clients. The disabled and war

orphans as well as those decorated for military valor were exempted from the law.

One of the most severe laws against Jewish labor was Decree-law no. 3825 of

November 15, 1940, on the Romanianization of the business labor force.

In the words

of Wilhelm Filderman, this law basically abolished the right of Jews to live,

since all

companies were required to fire their Jewish employees by December 31, 1941. The only

exceptions were Jewish institutions with a religious or cultural character, Jewish veterans

with combat disabilities from the 1916-1918 war, and war orphans.

Despite temporary

suspensions and deadline extensions, this statute led to the greatest growth of unemploy-

ment among active Jews. According to a June 13, 1943, Department of Labor report on

the Romanianization of the labor force, the number of Jewish employees dropped from

28,225 on November 16, 1940, to a mere 6,506 on March 1, 1943. Similarly, the

number of companies with Jewish employees dropped from 8,126 to 4,301.

Jewish doctors were also subject to discrimination. Unlike the decree-law of August 8,

1940, which excluded Jewish doctors belonging to categories 1 and 3 from the ranks of

state physicians, the November 1940 law stipulated that all Jewish workers, including

those from category 2, be excluded from the field of healthcare. Doctors professional

associations expelled their Jewish colleagues and prohibited them from caring for Chris-

tian patients. According to the law, Jewish physicians associations were to be created at

the county level, but even they could accept only those who had registered in Romania

71. Fondul de fi[e individuale completate în cadrul anchetei organizate de Congresul Mondial Evreiesc

`ntre anii 1945 [i 1947 în leg\tur\ cu pierderile suferite de populaþia evreiascã din Romania în anii

prigoanei. Unregistered document, Archive of CSIER.

72. Resolution no. 42181, in

ibid.

, no. 6, pp. 57-58.

73. Resolution no. 44400, September 21, 1940, in

ibid.

, no. 10, p. 63.

74. Decree-law no. 3294, October 1940, and Decree-law no. 3275, November 28, 1941, in

ibid.

, no. 11,

pp. 64-65, and no. 52, pp. 175-177.

75. Decree-law no. 3487, October 16, 1940, in

ibid.

, no. 15, pp. 71-73. See paragraph entitled

Caracterul rasial al legislaþiei antievreieºti.

76.

Ibid.

, no. 16, pp. 74-82.

77.

Ibid.

, p. 363.

78.

Ibid.

, no. 16, pp. 74-82.

79.

Stenograme

, no. 169, pp. 74-82.

194

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

prior to 1919.

Jewish physicians were also forbidden to publish research in professional

reviews and hold membership in research institutions. All Jewish physicians who could

still practice had to wear a badge and carry a stamp identifying them as Jewish. Moreo-

ver, doctors with Jewish spouses were also prohibited from practicing. In addition, if

sick, Jews could not be received in a Romanian hospital or treated by Romanian physi-

cians. The result of these prohibitions was to deprive Jews of adequate healthcare, though

the stated purpose for the adoption of these harsh regulations was to maintain, develop,

and improve the health of ethnic Romanians.

According to the association of Romanian engineers decision of February 2, 1942, the

Jews from the first and third categories and those from the second category registered after

August 9, 1940, were expelled from this association (

Colegiul Inginerilor

). There were

expelled engineers from the fields of construction, the navy, metallurgy, chemistry, and

others. This exclusion from the unions and associations also meant that they were forbid-

den to practice their profession as independent workers.

The same fate later befell Jewish

architects as well as Jewish members of unions and other professional associations.

Nevertheless, in June 1943 the government issued the guidelines for the use of Jews with

university degrees for various public services.

Craftsmen and apprentices were also

excluded from the labor market, and both of these categories were forbidden from doing any

other skilled job.

A number of restrictions were imposed on the freedom of Jewish mer-

chants.

Exclusion from professional associations also affected Jewish painters, sculptors,

composers, journalists, and writers. Books written by Jewish authors and records contain-

ing music written by Jewish composers were banned in public libraries and bookstores.

It is worth noting, however, that the government took steps to keep several types of

Jewish workers working in exchange for high fees established by law (many times the

fees were higher than the income).

These Jews were exempted from protective labor

regulations. As a result, they lost their right to leave pay and were discriminated in terms

of their wages; for example, they did not receive raises equivalent with the rate of

inflation, as Romanian workers did. Even as late as January 10, 1944, companies with

Jewish employees had to take measures to pair these employees with ethnic Romanians

(Department of Labor Resolution no. 102064).

The timing of the twinning system shows that Antonescu never gave up on the

complete Romanianization of labor. The only improvement under his government was

when he later agreed that the actual replacement of Jewish workers would take longer. In

80. Decree-law no. 3789, November 12, 1940, in

Legislaþia

, no. 19, pp. 85-88.

81. Ioanid,

op. cit.

, p. 40.

82. Resolu]ia Consiliului Colegiului Inginerilor, February 3, 1942, in

Legislaþia

, no. 58, pp. 191-192.

83. Presidency of the Council of Ministers Decision no. 17, June 15, 1943, in

ibid.

, no. 76, p. 242.

84. Decree-law no. 1981 of July 10, 1942, in

ibid.

, no. 68, pp. 220-221; Ministry of Labor, Health and

Social Protection Decision no. 97484, March 8, 1941, in

ibid.

, no. 34, pp. 121-122.

85. Matatias Carp, in the Archive of CSIER.

86. See footnote 85.

87. Directive no. 38811, January 5, 1942, in

Legislaþia

, no. 55, pp. 181-183.

88.

Ibid.

, no. 85, pp. 256-257.

195

FINAL REPORT

addition, whenever an employer wanted to hire a new worker, he had to submit papers

showing that the new worker was a Christian or an Aryan. These statutory labor provi-

sions literally deprived Jews of the right to work.

Statutory Regulations on the Situation of Jews in the Education System

Decree-law no. 3438 of October 11, 1940, mandated the exclusion of Jews students and

teachers alike from all levels of the education system. Article 3 of the law unequivo-

cally stipulated, students born of Jewish parents shall not be admitted to Romanian/

Christian primary, secondary, and high schools

[

]

universities, irrespective of their

religion.

The same regulation was declared applicable to Jewish teachers, professors,

and school administrators.

In this way, the

numerus clausus

of Decree no. 153377 of August 29, 1940, which

stipulated that no more than 6 percent of students in a class should be Jewish, trans-

formed into a

numerus nullus

decree: no Jewish student was allowed to attend Romanian

schools unless he or she was a either a Christian convert and direct heir of a decorated,

disabled, or dead veteran of the war of independence; a disabled or decorated veteran

of the 1916-1918 war; or a descendant of a disabled or decorated veteran of the

1916-1918 war and had converted to Christianity by August 9, 1940. The October 11,

1940, law did allow Jewish students to attend Jewish private schools; however, these

schools were forbidden to advertise, and the state would not recognize the graduation

papers they issued, which basically made them worthless in the labor market. In February

1941, under pressure from the representative of the Holy See in Bucharest, Antonescu

allowed Jewish students who had converted to Christianity to attend classes at confes-

sional schools (mostly Catholic). He also allowed Christian students who had only one

Jewish parent to attend non-Jewish private schools. At the same time, however, he

decreed that ethnic origin would be noted on graduation papers, and Jewish graduates

would be subject to the statutory provisions applicable to Jews.

The situation for Jewish university students was the worst since Jews were not allowed

to set up their own universities. Still, Jewish leaders managed to obtain permission for

Jewish university students to attend non-university-level classes at the College for Jewish

University Students and the School of Arts for Jews, and to receive medical and technical

training. Jewish professors struggled to make these classes like actual university-level

classes. For example, students took regular exams and had official transcripts.

However,

the parallel Jewish education system was ultimately disrupted by the requisition and

subsequent nationalization of some Jewish school buildings and by the legal obligation of

all Jewish students over the age of fifteen to join work detachments.

Like Jewish

students, Jewish teachers were excluded from the public education system, so some

joined Jewish private schools.

Their salaries were paid exclusively by the Jewish com-

munities, and the Romanian government offered no subsidy.

89.

Ibid.

, no. 14, pp. 70-71.

90. Decree-law of February 20, 1941; see Carp, list, CSIER Archive.

91. Memorandum, September 22, 1944, in

Legislaþia

, no. 101, pp. 351-358.

92. Eliza Campus,

Viaþa evreilor din Bucureºti. 1940-1944. Monografie, dactilogramã

, Archive of

CSIER, file no. 5.

93. See footnote 89.

196

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Status of Jewish Religion

According to the August 8, 1940, decree-law:

...the Romanian government guarantees that all faiths have the right to be protected from all

injunctions since they do not harm public order, morality and security. By this statute, to be

integrated into the Constitution, the spiritual life of Jews is not regarded as integrated into the

spiritual life of the Romanian society. Rather, it will be regarded only as owing respect to the

Romanian community, on the basis of its guaranteed freedom.

Immediately after Antonescu came to power, the Ministry of Religion and Culture

issued Ruling no. 42352 of September 9, 1940, which stipulated that only historical

denominations enjoyed state protection and were authorized to function on Romanian

territory. With regard to Judaism, the resolution did not go further than acknowledging

its existence. Its activities were to be regulated by subsequent government regulations

issued on September 17, 1940, which severely limited its freedom.

As a consequence

of Jewish community leaders protests, the September 9 regulations were later abro-

gated.

Between late 1941 and early 1942, the government excluded Judaism from the right

to claim state subsidies

and replaced the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania

(FUCE) as an institution of community leadership with the government-controlled Jew-

ish Center (

Centrala Evreilor

Besides being the object of repressive legislation,

Jewish religious institutions were often vandalized or destroyed. Several Jewish cemeter-

ies, including the historical cemeteries in Iaºi and Bucharest, were destroyed, and in

Piatra-Neam] municipal authorities demanded that Jews pay fees to the Chamber of

Legionary Aid for the right to bury Jewish dead in the local cemetery. In Bucharest, Jews

were made to exhume their dead who were buried in Christian cemeteries, and the police

prevented Jews in several towns from praying. After July 15, 1942, Jews could no longer

practice the ritual slaughter of animals and birds.

The many abuses committed against

Judaism went unpunished, thereby proving that the self-proclaimed nationalist, Chris-

tian, totalitarian state had withdrawn its protection of this religion.

100

Exclusion from Political Life

The exclusion of Jews from political life began around the time that Carol IIs Front for

National Rebirth was renamed the Party of the Nation, a self-proclaimed single and

totalitarian party placed under the supreme leadership of His Majesty, King Carol II.

Jews were expressly forbidden to join this party, and since eligibility for public service

94. See footnote 6.

95. Resolution no. 42352, September 9, 1940, in

Legislaþia

, no. 7, pp. 58-59.

96. See Decision no. 43832.

97. Decree-law no. 846; see Carp, list, CSIER.

98. Decree-law no. 3415 on December 16, 1941, in

Legislaþia

, no. 53, p. 178.

99. Carp, list, CSIER.

100. See footnote 6.

197

FINAL REPORT

was conditional on being a member of the Party of the Nation, Jewish public servants

were immediately fired, irrespective of their positions. As a summer 1940 report of the

Presidency of the Council of Ministers shows, prior to Antonescus political takeover,

Jews had been excluded from the habitual application of ordinary laws applicable to all

other Romanian citizens and were the only minority in Romania subject to discrimina-

tion.

101

Although Jews could still vote during the Royal Dictatorship, they were deprived

of this right under Antonescu. It must be noted here that Antonescu called the people of

Romania to cast their votes in two referenda in 1941 (on February 26 and November 9),

and each time Jews were expressly forbidden to participate.

102

The Military Status of Jews

The exclusion of the Jews from the Romanian society also entailed their dismissal from

the army. The military obligations, being obligations of honor, stipulated the Decree-law

of August 8, 1940, are to be converted for Jews in the first and third categories into tax

or labor obligations. Those obligations are decided pursuant to every Jews income and

military situation and according to the states and public institutions needs. The Jews in

the second category are forbidden from pursuing professional careers in the military.

103

According to the decree-law on the military status of Jews adopted in December

1940, all Jews were excluded from military service and pre-military training obligations

and were required instead to pay military fees or perform labor. The duty to pay military

fees was imposed by the Ministry of Finance directly, according to tables of names

compiled by the military authorities. These obligations were to last as long as the rest of

the citizenry was mobilized to fulfill military service. Those who were deemed physi-

cally unfit for military service had to pay exemption fees, as well. According to the law,

during a lengthy period of mobilization or war, the Jews could be used for the benefit of

the army or for community work.

Jewish professionals with university degrees were supposed to be used according to

their qualifications and to receive an allowance

per diem

. Jews who already possessed

military identification had to have the word Jew stamped in red ink on the cover, and

the rest were given a special military booklet for Jews. Jewish doctors, pharmacists,

veterinarians, engineers, and architects requisitioned by the army during the prolonged

drafts or the war had to wear special uniforms that also showed their ethnic origin.

104

The

military status of the Jews was regulated through several laws that specified the obliga-

tions, conditions, and circumstances for forced labor and the additional taxes.

101.

Stenograme

, no. 22, p. 62.

102.

Legislaþia

, no. 49, pp. 170-171.

103. For the military status of the Jews, see

ibid.

, no. 25: Decretul-lege relativ la statutul militar al

evreilor (December 4, 1940);

ibid.

, no. 29: Decizia Ministerului Apãrãrii Naþionale nr. 23325,

27 ianuarie 1941, privitoare la medicii, farmaciºtii, veterinarii, inginerii ºi arhitecþii evrei folosiþi

eventual în serviciile Armatei;

ibid.

, no. 43: Regulamentul Ministerului Apãrãrii Naþionale nr.

2030 din 12 iulie 1941 asupra Decretului-lege nr. 3984 din 4 decembrie 1940.

104. See the regulation regarding the decree-law on the military status of the Jews, in

ibid.

, no. 43,

p. 159.

198

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

These laws stipulated that military service was to be replaced with community work

for the Ministry of National Defence or other ministries and institutions. For the duration

of these activities, the Jews were under military jurisdiction. According to the regulation

referring to the decree-law on the military status of Jews, the community work was

mandatory for Jewish men between eighteen and fifty years old.

Work was done in camps and battalions of mandatory community labor that fell

under the regime of military order and discipline.

105

Decree-law no. 1851 of June 22,

1942, transferred the organization of Jewish forced labor to the Army High Command.

106

The Army High Command assigned work details to all Jews drafted to the work detach-

ments. These workers were subject to the rigors of the military code and wore their own

civilian clothes as well as a yellow band marked with the name of their recruiting center

on the left sleeve.

107

One month later, in order to distinguish between community work

(

munc\ `n folos obºtesc

), which Romanian youth had to perform gratis as part of their

patriotic education, and the free work done by the Jews, the latter was called compul-

sory or forced labor (

munc\ obligatorie

108

On June 23, 1942, a resolution of the

Ministry of National Defense obliged Jews holding a university degree to work ninety

days a year for the government.

109

Jewish forced labor was employed for a variety of

infrastructure projects, such as laying railway tracks and roads, building fortifications,

and providing maintenance services for the military. The skilled men were used in the

army and in military factories. Young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty and

adults between forty-one and fifty years old worked in their towns of residence. Theoreti-

cally, only the Jews between eighteen and fifty years old were supposed to do mandatory

work. But, in actuality, people older than fifty or younger than eighteen were used for

mandatory labor on numerous occasions. Thus, a communiqué transmitted by the High

Command to the Jewish Center on January 10, 1943, stipulated that students older than

sixteen were supposed to do mandatory work. These young people were used to shovel

snow, for farm work, or for finding the victims of the Anglo-American bombings under

the ruins. Additionally, the army could freely use Jewish women, aged eighteen to forty,

for clerical work, cleaning, tailoring, and other tasks.

Punishments for disobedience ranged from deportation to Transnistria, along with

ones entire family, to the death penalty. The Army High Commands Regulations on

Jewish Labor (no. 555000 of July 27, 1942) stipulated specific punishments. In the case

of a small transgression, such as being late for roll call or undisciplined behavior,

commanders were to physically punish the offender. For repeated offenses as well as

cheating, failure to show up for the assignment, abandonment of the work place without

permission, and failure to inform the Recruitment Center about changes of address, the

offender and his extended family (wife, children, parents) would be deported to

Transnistria.

110

Forced labor with 47,345 Jewish men, women, and teenagers sent to

105. Decree-law published in

Monitorul Oficial

, part 1, no. 155, July, 7, 1942, p. 5538.

106. Decree-law no. 2068, July 20, 1942,

Monitorul Oficial

, part 1, no. 167, July 20, 1942, p. 6027.

107. See Decree-law no. 3205, November 14, 1941 on the establishment and organization of the

General Inspectorate of labor camps and corps,

, no. 50, pp. 171-173.

108.

Legislaþia

, no. 25, p. 87, footnote 1.

109.

Ibid.

, no. 29, p. 105, footnote 1.

110.

Stenograme

, no. 142, p. 427.

199

FINAL REPORT

work detachments was one of the methods used to marginalize Jewry from the Old

Regat

and southern Transylvania. The wages for this work were either minimal or

nothing at all, and the Jewish communities had to provide work clothes, tools, healthcare,

and food.

111

In 1943, 44,234 Jewish men performed mandatory work, and 21,078 were

drafted for industry and commerce.

The Regulation of the Situation of Romanian Jews

According to Resolution no. 49 of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, issued on

October 30, 1941, Radu Lecca, a man close to German intelligence services, was

appointed director of the Council of Ministers Division for the Regulation of the Situa-

tion of Jews in Romania.

112

Decree-law no. 2461 of September 6, 1943, terminated this

agency, creating the General Commissariat for Jewish Problems, also led by Lecca. His

mission was to make policy on the economic, social, and cultural aspects of the life of

Jewish communities in a way that they would serve government interests.

113

Wartime Anti-Jewish Legislation

Exceptional Measures

The Antonescu regime considered Jews to be internal enemies or natural allies of the

external enemy, and this was particularly the case during the war against the Soviet

Union. Antonescu even went as far as calling Jews worse than our external enemies,

because from these external enemies we can expect the occupation of Romanian territory,

whereas from the internal enemy we can expect the poisoning and the corruption of the

Romanian soul.

114

The Marshal and his aides believed the Jews spied not only for Red

Russia, but also for Anglo-American imperialism; hence, they were thought to be a

tremendous danger to the security of the state.

As a consequence, the regime issued a body of legislative measures that created for

the Jews a regulatory environment typical of a state of emergency an environment that

limited their liberties and threatened their lives. Thus, on May 6, 1941, all people having

at least one Jewish parent were asked to surrender any radios able to send and receive

messages within fifteen days of the publication of the law.

115

Failure to comply was

punishable by imprisonment or fines.

116

The motivation behind the law was that Jews

were believed to listen to anti-Romanian propaganda and then spread alarmist informa-

tion, causing the Romanian population to panic.

111.

Ibid.

, no. 187, p. 558.

112.

Legislaþia

, no. 48, p. 170.

113.

Ibid.

, no. 81, pp. 250-251.

114.

Stenograme

, pp. 499-502.

115. Decree-law no. 1253, May 6, 1941, in

Legislaþia

, no. 40, pp. 147-149.

116. See footnote 113.

200

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

On June 21, 1941, the Ministry of Interior issued Circular Order no. 4147, which

relayed Antonescus order that Jews between the ages of eighteen and sixty living in the

villages between Siret and Prut, an area close to the border with the Soviet Union, were

to be deported to the T^rgu-Jiu camp. According to this order, all Jews from the country-

side were also to be evacuated to cities.

117

Within a week after the outbreak of the war against

the Soviet Union and the publication of the execution of 500 Judeo-communists in Iaºi, the

Ministry of Interior issued Circular Order no. 4599, of June 30, 1941, which declared:

The Soviets plan and carry out acts of sabotage, disorder, and attacks behind the frontlines

of the Romanian army by parachuting spies and armed terrorists who are often dressed as

women. Together with local agents and the Jewish-communist population, they organize acts

of sabotage, terrorism, and aggression. In order to put an end to all of these, Marshal

Antonescu has ordered the following: (1) Jewish males from your city, if aged between 18 and

60, must be concentrated in Jewish districts or rounded up in schools and other bigger

buildings, where they shall be guarded in order to prevent any disorder, (2) Jews shall not be

allowed to move freely between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., (3) Jewish religious or community leaders

shall be taken hostage, and in case of any acts of rebellion, they shall be shot, (4) Please post

public notices on the fate that awaits these hostages in case the Jews or the communists launch

acts of sabotage, terrorism, and aggression.

118

This order was sent to prefectures in Moldavia, to the Bucharest police department,

and to the gendarmerie. Many internments were carried out based on this order. For

example, a number of Jews were arrested or interned in Ploie[ti, C^mpina, and Sinaia in

the Tei-T^rgovi[te concentration camp.

Immediately after the Iaºi pogrom, Jews in several towns in Moldavia (Bac\u, Gala]i,

Iaºi, F\lticeni, Hu[i) were forced to wear the yellow star.

119

On August 5, 1941, claiming

that he was addressing concerns of military commanders, Mihai Antonescu ordered that

all Jews in Romania must wear the yellow star. On August 7, 1941, the Ministry of

Interior relayed the order to local police stations. On September 3, FUCE announced

that all Jews in Bucharest must wear a patch with the Star of David on the left side of the

chest.

120

On September 9, as a result of Fildermans plea before Antonescu, the Marshal

decided to abrogate the order on the yellow star.

121

Despite Antonescus reversal on this

matter, in some Moldavian cities and in Cern\u]i, the abrogation did not take full effect,

and in Transnistria Jews had to wear the star for the rest of the war.

On the basis of Order no. 62 of July 24, 1941 (signed by General C. Voiculescu),

Romanian authorities set up the first concentration camp in Chi[in\u.

122

Next, the

Cern\u]i concentration camp was established in October 1941.

123

On September 19,

1942, Antonescu signed a law stipulating that all Jews who returned to Romania from

117.

Legislaþia

, pp. 339.

118. Ioan {erb\nescu,

Evreii din România între anii 1940-1944

, vol. 3, part 1, Perioada unei mari

restri[ti (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997), no. 120, p. 330.

119. Ioanid,

op. cit.

, p. 50.

120. Lya Benjamin,

Prigoan\ ºi rezistenþ\

în istoria evreilor din România. 1940-1944. Studii

(Bu-

charest: Hasefer, 2001), p. 160.

121.

Stenograme

, no. 109, pp. 304-308.

122. Jean Ancel,

Transnistria, 1941-1942

(Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2003), vol. 2, no. 8, p. 17.

123. Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã. Fapte [i documente. Suferin]ele evreilor din Rom^nia, 1940-1944

ed. (Bucharest: Diogene, 1996), vol. 3, p. 152.

201

FINAL REPORT

Transnistria in a fraudulent manner would be executed.

124

According to Decree-law

no. 552 of March 2, 1943, Jews sentenced to at least three months of prison or six

months of camp internment were to be deported to Transnistria together with their

families.

125

In the case of Jews sentenced for crimes that posed a threat to national

security, their punishment was to be doubled.

126

Furthermore, according to a law of

May 26, 1944, Jews who entered Romania illegally were to be sentenced to death. This

law was aimed at Jews from Hungary and Northern Transylvanian who were fleeing the

deportations there, which began on March 19, 1944. This law, however, was not en-

forced.

127

Jewish Material Obligations and Contributions:

Legislation and Means of Implementation

Using the pretext that Jews did not have to risk their lives in combat, the government

asked Jews to make contributions in money and goods that went far beyond their

resources. After mass lay-offs, deportations, abusive taxes, and nationalizations, the

Jewish minority was severely impoverished. With reference to the exceptional contribu-

tions made by Romanian Jews between 1941 and 1944, Matatias Carp drafted the

following assessment in his

Cartea neagr\

: Jews paid 1,994,209,141 lei before May 20,

1942, for an imposed government bond (

~mprumutul Re`ntregirii

) requiring Jews to pay

four times more than all other citizens; they paid 500 million lei for hospital equipment

and 100 million lei for a disabled veterans fund (

Palatul Invalizilor

); they paid

1,800,135,600 in forced donations to the government in the form of items such as

clothing, footwear, mattresses, and bed linen based on individual economic status (those

who did not have the required items had to pay the equivalent value in cash, and failure

to donate led to five to ten-year prison sentences; a blanket amnesty was granted to these

debtors only after the community paid 100 million lei to the government); Jews

forfeited 3,034,148,141 lei in fees for exemption from compulsory labor for April 1,

1941, and August 23, 1944, and 144,024,375 lei in fees for exemption from snow

shoveling obligations. The extraordinary contribution of 4 billion lei was imposed on the

whole Jewish population by Ion Antonescus personal order in April 1943. This was

achieved through pressure or blackmail, the only options being payment or deportation

to Transnistria; thus, the Jews paid 738,156,308 for the exceptional contribution

ordered by Antonescu.

128

On August 26, 1943, the Council of Ministers ordered that fees

paid for exemption from forced labor be transferred to the Social Works Council

(

Consiliul de Patronaj al Operelor Sociale

129

On July 1, 1943, Radu Lecca confirmed

that this Council received 410 million lei exclusively from these exemption fees.

130

124.

Legislaþia

, no. 71, pp. 229-230.

125.

Ibid.

, no. 74, pp. 229-230.

126. Decree-law no. 3802, November 12, 1940, in

ibid.

, no. 20, p. 89; and Decree-law no. 236,

February 5, 1941, in

ibid.

, no. 30, p. 111.

127. Decree-law no. 1069, May 26, 1944, in

ibid.

, no. 89, pp. 278-279.

128. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 68.

129.

Legislaþia

, no. 80, pp. 249-250.

130. CSIER, fond 3, file no. 425, p. 60.

202

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Restrictions on the Freedom of Movement

and Access to Food and Supplies

A government order, issued on July 27, 1941, cancelled all travel authorizations granted

to Jews.

131

Between June 27, 1941, and December 31, 1943, the government issued over

twenty internal orders specifying the conditions in which Jews could obtain travel au-

thorizations from the Ministry of Interior. Students and teachers were allowed to travel

to school and return home. A limited number of authorizations were issued in cases of

official summons, illness, and in even fewer cases, for business. Jews who traveled

without authorization risked deportation. Also, on March 16, 1942, drivers licenses

issued to the Jews were withdrawn.

Basic foodstuffs, such as bread, sugar, oil, and polenta, were rationed. The Jews were

submitted to restrictive orders enacted by the central and local state authorities. Jews

were allowed to shop in markets and stores only between certain hours, and peasants

were forbidden access to Jewish houses. The food ration cards of the Jews with Romanian

citizenship were specially marked, and Jews received less sugar and wheat than other

Romanians. Jews were paying 15 lei for the bread ration instead of the 7 lei the Roma-

nians paid. Moreover, two weekly rations given to the rest of the population were

canceled for the Jews.

In general, documents from the period show a number of discriminatory measures

that seriously affected the daily lives of the Jews not just buying groceries (both in

terms of access and money), but other aspects, as well. For example, since the tenants

law did not apply to Jews, they were forced to pay higher rent than the rest of the

population. During bombings they were denied access to public shelters, and they were

not allowed to leave areas, like Bucharest, that were bombed. The daily lives of Jews took

place under the constant threat of abuse and within the boundaries delineated by the

discriminatory policies of the totalitarian regime.

Conclusions

The anti-Jewish legislation and administrative measures taken by the Antonescu regimes

are characteristic of an extremist, totalitarian policy toward a minority ethnic group in

this case, the Jewish minority. Romanianization policies clearly evinced an ethnic re-

structuring of Romanian society to the exclusive advantage of ethnic Romanians. The

emphasis on blood arguments was emblematic of a structurally racist regime, and the

emergency laws and portrayal of Jews as internal enemies laid the foundation for the

large-scale repression of the Jewish minority and the legitimization of this repression as

an actual war.

This legislation, along with the policy that inspired it, reveals the intentions of

Antonescu and the state apparatus. Considering the particular weight given to anti-Jewish

legislation, it is obvious that the so-called Jewish issue was a principal preoccupation of

131.

Legislaþia

, pp. 331-339.

The Life of Jewish Community under Ion Antonescu

and the Jewish Communitys Response to the Holocaust

in Romania

The Federation of Jewish Communities and the Resistance

to Anti-Semitism and Terror

The Role of Dr. Wilhelm Filderman (September 1940 December 1941)

The decisive role in the organization of the Jewish struggle for survival during the

Holocaust was devolved to the institutions of the Jewish community.

An entire institu-

tional network for religious services, community culture, education, and social assist-

ance was charged with addressing the moral, social, intellectual, and material needs of

Jews during the regimes of Ion Antonescu.

Between 1940 and 1941, the Federation of Jewish Communities (

Federaþia Uniunilor

de Comunitãþi Evreieºti

FUCE) played the leading role. The president of the Federa-

tion, Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, was the initiator and political leader of Jewish life at that

historical moment when the Jewish community in Romania was confronted with the most

complex problems of its entire history. Although his activity had to be focused on solving

everyday problems (as all the anti-Semitic measures had a direct effect at this level), his

efforts did not have only an administrative dimension. Solving those many problems

required great tact, political vision, flexibility, and the capacity to adapt to a specific

historical context. Wilhelm Filderman adopted appropriate tactics in response, such as

petitions and audiences with the prominent figures in Romanian political and clerical life

who had influence in governmental circles and agreed to intervene on behalf of Jews. He

continued this activity even after the dismantling of the Federation.

The patent of petitions was held by Filderman, wrote Theodor Lavy, a Zionist

leader. The Zionists fought against the system of petitions. However, not only were

petitions the sole means for expressing demands or protest, but the fact that they where

delivered was a success in itself.

Between September 1940 and December 16, 1941, the

Federation attempted to address problems arising from anti-Semitic measures, which

were affecting the Jews in general, or only some social classes of the Jewish population,

via petitions sent to Antonescu and other state authorities. It was Filderman who created

a certain style of petition. His responses were always prompt and direct, citing statistical,

1. See doc. no. 163 in vol.

Documente

(henceforth:

Documente

) (Ia[i: Polirom, 2005).

2. Dr. Théodor Lavi, Petiþiile doctorului Filderman,

Viaþa noastrã

, Tel Aviv, November 30, 1979.

206

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

historical, and political arguments that reflected the negative effects of the measures on

Romania as a whole, and not just on the survival of the Jewish community. He also

demonstrated that the anti-Semitic measures in Romania were frequently harsher than in

the other Axis countries. Ultimately, the Federation would face the consequences of the

Legionary terror (September 1940 to January 1941), the acceleration of the Romanianization

process, and the regime of terror imposed after Romania became engaged in the

anti-Soviet war (e.g., deportations, the Iaºi pogrom, propaganda based the Judeo-Communist

myth, anti-Semitic psychosis, hostage taking, the yellow star, deportations to Transnistria,

the right to offer assistance to camp prisoners and people deported to Transnistria, and

compulsory labor).

The Struggle against Legionary Terror and Legislation

(September 1940 January 1941)

After the first anti-Semitic measures adopted by the National Legionary State, the

Federations leadership considered the most important threat to the Jewish population

and to Romania, in general to be from the Legionary movement and the Legionary

ministries in the government. The leaders of the Federation, therefore, attempted to make

personal contact with the head of the state.

On September 11, 1940, the Federation issued one of the first protest memoranda

against the Ministry of Religions decision to suppress most of the synagogues and forbid

cultural-religious activities. According to the memorandum, newborn Jewish children

cannot receive religious blessings; Jews cannot be religiously married anymore. Also, to

bury our dead, we must await the approval of authorization requests to the Prefecture, to

the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and to the Ministry of Religions. The memorandum

signed by Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, Chief Rabbi Dr. Alexandru {afran (representative of

the Mosaic Cult in the former Senate), and Josef M. Pincas (president of the Sephardic

communities) asserted that public order is thereby being threatened and anarchy

provoked, because religion was always public orders guarantee. By suppressing the

places of worship, anarchy is instilled in the spirit, and this does not respect one of the

most natural human rights, which is to believe in and pray to God.

At the same time,

by delivering the memorandum, Dr. Wilhelm Filderman obtained and received an audi-

ence with the

Conduc\tor

on September 17, 1940, which represented an encouraging

success. During the meeting, Filderman presented the consequences of the decisions

taken by the minister of religions and the many other problems that plagued the Jewish

population during that period. He demonstrated that the adopted measures violated

current laws and generated incertitude and mistrust among merchants and industrialists

since all of the countrys laws compelled them not to stop production and supply.

Through his requests, based on law and justice, Filderman tried to avoid social and

economic movements on a national level.

The

Conduc\tor

wrote back, asking Filderman to show understanding and to make

the members of the Jewish community from all over the country understand that General

Antonescu cannot perform miracles in one week... I assure Mr. Filderman that if his

3. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

(Jerusalem, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 475-476.

207

FINAL REPORT

colleagues do not undermine the regime directly or indirectly, the Jewish population will

not suffer politically or economically. The word of General Antonescu is a pledge.

September 19, a new decision of the Ministry of National Education for Religions and

Arts suspended the implementation of the September 9 resolution on places of worship

(temples and synagogues) until there was a definitive regulation on the status of associa-

tions and religious communities in Romania. This did not mean that the Legionnaires

gave up closing the synagogues in some places or stopped terrorizing the Jewish popu-

lation. To the dismay of the FUCE leadership, the promises of the

Conduc\tor

were not

fulfilled. It looked as though neither the enforcement of anti-Semitic measures nor the

Legionnaires terrorism could be stopped. Therefore, the FUCE leadership continued

sending memoranda to the government presenting data and facts on the Legionnaires

violence and abuse of the Jewish inhabitants.

On December 9, 1940, after receiving one of the memoranda, the

Conduc\tor

wrote

the following resolution: The Ministry of Internal Affairs together with a Legionnaire

from the Legionary forum designed by Mr. Sima will urgently investigate all of these

cases

[

in the memorandum

]

. The findings will be written in a report and presented to me

as soon as possible. If I find that the claims are accurate, I will take measures. I pledge

that I will respect the promises made to the citizens of this country, and I think that the

partnership with the Legionnaires is real, not just words.

During December 1940,

some dozens of memoranda were sent.

On January 2, 1941, Dr. Filderman sent a memorandum drawing a parallel between

the situation of Jews in Germany, Italy, and Hungary and their situation in Romania.

Filderman concluded:

In three months of government, Romania has issued laws that go further not only than

Italian and Hungarian laws, but also than German laws, before and after the issuance of the

Nuremberg laws... Then, either Hitler and his Germans, Mussolini and Horthy were wrong,

or Romania

[

will experience

]

a social and economic disaster, unprecedented and unique, with

all the consequences that this disaster could engender... The multitude of laws and decisions

adopted in these three months took more rights from Romanian Jews than the National

Socialists have taken in eight years from German Jews, including the laws adopted after 1938

aiming to punish them; to Italian Jews in eighteen years; and to Hungarian Jews in three

years. To this legislative over-performance we could add here instances of torture, confiscation

of fortunes worth hundreds of millions... I sent a memorandum to you regarding these issues.

You ordered an investigation... But this order was not carried out by the Tribunal, but by the

defendants... In different places, Jewish claimants called in front of a table on which there

were revolvers were obliged to

[

declare

]

that nobody had touched them... That investigation

is distorted because it was not made objectively and worse, not only did the terror not stop...

it grew.

In conclusion, Filderman reviewed all the promises made by the

Conduc\tor

regard to solving the Jewish problems and showed that these promises were not re-

spected. He wrote, Though the

Conduc\tor

first promised that only the Jews who came

to Romania after 1913 will be eliminated from society, in reality this expulsion is made

without any criteria; if the

Conduc\tor

himself pledged that Jews will be replaced

Ibid.

, pp. 475-476.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, p. 47.

208

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

gradually, in reality they are replaced faster than they have been in other countries. Also,

Jews cannot benefit from Romanias resources either in the future as the

Conduc\tor

has declared or at present, because even today they cannot live, having been con-

demned to die of hunger, just when their proportion to the Romanian population is

reduced by half. Therefore, Romanianization is half-solved.

In his explanations, Filderman did not accuse Ion Antonescu, but he did accuse the

Iron Guard. He stressed the difference between Ion Antonescus approach and the

Legions as well as the fact that the Legionnaires revolted against the

Conduc\tor

policy by trying to solve the Jewish problem on their own. At the same time, Filderman

believed that as a Romanian and as a Jewish leader he had to make known to Ion

Antonescu the gravity of the situation in which the Legionnaires had placed Romania.

The documents drafted by the Federation leadership regarding the Legionary terror

reflected the drama of the Jewish populations everyday life at that time and also

Fildermans belief that to protect Jewish interests was also to protect the Romanian

national interest. FUCEs memorandum on Legionary terror also contained an assess-

ment of material damages: damage from the January 1941 pogrom alone amounted to

382,910,800 lei.

FUCEs Response to Romanianization (February 1 June 22, 1941)

After the exclusion of the Legionnaires from government and the reorganization of

Antonescus Cabinet, the Jewish population was confronted with new forms of anti-Semitic

policies. Under these circumstances, the leadership of the Federation asked the govern-

ment to do the following: restitute assets taken by Legionnaires; interrupt the illegal

closure of Jewish firms; slow down Romanianization; modify laws on the expropriation

of urban assets; discontinue ghettoization; authorize the Jews of Panciu to return to

their homes; stop the evacuation of Sibiu Jews from their homes; remove offensive

language in official documents and end the slandering of Jews as saboteurs; restore the

right to work of Jewish craftsmen and apprentices; and understand that the policy of

dismissing Jews from their jobs would hurt the economy.

FUCEs Response to Terror and Exceptional Measures Declared

during the War against the Soviet Union (June 22 December 16, 1941)

In the context of the wartime regime of terror and at a time when the measures made Jews

the object of extermination policies, the Federation focused all its forces and political

wisdom on safeguarding Jewish lives. The pogroms of Iaºi, Bessarabia, and Bukovina as

well as the deportations to Transnistria were also serious developments that put the

FUCE leadership to the test. In those days, wrote

Curierul israelit

in February 1945,

...one needed prudence in efforts to safeguard the life of Jewish leaders themselves and to

eliminate the possible serious and painful consequences that government measures had for the

Ibid.

, p. 115.

7. Matatias Carp, list, CSIER, fond III, file no 55, f. 16.

209

FINAL REPORT

Jewish population. For this reason, Jewish leaders could not protest against the crimes in

Bessarabia and Bukovina, because it would have been considered an insult to the army; also

they could not protest against the description of the Iaºi pogrom in the Council of Ministers

communiqué as to the execution of 500 Judeo-Communists. They could not protest and

interfere, directly or in writing, against the extremely dangerous

and suspicion-laden context

of the first

[

Anglo-American

]

air raids on Bucharest, when Jews were blamed by police for

signaling targets to the bomber pilots.

Still, the FUCE leaders carried on with the same intensity. But they began to employ

another type of discourse in their memoranda, one that focused on such points as the

patriotic feelings of Jews in the Old Kingdom, Jewish participation in the Romanian wars

for independence and territorial unification, the re-enlisting of certain Jews in the army,

the accusation of Judeo-communism (contesting it by

showing that in the Soviet Union

the Jewish religion and Jewish bourgeoisie were persecuted as much as the religions and

bourgeoisie of other ethnic groups there). They also asked that criminal punishments be

meted out on an individual, rather than collective basis and protested against mass

evacuations and deportations to camps and to hostage taking, since they pointed out

all of

these measures were illegal.

The Iaºi pogrom (June 29 July 6, 1941) was a taboo topic with FUCE leaders, who

confined their efforts to helping survivors of the death trains, who had been deported to

C\l\ra[i-Ialomi]a and Podu Iloaiei, to return to their homes. After the bloody events in

Iaºi, the FUCE leadership released an official announcement to the Jews, signed by

Filderman, Rabbi {afran, and Secretary general Matatias Carp. Jews were asked to show

maximum social discipline and obedience to the rule of law. They were told to black out

the lights, not to listen to or spread rumors, not to discuss military and political matters,

not to dispose of or waste food, and to respect the army, the countrys shield and also

our shield, a shield for everyone.

Along with his colleagues, Filderman carried out a steadfast struggle against the

mandatory wearing of the yellow star. They drafted the first protest on July 15, 1941,

which aimed for the abrogation of the law, claiming that it would hinder Jews from

traveling, from buying supplies, from reporting to the authorities.

Filderman sent a

memorandum to Marshal Antonescu on September 5, which stated: I cannot transmit

an order to the Jewish community without having a legal basis. I have no other options

if the order is maintained than to accept the consequences and give up the leadership

of Jewish community in the country by offering my resignation.

On September 6, in

a memorandum to Nicodim, the Patriarch of Romania, Filderman and {afran requested

the protection of the Jews in the name of religion and human rights.

On September 8,

Filderman obtained an audience with Marshal Antonescu and came accompanied by the

Jewish architect H. Clejan.

The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the yellow

star. After a short conversation, the Marshal said to Mihai Antonescu: All right, issue

an order to forbid the wearing of the sign throughout the country.

During a session of

the Council of Ministers, the Marshal explained that the measure had great consequences

Curierul israelit

(henceforth:

C.I.

), 35, series 2, February 23 and 25, 1945.

9. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, p. 428.

10.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 123.

11.

Ibid.

, p. 126.

12.

Ibid.

, p. 30.

210

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

for the public order and from other points of view. The representatives of Jewish

community came to me, and I promised them to strike down this measure. Considering

the results of this battle, Israeli historian Theodor Lavy observed, it was a battle in

which the victims were victorious.

Federation leaders were also prompt in mobilizing Jews for the tasks demanded by the

regime. Thus, FUCE mobilized Jews to pay a tax-in-kind for the so-called reunification

debt. The Federations appeal, which led to Jewish compliance, stated: Our task is to

give to the country all we can give and even more, unconditionally, for the countrys

wealth is our wealth and everyones wealth. The duty to pay this tax-in-kind is the mark

of the highest expression of patriotism. Although they were unable collect the entire

requested amount of ten billion lei, the Jewish population did donate four times more

than the other nationalities. By May 20, 1942, Jews donated 1,994,209,141 lei.

After

this date, the duty to pay the remaining amount was transformed into a tax.

Desperate FUCE Attempts to Stop Deportations

and Rescue the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina

FUCE mobilized Jews from across the country to show solidarity with the Jews of

Bessarabia and Bukovina, the counties of Dorohoi and Her]a, and those deported to

Transnistria from all over Romanian territory. (Most Jews in Romania had relatives

among those deported.) In light of the news coming from Bessarabia and Bukovina,

Filderman wrote two memoranda. The first was sent on October 9, 1941, to Marshal

Antonescu and his wife which stated that deportation was tantamount to death. He then

begged that the deportations be stopped.

The second memorandum was sent on October 11

to the Marshal. In this memorandum, Filderman repeated, It is a death sentence, death

without any charges except being defined as a Jew. I beg you do not let such a tragedy

happen.

On October 14, 1941, at 7 a.m., Filderman announced that, at his request, he was

going to meet with Mihai Antonescu, vice president of the Council of Ministers. The

meeting lasted forty-five minutes.

Mihai Antonescu promised to give the order that

Jewish intellectuals, craftsmen, industrialists, merchants, and all urban and rural land-

owners not be deported. At the end of the meeting, Filderman filed a memorandum in

which he beseeched Mihai Antonescu to take measures to bring back the deportees, one

of the most important reasons being that among them were Jews from the Old

Regat

Jewish veterans of Romanias wars, decorated disabled veterans, and war orphans.

On October 19, Filderman sent another letter to Marshal Antonescu informing him of

Mihai Antonescus agreement to spare all the Jewish intellectuals, craftsmen, and indus-

trialists in Cern\uþi a measure that had not been applied in Chiºinãu, where all Jews

13. Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Problema evreiascã în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri, 1940-1944

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), p. 307 (henceforth: Benjamin,

Stenograme

14. Carp,

loc. cit.

15. Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã. Fapte [i documente. Suferinþele evreilor din România, 1940-1944

(Bucharest: Diogene, 1996), vol. 3, p. 96.

16.

Ibid.

, p. 101.

211

FINAL REPORT

were forced to leave, and their bodies lay between Orhei and Rezina. Filderman

dwelled on the illegal nature of these deportations, which also spread to southern

Bukovina and Dorohoi county. Filderman emphasized, I did not protect and I do not

protect the guilty. Those guilty must be punished. I protect only the innocent people and

those who are deprived of their human rights, granted by law, as a result of an adminis-

trative measure. Filderman asked the Marshal to extend Mihai Antonescus decision to

spare some professional categories to the Jews in Bessarabia,

[

]

ecause intellectuals,

merchants, industrialists and landowners suffered under the Bolshevik regime, either

Christians or Jews, and not only Romanians, but also thousands of Jews in Bukovina and

Bessarabia were deported to Siberia.

Despite the pressure, the

Conduc\tor

did not agree to review his decision regarding

the deportation of all Jews, especially from Bessarabia. His reaction to Fildermans

appeals was quite strong.

In response to the October 19 letter, he accused the Jews,

especially those from the new provinces, of causing the terrible suffering of the Roma-

nian people in 1940, when all that happened had the Jewish community as source of

inspiration and execution.

Several days later, on October 26, almost all newspapers

with a wide distribution published Marshal Antonescus response to Fildermans Octo-

ber 9 and October 11 letters. The

Conduc\tor

reproached Filderman for acting as

prosecutor instead of a defendant because he defended Jews who had committed hei-

nous acts against the tolerant and hospitable Romanian people. The

Conduc\tor

then

concluded, their hatred is the hatred of everyone, it is your hatred.

Following the

publication of Antonescus open letter, the authorities launched a domestic and interna-

tional press campaign. This campaign was used to intensify anti-Semitic policies.

Undaunted, Filderman carried on his struggle. On October 25 he sent a reply to the

Conduc\tor

, in which he reaffirmed his support for the merciless punishment of persons

found guilty and his objection to the unfairness of innocents being sent to their deaths.

He reinforced his argument that Jews could not be identified with Bolshevism, just as the

Romanian people should not be conflated with the Iron Guard.

On November 3, after

referring to examples of Jewish devotion to Romania, Filderman stressed that Jews had

participated in the wars for the retrieval of Romanian territory and that Jews never acted

against the state and the Romanian peoples interests.

Ovidiu Al. Vl\descu

secretary general to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers,

answered on behalf of the Marshal. Vl\descu sarcastically dismissed Fildermans

pro-Romanian and patriotic statements on behalf of Jews as lawyers tricks

and then

reaffirmed the Marshals policies on the Jews: first, all Jews who came to Romania after

1914 and those from the liberated counties had to leave with no exceptions; and second,

Jews from the Old Kingdom and those who came to Romania before 1914 could stay if

they respected the laws of the state; yet those who were considered communists, were

involved in subversive propaganda, were associated with the states enemies, or finally,

those considered saboteurs, were also slated to leave. He then added, The rest can be

17.

Buletinul Centrului Muzeului ºi Arhivei Istorice a Evreilor din România

, no. 6 (2000), pp. 75-77.

18. See footnote 17.

19. Carp,

op. cit.

, p. 103.

20. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 287.

21.

Ibid.

p. 287, footnote 20.

22.

Ibid.

, pp. 330-331.

212

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

tolerated as long as they do not steal our rights.

FUCEs activities angered Romanian

authorities and the German advisor for Jewish Affairs, Gustav Richter. As a conse-

quence, FUCE was dissolved by Decree-law no. 3415 of December 16, 1941.

The Establishment of the Jewish Center

and Its Role in Jewish Society (1942-1944)

After the dissolution of FUCE, the Jewish Center (

Centrala Evreilor

) became the only

organization authorized to represent the Jewish communitys interests and to organize

community life by following government policy priorities. Indeed, the Jewish Center was

the Romanian version of the German

Judenrat

. Marshal Antonescu approved the political

and organizational structures of the Jewish Center as well as the organization of its

leadership, which were published by the

Monitorul Oficial

on January 30, 1942. The

Jewish Center was led by a president, secretary general, and steering committee, which

worked on issues such as professional training, migration, social assistance, schools,

culture, media, publishing, finance, and religion.

The government charged the Jewish Center with the following tasks: the representa-

tion of Jewish interests in Romania and the administration of the former Federation of

Jewish Communities; the organization of the Jews according to governmental regula-

tions; the retraining and organization of Jewish labor; the preparation of Jewish migra-

tion; the organization of Jewish cultural and educational activities; the organization of

Jewish social assistance; the organization of Jewish professionals; the publication of a

Jewish journal in Romania; the sharing of information and data demanded by Romanian

authorities regarding Romanianization; the updating and filing of all Jewish graduation

papers; the management of Jewish memoranda sent to government authorities; and the

execution of all government regulations and administrative orders through the Commis-

sariat for Jewish Affairs.

Furthermore, in its local activities, the Jewish Center used its

county offices and the local communities. H. Streitman was appointed the first president

of the Jewish Center. N. Gingold, originally the secretary general, replaced Streitman as

president in December 1942.

Despite the dissolution of the Federation, local Jewish communities continued their

activities. According to Jewish Center resolution no. 48/1942, existing Jewish commu-

nities organized in accordance with the statutory law on religious denominations shall

continue to function.

These communities further coordinated the organization of the

Jewish faith as well as Jewish schools and cultural institutions. They also coordinated the

administration of social assistance and the organization of a statistical service. Yet, on

June 25, 1943, Government Resolution no. 189 mandated that the leadership committees

of the Jewish communities and evacuees were to be dismantled. They decided instead to

establish a number of representative committees, which would be attached to the local

23.

Ibid.

24.

Ibid.

, p. 379.

25. Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Evreii din Rom^nia `ntre anii 1940-1944

, vol. 1,

Legisla]ia antievreiasc\

(henceforth:

Legislaþia

), no. 53, p. 178.

26.

Activitatea Centralei Evreilor din România

(Bucharest, 1944), p. 40.

213

FINAL REPORT

committee of the host communities. These representative committees were responsible

for the administration of the communitys patrimony, registration of the evacuated popu-

lation, and collaboration with the committee of the host community for introducing and

applying measures regarding the interests of evacuees.

The communities, like all the other Jewish institutions, conducted their activities

under the control of the Jewish Center. The Centers leadership repeatedly asked for

obedience, evoking the specter of harsh punishments. In its attempt to impose authority,

the Jewish Center could rely on the support of the state administration through the

government representative for Jewish issues. Subsequently, the Jewish Center was placed

by law under the strict control of Radu Lecca

By the Ministry of Labors resolution of

September 8, 1943, Leccas job specifications were: (1) to organize, with the Army

High Command, Jewish compulsory labor; (2) to supervise and control the enforcement

of regulations on the practice of certain professions by Jews; (3) to replace the govern-

ment representative for the regulation of the status of Jews; (4) to draft, in agreement

with the Ministry of Interior, the policies necessary for the surveillance of the Jews, as

required by the protection of public order and safety; (5) to regulate and authorize,

under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior, temporary travel permits for Jews;

(6) to regulate, authorize, and organize Jewish migration; (7) to solve all economic,

social, and cultural problems of the Jewish community; and (8) to suggest any other

measures concerning Jewish matters.

The president of the Jewish Center appointed its clerks, auxiliary institutions, and

representatives in the country, all of whom had to be approved by Lecca. The Jewish

Centers leadership also had to submit detailed reports on their activities to Lecca several

times a year. Furthermore, Lecca had control over the budget and financial balance sheet

of the Jewish Center.

Upon its inauguration, the Jewish Center sent the following

message to the Jewish community:

By order of Marshal Ion Antonescu, the Jewish Center in Romania was established and

invested with the mission to manage the interests of the Jewish community in Romania. We

were called to organize the Jews under the new regime. This regime asks Jews to obey all

government legislation, to be disciplined, to support national priorities, to refrain from upset-

ting Romanians, to lead a life of decency, and to obey the decisions and advice of the Jewish

Center.

The Centers demands were indicative of the new policy of the Antonescu regime

regarding the Jews

A few days after its establishment, the Center leadership (president

Streitman and his secretary-general, Dr. Gingold), were summoned by the prefect of

Ilfov, General Emil Palangeanu, who asked them to collaborate on maintaining public

order and discipline among the Jews. He also asked the Jewish Center to watch out for

Jewish extremists and to prevent them from to stirring up the population. He advised the

leadership of the Jewish Center to establish an internal police, which would be able to

contribute to the enforcement of official legislation and administrative measures. The

Center leadership was given a list of hostages who would be held responsible for Jewish

law breaking.

27.

Legislaþia

, no. 57, pp. 185-190.

28.

Ibid.

, p. 45.

29.

Ibid.

, no. 81, pp. 250-251.

214

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

On February 24, 1942, General Vasiliu summoned Streitman and Gingold to the

Ministry of Interior and promised them he would refrain from adopting any severe

measure against Jews. He also asked that the Jewish population be made to understand

that it had been under constant suspicion after the attitude it displayed during the 1940

withdrawal from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, so the government was obliged to

take safeguard measures. General Vasiliu also ordered the dismantling of hostage camps,

though that did not mean that all hostages were set free. The Jewish Center drafted a new

list of Jewish leaders taken hostage in April 1943. Of course, none were members of the

Jewish Centers leadership.

The Census of Persons Considered to be of Jewish Blood

The first official task assigned to the authorities of the Center was to organize the

census of those considered to be of Jewish blood,

which followed patterns in

Germany and German-occupied countries, where the

Judenrat

was typically assigned

such tasks. The census was considered necessary in order to give an accurate assess-

ment of the number of Jews a step necessary for the bureaucratic organization of

deportations, forced labor camps, and physical extermination. The results of the cen-

sus were to be deposited in the Archive of the Jewish Center and put at the disposal of

Gustav Richter to help him organize the anticipated deportation of Jews from the Old

Regat

and southern Transylvania.

The Policy of Money Extortion

One of Centers core tasks was the extortion of money from the Jewish population, a

process in which Radu Lecca played a decisive role. The need for extra-budgetary

money was continuously rising, Lecca wrote in his memoirs. Mrs. Antonescu asked

for money for her patronage, Mihai Antonescu was always demanding money for the

county of Arge[, where he built schools, churches, etc., in order to gain popularity in

case elections would be organized. And then Killinger had many needs, too... Accord-

ing to Leccas statements, Jews were saved precisely because of the amounts they gave to

the above-mentioned persons. All of these enormous expenditures, he concluded,

were being covered by the fees levied on exemptions from forced labor and on authori-

zations for professional practice.

These funds were transferred to the government via

Lecca based on his signed approvals.

30. See

Documente

, no. 231.

31.

Legislaþia

, no. 54, pp. 179-180.

32. Radu Lecca,

Eu i-am salvat pe evreii din România

(Bucharest: Roza V^nturilor, 1994), p. 205.

33.

Ibid.

215

FINAL REPORT

Actions against Deportations in 1942

Ample documentary material records Dr. Fildermans activities after the Federation was

closed. Although marginalized, Filderman remained at the forefront of rescue efforts. He

acted on the belief that he had an obligation as a Jew and as a Romanian citizen who

knows the Jews problems better than anyone else, to get the attention of the leading

organizations on the serious

[

possibility

]

that some anti-Semitic measures might have

deleterious consequences both for the Jews and for Romanias situation.

Thus, he was

the Jewish leader who led the fight against the resumption of deportations to Transnistria

in 1942. Filderman suggested that deportations should be used only as an extreme

measure decided by courts for well defined offenses. He also urged the government to

respect the principle of individual responsibility and to make sure that the families of the

condemned would not be punished unless they were caught hiding the criminal.

Simul-

taneously, Filderman took steps against the Nazi-requested deportations of the Jews from

southern Transylvania and Banat to the Nazi extermination camps, which the Antonescu

regime had accepted during this first phase.

In his memoranda to the government, Filderman referred to the long-term presence

of the Jews in Transylvania. By comparing the situation of the Jews in Romania to that of

other countries, he recommended that Italy and Germany should be left to assume the

risk of deportations. He suggested that Romania should solve the Jewish issue once

there was a common decision on the fate of Jews in all Axis countries and on the fate of

the European countries themselves. Filderman drafted several memoranda

to be signed

by Romanian Transylvanians (intellectuals, traders, factory owners, craftsmen, presi-

dents of the Chambers of Commerce) and sent to Antonescu. The essence of these

memoranda was that the deportations should not take place because Transylvanian Jews

were useful to local socio-economic life. His efforts were reinforced by the activism of

local Jewish leaders from Transylvania and Banat, and the pressure put on the Antonescu

regime by the representatives of the Jewish community contributed to the governments

decision to postpone the mass deportations of Romanian Jews.

The Tax in Kind, the Ambiguous Position of the Jewish Center,

and Fildermans Deportation

In spring 1943 the government decided to impose a new exceptional tax-in-kind worth

4 billion lei on the Jews. Radu Lecca sent the decision to the Jewish Center on May 11, 1943:

Please be aware that the government takes into account the fact that Romanian soldiers give

their lives in combat, while the majority of the Jewish population continues to enjoy the

freedom to trade and live protected from war. The government has therefore decided that the

Jewish population should make an effort to pay 4 billion lei as a special tax-in-kind... Please

be aware that the government has decided that the Jews who do not want to pay the tax... shall

34. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 4, p. 551.

35.

Ibid.

36.

Stenograme

, no. 145, p. 442.

216

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

be punished by deportation to Transnistria, and their property shall be nationalized... We

would like to draw your attention to the responsibility that the leaders of the Jewish community

have... in order to enforce the above-mentioned decision of the government.

Gingold summoned Filderman and other Jewish leaders for an advisory meeting.

After reviewing the devastating effects of the 1941-1943 anti-Jewish legislation, Filderman

indicated that the Jewish community in Romania was unable to pay the full amount. In

contrast to Filderman, Gingold adopted the stance taken by Lecca: Jews were privi-

leged, and so it was natural that they should pay additional taxes. Filderman rebutted this

argument by showing that Jews did not ask to be spared from military obligations, that

they, too, were serving the country in labor detachments for which, unlike the Romanian

soldiers, they received no healthcare, pensions, clothes, or work equipment from the

Romanian government.

Gingold asked Filderman to submit his position in writing. Fildermans text was

addressed to Gingold. Gingold then gave it to the

Conduc\tor

, who found it impertinent.

As a punishment, Filderman was deported to Transnistria at the end of May 1943 and set

free after three months, following the personal protests of key Romanian political fig-

ures, such as King Michael, Queen Mother Elena, and NPP leader Iuliu Maniu.

Gingolds Resignation and the Intensification of Jewish Efforts

Upon his return from Transnistria, Filderman continued to be in the forefront of actions

in defense of the Jews. A chronology of meetings he had with different ministers and

other officials in spring and summer 1944 shows some of the critical problems facing the

Jewish community in this final stage of confrontation with the anti-Semitic policy of the

Antonescu regime. On March 7, Filderman pleaded with the National Center for

Romanianization against the decision to evacuate the Jews belonging to exempted

categories from the Romanianized houses. Then, on March 18, Filderman discussed

with the minister of interior the need to take precautions for the safety of Jews in areas

where the German forces were retreating. On March 20, he requested that Jews be

allowed to leave cities with a high concentration of German troops. Later, on April 25,

Filderman filed a memorandum with the Ministry of Interior asking for clarification

about the rumor of government plans to make the wearing of the yellow star compulsory

and the ghettoization of Jews from the Moldavian cities of Iaºi, Vaslui, B^rlad, Hu[i,

Tecuci, Gala]i, Foc[ani, Bac\u, Piatra-Neam], and Roman. Then, on May 12, he pro-

tested against the government decision to form labor battalions in northern Moldavia and

to charge Jewish communities with providing equipment, food, transportation, and

accommodation for these detachments. Filderman argued that these government meas-

ures were illegal since they ignored statutory limits on the ages of those drafted in the

battalions (the second measure ordered all Jews between fifteen and fifty-five years old

to participate in labor detachments) as well as the fact that it did not exclude those with

exemption cards. On May 19, Filderman presented the Presidency of the Council of

37. CSIER, fond III, file no. 405, f. 30.

38. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 4, pp. 567-571.

217

FINAL REPORT

Ministers a petition regarding the right of Jews to use the bomb shelters during air raids.

He wrote: After the Jews were forbidden the holy right to life, after being denied

resettlement both in villages and towns, now they are being denied the right to protect

themselves by using bomb shelters. He sent a note to the Ministry of Interior on August 23,

informing the minister that on the night of August 19, on {tefan Mih\ileanu Street at the

corner of the Secret Service headquarters, somebody had written on the wall: The

Voice of London = The Voice of Judah. The same message was found written on a

building on Carol Boulevard. He argued that both inscriptions incited the population

against the Jews.

Given this intense activity and its results, it became obvious that Filderman was the

true leader of the Jewish community in Romania. This

de facto

power and the fact that

he could rely on some leaders in the Jewish Center itself helped him to influence the

decisions taken by the Jewish Center. Filderman advocated continuous resistance, rather

than open rebellion. His numerous memoranda were a form of protest and resistance that

affirmed the dignity of Romanian Jewry and strongly contributed to survival in times of

extreme oppression.

Israeli Historian Bela Vago evaluated the role of the Jewish Center in this way:

the Center was imposed on the Jews; its leaders accepted their roles without a mandate from

the Jews, and were seen as representatives of the anti-Semitic regime and of the Nazis, and not

of the Jews. They were not considered as representatives of Jewish interests even when

subjectively they were acting as such. By serving the interests of the Nazis and Romanian

anti-Semitic authorities, they facilitated the task of the rulers in depriving the Jews of their

property; in ejecting tens of thousands of Jews from their dwellings; in mobilizing and

exploiting manpower and material resources; in humiliating the Jewish population; and

bringing about the rapid impoverishment of the Jewish masses. However, this assessment

leaves the arena wide open for accusations ranging from clamors for death sentences to traitors,

to brandings as an opportunistic, servile, effacing fringe-group that subjectively tried to help the

Jewish community precisely by exploiting its privilege as a sector of the anti-Semitic establishment.

The Center did not become a

Judenrat

and a Nazi tool as was intended...

The former leadership of Romanian Jewry had the possibility to counteract some of

the anti-Jewish measures

Their political power and influence increased at the same

rate as the international situation moved in favor of the Allies, while the Jewish

Centers leaders became increasingly isolated. However, it must be emphasized that

the Jewish Center sought assistance from former Jewish leaders sometimes for

tactical reasons, sometimes out of conviction. Whether directly or indirectly, this

helped the Jewish population by encouraging cultural life and leading to acts of

resistance and rescue in the face of government plans for deportations to Transnistria.

Thus, the Jewish Center reflected the general Romanian policy ambivalence during the

second part of the war by its subservience to or collaboration with the regime, but also

by some rescue efforts.

39. CSIER, fond III, file Filderman, f. 30-33.

40. Bela Vago, The Ambiguity of Collaborationism: the Center of the Jews in Romania, 1942-1944,

in Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (eds.),

Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe,

1942-1945

, trans. Dinah Cohen,

et al

. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1979), p. 308.

218

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Social Assistance and Health Care in Times of Oppression

Both FUCE and the Jewish Center provided social assistance during these times of

state-organized oppression. An important part was played by the Autonomous Commis-

sion of Assistance

(Comisia Autonom\ de Ajutorare CAA), which was established in

January 1941. The CAA benefited from the beginning from the subvention paid by the

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was allowed to continue its work

in Romania during the war. During the first months of its activity, the CAA worked to

help the victims of the Legionary pogrom. Later, in summer 1941, it focused on assisting

those evacuated from the countryside and small towns and the victims of the Iaºi pogrom.

In late 1941, through the efforts of the Federation, the CAA began helping Jews deported

to Transnistria. The authorization was given on December 17, 1941.

The International Red Cross channeled large sums of aid money through the CAA to

Romania. In January 1943, the first delegation of the CAA and the Social Assistance

Department of the Jewish Center went to Transnistria. Their mission was to become

acquainted with the realities there and to supervise the distribution of aid. The report

drafted by F. ªaraga, head of the delegation, indicated that (1) all the help that was sent

through the Jewish Center covered only an extremely small part of what was necessary;

(2) the situation of the 5,000 orphans was disastrous; (3) the whole camp population was

underfed, weak, and lacked clothing. The report also indicated that the deportees could

be saved only by using them in productive jobs and by providing them with more clothes,

medicine, and food.

But in spite of all the efforts, the help continued to be insufficient.

After his return from Transnistria, Filderman wrote a report to the prime minister, dated

August 8, 1943, describing the critical situation of the deportees. Clearly, for the leaders

of the Romanian Jewish community the fate of the deportees in Transnistria represented

a constant preoccupation. The efforts to save and aid the Jews there were part of the

overall struggle for survival.

The Jewish community worked to supply healthcare for Jewish work detachments

since no government subsidy was offered at any time. Because Jews were barred from

using Romanian hospitals, and because Jewish hospitals and health centers as well as

personal and community ownership had been Romanianized, it was crucial for the Jews

living under the Antonescu regime to receive the social and medical assistance carried

out by the Jewish Center and other community organizations.

The Repatriation of Jews Deported to Transnistria

As the front neared Romanian territory, Jewish leaders and Filderman, in particular,

increased their efforts to enable the return of the Transnistria deportees. Thus, on

January 2, 1943, Filderman pleaded with the government to save the two- to sixteen-year-old

orphans by sending them to Cern\uþi. He argued that these children could not possibly

be blamed for any crimes and that given their poor health, emigration was not a viable

41. CSIER, fond III, file no. 300, ff. 200-205.

219

FINAL REPORT

solution. He also requested of Ion and Mihai Antonescu that Jewish deportees originally

from the Old

Regat

and Dorohoi be repatriated, as there was a high risk that most of them

would die.

The issue of the repatriation of deportees was high on Fildermans agenda after his

return from Transnistria. Thus, on August 4, 1943, he informed General Vasiliu about

the plight of the deportees from Dorohoi, Darabani, and Her]a who were interned in the

Moghilev camp. On September 23, 1943, he asked Vasiliu for the Jews in Transnistria to

be moved away from the German armys paths of retreat. Filderman sent a memorandum

to Vasiliu and Mihai Antonescu on October 12, 1943, explaining that many innocents

had died in the camps, and on November 17, 1943, he was informed that Antonescu had

ordered the concentration of all deportees in Vijni]a, where the Jewish Center was asked

to build barracks for them (the decision was unfortunate as the allocated space was too

small to accommodate all deportees).

On November 24, Filderman submitted a list to

the Council of Ministers of localities where the repatriated could be resettled: Jews from

the Old

Regat

and southern Transylvania were to return to their homes; those suspected

of dangerous political liaisons were to be interned in an Old

Regat

camp; Jews from

Dorohoi and southern Bukovina were to be resettled in county capitals; and those from

Northern Bukovina were to be resettled in Cern\uþi, Storojine], Gura Humorului, and

Siret. Finally, the memorandum suggested that Bessarabian Jews be resettled in the towns

of Chiºinãu, Bãlþi, and Soroca, while healthy people could be sent to other towns.

Special proposals were drafted on family reunification, and the government was asked to

pay the transportation costs of repatriation.

On February 25, 1944, Filderman was received at the Ministry of Interior, where he

asked once again for the repatriation of all deportees, presenting the issue as a matter of

life and death. He argued against the charge that the Romanian population in Bessarabia

and Bukovina was hostile to repatriation by explaining that this argument unfairly asso-

ciated the Jewish population with a group of agitators and speculators and that in

Dorohoi the Romanian population welcomed the return of the deportees.

Partial repatriation began in the second half of December 1943. On December 20, the

6,053 Jewish inhabitants of Dorohoi who survived deportation were sent back to their

hometown. On March 6, 1944, 1,846 children of the over 5,000 orphans were repatri-

ated. Filderman sent a note to the government on March 11, 1944, offering humanitarian

reasons (over half of the deportees had died in two years) and pointing out the economic

benefits of repatriation as well as politically positive outcomes (e.g., the Soviets could

not use the Romanian Jewish deportees).

Antonescu ordered general repatriation in March 1944, yet the decision came too late

to organize the repatriation of the last group of deportees, which happened to be the most

numerous. Only the following categories of deportees were repatriated by train: inhab-

itants of Dorohoi, orphan children, the 500 political prisoners from the Vapniarka camp,

and former internees in Grossulovo. Between March 17 and March 30, 1944, the CAA

and delegates from the Jewish Centers Department for Assistance, together with the

Romanian authorities, also organized the repatriation of 2,538 people from different

camps and ghettos in Transnistria. The fate of the remaining tens of thousands of

42.

Stenograme

, no. 176, pp. 525-529.

43. See footnote 39.

220

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

deportees left in Transnistria is difficult to know. In a letter to Mihai Antonescu,

Filderman expressed his regret for the failure to repatriate all Jews because of the

postponement of the general repatriation decision, a delay that, according to the infor-

mation received up to today, cost the lives of about 15,000 deportees.

The Parallel Jewish Education System

The October 14, 1940, law on the Jewish educational system had extremely deleterious

effects for Romanian Jews, who were consequently forced into a cultural ghetto. In this

context, the Jewish community and then the Jewish Center took upon themselves the

difficult task of ensuring education at the primary, secondary, even university levels. In

fact, the reorganization of the Jewish educational system in the new circumstances was an

expression of Jewish resistance and determination not to let the young be victims of

moral, intellectual, and professional degradation.

According to S.M. Litman, principal of the Jewish Cultura High School in Bucha-

rest, the way in which the students expelled from the public education system were

absorbed

[

into a parallel system

]

was a chapter of glory and a miracle of perseverance.

But everything happened against the background of oppression, massacres, compulsory

work, deportations, and insecurity. All of these developments affected both

students and

teachers. Moreover, many school buildings were requisitioned and transformed into

barracks for Hitlers troops. Classes were held in old houses of worship, former restau-

rants, and insalubrious basements or attics. Yet, educational activities continued in spite

of these many hardships and in spite of the fact that both the students and teachers were

recruited for compulsory work.

Cultural and Artistic Life: The Jewish Theater in Bucharest

Many educated Jews, especially those who specialized in humanities, writers, journal-

ists, and artists, were banished from the cultural infrastructure of Romanian society. As

a consequence, they continued working in the Jewish community and became involved in

cultural, educational, artistic, or publishing work. A reciprocal relationship was estab-

lished in which both sides benefited: the community and then the Jewish Center under-

stood not just the cultural, but also the social importance of continuing traditional Jewish

cultural life; in their turn, Jewish intellectuals understood that involvement in these

activities was a chance to survive, economically and morally.

Thus, in the new context of cultural ghettoization, Jewish educational, religious and

cultural institutions became, for a certain part of the Jewish population, genuine forms

of moral and economic support. Of course, nothing was similar to the times before the

war. Instead of dozens of Jewish newspapers, now there was only one, and most of the

Jewish cultural activity occurred in Bucharest. But even there, the only Jewish cultural

center left was the Barasheum Theater

Nevertheless, given the sheer concentration of

Jewish intellectual elites in this city, Jewish cultural life there was exceptionally intense

relative to what happened outside Bucharest, where synagogues, schools, and Jewish

221

FINAL REPORT

intellectuals lost their traditional cultural functions. In these areas, Jewish schools re-

mained the last bulwark against complete cultural ghettoization.

Synagogue and Religious Life

Despite the presence of undercover government agents, synagogues were always full.

Former Chief Rabbi {afran recounted, On the two Sabbaths I preached

[

at the Malbim

Synagogue

]

, a large number of Jews came especially to hear my sermon. As there was

not enough space for them all, they crowded at the windows and doors of the synagogue

and filled the surrounding streets.

This heavy attendance was an expression of Jewish

solidarity, of hope that in the synagogue they could find out the latest news about the

events that were to be expected. It was also a means of passive resistance against

persecution and discrimination, as for example, when the first commemoration of the

victims of the Bucharest pogrom (January 22-23, 1941) was held on March 4, 1941.

Rabbi {afrans sermon was received by those present both as a cry of revolt and as

encouragement to face the hardships. The manner in which the entire ceremony was

conducted, in a synagogue full to capacity, implicitly represented an act of passive

resistance. Even in the days of the Jewish Center and of the harsh control exercised by the

Ministry of Religions, the synagogue remained a site for educating the youth, a place for

recollection and mutual support. In spite of the uncertainties of everyday life, in spite of

severe constraints and threats, Romanian Jews followed their traditions, maybe with even

more fervor than in peaceful times.

Conclusion

The Jewish framework of institutions functioned along the lines of civil society organi-

zations and was closely associated with Jewish daily life and the material, moral, and

spiritual fate of the discriminated minority. Even the Jewish Center an institution

directly subordinated to the state was compelled by the circumstances of those times to

factor in the interests of formal and informal traditional Jewish institutions.

In more peaceful times, when Jews enjoyed the same rights as all other Romanian

citizens and were integrated into Romanian society at least according to the constitu-

tional and democratic provisions the Jewish communitys institutions were generally

confined to ethno-cultural and religious issues. When Jews lost many of the rights of

citizenship and became the object of statutory discrimination, when they were deprived

of their property and their jobs, the community institutions were there to help manage the

crisis and work on behalf of individual and collective survival through self-management,

self-administration, self-organization, and most important, mutual assistance in every life.

44. Alexandru ªafran,

Resisting the Storm: Romania, 1940-1947

, ed. Jean Ancel (Jerusalem: Yad

Vashem, 1987), p. 74.

The Deportation of the Roma and Their Treatment

in Transnistria

The Antonescu Regime and the Emergence of the Gypsy Problem

The deportation of Roma to Transnistria, from its conception to its implementation, was

altogether the work of the Antonescu government. Before the Antonescu regime, there

was no Gypsy policy to speak of in Romania. Politicians did not see the Roma as a

problem. Even though they were registered in censuses as a separate ethnic group with

their own language, the Roma were treated more as a social category. Consequently,

Romanian authorities never actively treated the Roma as a national minority

per se

;

therefore, legislation concerning minorities was never applicable to them. Moreover,

interwar Romanian nationalism was not accompanied by anti-Roma manifestations, and

the Romanization policies of the 1938 Goga government and the Royal Dictatorship did

not pertain to the Roma. The General Commissariat for Minorities (

Comisariatul General

al Minoritãþilor

), established in 1938, never considered the Roma within the scope of its

jurisdiction.

If the Jewish problem figured largely in Romanian interwar politics, there was no

comparable Gypsy problem. Romanian political parties and politicians even devel-

oped collaborative relationships with Roma leaders, some of whom became formal

members of Romanian parties. During the 1937 electoral campaign, the

Þara Noastrã

journal of the National Christian Party (Octavian Gogas party) printed a special

weekly for the Roma.

The situation of the Roma in the decades preceding World War II is well known,

mainly due to sociological and ethnographic research done in those years.

The 1930 census

recorded 262,501 people who declared themselves to be of Gypsy descent (1.5 percent

of Romanias population). Of these, 221,726 (84.5 percent) lived in villages and 40,775

(15.5 percent) in towns. Most of these resided primarily on the outskirts, yet during the

economic transformations of the epoch, such as the land reform of 1920, many rose to

the same social status as Romanian peasants. This contributed to the integration of these

socially mobile Roma into the village community, a process that had begun with their

sedentarization. Moreover, the social and economic development of many Roma led to the

emergence of a new type of Roma elite (artists, traders, and intellectuals) who became

involved in community affairs and even formed Roma associations. The most important

1. Viorel Achim,

Þiganii în istoria României

(Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicã, 1998), p. 132.

2. On the Roma in the interwar period, including their perception by the Romanian society,

ibid.

pp. 120-132.

224

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

was the General Union of Roma in Romania, established in 1933, which formally

continued to function during the war.

Sociological studies from the thirties explored the socio-economic role of Roma in

Romanian villages as well as their relations with the ethnic majority. These studies

showed that the Roma were part of the community and worked as craftsmen and farmers.

Still, prejudices and stereotypes, some of which were inherited from the centuries of

Roma slavery, affected them unfavorably; yet overall, the relations between the Roma

and Romanian peasants were good. A significant number of Roma chose to assimilate

into the majority culture.

During the same decade, however, the Roma became the target of some Romanian

proponents of eugenics.

Drawing on the ideas of Robert Ritter, the intellectual master-

mind of the Roma tragedy in Nazi Germany, these Romanian researchers considered the

Roma to be a plague. In supporting their opinion, they argued that the Roma were

socially peripheral paupers with high criminality rates. These self-appointed experts

racialized the Roma and warned of the menace that the ongoing assimilation of the Roma

presented to the racial purity of Romanians. Iordache Fãcãoaru, a leading proponent

of eugenics and biopolitics, argued the following:

Assimilation is activated and made more threatening not only by the great number of

Gypsies, but also by specific Romanian socio-political elements: the traditional Romanian

tolerance, the spread of Gypsies over all Romanian territory, their mixture with the Romanian

population in rural and urban areas, unsegregated schools, the fact that Gypsies were given

land by the state, sedentarization, the lack of any segregation legislation, and finally, the

protection granted to them by the government.

The same author decried the fact that although Romania had the highest number of

Roma in Europe he estimated at least 400,000 the authorities had not taken any

measures against them. Yet, despite praising anti-Roma policies in some countries,

especially in Germany, he rejected such solutions as biological isolation or complete

ethnical separation from the majority as being too difficult to operationalize or too

economically and/or morally problematic.

The extermination of the Roma was, however,

proposed by another author, Gheorghe Fãcãoaru:

Nomadic and semi-nomadic Gypsies shall be interned into forced labor camps. There,

their clothes shall be changed, their beards and hair cut, their bodies

sterilized

[

emphasis in

original

]

. Their living expenses shall be covered from their own labor. After one generation,

we can get rid of them. In their place, we can put ethnic Romanians from Romania or from

abroad, able to do ordered and creative work. The sedentary Gypsies shall be sterilized at

home... In this way, the peripheries of our villages and towns shall no longer be disease-ridden

sites, but an ethnic wall useful for our nation.

But such racist opinions were not widespread in Romania. Academia, the press, and

public opinion were reluctant to accept them, and not even the extreme right adopted

Ibid.

, pp. 133-136.

4. Iordache Fãcãoaru, Amestecul rasial ºi etnic în România,

Buletinul eugenic ºi biopolitic

, 9

(1938), p. 283.

Ibid.

, pp. 282-286.

6. Gheorghe Fãcãoaru,

Câteva

date în

jurul familiei ºi

statului biopolitic

(Bucharest, 1941), pp. 17-18.

225

FINAL REPORT

them. This situation changed after 1940, when Romanian democratic values were aban-

doned and the country entered the sphere of Nazi political and ideological domination.

After coming to power, the Legionary movement was the first to consider adopting a

racial policy toward the Roma. The Legion journal

Cuvântul

published an article on

January 18, 1941 (a few days before the Iron Guard rebellion), that stressed the priority

of the Gypsy issue on the government agenda and suggested that appropriate legislation

be passed to make marriages between Romanians and Roma illegal and to gradually

isolate the Roma into some kind of ghetto.

Yet, during the time the Legion was in power,

they adopted no specific anti-Roma measures.

Even though the Roma had never before been an issue in the Romanian social

sciences, some researchers some of them from among the best began to approach

what they called the Gypsy problem during the war. One such study, published in

1944, proposed either their concentration in an isolated area of Romania, their deporta-

tion to Transnistria, or their sterilization.

Despite their marginal status, the racist opin-

ions expressed in Romanian society during the thirties and forties did play a certain role

in the preparation for Antonescus policies on the Jews and Roma. Yet, it must be

stressed that, unlike in the case of Jews, anti-Roma policies were not rooted in the

Romanian past, but rather in new political realities resulting from Marshal Antonescus

entry into the political arena. The best evidence is that the Romanian population, notably

peasants, opposed the deportations of Roma to Transnistria.

The deportation of the Roma to Transnistria was Antonescus personal decision, as he

would later admit during his trial in 1946.

It is worth noting that none of the orders

concerning the Roma bore Antonescus signature and none were published not in the

Monitorul Oficial

or anywhere else. All were made verbally by Antonescu to his minis-

ters and carried out by the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie. That Antonescu

closely monitored their enforcement suggests that Romanias wartime policy on the

Roma was his creation.

The idea of the Romas deportation to Transnistria did not exist at the beginning of

Antonescus rule. When the discussion on taking measures against the Roma began in

February 1941, Transnistria was not considered. At the Council of Ministers meeting on

February 7, 1941, Ion Antonescu requested the removal of the Roma from Bucharest and

spoke of settling them in compact villages in Bãrãgan; he suggested three to four

villages to be built for this purpose, each able to accommodate 5,000 to 6,000 families.

7. L. Stan, Rasism faþã de þigani,

Cuvântul

, vol. 18, no. 53, January 18, 1941, pp. 1, 9.

8. Ion Chelcea,

Þiganii din România. Monografie etnografic\

(Bucharest: Editura Institutului Cen-

tral de Statisticã, 1944), pp. 100-101.

9. See the section below, The Romanian Population and the Deportation of Roma.

10.

Procesul marii trãdãri naþionale

Stenograma desbaterilor de la Tribunalul Poporului asupra Guvernului

Antonescu

(henceforth:

Procesul marii tr\d\ri na]ionale

) (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1946), p. 66.

11. Marcel-Dumitru Ciucã, Aurelian Teodorescu and Bogdan-Florin Popovici (eds.),

Stenogramele

ºedinþelor Consiliului de Miniºtri. Guvernarea Ion Antonescu

(Bucharest: Arhivele Naþionale ale

României, 1998), vol. 2, p. 181. Antonescu stated, all Gypsies in Bucharest must be removed.

But before removing them, we must consider where to take them and what to do with them. A

solution might be to wait until the marshes of the Danube are drained and build some Gypsy

villages there and let them fish... Another solution would be to negotiate with the big landown-

ers. There... is a considerable shortage of workers in Bãrãgan. We could build these villages

there... at least some houses and barracks, a sanitation system, stores, inns, etc. We should set

up a census and arrest all of them en masse, and bring them to these villages. We will build

226

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Although this idea was not implemented, it is illustrative of the way in which the solution

to the Roma problem was seen at that time. Only after Romania obtained Transnistria

was there the possibility to deport the Roma to outside of Romanias boundaries. By

1942, when measures against the Roma began, there was already the precedent of the

Jews deportation, which had commenced in fall 1941. Antonescu made the decision to

deport the Roma across the Dniester in May 1942. By the time of the census of the Roma

considered to be problems (May 25, 1942), their fate had already been decided by the

Conduc\tor

. On May 22, 1942, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers informed the

Ministry of Internal Affairs of Marshal Antonescus decision to deport certain categories

of Roma to Transnistria.

The May 1942 Census of Roma Considered to be Problems

The census conducted by the gendarmerie and police all over the country on May 25,

1942 (although it had initially been planned for May 31), was ordered by Marshal

Antonescu in order to find the Roma who fit into the category of problem Roma. The

following were registered, along with their families: nomadic Roma; and from the

sedentary Roma, those with criminal records, recidivists, and those with no means of

subsistence and without a definite occupation with which to support themselves. A total

of 40,909 individuals were registered on these lists: 9,471 nomadic Roma and

31,438 sedentary Roma. The order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of May 17, 1942,

stated that the Roma on the list were to be kept under close surveillance by local

authorities and prevented from leaving the county until further instruction.

The lists

with Roma from both categories recorded by commune, town, and county were sent to

the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie.

The subsequent deportations con-

sisted of the citizens registered in this census. With only a few exceptions, the roughly

25,000 Romanian Roma evacuated to Transnistria were included on the lists set up by

the gendarmerie and police at the end of May.

Reasons for the Deportation of the Roma

The May 1942 census, through its definition of the two categories of Roma, also showed

the criteria for selection of those to be deported. It was based on nomadism and, in the

case of the sedentary Roma, on criminal convictions, theft, and the lack of means to

subsist. In some documents authorities also referred to the necessity of ridding villages

and towns of the poor Roma population without an occupation or trade and no means of

subsistence, without any possibility to earn a living, and those who made a living from

three-four villages, each for 5-6,000 families, and install guards around them so they cannot get

out. They will live their life there and find work there too.

12. Viorel Achim (ed.),

Documente privind deportarea þiganilor în Transnistria

, 2 vols. (henceforth:

Achim,

Documente

) (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicã, 2004), vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 9-10.

13.

Ibid.

, no. 3, pp. 5-6.

14. ANIC, fond IGJ, file no. 201/1942, file no. 202/1942, file no. 203/1942.

227

FINAL REPORT

theft and begging. At the 1946 trial of the principal war criminals, Ion Antonescu evoked

the murders and thefts Roma had committed in towns during anti-aircraft alarm exer-

cises.

Thus, the criteria appear to have been mainly social, relating to public order.

Although it is unknown whether the accusations against the Roma were true, the crimes

they supposedly committed in towns could not have been the main reason for the

deportations, since nearly all Roma lived in villages. Moreover, these deportations could

not have been a purely social measure. Otherwise, this process of cleansing the

country of socially problematic elements would have extended to the entire population,

regardless of ethnic origin; yet it applied only to the Roma. Government documents on

the Roma did not invoke race as a reason for deportation. They did not refer to racial

inferiority or to a racial danger posed by the Roma, as did some Romanian publi-

cations at the time.

In short, while such terms as dangerous and undesirable were

used in reference to the Roma, the authorities did not use race to motivate the deportation.

The reason for the Romas deportation was likely another: it was part of the

Antonescu regimes ethnic policy.

Achieving ethnic homogeneity in Romania by

transferring the minority out of the country and bringing in Romanians from neighboring

countries was a genuine preoccupation of the Romanian government at that time.

Effective measures were taken and documents were drafted to deal with this problem.

The most important of these documents was the project of Sabin Manuilã, general

director of the Central Institute for Statistics, written in the form of a memorandum

addressed to Marshal Antonescu on October 15, 1941. This memo took aim at all ethnic

minorities in Romania. According to Manuilã, they should be subject to transfer agree-

ments or population exchanges between Romania and different states. For the Jews and

the Roma, who did not have a state of their own, the planned solution was the unilateral

transfer, which actually meant sending them across the border.

The territory where the

Romanian government could do this was Transnistria. Thus, the partial deportation of

Jews and Roma to Transnistria in 1941 and 1942 can be understood as elements of this

policy of ethnic purification.

The contemporary documents currently available do not elucidate why if the

transfers across the border were part of an ethnic policy the deportations to

Transnistria were limited to the Roma categories explained above. However, during those

years in which the Roma overnight became a problem for the authorities, the govern-

ment could not stray too far from the opinions held by Romanian society, as reflected in

the sociological studies of the thirties. The selection and the deportation of Roma

aimed at only those who led a very Gypsy way of life.

Out of a population of 208,700 Roma in Romania within the borders of 1942, as

estimated by the Central Institute for Statistics,

almost 41,000 (20 percent) Roma were

15.

Procesul marii trãdãri naþionale

, p. 66.

16. See footnote 8.

17. On the objectives of the governments deportation of the Roma, see Viorel Achim, The Antonescu

Governments Policy towards the Gypsies, in Mihail E. Ionescu and Liviu Rotman (eds.),

The

Holocaust in Romania: History and Contemporary Significance

(Bucharest, 2003), pp. 55-60.

18. For Sabin Manuilãs memorandum, see Viorel Achim, The Romanian Population Exchange

Project Elaborated by Sabin Manuilã in October 1941,

Annali dellInstituto storico italo-germanico

in Trento

, 28 (2001), pp. 593-617.

19. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 104, pp. 162-177.

228

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

registered in May 1942. Of these, more than 25,000 were deported (12 percent of the

total Roma population).

The Deportations of Roma to Transnistria

The Deportation of Nomadic Roma (June-August 1942)

The deportations began on June 1, 1942, with the nomadic Roma. That day, the gen-

darmes began to gather them in the capital cities of the counties and then to send them

to Transnistria. Marshal Antonescu gave the order himself for the deportation of all

nomadic Gypsies camps from all over the country.

The nomadic Roma traveled on

foot or with wagons from one precinct to the other, making their trip several weeks long.

Officially, the operation ended on August 15, 1942. Those who were at the front or

mobilized within the country at the time of the deportation were expelled from the

military by order of the Army General Staff, sent back home, and made to follow their

families to Transnistria. Until October 2, 1942, a total of 11,441 nomadic Roma were

deported to Transnistria (2,352 men, 2,375 women, and 6,714 children).

The Deportation of Sedentary Roma Deemed Undesirable

(September 1942)

In terms of the sedentary Roma registered in May 1942, the authorities first undertook

to sort them. Those selected for the initial deportation were Roma who were considered

dangerous and undesirable along with their families a total of 12,497 individuals.

The remaining 18,941 were to be deported later. Families of mobilized Roma and Roma

eligible for mobilization together with their families were to remain in the country, even

if they had been categorized as dangerous. At the time of the deportation of nomadic

Roma, the authorities had not yet formed a definite plan of action concerning the

sedentary Roma. They were either to be deported to Transnistria or imprisoned in camps

within Romania. In the end, the authorities chose deportation. According to the initial

plan, the Roma were to be transported by ship to Transnistria in July, first on the Danube

and then the Black Sea. This plan was prepared in detail but ultimately abandoned, and

they were transported by train instead. Ion Antonescu set the beginning of the operation

for August 1, 1942.

However, the deportation of sedentary Roma did not take place

until September. It lasted from September 12 to September 20, 1942, used nine special

trains, and began in different towns in the country. The modification of the plan from

water to land explains why the deportations did not begin until September 1942.

During that month, 13,176 sedentary Roma were deported to Transnistria. This

number exceeded the number on the lists drafted for deportation and, moreover, the list

20.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 15, pp. 22-23.

21.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 179, pp. 269-271.

22.

Ibid

., vol. 1, no. 42, pp. 66-67.

229

FINAL REPORT

of those deported did not coincide with the lists of those selected for deportation. An

investigation into this discrepancy concluded that some who had been slated for depor-

tation could not be found, while others, having been misled, volunteered; a rumor had

been circulated among the Roma that once they arrived in Transnistria, they would be

granted land. This, in part, explains the desire of some Roma to leave. Because most did

not carry identity papers with them, it was easy for these volunteers to mingle among the

other Roma. Some Roma traveled by regular trains to Tighina (on the Dniester), where

they joined various groups of deportees.

The deportation operation led to many abuses by the gendarmes and policemen who

conducted the operation. Some families of mobilized Roma and some Roma likely to be

mobilized, along with their families, were deported. There was one case in which a

Roma soldiers wife and in-laws were seized by gendarmes and deported to Transnistria

while he was on leave.

Some Romanian, Turkish, and Hungarian families were also

rounded up by mistake. Some of the deported Roma had Romanian wives, and some had

an occupation or owned land.

A large number of complaints were filed decrying these occurrences; the number of

requests for repatriation was even larger. Roma serving at the front or mobilized within

the country raised their voices against these actions. As a consequence, the Presidency of

the Council of Ministers and the Army General Staff demanded reparation. In an order

issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these actions were described as causing

turmoil among soldiers of Gypsy origin, and rightly so, for while serving their country

with great honor, their families were being rounded up and deported to Transnistria.

This order went on to recommend that appropriate steps be taken and requested that the

families of these people be treated with all possible care; moreover, family was to be

understood in the Roma sense of the word; thus, concubines of the conscripted Roma

and Roma who were slated for mobilization as well as their children were to be exempt

from deportation.

After an investigation, repatriation was granted to 311 heads of

families and 950 family members a total of 1,261 individuals.

Not all of them were

repatriated, however. Deported Roma who had relatives at the front or had fought in

World War I or the anti-Soviet war were guaranteed, at least on paper, better treatment

than the rest of the Roma.

At the same time, Roma were forced from their homes without even their most

necessary personal and household belongings and were not given time to sell their

possessions. So, heads of local gendarmerie and police stations would often buy the

Romas belongings and livestock at extremely low prices. The National Center for

Romanianization took possession of the houses and all other goods belonging to the

deported Roma.

23. ANIC, fond PCM, file no. 202/1941-1944, pp. 274-277.

24. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 203, pp. 302-303.

25.

Ibid.

26.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 306, pp. 107-108.

27. ANIC, fond DGP, file no. 77/1943, p. 47; file no. 43/1943, p. 286.

28. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 101, pp. 158-160.

230

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Later Deportations

The deportation of the sedentary Roma categorized as dangerous was to be followed by

that of the other Roma listed in May 1942. When the selection of the sedentary Roma was

made, it was intended that conscripted or soon-to-be conscripted Roma would later be

imprisoned in the camps inside Romania. But, the authorities eventually settled on deporta-

tion. It never occurred, however. The deportation was postponed at the beginning of

October 1942 until the following spring. Then, on October 13, the Council of Ministers

decided to call off any future deportations of Jews and Roma.

The following day, the

Ministry of Internal Affairs ordered that no more Roma were to be sent to Transnistria

neither the nomads still in the country nor those with criminal records; only those Roma

who by their very presence were a threat to public order were still to be deported.

It can be argued that problems encountered during the deportations by the Romanian

military bureaucracy played an important part in bringing them to an end.

The Roma

deportations were discussed at the September 29, 1942, Council of Ministers meeting,

during which Gen. Constantin Vasiliu, secretary of state at the Ministry of Internal

Affairs, stated that he would not send any more Roma to Transnistria.

Nevertheless,

deportations of Roma to Transnistria continued even after that date some in fall 1942

and others during the following year. These were of small groups and isolated individuals

from among those who had escaped the two major deportation operations, those who had

escaped from prison, and some whom the authorities had registered later on the list of

the undesirables. They amounted to several hundred people deported after October

1942. The last deportations took place in December 1943, when a transport arrived in

Transnistria with fifty-seven Roma from Piteºti and from the county of Argeº; thirty-six

of them were considered to have been evacuated (deported) and the other twenty-one

were re-evacuated (re-deported).

Number of Roma Deported to Transnistria

The total number of Roma deported to Transnistria from June 1942 to December 1943

reached slightly over 25,000. In early October 1942, after both major deportations, there

were 24,686 Roma in Transnistria: 11,441 were nomadic, 13,176 were sedentary, and

another 69 had been deported after having been released from prison.

This number

later increased by a few hundred with the additional deportations of some who had

escaped the major operations, been released from prison, or become undesirable.

29.

Timpul

, 6, no. 1954, October 16, 1942, p. 3.

30. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 189, pp. 286-287.

31. Radu Ioanid,

The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu

Regime, 1940-1944

(henceforth: Ioanid,

The Holocaust in Romania

) (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,

2000), p. 227.

32. Radu Ioanid,

Evreii sub regimul Antonescu

(henceforth: Ioanid,

Evreii

) (Bucharest: Hasefer,

1997), pp. 312-313.

33. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 573 (Report, January 3, 1944), p. 420.

34.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 179, pp. 268-271.

231

FINAL REPORT

The Treatment of the Roma in Transnistria

Gypsy Colonies

The Roma were settled at the border or inside villages located in eastern Transnistria on

the bank of the Bug in the counties of Golta, Otchakov, Berezovka, and Balta. Initially,

most of the nomadic Roma were settled in Golta county, while sedentary Roma were

almost all settled in Otchakov county. Some Roma were accommodated in huts, others in

houses. Usually half of the local Ukrainian residents in a village would be evacuated

from their houses and then moved into the homes of their non-evacuated neighbors; the

Roma were then placed into the newly-empty houses. A few villages on the Bug were

completely evacuated for this purpose, with the Ukrainian population being relocated to

the central areas of the county. These were the so-called Gypsy colonies

in Transnistria,

consisting of several hundred people (in the beginning there were even thousands of

people). They were neither camps nor ghettos, even if the documents sometimes use

these terms. Certain zones of the village were reserved for the Roma. The deportees were

overseen by the local gendarme precinct, but had a certain freedom to move around

inside the commune and vicinity in order to go to work to earn their living.

The Status of the Roma Deportees

The Government of Transnistria issued an order on December 18, 1942, establishing the

status of Roma deported to Transnistria. It stipulated the following: the Roma would be

settled in villages in groups of 150-350 individuals (according to the local need for

laborers) with one of their own as a leader; they would be obligated to perform any kind

of work required of them in exchange for wages similar to those earned by local laborers;

skilled laborers would be employed according to their skills in existing workshops and

workshops to be built in the future; the remaining Roma would be organized into teams

of laborers under the supervision of a leader they chose, and they would be employed in

agriculture, woodcutting, lumbering, and in the collection of such items as hides, hair,

metal, old rags, and garbage; it was mandatory for all Roma, aged twelve to sixty, male

and female, to be engaged in an activity, either in workshops or in teams of laborers;

Roma with above-average levels of productivity would be recompensed with 30 percent

of the value of their extra work; the leaders would be responsible for preventing the

Roma in their village from leaving and would be required to monitor the work attendance

of all members on a daily basis; and Roma leaving the villages where they were settled

without authorization or those absent from work would be imprisoned in reformatory

camps to be established in every county.

35.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 268, pp. 54-55.

232

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Living Conditions in the Deportation Sites

These measures were supposed to provide the deported with the necessary means to earn

a living under circumstances of compulsory residence. Yet, they would remain on paper

only. The situation of the Roma in Transnistria was extremely difficult at first. They were

given few possibilities of work or means to live. Only some were used on former state

and collective farms (

sovhoz

and

kolkhoz

, respectively), which needed but a small

number of workers and usually just for seasonal work, and preferred to use native

Ukrainians. Only a few workshops mandated in the above order were organized.

Living conditions in Transnistria were very harsh. The Roma were not provided with

enough food and were unable to support themselves. The food rations established by the

government were not observed; sometimes none would be distributed for weeks. The

Roma were also not provided with firewood; so, they could neither prepare their food

nor warm themselves. Clothing was another major problem, since they had not been

allowed to take any clothes or any personal belongings with them. The deportees lacked

the most elementary items, including pots for preparing their food. Medical assistance

was almost nonexistent, and they lacked medicine. Those who were fortunate enough to

have gold, Romanian currency, or other belongings of value managed to buy food from

local people. This desperate situation was clearly described in reports and other docu-

ments drafted by the authorities in charge of the deportees, such as gendarme precincts

and legions, and district pretures and county prefectures. For example, a December 5,

1942, report signed by an intelligence agent explained the situation in the county of

Otchakov and was representative for almost all Roma colonies:

During the time that they have spent in the barracks in Aleksandrodar, the Gypsies have

lived in indescribable misery. They werent sufficiently fed. They were given 400 grams of

bread for the ones that were capable of working and 200 grams each for the elderly and the

children. They were also given few potatoes and, very rarely, salty fish, and all these in very

small quantities.

Due to the malnutrition, some of the Gypsies and these make up the majority have lost

so much weight that they have turned into living skeletons. On a daily basis especially in the

last period ten to fifteen Gypsies died. They were full of parasites. They were not paid any

medical visits and they did not have any medicine. They were naked... and they didnt have any

underwear or clothing. There are women whose bodies... were

[

completely

]

naked in the true

sense of the word. They had not been given any soap since arriving; this is why they havent

washed themselves or the single shirt that they own.

In general, the situation of the Gypsies is terrible and almost inconceivable. Due to the

misery, they have turned into shadows and are almost savage. This condition is due to the bad

accommodations and nutrition as well as the cold. Because of hunger... they have scared the

Ukrainians with their thefts. If there had been some Gypsies in the country who were steal-

ing... out of mere habit, here even a Gypsy who used to be honest would begin stealing,

because the hunger led him to commit this shameful act.

Due to maltreatment, by November 25, three hundred nine Gypsies had died. Roma bodies

were found on the Otchakov-Aleksandrodar road. They died of famine and cold.

But, while the Gypsies in the Aleksandrodar barracks were lodged in a more humane way

in the above-mentioned villages, this did not mean that the Gypsy problem in Otchakov was

solved. Their situation has somewhat improved; they were less exposed to the cold and were

disinfected. But if they do not receive any wood or other fuel, the Gypsies will be able to do

233

FINAL REPORT

to the houses what they did to the barracks, turning them into places impossible to live in. And

the cold will lead them to that as well, not thinking that they only make their bad situation

worse, and that the danger of dying from cold increases this way. Also, if they will not be given

humane nourishment, medical assistance, and medicine as well as clothing for some of them,

the mortality of the Gypsies will not decrease, but will simultaneously increase with the

increase of the frost. Also, they will increase the thefts from the Russians

[

i.e., Ukrainians

]

As a matter of fact, the local population is outraged, and its state of mind is very low because

they have been evicted from their own houses during the winter so these houses could be given

to the Gypsies, whom they cannot stand.

Until spring 1943 the situation of the deportees was dramatic from every perspective.

Many thousands of Roma died. In fact, almost all deaths among the Romanian Roma

deported to Transnistria occurred in winter 1942/1943. A report of the Landau district

preture to the prefect of the county of Berezovka regarding the exanthematic typhus

epidemic that broke out in the middle of December 1942 in the Roma camps stated that

due to typhus, the number of Roma located in Landau had decreased from around 7,500

to approximately 1,800-2,400.

The situation in Landau was an exception, but the

number of deceased was high everywhere.

The confiscation of their horses and wagons, which served as both mobile homes

and means to earn an income, affected the nomadic Roma very harshly. Gheorghe

Alexianu, governor of Transnistria, issued an order in this respect on July 29, 1942.

Lt. Col. Vasile Gorsky, former prefect of Otchakov county, gave one of the most graphic

descriptions of the situation of the Roma deported to Transnistria in a memo written in

1945.

This memo also represents a detailed account of what was recorded in documents

issued by the Transnistrian administration. In addition to Roma suffering, the bad

administrative skills of the authorities were depicted in detail.

The situation of the Roma later improved somewhat. Since the concentration in large

groups made it extremely difficult to provide work and food as well as supervision, and

after the dramatic experience of winter 1942/1943, the authorities dissolved the colonies

and distributed the Roma among the villages in the spring and summer of 1943. Thus,

the Roma began to live long-term or short-term in many of the villages in the counties

of Golta, Balta, Berezovka, and Otchakov where they used to work, either on former

state farms and

kolkhoz

, or in workshops or other places where they were compensated

for their work.

The archives created by the occupation authorities in Transnistria or by the adminis-

tration of some communes and farms provide great detail about the type of work done by

the Roma, including agricultural labor, repairing roads and railroads, chopping down

willow trees on the bank of the Bug, chopping wood in forests, and military-related tasks

36.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 249, pp. 26-28.

37.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 590, p. 437.

38. Ioanid,

Evreii

, p. 315.

39. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 641, pp. 495-500. Vasile Gorskys memorandum is discussed in

Ioanid,

The Holocaust in Romania

, pp. 231-235.

40. The situation of the Roma deportees and the changes that occurred over time are best summarized

in the monthly reports of the Labor Service within the district prefectures. These documents

contain a chapter dealing with The Gypsies Labor and Regimen of Life. For example, see

Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 473 (from the county of Golta, August 1943), pp. 303-304.

234

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

in the Nikolaev region (on the opposite side of the Bug in German-occupied territory).

Through a series of steps taken in summer 1943, the authorities tried to provide the

deportees with work. At the time, these measures were referred to as the organization

of labor. There was a positive side, for the work was paid and the deportee and his

family could earn somewhat of a living.

Some of the deportees adapted to the unfavorable circumstances in Transnistria. They

found niches in the village economy, doing some work and making crafts for the natives,

exactly as they had done in their villages in Romania. One group that managed to

preserve its occupation and thereby ensure its welfare was the

pieptãnari

(comb makers).

In February 1944, 1,800 Roma living in the county of Berezovka earned their living by

making and selling combs.

In a March 11, 1944, request to the prefect of Berezovka

county, the mayor of the Gypsies of the Suhaja Balka farm wrote:

We didnt receive anything from the farm or village for four months and lived only by our

work and by the income earned selling combs. With the income we have from selling combs,

we have managed to dress and eat decently this winter.

Pãun Marin, foreman of the Roma comb workshop on the Suhaja Balka farm, wrote

in similar manner on the same day, when requesting permission to sell combs.

However, not all deportees could be provided with work. So, efforts were made at the

county or district level to provide them with food. The various departments of the

Government of Transnistria particularly the Department of Labor, which dealt with

Jews and Roma deported to Transnistria did not always share a good working relation-

ship. In summer 1943, in the county of Balta, Roma were removed from their houses,

moved into huts, and given land to work for food. Other colonies were dissolved, and the

Roma were distributed among Ukrainian villages, thus making them easier to feed and

use for work. There were even proposals to create Roma agricultural colonies with

farmland and agricultural equipment. The gendarmerie appealed to the county prefec-

tures to ensure the Romas living.

The situation was not the same everywhere. In some places, Roma were confronted

with hunger and cold again in 1943. The situation was extremely serious in Golta county.

The May 10, 1943, report of the Golta Gendarme Legion to the General Inspectorate of

the Gendarmerie described the extermination regime applied to Jews and Roma:

I have the honor to report to you that, from the information I have verified in the whole

county, the following are the results. The Jews are not given food for months. The same is true

of the Gypsies and prisoners in the Golta camp, where 40 individuals are imprisoned. All of

them work and are forced to work until they are exhausted from hunger. Please advise.

In another report, dated November 22, 1943, to the Prefecture of the county of Golta,

the Gendarmes Legion stated that the Roma interned in the Golta labor camp (including

41. See footnote 40.

42. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 589, p. 436.

43.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 605, p. 455.

44.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 604, pp. 454-455.

45. Documents referring to these efforts:

ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 474, pp. 304-305; no. 481, p. 312; no. 506,

pp. 340-341; no. 522, p. 359; no. 528, pp. 365-366; etc.

46.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 375, p. 187.

235

FINAL REPORT

some who had unsuccessfully tried to flee from Transnistria) were faced with starva-

tion.

Likewise, in September that year, Ion Stancu, mayor of the Gypsies in Kamina

Balka in Golta, denounced the fact that the Roma were not given sufficient food:

During the day we work at the kolkhoz, but at night we patrol the precinct; they give us

very little food: 300 grams of

[

corn

]

flour, 500 grams of potatoes and 10 grams of salt per

person, without any other kind of food; we havent been given oil for 8 months.

At the same time, authorities often criticized the fact that Roma tried to avoid work

when it was available. According to the documents, the Roma preferred to travel around

the villages and beg. In order to procure food, some Roma began to steal; there were

Roma gangs of thieves. These deportees terrorized the Ukrainian population with their

criminal activity and caused difficulties for the Romanian authorities. At the same time,

the Roma had a tendency to flee from the colonies on the Bug. Either individually or

in groups, they attempted to return to Romania by any means possible. However, the

runaways were usually caught and brought back. The authorities in Transnistria discov-

ered that it was impossible to put a stop to this. Punishment camps were planned for such

situations, but were never realized. Only in fall 1943, when the exodus of Roma had

grown considerably and the number of those who had fled and been caught exceeded

2,000, was the measure taken to create such a camp in Golta, where 475 Roma were

interned.

The situation of the Roma varied from county to county, district to district, and even

farm to farm. It depended on many factors, including the Romanian official at the head

of the administrative unit (county or district). Food provision depended heavily on local

communities, but the local Ukrainians considered the Roma to be a burden. County and

district authorities often had to force the Ukrainian communes and communities to give

the Roma food in conformance with the government regulations. The Romas situation

also depended on the group or sub-group to which they belonged. In some places, Roma

communities managed to secure their subsistence and survive almost two years of depor-

tation. Elsewhere, though, only a small number were able to survive.

Number of Victims

Under these circumstances, many deported Roma died in Transnistria of hunger, cold, or

disease. There is no document indicating that the Romanian civil or military authorities

in Transnistria organized executions of Roma. Nevertheless, there were instances when

gendarmes shot Roma, as in Triha]i (Otchakov county), where, according to a May 1943

report, gendarmes shot the Roma who had come there from neighboring villages in

search of work.

The exact number of Roma who died in Transnistria is not known. On March 15,

1944, when Romanian citizens regardless of origin were to be evacuated from

47.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 543, pp. 379-380.

48.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 488, p. 319.

49.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 553 (Report of the Gendarmerie Inspectorate Balta, December 9, 1943), pp. 390-394.

50.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 383, pp. 196-198.

236

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Transnistria, the General Gendarmerie Sub-Inspectorate Odessa reported that it had on

its territory 12,083 Roma.

This number represented the Roma who had survived the

deportation. To this number must be added the number of Roma who escaped from

Transnistria before the above-mentioned date. These include Roma who were repatriated

at different times for various reasons as well as those who had escaped from Transnistria

illegally without being caught and returned. There were approximately 2,000 Roma who

fit into these categories, which raises the number of the survivors to approximately

14,000. This means that out of the over 25,000 deported Roma, approximately 11,000

died and 14,000 survived.

The 6,439 Roma recorded by the gendarmerie in the second half of July 1944, when

it began to register those who returned to Romania, are only part of the survivors.

The

Roma in urban areas, supervised by the police, were not included in this number.

Moreover, a considerable number of Roma were able to escape registration due to the

conditions of war. The Soviet army already occupied part of Romanias territory by then

or was located in the vicinity of the front line. At that time, some Roma were still

traveling home, while others were stranded behind when the army and Romanian authori-

ties retreated. From the latter, some were repatriated at the end of the war, while others

scattered about on Soviet territory.

Return of Roma Survivors to Romania (1944)

The Roma who survived deportation returned to Romania in spring 1944 at the same

time as the army and Romanian occupation authorities that withdrew because of the

Soviet offensive. As early as fall 1943, the unauthorized desertion of the deportation sites

had become widespread. Those caught trying to flee were sent back to Transnistria. In

March/April 1944, in the absence of any official measures of repatriation, the Roma

withdrew to the other side of the Dniester and then back to Romania. In some cases, they

received direct assistance from the retreating Romanian and German armies and from the

Romanian railway workers. On April 19, 1944, the General Inspectorate of the Gendar-

merie ordered all Roma from Transnistria to be stopped in their flight and put to work

where they were caught.

The order was repeated on May 17, 1944.

These Roma were

given a temporary place of residence and were forbidden to move around. They were to

be employed in farming activities. Life in Transnistria had made most of them unfit for

work, however. Others were placed with various landowners to do agricultural work.

But, there were frequent instances of Roma refusing to work on the grounds that they did

know how to perform the tasks, which exasperated the local authorities; and the Roma

continued to starve. In such conditions, some groups of Roma obtained permission to

return to their native villages.

51.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 608, p. 458.

52. ANIC, fond IGJ, file no. 86/1944, file no. 97/1944.

53. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 613, p. 463.

54.

Ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 621, pp. 472-473.

55. Numerous examples can be found in ANIC, fond IGJ, file no. 86/1944, etc.

237

FINAL REPORT

The End of Anti-Roma Policies

With the ousting of the Antonescu government on August 23, 1944, and the abrogation

of fascist legislation, the regimes Roma policy was brought to an end. On September 13,

1944, the State Undersecretariat for the Police issued an order that all Roma who had

returned from Transnistria were to be left to their occupations, while measures are to be

taken to entice them into various work.

The Situation of the Other Roma of Romania

More than 25,000 Roma were deported to Transnistria approximately 12 percent of the

Roma population in Romania. But, most were of no interest to the authorities. From a

juridical point of view they were unaffected by the measures of persecution instituted by

the Antonescu government. Most Roma continued to enjoy full citizenship rights (given

the conditions of that time, of course) along with all the other citizens of the country.

They did not lose these rights, and their property was not subject to the Romanianization

policies applied to the Jewish population. Yet, the Roma still experienced insecurity

during these years. Documents reveal that they feared the deportations would extend to

other categories of Roma, as well. This fear was sometimes fed by local authorities, who

usually in their own interest would threaten these citizens with deportation.

However,

there was no special policy aiming at the entire Roma population in Romania from 1940

to 1944. What is now referred to as the Roma policy of the Antonescu regime actually

consisted of measures taken against only part of this population.

In addition to the Roma deported to the Bug, two other groups of Roma were targeted

by the Romanian authorities: (1) the several hundred Roma who fled from Northern

Transylvania, which was under Hungarian occupation from 1940 to 1944, and settled in

the counties of Cluj-Turda and Arad; they crossed the frontier to Romania mainly

because they refused to join the Hungarian army (more precisely, to join the work

battalions); these Roma were not sent to Transnistria, though some gendarme legions at

the border threatened to deport them;

(2) another several hundred Roma on the large

estates in the south of the country, who had been working there for many years in

precarious conditions in terms of both wages and housing. In November 1942, the

General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie ordered that all landowners provide permanent

accommodations for the Roma working their lands. Marshal Antonescu himself issued

56. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 2, no. 639, p. 494.

57. The state of mind of the Roma after the deportations in the summer and fall of 1942 is seen, for

example, in the reports of the Regional Police Inspectorate Alba-Iulia from September 30 (Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 162, p. 247) and December 3, 1942 (

ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 243, pp. 14-15), or

in the report of the Regional Police Inspectorate Timiºoara from November 27, 1942 (

ibid.

, vol. 1,

no. 238, pp. 352-353).

58. Some documents with respect to these Roma:

ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 119, p. 194; vol. 2, no. 568,

pp. 413-414; vol. 2, no. 577, pp. 424-425.

238

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the same order in June 1943. Few houses would actually be built for these Roma,

though.

This measure was part of the governments social policy.

Since the deportation was limited to only part of the Roma, their situation may seem

to have been parallel to that of the Jewish population. Only Jews from Bessarabia,

Bukovina, and the county of Dorohoi were deported; the other Romanian Jews, with

only a few exceptions, were not. Nevertheless, during the war, the Romanian state led a

policy that aimed at all Jews; the anti-Semitic legislation, the measures with racial

content, and the Romanianization policies affected all segments of the Jewish population,

albeit in different ways. From 1940 to 1944, the entire Jewish population was subject to

heavy discrimination. It was not so with the Roma population. During those years there

was no measure taken in Romania against all Roma that is, against the entire population

registered on the census as Gypsies or identified as such by the authorities or the local

population. Thus, the Antonescu governments plans for the Roma were not limited to

Transnistria. The deportation to the territory between the Dniester and Bug Rivers

remains the most important element, though.

The Romanian Population and the Deportation of Roma

The deportation of the Roma did not enjoy the support of the Romanian population, and

protests came from all quarters.

One category of protests came from the political and

cultural elite. Thus, on September 16, 1942, while the deportations were underway, the

president of the National Liberal Party, Constantin I.C. Brãtianu, sent a letter to Marshal

Antonescu that invoked both humanitarian and moral arguments, calling the deportations

persecutions that will make us regress several centuries.

This letter was a political

move: Brãtianu argued that the responsibility of this decision was entirely Antonescus

and that Antonescus policy toward the Roma had no relation to the policies of previous

governments. He went on to argue, These Romanian citizens have not been subject to

a special treatment in our state before now. Brãtianu also did not fail to mention the

persecutions and the deportations of the Jews as reprisals against their co-religionists in

Bukovina and Bessarabia and under the influence of German policies.

The leaders of

the National Peasant Party expressed their solidarity with Brãtianus protest.

The famous

Romanian composer George Enescu pleaded in person with Antonescu against the

deportation of Roma musicians and threatened to go with them should that occur.

Also, the management of several companies, such as the state-run Romanian Railway

59. Documents referring to this issue:

ibid.

, vol. 2, no. 400, pp. 215-216; no. 622, pp. 473-474;

no. 623, pp. 474-475; no. 626, pp. 479-480.

60. See Viorel Achim, Atitudinea contemporanilor faþã de deportarea þiganilor în Transnistria, in

Constantin Iordachi and Viorel Achim (eds.),

România ºi Transnistria: problema Holocaustului.

Perspective istorice ºi comparative

(Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004), pp. 201-233.

61. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of the Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

(New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), vol. 4, p. 225.

62.

Ibid.

63. Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 202, pp. 301-302.

64.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 220, p. 331.

239

FINAL REPORT

Company, defended their Roma employees out of fear that deportations would extend to

new categories of Roma.

Most documents indicate popular opposition to the deportation of Roma from all

social classes, whereas few documents show support for the measure.

Protest was

usually expressed in the form of letters or memoranda sent by individuals or entire

communities to such public authorities as the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Ion

Antonescu personally, the Queen Mother, the Ministry of Interior, and the Army General

Staff. These efforts aimed either to stop deportations from a certain village or town or

to secure the return of deportees to their homes. Most of these protests were made in fall

1942 after the deportation of the dangerous sedentary Roma, and they most likely were

made out of fear that new categories of Roma would be added to the deportation lists.

Also, many local municipalities issued good behavior papers for the local Roma who

felt threatened, or they intervened more directly to shield the local Roma from possible

deportations. For example, in an October 1942 memorandum sent to Antonescu, the

inhabitants of the village of Popoveni in the Balta Verde commune of Dolj county and

from other villages, as well from Craiova, requested that a Craiova blacksmith, Ilie

Dinc\, not be deported to Transnistria.

Before that, in September 1942, a group of

citizens from the town of Craiova asked the Council of Ministers that ªtefan Gâdea, the

local tin sheet specialist, not to be deported to Transnistria.

In addition, in October

1942, 127 Romanians from Zimnicea made the same plea to Marshal Antonescu on

behalf of local craftsmen who only by distant lineage can be considered Gypsies.

The

arguments invoked in these appeals included the considerable integration of the Roma in

the local community and their importance in its economic life (in many cases, the Roma

were the only craftsmen available in the village).

However, these objections to the deportation of the Roma never pertained to the

nomadic Roma, whose deportation seems to have been considered justifiable by the

Romanian majority. In fact, one of the arguments used by the sedentary Roma to defend

themselves against actual or possible deportations was that they were not nomadic but

had stable homes and performed useful work.

65.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 190, pp. 287-288.

66. One such case is that of a retired officer (Captain Dogaru) from Târgu-Jiu, who suggested in June

1942 that local Roma either be colonized in Transnistria or gathered from around the county and

confined in an ethnically pure Roma village (

ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 44, pp. 69-70).

67.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 167, pp. 255-256.

68.

Ibid.

, vol. 1, no. 157, p. 241.

69. ANIC, fond PCM, file no. 202/1942, pp. 234-235.

70. The chairman of the General Union of Roma in Romania, Gheorghe Niculescu, demanded in

September 1942 that the execution of deportation orders must concern only nomadic Roma and

exempt sedentary Roma who have a stable abode and are skilled in the practice of various

professions (Achim,

Documente

, vol. 1, no. 169, pp. 258-259).

240

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Postwar Years and the Treatment of the Roma Deportations

in the War Crimes Trials

After the return of the surviving Roma from Transnistria in spring and summer 1944 and

the regime change of August 1944, the Gypsy issue no longer figured on the political

agenda in Romania, and the reinstatement of the Romas rights went smoothly. For the

new government, the Roma became once again what they were before Antonescu came

to power: a marginalized social category, rather than an ethnic minority. As a conse-

quence, the policies adopted vis-à-vis the Roma included such measures as the creation

of incentives to make the nomadic Roma sedentary and the re-establishment of former

restrictions on their freedom of movement. There is no evidence indicating that the

deportees received reparations, and the Romas problems did not reach the agendas of the

political parties.

Although the fate of the Roma during the war the deportations to Transnistria and

the killings were no longer of interest to either the government or the public, the

postwar trials of war criminals temporarily brought attention back to these events. Yet,

the fate of the Roma was fairly marginal to the topics of interest. When the first group

of war criminals was tried in 1945, only one indictment document mentioned the Roma

deportations (in the case of Col. Modest Isopescu, prefect of the county of Golta), and

even then the offenses concerned only the confiscation of Romas wagons and horses.

The remainder of the indictment was dedicated exclusively to the murder of Jews.

The situation was similar when Ion Antonescu and his main collaborators were tried

in 1946. While charges were formally brought against Antonescu for the deportation of

the Roma, the prosecutor did not dwell on the details. Thus, during Antonescus trial, the

plight of the Roma was mentioned only four times: in the indictment, in the formal

reading of the charges, and in statements taken from Antonescu and General Vasiliu.

The indictment noted in passing that thousands of unfortunate families were taken out

of their huts and shanty houses and deported beyond the Dniester; tens of thousands of

men, women, and children died due to starvation, cold, and diseases.

In addition, it

mentioned 26,000 deported Roma, while General Vasiliu acknowledged only 24,000.

In the statement he gave during the interrogation, Ion Antonescu argued that the

deportations were motivated by considerations of law and order: the Roma had commit-

ted many thefts, robberies, and murders in Bucharest and other cities during the wartime

curfew.

He made the same argument in his May 15, 1946, memorandum to the Peoples

71. For more information on the Roma in Romania after 1944, see Viorel Achim, Romanian Memory

of the Persecution of the Roma, in

Roma and Sinti: Under-Studied Victims of Nazism

, Sympo-

sium proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2002), pp. 59-77.

72.

Actul de acuzare, rechizitoriile ºi replica acuzãrii în procesul primului lot de criminali de rãzboi

(Bucharest: Editura Apãrãrii Patriotice, 1945), p. 76.

73.

Procesul marii trãdãri naþionale

, pp. 42, 65-66, 104, 108, 305.

74.

Ibid.

, p. 42.

75.

Ibid.

, p. 108.

76.

Ibid.

, pp. 65-66.

241

FINAL REPORT

Court.

At the time, press coverage of the fate of the Roma during the war was scant,

even as the details of the trials were systematically presented.

In the early postwar years, the fate of the Romanian Roma during the war did not

seem to interest anyone. The only initiative to support the ex-deportees came in early

1945 from the General Union of Roma in Romania. Its central committee announced that

the organizations main objective was to give moral and material support to all the

Roma, and in particular to all the Roma deported to Transnistria.

However, after this

organization began to function effectively again on August 15, 1947, its activities no

longer concerned the former Roma deportees.

Finally, in 1948 the Roma were close to obtaining the status of ethnic minority

(co-inhabitant nationality). The December resolution on the issue of ethnic minorities

of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party a key

document of communist-era minority policies denied the Roma this status. The situa-

tion remained unchanged until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. In addi-

tion, the issue of the deportation of the Roma was not mentioned in communist Romania

except in rare instances.

Conclusions

In 1942, as part of the policy of ethnic cleansing promoted by the Antonescu govern-

ment, 25,000 Romanian Roma were deported to Transnistria. This number included all

nomadic Roma and part of the sedentary Roma all of whom were considered to be

problems because of their way of life, criminal convictions, or lack of means to

subsist. The deportees represented approximately 12 percent of the total Roma popula-

tion in the country.

Given the very harsh living conditions at the deportation sites, especially because of

hunger, cold, and disease, approximately 11,000 deported Roma died in Transnistria.

The survivors returned to the country in spring 1944 at the same time as the Romanian

retreat from Transnistria.

77.

Revista istoricã

, N.S., vol. 4 (1993), nos. 7-8, p. 763.

78.

Scânteia

, a Communist Party daily, mentioned the topic only in its coverage of the Vasiliu case

and even then, only when it reported the reading of the charges by the prosecutor (

Scânteia

, May 9,

1946, p. 4; May 16, 1946, p. 2).

79. Police report, February 3, 1943, ANIC, fond DGP, file no. 87/1943, p. 318.

80. Secret Police report, April 7, 1948, ANIC, fond DGP, file no. 87/1943, pp. 352-353.

81. The reappearance of the Roma deportation in a Romanian scientific publication dates from 1974:

Gheorghe Zaharia,

Pages de la résistance antifasciste en Roumanie

(Bucharest: Meridiane, 1974),

p. 44.

The Role of Ion Antonescu in the Planning

and Implementation of Anti-Semitic and Anti-Roma Policies

of the Romanian State

Ion Antonescus responsibility for the death of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and

Transnistria is beyond debate. And yet, the survival of the Jews from Walachia, Moldavia,

and southern Transylvania was due to his decision in fall 1942 to postpone indefinitely

the deportation of Romanian Jews to Poland. During his trial in 1946, Antonescu

asserted that if the Jews of Romania are still alive, this is due to Ion Antonescu.

Additionally, others have cited his contact with Jews as a mitigating factor.

But, in general, Ion Antonescu was dominated by his loathing of Jews and Judaism.

He revealed this hatred at a session of the Council of Ministers on April 15, 1941: I

give the mob complete license to massacre

[

the Jews

]

. I will withdraw to my fortress, and

after the slaughter, I will restore order.

This was a rather accurate prediction of what

was to take place in Iaºi shortly thereafter. In numerous instances Antonescu personally

instigated specific anti-Semitic steps adopted by the Romanian fascist state: on June 19,

1941, Antonescu ordered the closure of all Jewish communist cafés and the comple-

tion of lists region by region of all

jidani

, communist agents, and

[

communist

]

sympathizers; the Ministry of the Interior was to prevent them from circulating and

to prepare to deal with them when Antonescu gave the order;

and as early as June 21,

1941, Ion Antonescu ordered that all able-bodied eighteen- to sixty-year-old Jewish men

in the villages between the Siret and Prut Rivers be removed to the T^rgu-Jiu camp in

Oltenia and to surrounding villages. Their families and all Jews in other Moldavian villages

were evacuated to the nearest urban districts.

During the Iaºi pogrom, at 11:00 p.m. on

Procesul marii trãdãri na]ionale

(Bucharest: Eminescu, 1946), p. 71.

2. For example, Aureliu Weiss, secretary to NPP leader Iuliu Maniu, wrote after the war, An

anti-Semite to the core...

[

Ion Antonescu

]

did, however, nurture relationships with Jews... One

day, in my absence, on the veranda of the villa where I stayed in Predeal, forgetting my wifes

presence, he launched into an anti-Semitic diatribe against a humble

[

town

]

official who came to

collect local taxes. At one point, realizing that my wife was present, he said, as if making an

excuse: Not all Jews are alike. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian

Jewry during the Holocaust

(New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), vol. 8, p. 608.

3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Romanian Information (Intelligence) Service (hence-

forth: USHMM/SRI), RG 25.004M, roll 31, fond 40010, vol. 1; Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Evreii din

Rom^nia `ntre anii 1940-1944

, vol. 2,

Problema evreiascã în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), p. 229.

4. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, roll 32, fond 40010, vol. 1; Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã

Fapte [i

documente. Suferinþele evreilor din România. 1940-1944

(Bucharest: Atelierele grafice Socec,

1946-1948), vol. 2, p. 39.

5. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, pp. 414-415.

244

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

June 28, 1941, Ion Antonescu telephoned Colonel Lupu, chief of the Iaºi garrison, who

reported to him about the situation in town. The head of state ordered the evacuation of

the Jewish population, group after group, indicating that it was also necessary to

include the women and children.

On July 4, Antonescu asserted that the Jewish people

had embezzled and impoverished, speculated on and impeded the development of the

Romanian people for several centuries; the need to free us from this plague is

self-evident.

In spite of his propensity for pogroms, Antonescu criticized the private

instigation of them; and on July 12, 1941, after the Iaºi pogrom, he condemned the

soldiers who had taken part.

Despite this rebuke, however, he still asserted that the Jews

were the open wound of Romanianism and had robbed bread from the poor.

For Ion Antonescu, the main enemy of his country was the Jew. On September 6,

1941, in a letter to Mihai Antonescu, he wrote, Everybody should understand that this

is not a struggle with the Slavs but one with the Jews. It is a fight to the death. Either we

will win and the world will purify itself, or they will win and we will become their

slaves... The war, in general, and the fight for Odessa, especially, have proven that Satan

is the Jew.

Such was the justification, perhaps, for less ideologically and more materi-

alistically motivated steps like Order no. 8507 of October 3, 1941 (formally promulgated

by Colonel Davidescu, head of Antonescus military office), in which the Romanian

dictator ordered the National Bank of Romania to exchange i.e., confiscate money

and jewelry belonging to Jews about to be deported.

Ion Antonescu was directly involved in his regimes major repressive acts against the

Jews. Unlike in Hitlers case, there is a wealth of documentary evidence proving this

direct involvement. In early October 1941, for example, Col. Gheorghe Petrescu of the

Supreme General Staff and gendarmerie General Topor initiated the deportation of the

Jews from Bukovina on Antonescus personal order. Petrescu declared in 1945 that they

had received their orders from Radu Dinulescu of Section Two (

Sec]ia II

) of the Supreme

General Staff;

this order no. 6651 of October 4, 1941 also cited Marshal Antonescus

decision to deport all Jews in Bukovina to Transnistria within ten days.

The governor of

Bukovina, General Calotescu, also confirmed that Petrescu and Topor had only been

fulfilling Antonescus instructions.

Ion Antonescu did indeed state on October 6, 1941,

in a meeting of the Council of Ministers: I have decided to evacuate all of

[

the Jews

]

forever from these regions. I still have about 10,000 Jews in Bessarabia who will be sent

beyond the Dniester within several days, and if circumstances permit, beyond the Urals.

On November 14 in another meeting of the Council of Ministers, Ion Antonescu stated:

I have enough difficulties with those

jidani

that I sent to the Bug. How many died on

6. USHMM/SRI, RG 25 004M, roll 48, fond 108233, vol. 29.

7. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, roll 32, fond 40010, vol. 1.

8. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 10, p. 79.

9. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Romanian State Archives (henceforth: USHMM/

RSA), RG 25.002M, roll 18, fond Presidency of the Council of the Ministers, Cabinet, file no. 167/1941.

10. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, roll 35, fond 40010, vol. 89.

11.

Ibid.

, roll 35, fond 40010, vol. 5.

12.

Ibid.

, roll 31, fond 40010, vol. 1.

13. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives (hence-

forth: USHMM/RFMA), RG 25.006M, roll 10, fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, vol. 20.

14. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 143.

245

FINAL REPORT

their way is known only by me.

Participants at the same meeting heard the following

situation reports from General Voiculescu, governor of Bessarabia: The

jidani

dont

exist anymore. There are 100 sick Jews in the ghetto at the crossing point for the

deportees from Bukovina.

In the November 13, 1941, session of the Council of Ministers, Antonescu ordered

that deported Jewish state retirees be denied their pensions. In the same session,

Antonescu expressed a deep interest in the campaign against the Jews of Odessa, then

underway:

Antonescu

: Has the repression been sufficiently severe?

Alexianu

: It has been, Marshal.

Antonescu

: What do you mean by sufficiently severe?

Alexianu

: It was very severe, Marshal.

Antonescu

: I said that for every dead Romanian, 200 Jews

[

should die

]

and that for every

Romanian wounded 100 Jews

[

should die

]

. Did you

[

see to

]

that?

Alexianu

: The Jews of Odessa were executed and hung in the streets...

Antonescu

: Do it, because I am the one who answers for the country and to history.

[

If the

Jews of America dont like this

]

let them come and settle the score with me.

During his trial, Ion Antonescu acknowledged his responsibility in the Odessa execu-

tions in the following way:

Public Prosecutor Sãracu

: Who signed the order to execute 200 people for every officer

and 100 for every soldier?

Accused Ion Antonescu

: I gave that order, because I also did it in Romania, and I

promulgated many more repressive laws, as did all states during that period... We did not

execute any Jews, we did not execute any youth; I did give the order for reprisals, but not for

massacres.

In fact, on October 24, 1941, General Macici, commander of the Second Army Corps

(the Romanian military command in Odessa), received Telegram no. 563 from Colonel

Davidescu, chief of the Military Cabinet, which stated that Marshal Antonescu had

ordered further reprisals: (1) Execution of all Jews from Bessarabia who have sought

refuge in Odessa; (2) All individuals who fall under the stipulations of

[

Telegram 562

]

of October 23, 1941, not yet executed and the others who can be added thereto

[

sic

]

will

be placed inside a building that will be mined and detonated. This action will take place

on the day of burial of the victims; (3) This order will be destroyed after being read.

On October 27, 1941, Colonel Davidescu asked if this order had been carried out, and

the Fourth Army replied that it had indeed been executed (Telegram 3218).

At the December 4, 1941, meeting of the Council of Ministers, Antonescu indicated

his frustration that the Jews of Chi[in\u had been deported before they could be plun-

dered. Because of that oversight, the Jews were robbed by their escorts at the crossing

15. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, fond 40010, vol. 78.

16.

Ibid.

17. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, fond 40010, vol. 28; USHMM/SRI, roll 35, fond 40010, vol. 78.

18.

Ibid.

, p. 54.

19. USHMM/MStM, RG 25.003M, roll 12(203), fond Fourth Army, vol. 870.

20.

Ibid.

246

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

points on the Dniester rather than by the state bank in the ghetto. This is what underlay

Antonescus demand for a commission of inquiry rather than any outrage at the abuses

suffered by the Jews. Instead of eating the bread of the Romanian country, it is better

that they eat the bread of that region.

Observing at the December 16, 1941, Council

of Ministers meeting that even Nazi Germany was slow to act, Antonescu urged his

lieutenants to hasten Romanias solution to its Jewish question: Put them in the

catacombs, put them in the Black Sea. I dont want to hear anything. It does not matter

if 100 or 1,000 die,

[

for all I care

]

they can all die.

This order resulted in the

deportation of the surviving Jews of Odessa to Berezovka and Golta.

One of the documents most revealing of Ion Antonescus anti-Semitic convictions is

the letter he sent on October 29, 1942, to Liberal Party leader C.I.C. Br\tianu shortly

after canceling his decision to deport the Jews from southern Transylvania, Moldavia,

and Walachia to occupied Poland. The letter is especially noteworthy because it does not

actually deal directly with the Jewish question; nonetheless it conveys powerful

xenophobic undercurrents in its frequent anti-Semitic discursions. Similar to pre-fascist

Romanian anti-Semites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as Legionnaire

and Nazi theoreticians, Antonescu was obsessed with the interference of foreign powers

in the defense of minorities in Romania and boasted about having put an end to it: The

Romanian people are no longer subject to the servitude imposed by the Congress of

Berlin in 1878, by the amendment of Article 7 of the Constitution

[

granting Jews

citizenship

]

, nor the

[

humiliation

]

imposed after the last war as concerns the minori-

ties.

In particular, Antonescu felt that as a result of Article 7, the country has been

Judaized, the Romanian economy compromised, just like our countrys purity.

Like Legionnaire ideologues, Antonescu believed the general corruption of Roma-

nian political life stemmed from Judaic and Masonic influences.

He cast himself as

the savior of the Romanian nation after the proclamation of the National Legionary

State.

Antonescu accused Iliu Maniu, leader of the National Peasant Party, and other

political adversaries of being supported by Jewish newspapers.

He accused his pred-

ecessors of having been brought to power by the occult, Masonic, and Judaic lobby.

Antonescu faulted Br\tianu, leader of the Liberal Party, for allegedly wavering in his

nationalism: You are a nationalist at least it would seem so and yet you side with

the Jews and you protest, like Mr. Maniu, against the Romanianization measures I have

just introduced.

In Antonescus view, Germany had always been Romanias ally, while

the Jew from London, and the British, the Americans, and the Jews who had dictated

their terms for peace after the previous war, were Romanias outside enemies.

Its

internal enemies were the communists...

jidani

, Hungarians, and Saxons, who waited

21. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Serviciul de Stat de Arhiv\ al Republicii Moldova

(henceforth: USHMM/SSARM), RG 54.001M, roll 3, fond CBBT, Bir. 3.

22. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, roll 31, fond 40010, vol. 1.

23.

23 August 1944. Documente

(Bucharest: Editura ªtiin]ificã ºi Enciclopedicã, 1984), vol. 1, p. 429.

24.

Ibid.

, p. 437.

25.

Ibid.

, p. 433.

26.

Ibid.

, p. 436.

27.

Ibid.

, p. 422.

28.

Ibid.

, p. 424.

29.

Ibid.

, p. 442.

30.

Ibid.

, pp. 426, 438.

247

FINAL REPORT

for the first signs of anarchy to ignite trouble... to strike the final blow to our

nation.

Ion Antonescus anti-Semitism had an obsessive quality. For example, on February 3,

1942, in a meeting of the Council of Ministers, he explained to members of the Roma-

nian government that the reason a Romanian peasant allowed a large quantity of nuts to

rot was that he did not know how to peal them. According to Antonescu, the peasant

lacked this knowledge because this operation was done previously by the Kike.

[

The

peasants

]

were giving away the nuts 5-6 years in advance and... no longer knew what the

Kikes were doing with them. This is the stage our nation is in; here is where the Kikes

(

jidãnimea

) have brought it.

During two meetings of the Council of Ministers on

April 22, 1944, and on May 6, 1944 Ion Antonescu enounced the cliché of the kikes

with glasses who are spying for the enemy.

For him, democracy itself was a pejorative

term: I fight to win the war, but it might be that it will be won by the democracies. And

we know what democracy means: it means judeocracy.

The

Conduc\tor

s attitude toward the Jews alternated between violent hatred and

moments of feigned patriarchal generosity. During fall 1941, for example, Antonescu

claimed before the Council of Ministers that he was fighting to cleanse Bessarabia and

Bukovina of

jidani

and Slavs.

But on September 8, 1941, Antonescu promised Wilhelm

Filderman, head of the Federation of Jewish Communities (

Federaþia Uniunilor de

Comunitãþi Evreieºti

FUCE), that he would rescind the order forcing Jews in Romania

to wear the Star of David, allow Jews to emigrate to Spain or Portugal, and not deport

the Jews of Moldavia and Walachia.

The next day Antonescu also asked the government

to differentiate between useful and useless Jews, presumably to halt the persecution

of at least some.

And yet, one month later in response to Fildermans appeal for

clemency toward the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina, Antonescu issued a violent reply

accusing the Jews in those two regions of having been the enemies of the Romanian

people and justifying their deportation to Transnistria.

Published in the press, Antonescus

reply provided ammunition for a savage anti-Semitic campaign, which cited his so-called

arguments about Jewish acts of barbarism in 1940 and 1941. Relevant in this respect

is the following excerpt from a reply from the

Conduc\tor

to Filderman, who had begged

Antonescu to show the Jews mercy: In response to the generous reception and treat-

ment granted your Jews among us, the leader wrote, they have become Soviet commis-

sars, who urged the Soviet troops in the Odessa region into senseless resistance for the

sole purpose of making us suffer losses.

On December 3, 1941, Dr. Nicolae Lupu, a National Peasant Party leader who was

sympathetic to the Jews, sent Antonescu three memoranda concerning, respectively, the

31.

Ibid.

, p. 444.

32. Marcel-Dumitru Ciuc\, Aurelian Teodorescu [i Bogdan-Florin Popovici (eds.),

Stenogramele

ªedinþelor Consiliului de Miniºtri. Guvernarea Ion Antonescu

(Bucharest: Arhivele Na]ionale ale

Rom^niei, 1998), vol. 6, p. 19.

33. Benjamin,

op. cit.

, vol. 2, pp. 551, 557.

34.

Ibid.

, p. 511.

35. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, fond 40010, vol. 77.

36. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 130-132

37. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, fond 40010, vol. 1.

38. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 258-262, 378-381.

39. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 184, plate VII; Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, p. 286.

248

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

judicial inquiry on Filderman, the repatriation of the Dorohoi deportees, and the repa-

triation of the deportees from Bessarabia and Bukovina. Antonescu refused to intervene

on behalf of Filderman, claiming that he could not stop the course of justice. But he

promised to issue instructions to repatriate the deportees from Bessarabia and Bukovina,

provided that the Federation of Jewish Communities guarantee that the peasants would

not kill them.

Ion Antonescu was well aware of the mass murders committed by the SS in Transnistria.

According to a report from the Supreme General Staff of the Romanian Army to

Antonescu in March 1942, German policemen subjected the Jewish population of the

county of Berezovka to mass executions:

I. 1) In the county of Berezovka (Transnistria), German policemen executed 4,067

[

sic

]

Jews

who had been interned in that countys camps; specifically: 1,725 Jews on March 10;

1,742 Jews on April 20; 550 Jews on April 22; 30 Jews on April 24. 2) Following the

executions, the German police burned the corpses, and donated the clothes to the German

population without having disinfected them, which caused cases of typhoid in one particu-

lar town.

II. The Supreme General Staff wishes to find out if the German policemen can conduct such

undertakings under Romanian administration.

Marshal Antonescu wrote in response, it is not the responsibility of the General

Staff of the Army to worry about such things.

Ion Antonescu was also directly responsible for or complicit in even the pettiest

decisions on the persecution of the Jews. It was he who signed the April 1942 order (462/

CBBT), to deport the remaining 425 Jews of Bessarabia to Transnistria.

It was his

decision to carry out the second deportation of Jews from Bukovina, formally enacted on

May 28, 1942.

On August 31, 1942, Antonescu reviewed some late-1941 statistics

indicating the presence of 375,422 Jews in Romania 2.2 percent of the population; on

his copy he wrote, a very large number. Where the text reported a remaining 6,900 Jews

(3.4 percent of the 1930 number) in Bessarabia, Antonescu wrote: Impossible! My

order was to have all the Jews deported. When he saw the figure of 60,708 Jews in

Bukovina at the time (1941), Antonescu noted: Impossible. Please verify. My order

stated that only 10,000 Jews should remain in Bukovina. Please check. This is fantastic!

Judaized cities, simply, purely Judaized.

(The figures for Cern\u]i, Dorohoi, Boto[ani,

Iaºi, and Bac\u, had indeed risen by anywhere from 26 percent to 58 percent, but this

was because of Antonescus decision to move the Jews from rural areas to the towns.)

Antonescu resolved to publicize this information to show Romania to what extent its

economic life has been compromised, threatened... owing to felonious Judaic and Ma-

sonic politicking. The

Conduc\tor

swore, If my legacy to the heirs of this regime

reflects the same situation, I will have made this regime an accomplice to a crime, and

40.

Ibid.

, p. 425.

41.

Ibid.

, vol. 10, p. 193.

42.

Ibid.

, p. 193

43.

Ibid.

, roll 25, fond 20725, vol. 10.

44.

Ibid.

, roll 34, fond 40010, vol. 75.

45.

Ibid.

, vol. 10, pp. 214-215.

249

FINAL REPORT

promised that in order to purify the nation... I will flatten all those who

[

attempt

]

prevent me from carrying out the wish of the absolute majority.

On October 12, 1942, Antonescu reassured

Centrala Evreilor

(Jewish Center) of his

openness to moderation: The better the Jews behave, the better they will be treated.

He was even big enough to acknowledge the good Jews who had paid dearly for the

mistakes of some of their own,

[

and that those

]

bastards

[

were

]

comparable only to some

of our own bastards. Fully aware of the corruption of the Romanian bureaucracy in

charge of the Jewish question, Antonescu even promised that if Jews helped him to

identify Romanians who had blackmailed them, they can rest assured, I will not spare

them. But, he warned, neither would he spare the Jews who were guilty.

During that

same autumn in 1942, Ion Antonescu made the crucial decision to postpone the imple-

mentation of the Romanian-German plan to deport all the Jews from the

Regat

and

southern Transylvania to Belzec. This planned deportation was never carried out, and

consequently, at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived the war.

Nonetheless, Ion Antonescus vacillations concerning the Jews continued during

1943. On one hand, he still declared that he tolerated the Jews, who might deserve partial

protection by the Romanian state; on the other, he demanded that his subordinates

display stern behavior toward the Jews. In a letter written on February 6 to his personal

architect, Herman Clejan, Antonescu stated that the Jews displayed only hostility and

bad faith toward the Romanian state, which was only defending and continuing to

defend itself against the Jews perfidy.

Antonescu nevertheless decided that Jews who

had settled in Romania before 1914 and who had participated sincerely... in the interests

of the Romanian state should enjoy the opportunities that existed there, though based

on the criteria of proportionality.

Antonescu also promised to protect Jews who had

served the country on the battlefield or in other areas of public life.

However,

according to Antonescu, Jews who had come to Romania after 1914 (those from

Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and beyond the Dniester) were corrupt and had em-

ployed criminal methods, such as embezzling from the state treasury, to acquire wealth;

he asserted that they were a subversive and negative influence on Romanian society.

Thus, these Jews were to be struck without pity and kicked out of the country. They do

not have the right to seek humanitarian sympathy because humanitarianism would mean

weakness

[

on our part

]

. After having repaid with hostility and crimes the limitless

tolerance they have enjoyed in Romania, where their prosperity defied even their own

dreams, these Jews no longer have any right to human understanding. They

[

should

]

receive only their just deserts for their misdeeds... All those who support them, will

suffer the same fate.

But on April 30, 1943, Filderman argued again on behalf of Jews in Romania,

contrasting their situation to the tolerance enjoyed by those in Finland. This seems to

have made an impression on Antonescu, who told General Vasiliu: If that is the case

in Finland, lets leave

[

the Jews of the

Regat

]

alone...

Six months later, on October 30,

46.

Ibid.

, p. 215.

47.

Ibid.

, p. 215.

48.

Ibid.

, vol. 3, p. 522.

49.

Ibid.

, p. 522

50.

Ibid.

, p. 523.

51.

Ibid.

, p. 523

52.

Ibid.

, vol. 4, p. 544.

250

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Ion Antonescu declared that he was happy with the results obtained in Romanianizing

(i.e., Aryanizing) trade in Moldavia: All trade in Moldavia, Dorohoi, right up to

Foc[ani must be Romanianized in a civilized fashion.

Documents originating from the military office of Ion Antonescu show that in 1943,

high-ranking members of his administration frequently informed him about the fate of

Jewish and Roma deportees in Transnistria. For example, a May 20 report emphasized

the terrible conditions of the Jews interned in Mostovoi (dirty, without clothes, very

thin) and the fact that the Roma from Berezovka kept their dead in their houses in order

to receive their food allowance.

Several more such reports moved Antonescu to decide on

June 3, 1943, to decrease the number of inmates in the Bersad ghetto (from 8,061 internees),

to reorganize the Vapniarka concentration camp, to relocate the Roma outside the vil-

lages where they could cultivate land, and to improve the general sanitary conditions in

the camps and ghettos.

Ion Antonescu was also directly responsible for both the death and the survival of the

Romanian Jews who lived in occupied Europe under German jurisdiction. On August 8,

1942, in Bucharest, Steltzer, the German Legation counselor, informed Gheorghe

Davidescu of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Ion Antonescu had agreed

with Ambassador Killinger that Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry in Germany and

the occupied territories should be treated in the same fashion as German Jews.

early as November 1941, Killinger told the

Auswärtiges Amt

(Foreign Office), that

Antonescu had approved the intention of the

Reich

to deport Romanian Jews under

German jurisdiction to eastern ghettos together with German Jews; the Romanian

government had stated no interest in bringing Romanian Jews back to Romania.

Therefore, on August 21, 1942, Gheorghe Davidescu telegrammed (no. 5120) the Roma-

nian Legation in Berlin to inform them that earlier orders concerning the protection of

Romanian Jews abroad were being revoked as a consequence of the agreement between

Marshal Antonescu and Ambassador Killinger. Romanian diplomats were henceforth

forbidden to protest German measures against Romanian citizens of Jewish ancestry, and

their only concern was to be the recovery of Jewish assets.

The conversation between

Antonescu and Killinger in which Antonescu agreed to hand over Romanian Jews living

in Nazi-occupied Europe to the Germans, had actually taken place sometime before

July 23, 1942, when a ciphered telegram from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

first mentioned it; it was not, however, immediately translated into policy.

As a direct result of this decision, 1,600 Romanian Jews from Germany and Austria,

3,000 from France, and an unknown number from Poland, Bohemia-Moravia, and Holland

perished in German concentration camps. During spring 1943, the Romanian govern-

ment reversed its decision, and over roughly 4,000 Romanian Jews living in France

survived the war. Ion Antonescu even approved the repatriation of some of these Jews; in

53.

Ibid.

, p. 667.

54. USHMM/RSA, RG 25.002M, fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Military Cabinet,

folder 205.

55.

Ibid.

56. Ion Calafeteanu, Regimul cetãþenilor români de origine evreiascã aflaþi în strãinãtate în anii

dictaturii antonesciene,

Anale de istorie

, 5 (1986), p. 132.

57.

Ibid.

58. Calafeteanu,

op. cit.

, p. 312; USHMM/RFMA, RG 25.006M, roll 17, fond Germany, vol. 32.

59. USHMM/RFMA, RG 25.006M, roll 17, fond Germany, vol. 32.

251

FINAL REPORT

fact, although the repatriated Jews were slated for deportation to Transnistria, Ion Antonescu

consented to their staying in Romania.

He formally committed to this on July 20, 1943.

In a speech to Romanian soldiers on January 1, 1944, Ion Antonescu struck a new

tone, basically denying the anti-Semitic atrocities of his regime:

[

]

our deeds in the occupied lands and wherever you have been, have been marked by

humanity... Man to us is a human being regardless of the nation he belongs to and the evil that

he may have caused. All those whom we have encountered on our journey, we have helped and

protected as no one else would. The children have been cared for like our own; the old people

as if they were our own... We have deported no one, and you have never driven the dagger into

the chest of anyone. In our jails there are no innocent people. The religious beliefs of all and

everyones political creeds have been respected. We have not uprooted their communities... or

families for our own political or national interests.

But in a private letter to Clejan, dated February 4, 1944, Antonescu demonstrated again

how virulent his anti-Semitic tendencies still were. He justified anew the deportations,

regretting only that they had not removed all Jews from the regions that had been cleansed.

He acknowledged that he had refused to repatriate the surviving Jews of Transnistria the

enemies of the Romanian nation but at the same time, he would not tolerate their abuse:

Mr. Clejan, concerning your letter about the fate of the Jews in Transnistria and those of

the Bug, and the compulsory labor exemption fees, allow me to broach anew some issues that

relate to the Jewish question in Romania in terms of reality, the results of war, and the events

that preceded it.

As I have told you in person, I was forced to

[

plan the deportation of

]

the Jews from

Bessarabia and Bukovina because of their terrible behavior during the Russian occupation; the

population was so angry at them, that the most horrible pogroms would have otherwise

occurred. Even though I decided to evacuate all the Jews... various intercessions and initiatives

prevented it. I regret today that I did not do it because... the largest number of this countrys

enemies is recruited among the Jews who remained there. There is no terrorist or communist

organization that does not have Jews in it, and often they are made up exclusively of Jews...

Under these circumstances, it is morally and politically inconceivable... to return the Jews

from Transnistria... But, I will give the order to allow them to stay away from the front line

and to settle them in southern Transnistria where the Jewish community, with help from

abroad, can

[

help

]

them leave the country. Among those

[

already

]

repatriated were those who

had been mistakenly deported, 7,000 Jews from Dorohoi, and 4,500 orphaned children... As

a man with a European outlook, I have never tolerated... crimes against persons

[

and

]

will

continue to take measures

[

so that they

]

will not happen to the Jews.

On April 22, 1944, during a Council of Ministers session, Antonescu reconsidered

repatriation from Transnistria if, perhaps, returnees were restricted to specific towns or

confined to ghettos; ultimately, however, he rejected any full repatriation to Romania:

It would be a solution to transfer them... to certain towns, if they return in large numbers.

To settle them, as in Buhu[i, in one or two towns, to resettle all the Romanians and allow the

60.

Ibid.

61. USHMM/RFMA, RG 25.006M, roll 16, fond Germany, vol. 30.

62. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 4, p. 712.

63. Carp,

op. cit.

, vol. 3, pp. 458459; Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 8, p. 19; OSS Report no. 19533, May 22,

1944, National Archives and Records Administration (henceforth: NARA).

252

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Jews to live together. All we would have to do is to send them supplies... They will work for

each other, sew, do carpentry, etc. That is one solution.

Another solution is to bring them together into ghettos inside each city. We tell them:

This is where you will live; do not leave. We will bring you food, do what you wish; we will

not kill you, we will not harm you.

The third solution is to bring them back to Romania. This is the most dangerous one... for

the Romanian people. I cannot order their return... people would stone me to death.

Questioned after the war, Ion Antonescu confessed that the original 1942 decision to

deport the Roma had also been his. He sought to justify himself by citing popular

demand for protection from armed robbers who entered peoples homes at night: After

much investigation, we concluded that these were armed Roma, many with military

weapons, organizing these attacks. All the Roma were moved out. Since Mr. Alexianu

needed manpower in Transnistria, I said: Lets move them to Transnistria; that is my

decision.

At his trial, Ion Antonescu accepted responsibility for mistakes and distortions of his

orders by subordinates, though not for the violent crimes and plundering some had

perpetrated.

While acknowledging that bloody repression

had occurred under the

aegis of Romania during the war, Ion Antonescu falsely declared that there had been no

massacres under his authority: I passed many repressive laws,

[

but

]

we did not execute

a single Jew... I gave orders for reprisals, not for perpetrating massacres.

At the beginning of the war, Antonescu a harsh and often violent anti-Semite

believed that he would be able to resolve once and for all the Jewish question and that

of the other minorities (Ukrainians, in particular). But a comparison to Hitler, whom he

admired and who admired him, shows him in a different light. Until September 1941,

Antonescu received Filderman, the leader of the Jewish community, which would have

been inconceivable in Germany; Hitler would have never entertained a direct or indirect

dialogue with the leader of the German Jewish community. At the end of 1942 and in

close connection with the reversals on the Eastern front, Antonescu tolerated encour-

aged, even contacts with the Allies through neutral countries (in Lisbon, Stockholm,

Ankara, and Cairo), which suggests that he had come to a more realistic assessment of

the overall chances of winning the war. After the end of 1942, he imagined, like many

other Romanian politicians, that the Romanian Jews could be used as bargaining chips to

improve Romanias image in the United States and England.

But this does not mean that the decision not to deport the Jews from southern

Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia to Nazi camps in occupied Poland was strictly

opportunistic. In all likelihood, various appeals including those from Archbishop

B\lan, the Romanian royal family, and the diplomatic corps played a significant role.

Nonetheless, after Stalingrad, Antonescu did grow more concerned about Romanias

image abroad. Reports from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which asserted

that Romanian Jews under Nazi occupation were treated worse than Hungarian Jews,

64. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 10, p. 422.

65.

Procesul marii trãdãri na]ionale

, p. 108.

66. Ancel,

op. cit.

, vol. 8, p. 486

67.

Procesul marii trãdãri na]ionale

, p. 51.

68.

Ibid.

, p. 54

253

FINAL REPORT

annoyed Antonescu. His position of relative equality with Hitler had commanded the

respect of Nazi dignitaries and the German Embassy. At a certain point even Himmler

having lost all hope of collaboration in the destruction of Romanias Jews gave up and

intended in 1943 to order the withdrawal of his killer-bureaucrats (e.g., Gustav Richter)

from Romania.

Even though he shared many ideas with the Legionnaires, Ion Antonescu was not an

adventurer in the economic arena. Politically, he placed himself between Goga and

Codreanu: he nurtured an obsession for a Romania purged of the minorities that repre-

sented a danger to the state, especially in the territories reattached to Romania after

the First World War. Antonescus anti-Semitism was economic, political, social, and

sometimes religious, but it did not share the mystical aspects of Legionary anti-Semitism.

His hatred was not that of a hoodlum armed with a truncheon, but that of a bureaucrat

pretending to resolve a problem in a legal and systematic manner. The fate of the Jews

might have been different had the Legionary government lasted longer, if for no other

reason than that the Legionnaires would have certainly been more closely aligned with

Germany.

Ion Antonescu was responsible not only for the devastation of Romanian Jews and

Roma, but also for many of the tragic losses endured by the Romanian nation during

World War II. As an Axis state and committed ally of Nazi Germany, Romania closely

coordinated military matters with the Germans. For example, in June 1941 Hitler ap-

pointed General Eugen von Schobert of the German Eleventh Army to command the

southern flank on the Eastern front. However, although Schobert was in command,

Hitler recognized Antonescus importance and mandated that the

Conduc\tor

co-sign all

of Schoberts orders.

While Antonescus war in the East has frequently been construed merely as an

attempt to regain Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina or as leverage to persuade Hitler to

return Northern Transylvania to Romania, Antonescu had higher aspirations in which

not feeling at all inferior to Hitler and Mussolini he imagined a Dacian empire from the

Balkans to the Dnieper.

[

Moreover

]

, his collaboration with the military plans of the Axis

was not limited to the offensive against the Soviet Union.

Ion Antonescu declared war

on the United States on December 16, 1941. He was also at war with Great Britain,

Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Furthermore, he allowed

German divisions to pass through Romania in their advance to attack Greece, and he

permitted Germany to use Romanian territory as a launching pad for its attacks against

Yugoslavia.

As Antonescu himself declared in writing, he was at war with the Jews. By imple-

menting the systematic deportation of the Jewish population from within Romania and

occupied Ukraine, Ion Antonescu and his lieutenants became the architects of untold

69. For Romanian-German headquarters reports, see: Arhivele Naþionale Istorice Centrale, fond

Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Ion Antonescu Military Cabinet, file no. 126/1941, f. 3-5;

319/194, f. 28-29; 42-44; Andreas Hillgruber,

Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler Vertrauliche

Aufzeichmmgen über die Unterredunger mit Vertreten des Auslandes. 1939-1941

(Deutscher

Taschenhuchverlag, 1969), pp. 276-291;

Documents on German Foreign Policy. 1918-1945

, series

D, vol. 7, February 1941, June 1941, document no. 644.

70. Andrei Pippidi,

Despre statui ºi morminte

(Ia[i: Polirom, 2000), p. 240.

71.

Ibid.

254

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

suffering for hundreds of thousands of innocent victims, and the death of more than a

quarter of a million of them. Thus, in addition to waging war against a traditional,

military enemy, from 1941 to 1944 Antonescu also targeted civilians with the persecu-

tion ranging from plunder to murder.

Ion Antonescu and his accomplices do not bear

sole responsibility for this tragedy, however; in addition to the Nazi regime, part of the

Romanian political class is

[

also

]

responsible for his rise to power, due to its weakness

or selfishness.

In extreme nationalist circles today, an attempt is underway to restore Antonescu to

a place of honor in Romanian history as a great patriot. But whether he loved his country

is irrelevant: Antonescu was a war criminal in the purest definition of the phrase. His

leadership involved the Romanian government in crimes against humanity unrivaled in

Romanias sometimes glorious, sometimes cruel history; perhaps more ironically, this

leaders war against a defenseless and innocent civilian population was only part of the

broader folly of involving the country in a conflict that promised only illusory gains, but

actually wrought very definite, catastrophic consequences. A modern Romanian patriot-

ism must not only reject the legacy of five decades of communist misrule, but years of

fascist tyranny, too, if it is to be able to recount and take honest pride in Romanias

history.

72.

Ibid.

, pp. 240-241.

73.

Ibid.

The Holocaust in Northern Transylvania

Toward the Second Vienna Award

The Nazis assumption of power in Germany in January 1933 marked a watershed in

modern history.

Within a relatively short time after the establishment of the totalitarian

regime, the Nazis initiated a series of radical changes in the domestic and foreign policies

of Germany. Domestically, they destroyed the democratic institutions of the Weimar

Republic and adopted a series of socioeconomic measures calculated to establish a Third

Reich

that was to last a thousand years. Toward this end, they resolved to bring about the

purification of Germany by expelling all Jews living in their country a drive that

eventually culminated in the physical destruction of European Jewry during the Second

World War.

An important foreign policy objective of the Nazi regime was to replace the world

order established after World War I by the Allies, under the provisions of the Treaty of

Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations, with a New Order reflecting the

principles of National Socialism. In pursuit of this objective the Nazis violated Germanys

obligations under the various treaties ending the First World War. Among other things,

they launched a massive rearmament program and re-militarized the Rhineland aggres-

sive moves that were indirectly encouraged by the failure of the Western democracies and

the League of Nations to effectively oppose them, as they were more afraid of the

long-range danger of Bolshevism than of the immediate threat posed by the Third

Reich

In fact, their appeasement merely encouraged the Nazis to pursue their aggressive

revisionist policies with greater intensity.

In their drive for supremacy in Europe, the Nazis first aimed to gain a dominant role

in East Central Europe. Within a few years they gradually tied the socioeconomic,

political, and military interests of the countries of the region to those of the Third

Reich

They largely achieved this objective by financially and politically supporting these

countries anti-Semitic press organs and right radical parties and movements.

Post World War I Hungary was a natural ally for the Third

Reich

. Following the

collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Hungarian Kingdom became one

of the major losers of the war. After first relying unsuccessfully on the Western democ-

racies and the League of Nations to rectify what it termed the injustices of Trianon, in

the mid-thirties Hungary decided to pursue its revisionist objectives in tandem with

the Third

Reich

. Although they were not always in harmony, both Hungary and Nazi

Germany aimed to undo the European world order created after World War I. Their

first target was the Little Entente, whose members Czechoslovakia, Romania, and

Yugoslavia had been the major beneficiaries of the disintegration of Greater Hungary.

256

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

A week before the German annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938, the Hungarian

government launched a rearmament program that was intertwined with the adoption of

the first major anti-Jewish law. The twin issues of revisionism and the Jewish question

came to dominate Hungarys domestic and foreign policies. The alignment of Hungary

with the

Reich

paid its first dividend shortly after the Western democracies surrendered

in Munich (September 29, 1938) to the Nazis demands for solving the crisis over the

Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. Under the terms of the so-called First Vienna Award of

November 2, 1938, brokered by Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, the

foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Hungary acquired from Czechoslovakia the

Upper Province (Felvidék) a strip of land in Southern Slovakia and western

Carpatho-Ruthenia. Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939,

Hungary also acquired Carpatho-Ruthenia (

Kárpátalja

Hungarys revisionist ambitions were indirectly enhanced by the German-Soviet

Non-aggression Pact of September 1939, under whose terms the USSR was given a free

hand in several parts of Eastern Europe, including Romania. The USSR refrained from

acting against Romania as long as France, the countrys foremost supporter, was still

considered Europes most formidable military power. But on June 26, 1940, three days

after a defeated France was compelled to sign an armistice agreement, the Soviet

government issued an ultimatum: it demanded that Romania give up Bessarabia and

Northern Bukovina within a few days.

The annexation of these territories had been preceded by an orchestrated Soviet press

campaign against Romania. The campaign caught the attention of Hungarian governmen-

tal officials, who began working out plans for the possible recovery of Transylvania in

synchronization with the expected Soviet occupation of the eastern provinces

of Romania.

The Hungarian state and governmental leaders contacted Hitler early in July 1940 to

press their case concerning Transylvania. Since the

Fuehrer

needed both Hungary and

Romania as allies in the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, the leaders of the two

countries were advised to settle their differences by negotiation.

The Arbitration Award of August 30, 1940

The Hungarian-Romanian negotiations that began on August 16, 1940 in Turnu-Severin,

Romania, yielded no results and, after ten days of futile wrangling, both parties appealed

to the Germans for help. The deadlock was broken shortly after István Csáky and Mihail

Manoilescu, the foreign ministers of Hungary and Romania respectively, were invited to

Vienna for some friendly advice by their Italian and German counterparts. The

arbitration award worked out by Ciano and Ribbentrop and their staffs was signed on

August 30. Under the terms of this agreement usually referred to as the Second Vienna

Award Hungary received an area of 43,591 square kilometers with a population of

approximately 2.5 million. The area included the northern half of Transylvania, encom-

passing Sãlaj, Bistriþa-Nãsãud, Ciuc, and Someº counties, most of Bihor, most of Trei

Scaune and Mureº-Turda counties, and parts of Cluj county.

The territorial concessions

1. The county and district names and boundaries referred to in this study are those of Hungary of

1940-1944.

257

FINAL REPORT

also enabled Hungary to reestablish Maramureº, Satu Mare, and Ugocsa counties within

their pre-World War I boundaries. The annexation of Northern Transylvania was com-

pleted by September 13, and the territory was formally incorporated into Hungary under

a law passed by the Hungarian Parliament on October 2, 1940.

The Jews of Transylvania

The national-ethnic composition of Transylvania varied in the course of the three

decades preceding the partition as reflected in the following table relating to Northern

Transylvania:

Census of 1910

(Hungarian

by mothertongue)

Census of 1930

(Romanian, by nationality)

Census of 1941

(Hungarian)

Magyar
Romanian
German
Yiddish
Ruthene
Slovak
Others

1,125,732

926,268

90,195
16,284
12,807
22,968

Magyar
Romanian
German
Jews
Others

911,550

1,176,433

68,694

138,885

99,585

Magyar
Romanian
German
Yiddish
Ruthene
Slovak
Romany
Others

1,347,012
1,066,353

47,501
45,593
20,609
20,908
24,729

4,586

Total

2,194,254 Total

2,395,147 Total

2,577,291

Source

: C.A. Macartney,

October Fifteenth. A History of Modern Hungary, 1929-1945

(Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press, 1957), vol. 1, p. 423

The census figures used in this table are dubious. Both the Hungarian and the

Romanian census authorities appear to have juggled the figures relating to the ethnic and

national minorities in order to advance their particular national interests with reference

to their respective claims to the region. This was particularly true of the statistical

treatment of the Jewish minority.

Before the partition, the total Jewish population of Transylvania was about 200,000.

Of these, 164,052 lived in the territories ceded to Hungary.

The historical and cultural heritage that tied Transylvanian Jews to Hungary and the

socioeconomic and political realities that bound them to Romania were the source of

many conflicts during the interwar period. It is one of the ironies and tragedies of history

that after the division of Transylvania in 1940 the Jews fared far worse in the part allotted

to Hungary the country with which they maintained so many cultural and emotional

ties than in the one left with Romania the state identified with many anti-Semitic

excesses in the course of its history.

The Jews of Transylvania were victims of the historical milieu in which they lived.

Romanians resented them because of their proclivity to Hungarian culture and by impli-

cation Hungarian revisionism and irredentism. Hungarians, especially Right radicals,

accused them of being renegades in the service of the Left.

258

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The socioeconomic structure of Transylvanian Jewry was similar to that of the Jews

in the neighboring provinces. Many were engaged in business or trade, and their percent-

age in the professions and white-collar fields outside of government was relatively high.

There were, however, only a handful of Jews associated with mining and heavy industry.

While no data on income distribution are available, the many studies on Transylvania

reveal that there was a considerable proportion of Jews who could barely make a living;

many depended for their survival on the generosity of the community. Most of these

impoverished Jews lived in the densely populated Jewish centers of the northwest.

The original reaction of many of the North Transylvanian Jews to the historical

changes in the region was to a large extent determined by their experiences during the

previous three years, when the various Romanian governments instituted a series of

anti-Semitic measures, and the memories they still nurtured about their lives in the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. The illusions cherished by many among these Jews that the

Hungarian annexation of the area would denote a return to the Golden Era soon gave

way to disbelief and despair. The newly established Hungarian authorities lost no time in

implementing the anti-Jewish laws and policies that had already been in effect in Hungary

proper. The Jewish newspapers were suppressed, as were all nondenominational clubs

and associations. The general democratic and moderate press in the region fared no

better: most of the local press organs and periodicals were transformed into mouth-

pieces of the chauvinistic Right.

The discriminatory measures affected the Jews particularly harshly in their economic

and educational pursuits. While those in business and the professions managed to make

ends meet by circumventing the laws or taking advantage of loopholes, civil servants,

with a few exceptions, were dismissed, and students in secondary and higher education

found themselves almost totally excluded from the state educational system.

The heavy hand of the Hungarian military authorities was felt particularly in the four

counties of the Szekely area, which the Hungarians considered sacred. The Jews of the

area were subjected to a review of their citizenship status; as a result many of them

found themselves in custody because of their doubtful citizenship. Particularly hard

hit was the Jewish community of Miercurea-Ciuc, where dozens of families were rounded

up and expelled.

But harsh as these many anti-Jewish measures were they were overshadowed by the

forced labor service system Hungary introduced in 1939. During the first two years of its

operation, the Jewish recruits of military age, though subjected to many discriminatory

measures, fared relatively well. After Hungarys involvement in the war against Yugoslavia

in April 1941, however, the system acquired a punitive character. The Jewish labor

servicemen were compelled to serve in their own civilian clothes: they were supplied

with an insignia-free military cap and instead of arms they were equipped with shovels

and pickaxes. For identification the Jews were required to wear a yellow armband; the

2. For a review of the legislative acts enacted against the Jews, see Randolph L. Braham,

The Politics

of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary

, 2

ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),

pp. 125-130, 151-160 (henceforth: Braham,

Politics

3. For some details, see Tamás Majsai, The Deportation of Jews from Csikszereda and Margit

Slachtas intervention on Their Behalf, in Randolph L. Braham (ed.),

Studies on the Holocaust

in Hungary

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 113-163.

259

FINAL REPORT

converts and the Christians identified as Jews under the racial laws had to wear a white

one. Shortly after Hungary joined the Third

Reich

in the war against the Soviet Union

(June 27, 1941), the labor service system was also used as a means to solve the Jewish

question. Many of the Jews recruited for service were called up on an individual basis

rather than by age group. By this practice the military-governmental authorities paid

special attention to calling up the rich, the prominent professionals, the leading industri-

alists and businessmen, the well-known Zionist and community leaders, and above all

those who had been denounced by the local Christians as objectionable elements.

Many among these Jewish recruits were totally unfit for labor or any other service, and

eventually perished in the Ukraine, Serbia, and elsewhere. No data are available on the

Northern Transylvanian Jewish casualties of the labor service system.

The Jewish community of Northern Transylvania also suffered in the wake of the

campaign the Hungarian authorities conducted against alien Jews in the summer of

1941. Especially hard hit were many of the communities in Maramureº and Satu Mare

counties, where an indeterminate number of Jews were rounded up as aliens. They

were among the 16,000 to 18,000 Jews who were deported from all over Hungary to near

Kamenets-Podolsk, where most of them were murdered in late August 1941.

Despite the many casualties and discriminatory measures, however, the bulk of the

Jews of Northern Transylvania, like those of Hungary as a whole, lived in relative

physical safety, convinced that they would continue to enjoy the protection of the

conservative-aristocratic government. This conviction was shattered almost immediately

after the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944.

The Final Solution

The occupation of Hungary was to a large extent based on German military considera-

tions. Hitler was resolved to prevent Hungary from extricating itself from the Axis

Alliance a goal the Hungarians pursued after the crushing defeat of the Hungarian

Second Army at Voronezh in January 1943 and especially after Italys successful extri-

cation from the alliance in the summer of that year. The occupation itself was preceded

by a meeting between Hitler and Horthy at Schloss Klesheim on March 18 during which

the Hungarian head of state, confronted with a

fait accompli

, not only yielded to the

Fuehrer

s ultimatum but also consented to the delivery of a few hundred thousand

Jewish workers for employment in German industrial and agricultural enterprises. It

was largely this agreement that the Garman and Hungarian officials exploited as a legal

framework for the implementation of the Final Solution in Hungary.

Because of the worsening military situation the Red Army was already approaching

the borders of Romania the Nazis and their Hungarian accomplices decided to imple-

ment the solution of the Jewish question in Hungary at lightning speed. On the

German side, the SS commando that was entrusted with this mission was under the

leadership of SS-

Obersturmbannführer

Adolf Eichmann. Although it was rather small

4. For details on the Hungarian labor service system, see Braham,

Politics

chapter 10.

5. For details on the background and consequences of the Horthy-Hitler meeting at Schloss Klesheim,

see

ibid

., chapter 11.

260

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the commando consisted of only around 100 SS-men it was successful in carrying out

its mission primarily because it had received the wholehearted support of the newly

established Hungarian government.

The government of Döme Sztójay, which Horthy constitutionally appointed on

March 22, 1944, placed the instruments of state power the gendarmerie, police, and

civil service at the disposal of the Nazis. In addition, it issued a series of anti-Jewish

decrees, which were calculated to bring about the isolation, marking, expropriation, and

ghettoization of the Jews prior to their mass deportation. For logistical reasons, the drive

against the Jews was based on a territorial basis determined by the ten gendarmerie

districts into which the country was divided. These districts, in turn, were divided into

six anti-Jewish operational zones. Northern Transylvania encompassed Gendarmerie

Districts IX and X, and constituted Operational Zone II.

The details of the anti-Jewish drive as well as some aspects of the deportation process

were worked out on April 4 at a joint German-Hungarian meeting held in the Ministry

of the Interior under the chairmanship of László Baky, an undersecretary of state in the

Ministry of the Interior. Among the participants was Lt. Col. László Ferenczy, the

gendarmerie officer in charge of the ghettoization and deportation of the Jews.

The draft document relating to the roundup, ghettoization, concentration, and depor-

tation of the Jews the basis of the April 4 discussion was prepared by László Endre,

another undersecretary of state in the Ministry of the Interior. It was issued secretly as

Decree no. 6163/1944.res. on April 7 over the signature of Baky. This document,

addressed to the representatives of the local organs of state power, spelled out the

procedures to be followed in the campaign to bring about the Final Solution of the Jewish

question in Hungary.

Supplementary specific details about the measures to be taken

against the Jews were spelled out in several highly confidential directives, emphasizing

that the Jews destined for deportation were to be rounded up without regard to sex, age

or illness.

The minister of the interior issued directives for the implementation of the

decree three days

before

the top-secret decree was actually sent out. In a secret order, the

minister instructed all the subordinate mayoral, police, and gendarmerie organs to bring

about the registration of the Jews by the appropriate local Jewish institutions.

These lists,

containing all family members, exact addresses, and the mothers name of all those

listed, were to be prepared in four copies, with one copy to be handed over to the local

police authorities, one to the appropriate gendarmerie command, and a third to be

forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior.

To make sure that no Jews would escape the

net, the minister of supply also issued a registration order, allegedly to regulate the

allocation of food for the Jews.

Unaware of the sinister implications of these lists as well as of the wearing of the

Yellow Star of David the two interrelated measures designed to facilitate their isolation

and ghettoization the Jewish masses of Northern Transylvania, like their co-religionists

elsewhere in the country, complied with the measures taken by their local Jewish com-

munal leaders. In contrast to the national leaders of Hungarian Jewry, who were fully

informed, the local community leaders were as much in the dark about the scope of these

6. For the English version of the decree, see

ibid.,

pp. 573-575.

Ibid.

, pp. 575-578.

8. Order no. 6136/1944.VII.res. dated April 4, 1944 (

ibid.

, pp. 578-579).

9. For a sample of a mayoral order addressed to a local Jewish community, see

ibid.

261

FINAL REPORT

measures as the masses they led.

In the smaller Jewish communities, especially in the

villages, it was usually the community secretary or registrar who prepared the lists; in

larger towns, the preparation of the lists was entrusted to young men not yet mobilized

in the military labor service system. They usually acted in pairs, conscientiously can-

vassing the entire community, eager not to leave out a single street or building so as not

to deprive people of their share of provisions.

The Nazis and their Hungarian accomplices set up their headquarters for the anti-Jewish

drive in Munkács (now Mukacevo, Ukraine). At a gathering of the top officials in charge

of the Final Solution on April 7, Endre spelled out the instructions for the implementa-

tion of the anti-Jewish drive in accordance with the provisions of Decree no. 6163/1944.

He stipulated, among other things, that the Jews were to be concentrated in empty

warehouses, abandoned or non-operational factories, brickyards, Jewish community es-

tablishments, Jewish schools and offices, and synagogues.

The Military Operational Zones

Since the anti-Jewish measures could not be camouflaged and the mass evacuation of the

Jews was bound to create dislocations in the economic life of the affected communities,

the Nazis and their Hungarian accomplices felt compelled to provide a military rationale

for the operations. They assumed, it turned out correctly, that the local population,

including some of the Jews, would understand the necessity for the removal of the Jews

from the approaching frontlines in order to protect Axis interests from the machinations

of Judeo-Bolsheviks. On April 12, the Council of Ministers,

ex post facto

declared

Carpatho-Ruthenia and Northern Transylvania the first two areas slated for deje-

wification to have become military operational zones as of April 1.

The government

appointed Béla Ricsóy-Uhlarik to serve as Government Commissioner for the military

operational zone in Northern Transylvania.

The Ghettoization and Concentration Master Plan

The master plan worked out by the German and Hungarian anti-Jewish experts called for the

ghettoization and concentration of the Jews to be effected in a number of distinct phases:
Jews in the rural communities and the smaller towns were to be rounded up and

temporarily transferred to synagogues and/or community buildings.

Following the first round of investigation in pursuit of valuables at these local

ghettos, the Jews rounded up in the rural communities and smaller towns were to be

transferred to the ghettos of the larger cities in their vicinity, usually the county seat.

In the larger towns and cities Jews were to be rounded up and transferred to a

specially designated area that would serve as a ghetto totally isolated from the other

parts of the city. In some cities, the ghetto was to be established in the Jewish

10.

Ibid.

, chapter 29.

11. Decree no. 1.440/1944. M.E.

262

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

quarter; in others, in abandoned or non-functional factories, warehouses, brick-

yards, or under the open sky.

Jews were to be concentrated in centers with adequate rail facilities to make possible

swift entrainment and deportation.

During each phase, the Jews were to be subjected to special searches by teams

composed of gendarmerie and police officials, assisted by local

Nyilas

and other accom-

plices, to compel them to surrender their valuables. The plans for the implementation of

the ghettoization and deportation operations called for the launching of six territorially

defined mopping-up operations. For this purpose, the country was divided into six

operational zones, with each zone encompassing one or two gendarmerie districts.

Northern Transylvania was identified as Zone II, encompassing Gendarmerie District IX,

headquartered in Cluj, and Gendarmerie District X, headquartered in Târgu-Mureº.

The order of priority for the deportation of the Jews was established with an eye on

a series of military, political, and psychological factors. Time was of the essence because

of the fast approach of the Red Army. Politically it was more expedient to start in the

eastern and northeastern parts of Hungary because the central and local Hungarian

authorities and the local population had less regard for the Galician, Eastern, al-

ien, and Yiddish-oriented masses than for the assimilated Jews. Their round-up for

labor in Germany was accepted in many Hungarian rightist circles as doubly wel-

come: Hungary would get rid of its alien elements and would at the same time make

a contribution to the joint war effort, thereby hastening the termination of the German

occupation and the reestablishment of full sovereignty.

The Ghettoization Decree

Like the decision identifying Carpatho-Ruthenia and Northern Transylvania as military

operational zones, the decree stipulating the establishment of ghettos was adopted on an

ex post facto

basis. The government decree, issued on April 26, went into effect on

April 28.

Andor Jaross, the Minister of the Interior, outlined the rationale for, and the

alleged objectives of, the decree at the Council of Ministers meeting of April 26. He

claimed that in view of their better economic status the Jews living in the cities had

proportionally much better housing than non-Jews and therefore it was possible to

create a healthier situation by rearranging the whole housing situation. Jews were to be

restricted to smaller apartments and several families could be ordered to move in to-

gether. National security, he further argued, required that Jews be removed from the

villages and the smaller towns into larger cities, where the chief local officials the

mayors or the police chiefs would set aside a special section or district for them.

The

12. For details on the gendarmerie districts, see Braham,

Politics

chapter 13.

13. Decree no. 1.610/1944. M.E. The objective of the decree, which was issued ten days

after

the Jews

of Carpatho-Ruthenia were being rounded up, was camouflaged under the title

Concerning the

Regulation of Certain Questions Relating to the Jews Apartments and Living Places

14. For the minutes of the Council of Ministers meeting on this issue, see Ilona Benoschofsky and Elek

Karsai (eds.),

Vádirat a nácizmus ellen

(

Indictment of Nazism

) (Budapest: A Magyar Izraeliták

Országos Képviselete, 1958-1967),

vol. 1, p. 241-244.

263

FINAL REPORT

crucial provisions of the decree relating to the concentration of the Jews were included

in Articles 8 and 9. The former provided that Jews could no longer live in communities

with a population of under 10,000, while the latter stipulated that the mayors of the larger

towns and cities could determine the sections, streets, and buildings in which Jews were

to be permitted to live. This legal euphemism in fact empowered the local authorities to

establish ghettos. The location of, and the conditions within the ghettos consequently

depended on the attitudes of the mayors and their aides.

The Ghettoization Conferences

The details relating to the ghettoization of the Jews in Northern Transylvania were

discussed and finalized at two conferences chaired by Endre. These were attended by the

top Hungarian officials in charge of the Final Solution and representatives of the various

counties and municipalities, including the county prefects and/or deputy prefects, may-

ors, and the police and gendarmerie commanders of the affected counties. The first

conference was held in Satu Mare on April 6, 1944, and was devoted to the dejewification

operations in the counties of Gendarmerie District IX, namely Bistriþa-Nãsãud, Bihor,

Cluj, Satu Mare, Sãlaj, and Someº. The second was held two days later in Târgu-Mureº,

and was devoted to the concentration of the Jews in the so-called Szekely Land, the

counties of Gendarmerie District X: Ciuc, Trei Scaune, Mureº-Turda, and Odorheiu.

Endre reviewed the procedures to be followed in the concentration of the Jews as

detailed in Decree no. 6163/1944, and Lajos Meggyesi, one of Endres closest associ-

ates, provided additional refinements relating to the confiscation of their wealth. The

latter was particularly anxious to secure the Jews money, gold, silver, jewelry, typewrit-

ers, cameras, watches, rugs, furs, paintings, and other valuables. Lt. Col. László Ferenczy

revealed the preliminary steps already taken toward the ghettoization of the Jews, iden-

tifying the cities of Dej, Cluj, Baia Mare, Gherla, Oradea, Satu Mare, and ªimleul

Silvaniei as the planned major concentration centers in Gendarmerie District IX. In the

course of the anti-Jewish operations, Bistriþa was added as an additional center, while

Gherla was used only as a temporary assembly point, with those assembled there being

transferred to the ghetto of Cluj.

In Gendarmerie District X, the cities of Reghin, Sfântul Gheorghe, and Târgu-Mureº

were selected as the major concentration centers. The last major item on the conferees

agenda for this district meeting was the composition of the various ghettoization commis-

sions, i.e., of the officers and officials in charge of the anti-Jewish operations, and the

specification of the geographic areas from which the Jews would be transferred to the

major ghetto centers. Since most of these ghettos were in the county seats, they were

designated as the assembly and entrainment centers for the Jews in the various counties.

264

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Ghettoization Drive

In accordance with the decree and the oral instructions communicated at the two confer-

ences, the chief executive for all the measures relating to the ghettoization of the Jews

was the principal administrator of the locality or area. Under Hungarian law then in

effect, this meant the mayor for cities, towns, and municipalities, and the deputy prefect

of the county for rural areas. The organs of the police and gendarmerie as well as the

auxiliary civil service organs of the cities, including the public notary and health units,

were to be directly involved in the roundup and transfer of the Jews into ghettos.

The mayors, acting in cooperation with the subordinated agency heads, were empow-

ered not only to direct and supervise the ghettoization operations but also to determine

the location of the ghettos and to screen the Jews applying for exemption. They were also

responsible for seeing to the maintenance of essential services in the ghettos.

A few days before the scheduled May 3 start of the ghettoization drive in North-

ern Transylvania, the special commissions for the various cities and towns held

meetings to determine the location of the ghettos and settle the logistics relating to

the roundup of the Jews. The commissions were normally composed of the mayors,

deputy prefects, and heads of the local gendarmerie and police units. While nearly

the same procedure was followed almost everywhere, the severity with which the

ghettoization was carried out and the location of and the conditions within the ghetto

depended upon the attitude of the particular mayors and their subordinates. Thus in

cities such as Oradea and Satu Mare, the ghettos were set up in the poorer, mostly

Jewish-inhabited sections; in others, such as Bistriþa, Cluj, Reghin, ªimleul Silvaniei,

and Târgu-Mureº, the ghettos were set up in brickyards. The ghetto of Dej was

situated in the Bungur, a forest, where some of the Jews were put up in makeshift

barracks and the others under the open sky.

Late on May 2, on the eve of the ghettoization, the mayors issued special instructions

to the Jews and had them posted in all areas under their jurisdiction. The text followed

the directives of Decree no. 6163/1944, though it varied in nuances from city to city.

The ghettoization of the close to 160,000 Jews of Northern Transylvania began on

May 3 at 5:00 a.m. The roundup of the Jews was carried out under the provisions of

Decree no. 6163/1944 as amplified by the oral instructions given by Endre and his

associates at the two conferences on ghettoization plans in the region. The Jews were

rounded up by squads that were usually set up by the local mayors office. These were

usually composed of civil servants, usually including local primary and high school

teachers, gendarmes, and policemen, as well as

Nyilas

volunteers. The units were

organized by the mayoral commissions and operated under their jurisdiction.

The ghettoization drive was directed by a field dejewification unit headquartered in

Cluj. This unit was headed by Ferenczy and operated under the guidance of several

representatives of the Eichmann-

Sonderkommando

. Contact between the dejewification

field offices in Northern Transylvania and the central command in Budapest was

15. For a sample, see the text of the announcement issued by mayor László Gyapay in Oradea (Braham,

Politics

, p. 629).

265

FINAL REPORT

provided by two special gendarmerie courier cars that traveled daily in opposite direc-

tions, meeting in Oradea the midpoint between the capital and Cluj. Immediate

operational command over the ghettoization process in Northern Transylvania was exer-

cised by Gendarmerie Col. Tibor Paksy-Kiss, who delegated special powers in Oradea to

Lt. Col. Jenõ Péterffy, his personal friend and ideological colleague.

The Jews of the rural communities were first assembled in the local synagogues

and/or Jewish community buildings. In some cities, the Jews were concentrated at

smaller collection points prior to their transfer to the main ghetto. At each stage they

were subjected to an expropriation process that assumed an increasingly barbaric

character.

The ghettoization of the Jews of Northern Transylvania, as in the other parts of

Hungary, was carried out smoothly, without known incidents of resistance on the part of

either Jews or Christians. The Jewish masses, unaware of the realities of the Final

Solution program, went to the ghettos resigned to a disagreeable but presumably

non-lethal fate. Some of them rationalized their isolation as a logical step before their

territory became a battle zone. Others believed the rumors spread by gendarmerie and

police officials as well as some Jewish leaders that they were merely being resettled at

Kenyérmezõ in Transdanubia, where they would be doing agricultural work until the end

of the war. Still others sustained the hope that the Red Army was not very far and that

their concentration would be relatively short-lived.

The Christians, even those friendly to the Jews, were mostly passive. Many coop-

erated with the authorities on ideological grounds or in the expectation of quick

material rewards in the form of properties confiscated from the Jews. The smoothness

with which the anti-Jewish campaign was carried out in Northern Transylvania, as

elsewhere, also can be attributed in part to the absence of a meaningful resistance

movement, let alone general opposition to the persecution of the Jews. Neutrality and

passivity were the characteristic attitudes of the heads of the Christian churches in

Northern Transylvania, as reflected in the behavior of János Vásárhelyi, the Calvinist

bishop, and Miklós Józan, the Unitarian bishop. The exemplary exception was Aron

Márton, the Catholic bishop of Transylvania, whose official residence was in Alba-Iulia,

in the Romanian part of Transylvania.

The ghettoization drive in Northern Transylvania was generally completed within one

week. During the first day of the campaign close to 8,000 Jews were rounded up. By

noon of May 5, their number increased to 16,144, by May 6 to 72,382, and by May 10

to 98,000.

The procedures for rounding up, interrogating, and expropriating property

of the Jews, as well as the organization and administration of the ghetto, were basically

the same in every county in Northern Transylvania. The Jews were rounded up at great

speed, given only a few minutes to pack, and driven into the ghettos on foot. The internal

16. For details on the resistance movements and on the attitudes and reactions of the Christian church

leaders, see

ibid.

chapter 10.

17. These figures do not include the Jews of Maramureº county and of some districts in the neighboring

counties that were geographically parts of Northern Transylvania but administratively parts of

Gendarmerie District VIII. These Jews fell victim to the drive conducted in Carpatho-Ruthenia and

northeastern Hungary. See

ibid.

, chapter 17.

266

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

administration of each ghetto was entrusted to a Jewish Council, usually consisting of the

traditional leaders of the local Jewish community.

The living conditions in the North

Transylvanian ghettos were similar to those that prevailed elsewhere (see above).

Conditions in the Ghettos

The conditions under which the Jews of Northern Transylvania lived in the ghettos prior

to their deportation were fairly typical of conditions in all the ghettos of Hungary. In the

assembly centers the county ghettos the feeding of all Jews, including those trans-

ferred from neighboring communities, became the responsibility of the local Jewish

Councils. The main and frequently only meal consisted primarily of a little potato soup.

Even with these meager rations, though, the feeding problem became acute after the first

few days, when the supplies the rural Jews had brought along were used up. The living

conditions in the ghettos were extremely harsh, and often brutally inhumane. The

terrible overcrowding in the apartments within the ghettos, with totally inadequate cook-

ing, bathing, and sanitary facilities, created intolerable hardships as well as tension

among the inhabitants. But deplorable as conditions were in the city ghettos, they could

not compare to the cruel conditions that prevailed in the brickyards and the woods, where

many of the Jews were kept for several weeks under the open skies. Inadequate nutrition,

lack of sanitary facilities, absence of bathing opportunities, as well as inclement weather

led to serious health problems in many places. The water supply for the many thousands

of ghetto inhabitants usually consisted of a limited number of faucets, several of which

were often out of order for days on end. Ditches dug by the Jews themselves were used

as latrines. Minor illnesses and ordinary colds, of course, were practically ubiquitous.

Many people also succumbed to serious diseases including dysentery, typhoid, and

pneumonia.

The poor health situation was compounded by the generally barbaric behavior of the

gendarmes and police officers guarding the ghettos. In each ghetto the authorities set

aside a separate building to serve as a mint the place where sadistic gendarmes and

detectives would torture Jews into confessing where they hid their valuables. Their

technique was basically the same everywhere. Husbands were often tortured in full view

of their wives and children; often wives were beaten in front of their husbands or

children tortured in front of their parents. The devices used were cruel and unusually

barbaric. The victims were beaten on the soles of their feet with canes or rubber

truncheons; they were slapped in the face, and kicked until they lost consciousness.

Males were often beaten on the testicles; females, sometimes even young girls, were

searched vaginally by collaborating female volunteers and midwives who cared little

about cleanliness, often in full view of the male interrogators. Some particularly sadistic

investigators used electrical devices to compel the victims into confession. They would

put one end of such a device in the mouth and the other in the vagina or attached to the

18. For details on the composition of the Jewish Councils and on the German and Hungarian elements

involved in the anti-Jewish drive in Northern Transylvania, see

ibid.

, pp. 626-652.

267

FINAL REPORT

testicles of the victims. These brutal tortures drove many of the victims to insanity or

suicide.

Though in some communities there were local officials who endeavored to act as

humanely as possible under those extraordinary conditions, their example was the excep-

tion rather than the rule.

The Major Ghetto Centers

Cluj

. The ghetto of Cluj was one of the largest in Northern Transylvania. As elsewhere

in the region, the ghettoization, which began on May 3, 1944, was preceded by an

announcement posted all over the city the day before. Issued under the signature of Lajos

Hollóssy-Kuthy, the deputy police chief, the text of the announcement was also published

in the local press on May 3. The Jews of Cluj and of the communities in Cluj county were

concentrated in a ghetto established in the Iris Brickyard, in the northern part of the city.

The specifics of the concentration operation were worked out at a meeting held on May 2

under the leadership of László Vásárhelyi, the mayor, László Urbán, the police chief,

and Gendarmerie Col. Paksy-Kiss. The meeting, attended by approximately 150 officials

of the municipality who were assigned to the roundup operations, was devoted to the

details of the ghettoization process as outlined in the decree and during the conference

with Endre held at Satu Mare on April 26.

The Hungarian officials of Cluj received expert guidance in the anti-Jewish drive

from SS-

Hauptsturmführer

Strohschneider, the local commander of the German security

services. The ghettoization was carried out at a rapid pace. By May 10 the ghetto

population reached 12,000. At its peak just before the deportation, by then including the

Jews transferred from the ghetto of Gherla, it was close to 18,000.

In addition to the officers noted above, the following officials were also heavily

involved in the anti-Jewish drive: József Forgács, the secretary general of Cluj county

representing the deputy prefect; Lajos Hollóssy-Kuthy, deputy police chief; Géza

Papp, a high-ranking police official; and Kázmér Taar, a top official in the mayors

office. Overall command of the ghettoization process in Cluj county, except Cluj, was

exercised by Ferenc Szász, the deputy prefect of Cluj county, and by József Székely,

the mayor of Huedin. The Jews of the various towns and villages in the county were

first concentrated in their localities, usually in the synagogue or a related Jewish

institution. After a short while and a first round of expropriations, they were trans-

ferred to the ghetto in Cluj.

19. For testimonies presented by the prosecution in the 1946 trial of officials involved in the implemen-

tation of the Final Solution in Northern Transylvania, see Randolph L. Braham,

Genocide and

Retribution: The Holocaust in Hungarian-Ruled Northern Transylvania

(Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff,

1983) (henceforth: Braham,

Genocide

). The basic source of this work was the judgment (May 31,

1946) in the 1946 trial that took place in Cluj. Ministery of the Interior, file no.

40029. The Case

of Josif Abraham and Others (file no. 40029), vol. 1, part II, pp. 891-1068 (see also section

Crime and Punishment). On the anti-Jewish campaign in Northern Transylvania in general, see

also United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., Archives (henceforth:

USHMM), RG 25.004M, roll 42, file no. 5, and roll 94, file 23.

268

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Among the Jews transferred to the ghetto of Cluj were those from the many commu-

nities in the districts of Borºa, Cluj, Hida, Huedin, and Nadasdia.

Next to the Jewish

community of Cluj, by far the largest communities brought into the Iris Brickyard were

those of Huedin and Gherla. The Jews of Huedin were rounded up under the command

and supervision of Székely, Pál Boldizsár, the citys supply official; József Orosz, the

police chief; and police officers and detectives Ferenc Menyhért, András Szentkúti,

András Lakatos, and Sándor Ojtózi.

The brickyard ghetto of Gherla included close to 1,600 Jews. Of these, nearly 400

were from the town itself; the others were brought in from the neighboring communities

in the Gherla district.

The transfer of these Jews into the Cluj ghetto was carried out

under the command of Lajos Tamási, the mayor of Gherla, and Ernö Berecki and András

Iványi, the chief police officers of the town.

The ghetto of Cluj was under the direct command of Urbán. The internal administra-

tion of the ghetto was entrusted to a Jewish Council consisting of the traditional leaders

of the local Jewish community. It was headed by József Fischer, the head of the citys

Neolog community, and included Rabbi Akiba Glasner, József Fenichel, Gyula Klein,

Ernö Marton, editor-in-chief of the

Új Kelet

(

New East

), Zsigmond Léb, and Rabbi

Mózes Weinberger (later Carmilly-Weinberger). Its secretary general was József Moskovits,

and Deszö Hermann the secretary.

Fischer reputedly was one of the few provincial Jewish leaders who were fully

informed about the realities of the Nazis Final Solution program. He and his family

were among the 388 Jews who were removed from the ghetto of Cluj and taken to

Budapest and eventually to freedom on June 10, 1944, as part of Kasztners contro-

versial deal with the SS.

The ghetto was evacuated in six transports, with the first deportation on May 25 and

the last on June 9.

Dej

The ghetto of Dej included most of the Jews in Someº county. Under the

administrative leadership of prefect Béla Bethlen, the county was represented at the April

26 conference with Endre in Satu Mare by János Schilling, the deputy prefect; Jenö

Veress, the mayor of Dej; Lajos Tamási, the mayor of Gherla; Gyula Sárosi, the police

chief of Dej; Ernö Berecki, the police chief of Gherla; and Pál Antalffy, the com-

mander of the gendarmerie in Someº. The objectives and decisions of this conference

were communicated to the chief civil service, gendarmerie, and police officers of the

county at a special meeting convened and chaired by Schilling on April 30.

As elsewhere, the ghettoization drive began on May 3. The roundup of the Jews in the

county was carried out under the command of Antalffy. The ghetto of Dej was among the

most miserable in Northern Transylvania. At the insistence of the virulently anti-Semitic

local city officials, it was set up in a forest the so-called Bungur situated about two

20. Among these were the Jews of Borºa, Ciucea, Gilãu, Hida and Panticeu.

21. Among the Jews first assembled in Gherla were those of the villages of Aluniº, Bãiþa, Beudiu,

Buza, Chiochiº, Dârja, Fizeºu Gherlii, Icloda, Lacu, Livada, Lujerdiu, Manic, Mateiaº, Nasal,

Pãdureni, Pui, Sic, Sânnicoarã ºi Sânmartin.

22. For details, see Braham,

Politics

chapter 29.

23. For further details, see

idem

Genocide

pp. 24-27, 123-141.

269

FINAL REPORT

miles from the city. At its peak, the ghetto included around 7,800 Jews, including close

to 3,700 from the town itself. The others were brought in from the rural communities in

Someº County, many of whom were first assembled in the seats of the districts of

Beclean, Chiochiº, Dej, Gherla, Ileanda, and Lãpuº.

The luckier among the ghetto

dwellers lived in makeshift barracks; the others found shelter in homemade tents or

lived under the open sky. Before their transfer to the Bungur, the Jews of Dej were

concentrated into three centers within the city, where they were subjected to body

searches for valuables.

The ghetto, surrounded by barbed wire, was guarded by the local police supple-

mented by a special unit of 40 gendarmes assigned from Zalãu. Supreme command over

the ghetto was in the hands of Takáts, a government commissioner. The internal

administration of the ghetto was entrusted to a Jewish Council consisting of the trusted

leaders of the local community. The Council included Lázár Albert (chairman), Ferenc

Ordentlich, Samu Weinberger, Manó Weinberger, and Andor Agai. Dr. Oszkar Engelberg

served as the ghettos chief physician and Zoltán Singer as its economic representative in

charge of supplies.

Sanitary conditions within the ghetto were miserable, as were the essential services

and supplies. This was largely due to the malevolence of Veress, the mayor of Dej, and

Dr. Zsigmond Lehnár, its chief health officer. The investigative teams for the search for

valuables were as cruel in Dej as they were everywhere else. Among those involved in

such searches were József Fekete, József Gecse, Maria Fekete, Jenö Takacs, József

Lakadár, and police officers Albert (Béla) Garamvolgyi, János Somorlyai, János Kassay

and Miklós Désaknai.

The ghetto was liquidated between May 28 and June 8 with the removal of 7,674 Jews

in three transports. A few Jews managed to escape from the ghetto. Among these was

Rabbi József Paneth of Nagyilonda, who together with nine members of his family was

eventually able to get to safety in Romania.

ªimleul Silvaniei

. The ghettoization of the Jews of Sãlaj county was carried out under

the command and supervision of the officials who had participated at the Satu Mare

Conference of April 26: András Gazda, deputy county prefect; János Sréter, mayor of

Zalãu; József Udvari, mayor of ªimleul Silvaniei; Lt. Col. György Mariska, com-

mander of the countys gendarmerie unit; Ferenc Elekes, police chief of Zalãu; and

István Pethes, police chief of ªimleul Silvaniei Baron János Jósika, the prefect of Sãlaj

county, resigned immediately when he was informed by Gazda about the decisions taken

at the April 26 conference. He was one of the few Hungarian officials who dared to take

a public stand against the anti-Jewish actions, deeming them both immoral and illegal.

His successor, László Szlávi, an appointee of the Sztójay government, had no such

scruples and cooperated fully in the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures.

Soon after their return from Satu Mare, the conferees met at the prefects office with

Béla Sámi, the chief county clerk; Drs. Suchi and Ferenc Molnár, the chief health

24. Among these were the small Jewish communities of Beclean, Beudiu, Bobâlna, Icloda, Ileanda,

Lãpuº, Mica, Reteag, ªintereag, Uriºor, and Uriu. Those assembled in Gherla were eventually

transferred to the ghetto of Cluj.

25. See

ibid.

, pp. 27-29, 178-187. See also USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 52, file no. 2044; roll 72, file

no. 40027; rolls 89-90, file no. 40029.b.

270

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

officials of Sãlaj county and ªimleul Silvaniei, respectively; László Krasznai, the head

of ªimleu district; and István Kemecsey, the technical services department of ªimleul

Silvaniei, in order to select a site for the ghetto.

The roundup of the Jews in ªimleul Silvaniei was carried out under the immediate

command of István Pethes; in Zalãu under the leadership of Ferenc Elekes; and in the

other parts of the county under the direction of Gazda and the immediate command of

Lt. Col. György Mariska. Among the sizable Jewish communities affected were those of

Tãºnad and Crasna.

The Jews of Sãlaj County were concentrated in the Klein Brickyard of Cehei, in a

marshy and muddy area about three miles from ªimleul Silvaniei. At its peak, the ghetto

held about 8,500 Jews.

Among these were the Jews from the communities in the

districts of Crasna, Cehu Silvaniei, Jibou, ªimleul Silvaniei, Supuru de Jos, Tãºnad, and

Zalãu.

Since the brick-drying sheds were rather limited, many of the ghetto inhabitants

were compelled to live under the open sky. The ghetto was guarded by a special unit of

gendarmes from Budapest and operated under the command of Krasznai, one of the most

cruel ghetto commanders in Hungary.

As a result of tortures, poor feeding, and a totally inadequate water supply in the ghetto,

the Jews of S\laj county arrived at Auschwitz in very poor condition, so that an unusually

large percentage were selected for gassing immediately upon arrival. The deportations

from Cehei were carried out in three transports between May 31 and June 6.

Satu Mare

Because of the relatively large concentration of Jews in Satu Mare county,

the Hungarian authorities set up two ghettos in the county: one in the city of Satu Mare

and the other in Baia Mare. At first Carei was also used as a concentration center for its

local Jews and those in the neighboring communities. However, after a brief period, the

Jews in the ghetto of Carei, which was under the leadership of a Jewish Council

composed of István Antal, Jenö Pfeffermann, Ernö Deutsch, and Lajos Jakobovics, were

transferred to the ghetto of Satu Mare.

The county representatives at the Satu Mare Conference of April 26 included László

Csóka, the mayor of Satu Mare; Endre Boér, the deputy county prefect; Zoltán Rogozi

Papp, the deputy mayor of Satu Mare; Ernö Pirkler, the citys secretary general; and

representatives of the local police and gendarmerie.

The commissions for the apprehension of the Jews of Satu Mare and its environs were

established at a meeting held shortly after the conference. It was chaired by Csóka and

attended by representatives of the police and gendarmerie, including Károly Csegezi,

Béla Sárközi, and Jenö Nagy of the police and N. Deményi of the gendarmerie. Members

of the financial and educational boards of the city also participated in the work of the

commissions. The ghettoization in Satu Mare was carried out with the cooperation of

26. Among these were the Jews from the towns of Crasna, ªimleul Silvaniei, Tãºnad, and Zalãu. On

ªimleul Silvaniei, see USHMM, RG 25.004M, rolls 90, 92 and 94, file no. 40029. On Tãºnad,

roll 50, files no. 1106, no. 30 (502), and no. 422 (666).

27. Among these were the Jews from the towns of Buciumi, Cehei, Cehu Silvaniei, Jibou, Nuºfalãu,

Pir, ªimleul Silvaniei, Supuru de Jos, Supuru de Sus, Surduc, Tãºnad, and Zalãu.

28. For further details, see Braham,

Genocide

, pp. 29-30, 162-178.

29. For documentary sources on Carei, see USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 40, file no. 12; roll 50, file

no. 446 (678), and roll 51, file no. 1130 (III).

271

FINAL REPORT

Csóka; in the rest of the county the Jews were rounded up under the administrative

command of Boér.

At its peak the ghetto of Satu Mare held approximately 18,000 Jews. They were

rounded up in the following eleven districts of the county: Ardud, Baia Mare, Carei,

Copalnic-Mãnãºtur, Csenger (now in Hungary), Fehérgyarmat (now in Hungary),

Mátészalka (now in Hungary), Oraºu Nou, Satu Mare, ªomcuta Mare, and Seini.

The

commander of the ghetto was Béla Sárközi, the police officer in charge of the local

branch of the

National Central Alien Control Office (

Külföldieker Ellenörzö Országos

Központi Hatóság

KEOKH). The Jewish Council was headed by Zoltán Schwartz and

included Samuel Rosenberg, the head of the Jewish community, Singer, Lajos Vinkler,

and József Borgida, all highly respected leaders of the Jewish community of Satu Mare.

The searches for valuables were carried out with the customary cruelty by Sarközi,

Csegezi, and Deményi. Their effectiveness was enhanced by the presence of a special

unit of fifty gendarmes from nearby Mérk.

The ghetto was liquidated through the deportation of the Jews in six transports

between May 19 and June 1.

Baia Mare

. The ghettoization of the Jews of Baia Mare and of the various communi-

ties in the southeastern districts of Satu Mare county was based on guidelines adopted a

few days after the Satu Mare Conference. The meeting of the local leaders was held at

the headquarters of the Arrow Cross Party in Baia Mare, which was also attended by

László Endre. The city was at first represented by Károly Tamás, the deputy mayor, but

he was soon replaced by István Rosner, an assistant police chief, who proved more

pliable. Among the others present were Jenö Nagy, the police chief; Sándor Vajai, the

former secretary general of the mayors office; Tibor Várhelyi, the commander of the

gendarmerie unit; Gyula Gergely, the head of the Arrow Cross Party in Northern

Transylvania; and József Haracsek, the president of the Baross Association (a highly

anti-Semitic association of Christian businessmen).

The ghetto for the Jews of the city of Baia Mare was established in the vacant lots of

the König Glass Factory; the Jews from the various communities in Baia Mare, ªomcuta

Mare, and Copalnic-Mãnãºtur districts were quartered in a stable and barn in Valea

Borcutului about two miles from the city. The roundup of the Jews and the searches for

valuables were carried out under the command of Jenö Nagy and Gyula Gergely with the

involvement of SS-

Hauptsturmführer

Franz Abromeit. The ghetto of Baia Mare held

approximately 3,500 Jews and that of Valea Borcutului over 2,000. Of the latter, only

200 found space in the stable and the barn; the others had to be quartered outdoors. The

commander in chief of the ghetto was Tibor Várhelyi. The Jews in the ghetto of Baia

Mare were subjected to the tortures and investigative methods customary in all ghettos.

Among those involved in these investigations, under the leadership of Nagy and Várhelyi,

30. Among the Jews concentrated in the Satu Mare ghetto were those Aleºd, Apa, Batiz, Bixad,

Cãrãºeu, Carei, Craidorolt, Copalnic-Mãnãºtur, Lechinþa, Livada Micã, Medieºu Aurit, Micula,

Mireºu Mare, Negreºti-Oaº, Oraºu Nou, Seini, ªomcuta Mare, Trip, Vama and Viile Satu Mare.

On Bixad, see USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 51, file no. 852 (I). On Negreºti-Oaº, roll 49, file no. 714,

and roll 50, file no. 7141.

31. For further details on the ghetto of Satu Mare, see Braham,

Genocide

pp. 31-32, 101-113. See also

USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 51, files no. 854. (I) and no. 920 (I); roll 88, file no. 40029, vol. 4.

272

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

were Károly Balogh and László Berentes, associates of the Phoenix Factory of Baia

Mare, as well as Haracsek, Peter Czeisberger, Zoltán Osváth, and detectives József

Orgoványi, Imre Vajai and István Bertalan. Overall responsibility for the administration

of the county at the time rested with Barnabás Endrödi, who had been appointed prefect

of Satu Mare county by the Sztójay government on April 25, 1944.

The 5,917 Jews in these two ghettos were deported in two transports on May 31 and

June 5.

Bistriþa

The approximately 6,000 Jews of Bistriþa and the other communities in

Bistriþa-Nãsãud county were concentrated at the Stamboli farm, located about two to

three miles from the city. Close to 2,500 of the ghetto inhabitants were from Bistriþa

itself. The others were brought in from the communities in the districts of Lower Bistriþa

and Upper Bistriþa, Nãsãud, and Rodna.

The ghettoization of the citys Jews was carried out under the command of the mayor

Norbert Kuales and police chief Miklós Debreczeni. In the other communities of the county

the roundup was guided by László Smolenszki, the deputy prefect, and Lt. Col. Ernö

Pasztai of the gendarmerie. All four had attended the April 28 conference with Endre in

Târgu-Mureº.

The ghetto, consisting of a number of barracks and pigsties, was inadequate from

every point of view. The very poor water and food supply was in large part due to the

vicious behavior of Heinrich Smolka, who was in charge. Among those who cooperated

with Smolka in the persecution of the Jews was Gusztáv Órendi, a Gestapo agent in

Bistri]a. The local police authorities were assisted in guarding the ghetto by twenty-five

gendarmes from Dumitra, who had been ordered to Bistri]a by Col. Paksy-Kiss. After

May 10, 1944, the prefect of the county was Kálmán Borbély.

The deportation of the 5,981 Jews in Bistri]a took place on June 2 and 6, 1944.

Oradea

The largest ghetto in Hungary except for the one in Budapest was that of

Oradea. Actually, Oradea had two ghettos: one for the citys Jews, holding approxi-

mately 27,000 people and located in the neighborhood of the large Orthodox synagogue

and the adjacent Great Market; the other, for the close to 8,000 Jews brought in from the

many rural communities from the following twelve districts: Aleºd, Beretttyóújfalu (now

Hungary), Biharkeresztes (now Hungary), Cefa, Derecske (now Hungary), Marghita,

Oradea, Sãcueni, Sãlard, Salonta Mare, Sárrét (now Hungary), and Valea lui Mihai.

Many of the Jews from these communities were concentrated in and around the Mezey

Lumber Yards.

The ghetto of Oradea was extremely overcrowded. The Jews of the city, who consti-

tuted about 30 percent of its population, were crammed into an area sufficient for only

32. For further details on Baia Mare, see

ibid.

, pp. 32-33, 113-123. See also USHMM, RG 25.004M,

roll 42, file no. 40030; rolls 90 and 94, file no. 40029. On Baia Sprie, see roll 60, file no. 22291.

33. Among the rural Jews transferred to the ghetto in Bistriþa were those of Ilva Mare, Ilva Micã,

Lechinþa, Nãsãud, Nimigea de Jos, Prundu Bârgãului, Rodna, Romuli, and ªieu.

34. For further details, see Braham,

Genocide

pp. 33, 187-190.

35. Among the Jewish communities concentrated in the yard were those of Aleºd, Biharia, Borod,

Marghita, Sãcueni, Sãlard, Salonta, and Valea lui Mihai. On Marghita, see USHMM, RG 25.004M,

roll 88, file no. 40029. On Salonta, see roll 42, file no. 40030, item 43.

273

FINAL REPORT

one-fifteenth of the citys inhabitants. The density was such that 14 to 15 Jews had to

share a room. Like every other ghetto, the ghetto of Oradea suffered from a severe

shortage of food; they also were the victims of the punitive measures of an especially

vicious local administration. The anti-Semitic city government often cut off electric

service and the flow of water to the ghetto. Moreover, under the command of Lt. Col. Jenõ

Péterffy, the gendarmes were especially sadistic in operating the local mint, which was

set up at the Dréher Breweries immediately adjacent to the ghetto. Internally, the ghettos

were administered by a Jewish Council headed by Sándor Leitner, the head of the

Orthodox Jewish community.

The deportation of the Jews began with the evacuation of those concentrated in the

Mezey Lumber Yard on May 23. This was followed on May 28 with the first transport

from the city itself. The last transport left Oradea on June 27.

Þara Secuilor

. In Gendamerie District X, the so-called

Þara Secuilor

(Szekler Land),

which encompassed Mureº-Turda, Ciuc, Odorheiu, and Trei Scaune counties, the Jews

were placed in three major ghettos: Târgu-Mureº, Reghin, and Sfântul Gheorghe. The

concentration of the Jews of Þara Secuilor counties was carried out in accordance with

the decision of a conference held in Târgu-Mureº on April 28, 1944. It was chaired by

Endre and attended by all prefects, deputy prefects, mayors of cities, heads of districts,

and top police and gendarmerie officers of the area. As decided at this conference, the

ghetto of Târgu-Mureº held not only the local Jews but also those from the communities

in Odorheiu county and the western part of Mureº-Turda county. The ghetto of Reghin

held the Jews of the communities in the eastern part of Mure[-Turda county and the

southern part of Ciuc county. The ghetto of Sfântul Gheorghe was established for the

Jews of Trei Scaune county and the southern part of Ciuc county. As was the case

everywhere else, the Jews of the various communities were first concentrated in the local

synagogues or community buildings before being transferred to the assigned ghettos.

Târgu-Mureº

The ghetto of Târgu-Mureº was located in a dilapidated brickyard at

Koronkai Road that had an area of approximately 20,000 square meters. It had one large

building with a broken roof and cement floors; since it had not been in use for several

years, it was also extremely dirty. The ghetto population was 7,380 Jews, of whom

approximately 5,500 were from the city itself and the others from the communities in the

several county districts, including Band, Miercurea Nirajului, Sângeorgiu de Pãdure, and

Teaca. Among these were the 276 Jews of Sfântul Gheorghe and the Jews of Bezidu Nou,

descendants of the Szekler who had converted to Judaism in the early days of the

Transylvanian Principality. It was alleged that these Jews were given a chance to escape

ghettoization by declaring that that they were Magyar Christians but, according to some

sources, refused to do so.

36. For further details, see Braham,

Genocide

, pp. 33-36, 79-101. For additional documents on the fate

of the Jews in Oradea and Bihor County, see also USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 42, file no. 40030;

roll 73, file no. 40027; rolls 87 and 88, file no. 40029.

37. On Þara Secuilor in general, see USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 51, file no. 1548, item 1160 (I), and

fond Peoples Tribunal Cluj, 1945-1946, roll 1, item 11.

38. The ghetto of Târgu-Mureº also included the Jews of Band, Miercurea Nirajului, Sângeorgiu de

Pãdure, and Sovata.

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INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Approximately 2,400 of the 7,380 Jews in the brickyard, the largest ghetto in the

area, found accommodation in the brick-drying barns; the rest had to make do in the

open. The commander of the ghetto was police chief Géza Bedö; his deputy was Dezsö

Liptai. The Jewish Council, which did its best to alleviate the plight of the Jews, included

Samu Ábrahám, Mayer Csengeri, Mór Darvas, Ernö Goldstein, József Helmer, Dezsö

Léderer, Jenö Schwimmer, Ernö Singer, and Manón Szofer. Conditions in this ghetto were

as miserable as they were elsewhere; the water supply was particularly bad. Dr. Ádám

Horváth, the city health officer, and his deputy, Dr. Mátyás Talos, were mainly respon-

sible for the failure of the health and sanitary services in the ghetto.

The Târgu-Mureº Jews were concentrated under the overall guidance of mayor Ferenc

Májay, who had attended the conference called by Endre. In fact, Májay proceeded with

the implementation of Endres directives just one day after the conference, when he

ordered that the main synagogue be turned into a makeshift hospital. The police and

gendarmerie units directly involved in the ghettoization process were under the direct

command of Col. János Papp, the head of the Gendarmerie Directorate in the four

counties of the Þara Secuilor; Col. János Zalantai, the commander of the Legion of

Gendarmes of Mureº-Turda county; and Géza Bedö. Leadership roles were also played

by Col. Géza Körmendi, the head of the

Honvéd

units in the city and the county, and

Gen. István Kozma, the head of the so-called Szekler Border Guard (

Székely Határör

)

paramilitary organization. The involvement of these

Honvéd

(Hungarian armed forces)

officials was exceptional, inasmuch as regular military units were not normally involved

in the ghettoization process. Kozma claimed that he had gotten involved at the personal

request of Endre. Major Schröder, the local representative of the Gestapo, provided the

technical assistance required for the anti-Jewish operation.

The harshness and effectiveness of the local military-administrative authorities not-

withstanding, Paksy-Kiss found much wanting in their operation and provided a special

unit of gendarmes for their assistance. The concentration of the Jews was carried out with

the help of the local chapter of the Levente paramilitary youth organization.

Májays immediate collaborators in the launching and administration of the anti-Jewish

measures in Târgu-Mureº were Ferenc Henner, the head notary in the mayors office, and

Ernö Jávor, the head notary of the prefecture. In the county of Mureº-Turda the concen-

tration was carried out under the direction of Andor Joós and Zsigmond Marton, prefect

and deputy prefect respectively.

In Odorheiu county and the city of Sfântul Gheorghe, the county seat, the ghettoization

was carried out under the general guidance of Dezsö Gálfy, the prefect. Immediate

command in the county was exercised by deputy prefect István Bonda and Lt. Col. László

Kiss, the commander of the gendarmerie in the county. In Sfântul Gheorghe proper the

roundup was directed by Maj. Ferenc Filó and police chief János Zsigmond.

As in all other major ghettos, the Târgu-Mureº ghetto had a screening commission

whose function it was to evaluate petitions from Jews, including claims for exemption

status. The commission, whose attitude towards Jews was utterly negative, consisted of

Májay, Bedö, and Col. Loránt Bocskor of the gendarmerie. In Târgu-Mureº there was

also a mint, located in a small building within the ghetto. Among the torturers active

in the drive for the acquisition of Jewish valuables were Ferenc Sallós and captains Konya

and Pintér of the gendarmerie.

275

FINAL REPORT

The first transport was entrained for Auschwitz on May 27, 1944. By June 8, when the

third and last transport departed, 7,549 Jews had been removed from these local ghettos.

Reghin

. The ghetto of Reghin was established in a totally inadequate brickyard

selected by mayor Imre Schmidt and police chief János Dudás. Both of them had attended

the Târgu-Mureº Conference with Endre on April 28, 1944. They were assisted in the

selection of the ghetto site and in the roundup of the Jews by Maj. László Komáromi, the

head of the

Honvéd

forces in Reghin; Lt. G. Szentpály Kálmán, the commander of the

local gendarmerie unit; and Jenö Csordácsics, a counselor in the mayors office and the

local expert on the Jewish question.

Most of the Jews were housed in brick-drying sheds without walls. A number had to

live in the open, and a few were allowed to stay in houses right near the ghetto at the edge

of the city. At its peak the ghetto population was 4,000 people, of whom approximately

1,400 were from the town itself. The others were brought in from the eastern part of

Mureº-Turda county and the northern part of Ciuc county.

The Jews of Gheorgheni in Ciuc county were rounded up under the direction of

Mayor Mátyás Tóth and police chief Géza Polánkai. Even exempted Jews were picked up

along with rest and held together with the others in a local primary school, where the

searches for valuables were conducted by Beéa Ferenczi, a member of the local police

department. After three days at the school, where they were given almost no food, the

Jews were transferred to the Reghin ghetto.

The Reghin ghetto was guarded by the local police and a special unit of 40 gendarmes

from Szeged. Conditions in the ghetto were similar to what they were elsewhere. Searches

for valuables were performed by the police and gendarmerie officers guarding the ghetto

and assisted by Pál Bányai, Balázs Biró, András Fehér, and István Gösi, members of a

special gendarme investigative unit. To help with the interrogation of the Jews from

Gheorgheni, Béla Ferenczi was summoned from that town. In the pursuit of hidden

valuables, Irma Lovas was in charge of vaginal searches. The ghetto was under the

immediate command of János Dudás.

Sfântul Gheorghe

The ghetto of Sfântul Gheorghe held the towns local Jews as well

as those from the small communities in Trei Scaune county and the southern part of Ciuc

county. The total ghetto population was 850.

The commission for the selection of the

ghetto site consisted of Gábor Szentiványi, the prefect of Trei Scaune county, who

behaved quite decently toward the rural Jews; Andor Barabás, the deputy prefect;

István Vincze, the chief of the Sfântul Gheorghe police; and Lt. Col. Balla, the com-

mander of the gendarmes in Trei Scaune county. All of these had attended the Târgu-Mureº

Conference with Endre. The ghettoization of the few hundreds of Jews from the town of

Sfântul Gheorghe differed from the procedure followed elsewhere. On May 2, 1944, the

Jews were summoned by the police to appear the following morning at 6:00 a.m. at

39. USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 50, files no. 10781, no. 10801, and no. 10861; rolls 88 and 89, file

no. 40029.

40. Among these were the Jews of Iernuþei, Lunca Bradului, Rãstoliþa, and Topliþa.

41. USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 73, file no. 40027; roll 89, file no. 40029.

42. In addition to the Jews of Sfântul Gheorghe, the ghetto included the Jews of Boroºneu Mare,

Covasna, and Târgul Secuiesc.

276

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

police headquarters along with all members of their families. One person from each

family was then allowed to return home in the company of a policeman to pick up the

essential goods allowed by the authorities. After this the Jews were transferred to an

unfinished building that had neither doors nor windows.

The Jews of Ciuc county, including those of Miercurea-Ciuc,

were rounded up

under the general command of Ernö Gaáli, the prefect of Ciuc county; József Abraham,

the deputy prefect; Gerö Szász, the mayor of Miercurea-Ciuc; Pál Farkas, the citys

chief of police; and Lt. Col. Tivadar Lóhr, the commander of the gendarmes at

Miercurea-Ciuc. Like the city and county leaders of Trei Scaune county, these officials

too had attended the T^rgu-Mureº meeting with Endre.

The conditions in the Sfântul Gheorghe ghetto, which was under the immediate

command of an unidentified SS officer, were harsh. The Jews from this ghetto were

transferred to the ghetto of Reghin a week later.

Sighetul Marmaþiei

Although geographically Maramureº county was part of North-

ern Transylvania, for dejewification purposes it was considered part of Carpatho-Ruthenia

and Northeastern Hungary. Since it contained one of the largest concentrations of Ortho-

dox and Hasidic Jews in Hungary, the German and Hungarian officials were particularly

anxious to clear this area of Jews.

The details of the anti-Jewish measures enacted in Maramureº county, as in Carpatho-

-Ruthenia as a whole, were adopted at the conference held in Munkács on April 12,

1944. Maramureº county and the municipality of Sighetul Marmaþiei were represented at

the Munkács Conference by László Illinyi, the deputy prefect; Sándor Gyulafalvi Rednik,

the mayor of Sighetul Marmatiei; Lajos Tóth, the chief of police; Col. Zoltán Agy, the

commander of the local legion of gendarmes; and Col. Sárvári, the commander of

District IV of the gendarmerie. On the morning of April 15, Illinyi held a meeting in

Sighetul Marmaþiei with all the top officials of the county to discuss the details of the

ghettoization process, including the selection of ghetto sites. That same afternoon Tóth

chaired a meeting of the civilian, police, and gendarmerie officials of Sighetul Marmaþiei

at which the details of the operation were reviewed. This meeting also established the

twenty commissions in charge of rounding up the Jews. Each commission consisted of a

police officer, gendarmes, and one civil servant.

The ghetto of Sighetul Marmaþiei was established in two peripheral sections of the

city, inhabited primarily by the poorer strata of Jewry. The ghetto held over 12,000 Jews,

of whom a little over 10,000 came from the city itself. The others were brought in from

many of the mostly Romanian-inhabited villages in the districts of Dragomireºti, Maramureº,

Ocna-ªugatag, Ökörmezö (now Ukraine), Rahó (now Ukraine), Técsö (now Ukraine),

and Viºeu de Sus.

The ghetto was extremely crowded, with almost every room in every building,

including the cellars and attics, occupied by fifteen to twenty-four people. The windows

43. USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 50, files no. 1106 and no. 1920.

. Ibid.

, rolls 89 and 94, file no. 40029. For further details on the fate of the Jews in the counties

constituting Þara Secuilor, see Braham,

Genocide

, pp. 36-40, 141-157.

45. Among these were the Jews of Berbeºti, Bârsana, Budeºti, Giuleºti, Mara, Nãneºti, Onceºti,

Poienile Izei, Sârbi, Surduc, and Vadu Izei, On Berbeºti, see also USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 61,

file no. 7081.

277

FINAL REPORT

of the buildings at the edges of the ghetto had to be whitewashed to prevent the ghetto

inhabitants from communicating with non-Jews. To further assure the isolation of the

Jews, the ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded not only by the local police

but also by a special unit of fifty gendarmes, assigned from Miskolc, under the command

of Colonel Sárvári. The commander of the ghetto was Tóth; József Konyuk, the head of

the local firefighters, acted as his deputy. The ghetto was administered under the general

authority of Sándor Gyulafalvi Rednik, whose expert adviser on Jewish affairs was

Ferenc Hullmann. It was Hullmann who rejected practically all of the requests forwarded

by the Jewish Council asking for an improvement in the lot of the ghetto inhabitants.

The Jewish Council consisted of Rabbi Samu Danzig, Lipót Joszovits, Jenö Keszner,

Ferenc Krausz, Mór Jakobovits, and Ignátz Vogel. Like every other ghetto, Sighetul

Marma]ieis also had a mint where Jews were tortured into confessing where they had

hidden their valuables by a team composed of Tóth, Sárvári, János Fejér, a police

commissioner, and József Konyuk. At the time of the anti-Jewish drive the head of

Maramureº county was László Szaplonczai, a leading member of Imrédys

Magyar

Megujulas Partja

(Party of Hungarian Renewal).

The ghetto of Sighetul Marmaþiei was among the first to be liquidated after the

beginning of the mass deportations on May 15, 1944. The ghetto was liquidated through

the removal of 12,849 Jews in four transports that were dispatched from the city between

May 16 and May 22. The local Jewish physicians and the few Jews who were caught after

the departure of the transports were deported from the ghetto of Aknaszlatina. The

Aknaszlatina ghetto, which held 3,317 Jews from the neighboring villages, was liqui-

dated on May 25.

There were two other ghettos in Maramureº county. The one in Ökörmezö, which

held 3,052 Jews, was liquidated on May 17. A much larger ghetto was in operation for

a short while in Viºeu de Sus.

The Jews held there were entrained at Vi[eu de Jos,

where they joined the Jews from other neighboring villages.

A total of 12,079 people

were deported from Viºeu de Jos and Viºeu de Sus, in four transports that left between

May 19 and May 25, 1944.

Deportation: The Master Plan

Unlike what happened in Poland, the Jews in Hungary lingered in ghettos for only a

relatively short time: the ghettos in the villages lasted for only a day or two, and even

those in the major concentration and entrainment ghetto centers, which were usually

46. Among these were the Jews from of Bocicoiu Mare, Câmpulung de Tisa, Coºtiui, Crãciunel,

Remeþi, Rona de Jos, Rona de Sus, and Sãpânþa. On Crãciunel, see also USHMM, RG 25.004M,

roll 72, file no. 40027. On Rona de Sus, see roll 40, file no. 40030, item 26.

47. Among these were the Jewish communities of Borºa, Leordina, Moisei, Petrova, Poienile de Munte

and Ruscova. On Viºeu de Sus, see roll 42, file no. 40030, item 40; on Borºa, see roll 49, file no. 710.

48. Among these were those from Bogdan Vodã, Botiza, Glod, Ieud, Rozavlea, Sãcel, ªieu, Sajofalva,

Sãliºte, and Viºeu de Jos.

49. For more details on the anti-Jewish drive in Maramureº county, see Braham,

Genocide

pp. 40-42,

157-162. See also USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 71, file no. 40027.

278

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

located in the county seats, were short-lived. In Northern Transylvania they only lasted

a few weeks.

The technical and organizational details of the deportation were worked out under the

leadership of László Endre. Early in May, he issued a memo to his immediate subordi-

nates, providing general guidelines relating to the anti-Jewish operation with emphasis

on Hungarian-German cooperation in the drive.

The details of the memo were dis-

cussed at a conference in Munkács on May 8-9 attended by the top administration,

police, and gendarmerie officers of the various counties and county seats. The confer-

ence, chaired by László Ferenczy, heard an elaboration of the procedures to be used in

the entrainment of the Jews and the final schedule for the planned transports from the

various ghetto centers. The schedule was in accord with the instructions of the Reich

Security Main Office (

Reichssicherheitshauptamt

RSHA) as worked out by the

Eichmann-

Sonderkommando

, which called for the dejewification of Hungary from east

to west. Accordingly, the Jews of Northern Transylvania and those of Carpatho-Ruthenia

and northeastern Hungary were to be deported first, between May 15 and June 11. The

conference also agreed on the written instructions to be issued for the mayors of the

ghetto and entrainment centers, specifying the procedural and technical details relating

to the deportation of the Jews

Transportation Arrangements

The schedule of the deportations and the route plan were reviewed at a conference in Vienna

on May 4-6, 1944, attended by the representatives of the railroad, the Hungarian gen-

darmerie, and the German Security Police (

Sicherheitspolizei

SIPO). The chief representa-

tive of the gendarmerie was Leó Lulay, Ferenczys aide; the Eichmann-

Sonderkommando

was represented by Franz Novak, the transportation specialist.

The conferees considered three alternative deportation routes. After considering the

military, strategic, and psychological factors relating to the various proposals, the confer-

ees decided to begin the deportation of the Hungarian Jews on May 15 with the trains to

be routed from Kassa to Auschwitz across eastern Slovakia, via Presov, Muszyna,

Tarnow, and Cracow. A compromise was also reached on the number of deportation

trains per day. While Endre, who was eager to make Hungary

Judenrein

as quickly as

possible, suggested that six trains be dispatched daily, Eichmann, who was better in-

formed about the gassing and cremating facilities in Auschwitz, originally suggested

only two. At the end they settled on four trains daily, carrying approximately 12,000

Jews.

The

Wehrmacht

and the German Railways proved highly cooperative about providing

the necessary rolling stock, an indication of the Nazis resolve to pursue the Final

Solution even at the expense of the military requirements of the

Reich

. Together with

their Hungarian accomplices they attached a greater priority to the deportation of the

Jews than to the transportation needs of the Axis forces even when Soviet troops were

rapidly approaching the Carpathians.

50. Braham,

Politics

, pp. 666-668.

51.

Ibid.

, pp. 667-669.

279

FINAL REPORT

The Deportation Process

In accordance with the decisions reached at the Munkács conference of May 8-9, the

deportations began on schedule on May 15 in Gendarmerie districts VIII, IX, and X

(Carpatho-Ruthenia, northeastern Hungary, and Northern Transylvania), which were

identified as Dejewification Operational Zones I and II. Each day four trains, each

consisting of 35 to 40 freight cars, were dispatched to the various entrainment ghetto

centers to pick up their human cargo in accordance with a well-defined schedule. Each

train carried about 3,000 Jews crammed into freight cars with each car, carrying on the

average 70 to 80 Jews. Each car was supplied with two buckets: one with water and the

other for excrements. One of the first ghettos to be cleared was that of Kassa, the rail hub

through which almost all the deportation trains left the country. There, the Hungarian

gendarmes who escorted the deportation trains were replaced by Germans.

The Jews were permitted to take along only a limited number of items for the

journey. They were strictly forbidden to take along any currency, jewelry, or valuables.

Immediately prior to their removal from the ghettos to the entrainment platforms, they

were subjected to still another search for valuables. The brutality with which the searches

were conducted varied, but they were uniformly humiliating. In the course of the

searches, personal documents, including identification cards, diplomas, and even

military-service documents were frequently torn up and their proud owners turned into

non-persons. Shortly after the searches were completed, well-armed gendarmes and

policemen escorted the Jews to the entrainment points. After the Jews were crammed into

the freight cars amidst great brutality, each car was chained and padlocked

The German and the Hungarian officials in charge of the Final Solution bureaucrati-

cally recorded the entrainment and deportation operations on a daily basis. Ferenczy

submitted his reports to Section XX of the Ministry of the Interior. The reports of the

Eichmann-

Sonderkommando

were sent to Otto Winkelmann, the Higher SS and Police

Leader in Hungary, who routinely forwarded them not only to the RSHA but also via

Edmund Veesenmayer, Hitlers Plenipotentiary in Hungary to the German Foreign Office.

According to these reports, the number of Jews deported within two days of the

operations start was 23,363. By May 18, it reached about 51,000. The number of those

deported continued to climb dramatically as the days passed: May 19, 62,644; May 23,

110,556; May 25, 138,870; May 28, 204,312; May 31, 217,236; June 1, 236,414;

June 2, 247,856; June 3, 253,389; and June 8, 289,357.

The transport of June 7,

which was reported the following day, was the last one from Zones I and II. With it, the

German and Hungarian experts on the Final Solution achieved their target: within

twenty-four days, they had deported 289,357 Jews in ninety-two trains a daily average

of 12,056 people deported and an average of 3,145 per train. Among these were the

52. The horrors of the entrainment and deportation were described in detail in a great number of

memoirs and testimonies after the war. See Randolph L. Braham (ed.),

The Hungarian Jewish

Catastrophe: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography

ed. (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1984), and

idem

(ed.),

The Holocaust in Hungary: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography,

1984-2000

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

. Idem

(ed.),

The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account

(New York: World

Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1963), nos. 267-279.

280

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

131,639 Jews deported in forty-five trains from the ghetto entrainment centers in North-

ern Transylvania.

Crime and Punishment

Many, but certainly not all, the German and Hungarian military and civilian officials

who were involved in the Final Solution in Northern Transylvania were tried for war

crimes after the war. Most of them managed to escape with the retreating Nazi armies

and avoided prosecution by successfully hiding their identity after capture by the Allies.

Others managed to settle in the Western world, emerging as useful tools in the struggle

against communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Nevertheless, a relatively large number of the top Hungarian governmental and

military officials responsible for the planning and implementation of the Final Solution

were tried in Budapest, having been charged, among other things, with crimes also

committed in Northern Transylvania. Many of the Nazi officials and SS officers in charge

of the anti-Jewish drive in Hungary were tried in many parts of the world, including

Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Bratislava, Vienna, and Jerusalem.

The roundup and prosecution of individuals suspected of war crimes in Northern

Transylvania and elsewhere in postwar Romania were undertaken under the terms of

the Armistice Agreement, which was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1944. With its

implementation supervised by an Allied Control Commission operating under the Allied

(Soviet) High Command, the Agreement also stipulated, among other things, the annul-

ment of the Second Vienna Award, returning Northern Transylvania to Romania.

The peoples tribunals (

tribunalele poporului

)

were organized and operated under the

provisions of Decree-law no. 312 of the Ministry of Justice, dated April 21, 1945.

The

crimes committed by the gendarmerie, military, police, and civilian officials in the

course of the anti-Jewish drive in Northern Transylvania, including the expropriation,

ghettoization, and deportation of the Jews, were detailed in the indictment presented by

a prosecution team headed by Andrei Paul (Endre Pollák), the chief prosecutor.

The

trial of the suspected 185 war criminals was held in Cluj in the spring of 1946 in a

Peoples Tribunal presided over by Justice Nicolae Matei. Of the 185 defendants, only 51

were in custody; the others were tried

in absentia.

The proceedings recorded the

gruesome details of the Final Solution in the various counties, districts, and communities

of Northern Transylvania.

The trial ended in late May 1946, when the Peoples Tribunal announced its Judg-

ment.

The sentences were harsh. Thirty of the defendants were condemned to death;

the others received prison terms totaling 1,204 years. However, all those condemned to

54. See Appendix.

55. See Braham,

Politics

pp. 1317-1331.

56. For text, see

Monitorul Oficial

, Bucharest, part 1, April 24, 1945, pp. 3362-3364.

57. For the text of the indictment, see USHMM, RG 25.004M, roll 87, file no. 40029.

58. For documents on various trial proceedings and judgments, see

ibid.

, roll 69, file no. 40027; roll 76,

file no. 40024, and roll 87, file no. 40029. See also USHMM, fond Peoples Tribunal Cluj,

1945-1946, roll 2, item 22. For the English translation of the Judgment, see Braham,

Genocide.

281

FINAL REPORT

death were among those tried

in absentia

having fled with the withdrawing Nazi forces.

Among these was Col. Tibor Paksy-Kiss, the gendarmerie officer in charge of the

ghettoization in the region. The percentage of absentees was also high among those who

were condemned to life imprisonment. Among those under arrest, three were con-

demned to life imprisonment, six were freed after having been found innocent of the

charges brought against them, and the remainder were sentenced to various types of

imprisonment, ranging from three to twenty-five years. The harshest penalties were

meted out to those who were especially cruel in the ghettos.

Virtually none of the condemned served out their sentences. In Romania, as else-

where in East Central Europe during the Stalinist period, the regime found it necessary

to adopt a new social policy that aimed, among other things, at the strengthening of the

Communist Party, which was virtually non-existent during the wartime period. Under a

decree adopted early in 1950,

those convicted of war crimes who demonstrated good

behavior, performed their tasks conscientiously, and proved that they became fit for

social cohabitation during their imprisonment were made eligible for immediate release

irrespective of the severity of the original sentence. Among those who were found

socially rehabilitated were quite a few who had been condemned to life imprisonment

for crimes against the Jews. Guided by political expediency, the communists made a

mockery of criminal justice.

Appendix

Deportation trains from Northern Transylvania

passing through Kassa (Kosice) in 1944

Dates

Origin of transports

Number of deportees

May 16

Sighetul Marmaþiei

3,007

May 17

Ökörmezö (now Ukraine)

3,052

May 18

Sighetul Marmaþiei

3,248

May 19

Viºeu de Sus

3,032

May 19

Satu Mare

3,006

May 20

Sighetul Marmaþiei

3,104

May 21

Viºeu de Sus

3,013

May 22

Sighetul Marmaþiei

3,490

May 22

Satu Mare

3,300

May 23

Viºeu de Sus

3,023

May 23

Oradea

3,110

May 25

Oradea

3,148

May 25

Cluj

3,130

59. Decree no. 72 of March 23, 1950, Freeing of Convicted Individuals Prior to the Completion of

Their Term (Decret nr. 72 privitor la liberarea înainte de termen a celor condamnaþi),

Monitorul

Oficial

March 23, 1950. Also reproduced in

Colecþie de legi, decrete, hotãrâri ºi deciziuni

(Bucharest: Editura de Stat, 1950), vol. 28, p. 76-79.

282

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Dates

Origin of transports

Number of deportees

May 25

Aknaszlatina

3,317

May 25

Viºeu de Sus

3,006

May 26

Satu Mare

3,336

May 27

Târgu-Mureº

3,183

May 28

Dej

3,150

May 28

Oradea

3,227

May 29

Cluj

3,417

May 29

Satu Mare

3,306

May 29

Oradea

3,166

May 30

Târgu-Mureº

3,203

May 30

Oradea

3,187

May 30

Satu Mare

3,300

May 31

Cluj

3,270

May 31

Baia Mare

3,073

May 31

ªimleul Silvaniei

3,106

June 1

Oradea

3,059

June 1

Satu Mare

2,615

June 2

Bistriþa

3,106

June 2

Cluj

3,100

June 3

Oradea

2,972

June 3

ªimleul Silvaniei

3,161

June 4

Reghin

3,149

June 5

Oradea

2,527

June 5

Baia Mare

2,844

June 6

Dej

3,160

June 6

Bistriþa

2,875

June 6

ªimleul Silvaniei

1,584

June 8

Dej

1,364

June 8

Cluj

1,784

June 8

Târgu-Mureº

1,163

June 9

Cluj

1,447

June 27

Oradea

2,819

* These data were collected by the Railway Command of Kassa (Kosice). Mikulas (Miklós) Gaskó,

Halálvonatok (Death Trains),

Menóra

Toronto, June 1, 1984, pp. 4, 12. The figures relating

to the number of trains and deportees and the deportation dates do not always coincide with those

given in other sources.

Solidarity and Rescue.

Romanian Righteous among the Nations

Introduction

In June 2003, by resolution of the Bucharest town hall, a street in the Romanian capital

was named Dr. Traian Popovici, after the former mayor of Cernãuþi during the Second

World War, who saved thousands of Jews from deportation to Transnistria. Popovici was

the first Romanian awarded the title Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem to

be officially honored by the Romanian government. This happened six decades after the

end of the war and thirty-five years after Yad Vashem granted the title to Popovici. This

odd delay in celebrating a man who deserves the respect of a national hero was, undoubt-

edly, the outcome of a process aimed at the rehabilitation of the Antonescu regime for its

crimes against the Jews. This process commenced during the Ceauºescu regime and

continued after the fall of communism with the more overt attempt to turn Antonescu

into a martyr and national hero.

That Romanians who saved Jewish lives by endangering their own were not paid

public homage during their lifetime may be explained by the fact that postwar generations

in Romania were educated in the spirit of the patriotic myth of a Romania unsullied by

the war, despite the glaring truth that it had been an ally of Nazi Germany. Had they been

celebrated as rescuers, it would have implied that there had been Romanian murderers

and murderous Romanian authorities from whom thousands of Jews needed saving.

Certainly, such an acknowledgement would have questioned the official patriotic propa-

ganda on this dark chapter of Romanian history.

The only book written on the role of Romanian rescuers was authored by a Romanian

Jew, Marius Mircu, and published in Romanian in Tel Aviv.

Commemorations of Jewish

victims in the Romanian Jewish community and its publication (

Revista cultului mozaic

)

as well as ceremonies dedicated to their rescuers were tolerated, but also closely moni-

tored. The only exceptions were selected if they fit into political and propaganda

scenarios, such as rescuers in Hungarian-occupied Northern Transylvania. The actions

1. Michael Shafir, Marshal Antonescus Post-Communist Rehabilitation:

Cui Bono

, in Randolph

L. Braham (ed.),

The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era

(New

York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 349-410.

Din nou ºapte momente din istoria evreilor în România. Oameni de omenie în vremuri de

neomenie

(Tel Aviv: Glob, 1987), 190 p. Written in a journalistic style, the book does not provide

a critical examination of the documentary sources used in the evaluation of the described events.

284

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

of this specific category of saviors were highlighted and even exaggerated to the point of

mystification in order to bring into relief the otherwise genuine participation of Hungar-

ian authorities in the Nazi Final Solution or to publicize the zeal and the cruelty of the

Hungarian gendarmes. Relative to other European countries that were parties to the war,

to the number of victims and the size of the territory on which deportations and

massacres took place, Romania has a relatively small number of people who have been

granted the title Righteous among the Nations: sixty, including those who acted in

Northern Transylvania. As argued below, this can be explained by a number of contextual

variables.

Public Reaction: Between Hostility, Indifference, and Compassion

Despite the Antonescu regimes anti-Semitic propaganda, Romanian society of those

years did not become a fanatical society. The outcome of this propaganda was instead a

kind of neutralization of public reaction, a sort of de-sensitization of the majority of the

population toward whatever was happening to the Jews. The reactions of compassion and

rebellion were accompanied by passive acceptance of killings and even active participa-

tion in anti-Semitic policies.

However, the study of interwar Romanian intellectual life shows that Romania did

indeed have a democratic tradition and that many public figures, such as democratic

intellectuals (with left-wing affiliations or not), writers, and even politicians, opposed

the anti-Semitism of the thirties. Highly competent and influential in the intellectual

debate at the beginning of the thirties, these people lost ground after 1935 and after

1937. After the suspension of democratic journals, they were effectively silenced. When

Jews were excluded from professional associations, and the Goga government passed and

enforced anti-Semitic legislation in December 1937, their critical voices were virtually

mute.

There were numerous intellectuals who adopted anti-Semitic attitudes, because they

passively identified with the most influential representatives of past and contemporary

Romanian nationalism. The events of 1940 (the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

to the Soviets and then of Northern Transylvania to Hungary) made the issue of discrimi-

nation against the Jews a topic of secondary importance in Romanian intellectual circles.

It remains a fact that when the Antonescu regime and its alliance with Hitler brought

hope for the retrieval of the ceded territories, the reestablishment of the Greater Romania

of 1918, and the removal of the Bolshevik danger, many democratic intellectuals chose

to support the Antonescu dictatorship.

Historical and political circumstances account for the widely different destinies of

Jews from various regions of Romania during the war. Under Antonescu, Romania was

a Nazi ally and consequently joined Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union with the

stated intent to retrieve the ceded territories. Jewish populations in these territories

(200,000 in Bessarabia, 93,000 in Northern Bukovina, almost 200,000 in Transylvania

and Banat) were regarded as hostile and foreign, and were slated for extermination in

Antonescus cleansing of the land. A huge propaganda machine was set up in the army

and civil service to portray this population and, by extension, all Jews as an embodiment

285

FINAL REPORT

of the Bolshevik danger. This propaganda machine depicted the Jewish population in

the ceded territories as the culprits of the maiming, humiliation, and even the killing of

many withdrawing Romanian soldiers in the summer of 1940.

The situation of Jews under the Antonescu regime fluctuated by region, usually with

proximity to the front as the most important variable. The anti-Semitic atmosphere in

Romania was prefigured in 1939 by outbursts of anti-Semitism and was marked in 1940

by various forms of physical violence against the Jews. Antonescus military dictatorship

brought harsh censorship and a near total silence on the fate of Jews in Romanian public

life. This was particularly so after the outbreak of the war. The fact that, despite the

alliance with Germany, Antonescu was the leader of an independent country that devel-

oped its own policy on the solution to the Jewish problem had a dramatic impact on the

Jews living in Romania and Romanian-occupied territories. The measures taken by

Antonescu to deport or massacre the Jews were perceived by a significant part of the

Romanian population as necessary to the war of national survival and reunification.

Undoubtedly, there was a somewhat general consensus in Romania on participating in

the war against the Soviet Union. This consensus was only slightly diminished by the

huge number of Romanian soldiers and officers who became casualties of war. The

anti-Semitic rhetorical repertoire now included blaming Romanian military failures on the

Eastern front on alleged acts of Jewish espionage committed on behalf of the Red Army.

Under these circumstances, to save Jews or express compassion for them became unpatri-

otic and demanded great courage and strength of character, even when the risk was minimal.

A good indication of the morale of the Romanian citizens, including that of the Jews,

can be found in the diaries of Jewish intellectuals during those years.

Their human and

personal perspectives help to provide a better understanding of the nature and sense of

the relationships between Jewish and Romanian intellectuals. They also show individual

cases of contradictory and inconsistent conduct of the Romanian authorities, who distin-

guished between our Jews (Jews from the

Regat

) and foreign Jews (Jews from

Bessarabia and Bukovina) as well as the variation of official policies toward the Jews.

What is characteristic for Romania is the fact that unofficial channels of communica-

tions between Jewish leaders and intellectuals on one hand, and Romanian government

representatives and influential politicians on the other, existed throughout the period,

which eased the flow of information on the developments in state policies toward the

Jews. This sometimes led to confusion and panic, because the signals sent by Romanian

officials sometimes seemed to indicate policy vacillations or the possibility of instant

decision making, whether with beneficial or catastrophic consequences.

Jewish intellectuals often recorded their thoughts about the vehemently anti-Semitic

official policy as well as the issue of personal responsibility for what was happening to

the Jews. On August 5, 1941, for example, Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian noted the

reaction of his good friend, Romanian diplomat C. Visoianu, upon learning of the Iaºi

massacre in the summer of 1941:

Each time I see a Jew, I am tempted to approach him, greet him, and tell him: Sir, please

believe me, I have nothing to do with this. The sad thing is that no one admits having anything

3. Leon Volovici, The Victim as Eyewitness: Jewish Intellectual Diaries during the Antonescu Period,

in Braham (ed.),

op. cit.

, pp. 195-213; Andrei Pippidi,

Dictatorship and Opposition in Wartime

Romania

, paper presented at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 20, 2004.

286

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

to do with it. Everybody disapproves, everybody is revolted, yet to a no lesser extent everyone

is a cog in this huge anti-Semitic factory that is the Romanian state, with its offices, with its

press, with its institutions, and with its laws. I dont know if I have to laugh when Vivi

[

C. Vi[oianu editorss note

]

or Brani[te assure me that General Mazarini or General Nicolescu

are astonished and revolted at what is happening. Yet, beyond astonishment or revolt, they

and another ten thousand people like them sign, ratify, and acquiesce to what is going on, not

only through passivity, but also through direct participation.

A certain awakening of public opinion was evident with respect to the deportation

Regat

Jews planned in the Romanian-Nazi deal of summer 1942. Many Bucharest

intellectuals suspected of leaning toward communism personally protested the implemen-

tation of this plan, and beginning in fall 1942 the planned deportation of

Regat

Jews was

also faced with the resistance of a number of opposition politicians from Romanias main

parties, such as Iuliu Maniu, head of the National Peasant Party (

Partidul Na]ional-

-}\r\nesc

PN}), Nicolae Lupu and Ion Mihalache (also PN} leaders), and Constantin

I.C. Br\tianu (National Liberal Party leader).

The Romanian Orthodox Church also pro-

tested, although until then the leadership of the Church had been traditionally hostile to

the Jewish community; the intervention of Nicolae B\lan, the bishop of Transylvania, was

notable in this respect. Moreover, representatives of the Romanian royal house, particu-

larly Queen Mother Elena, made similar efforts. Also active in condemning the racial

discrimination and deportations were Prince Barbu {tirbey and PN} former members of

Parliament, Nicusor Graur and Ioan Hudi]\. Graur also lambasted the deportations of the

Roma population to Transnistria.

Unhappy with the criticism, Antonescu ordered that a

list be drafted containing the statements and protests made in favor of the Jews by

various public figures.

During the second half of the war, after the change in official

policy toward the Jews, however, Romanian diplomats made many more attempts to

rescue Jews with Romanian citizenship in the countries under German occupation.

The Righteous among the Nations

The title of Righteous among the Nations is awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute in

Jerusalem, which was set up in 1953 through a special law issued by the Knesset. Its

function is to preserve the memory of the martyrs and heroes during the Holocaust. One

of the objectives of Yad Vashem is to honor the Righteous among the Nations, those

non-Jews who risked their lives in order to save Jews. Up to the summer of 2004, 20,205

people had received this distinction.

Given the circumstances outlined above, the number of Romanian Righteous among

the Nations is rather small. It is important to point out, however, that in the case of

4. Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii la istoria României. Problema evreiascã, 1933-1944

(Bucharest: Hasefer,

2002), vol. 2, part 2, pp. 243-254.

5. Nicuºor Graur,

În preajma altei lumi

(Bucharest, 1946), pp. 158.

6. Jean Ancel (ed.),

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust

(henceforth:

Ancel,

Documents

) (Jerusalem, 1986), vol. 10, no. 131, pp. 354-355; Lya Benjamin (ed.),

Problema

evreiascã în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniºtri

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), no. 179, pp. 535-541.

7. Dumitru Hîncu,

Un licãr în beznã. Acþiuni necunoscute ale diplomaþiei române

(Bucharest:

Hasefer, 1997).

287

FINAL REPORT

Romania, as in other countries, there were actually many more people who could meet

Yad Vashems criteria to be granted the title and medal. Their recognition largely

depends on the existence of direct testimonies and the perseverance of witnesses in going

through the necessary procedures to build a convincing file. In many cases, those

rescued were caught up in the vortex of the postwar years or simply emigrated and used

private channels to reward the rescuer and his/her family and therefore did not pursue the

official and symbolic recognition.

Journalist Marius Mircu described examples of rescues in his book, but they were

not investigated after its publication.

Also, an eyewitness of the Iaºi pogrom listed

the names of several Iaºi Romanians whose conduct was beyond reproach, who took

on risks and kept Jews informed or hid them.

During the war, the odds of meeting

a rescuer largely depended on the very different circumstances in which Jewish

communities found themselves. Paradoxically, the odds increased during pogroms

when, due to the state of anarchy, it was much easier to save a Jewish family or a

group of Jews. Such were the many cases of rescue during the Bucharest and Iaºi

pogroms. Of particular importance were the rescue efforts of Iaºi pharmacist D. Beceanu

and Viorica Agarici, chairwoman of the Romanian subsidiary of the Red Cross, who

initiated and organized the administration of first aid to the survivors of the infamous

death train. Also exemplary during the Iaºi massacre were the undertakings of

cereal mill manager, engineer Grigore Profir, who defied death threats from German

soldiers and Romanian gendarmes and maintained his resolution to hide dozens of

Iaºi Jews.

These cases demonstrate that individual initiatives were often successful. Many peo-

ple, however, who may have otherwise been willing to help, were unable to overcome the

paralysis stemming from their feelings toward the Jews. Since anti-Semitic propaganda

was so intense during the war, compassion for Jewish suffering or questioning their

humiliation and persecution were construed as socially inappropriate or perceived as

evidence of a lack of patriotism or even treason. Viorica Agarici, for example, was

attacked so vehemently by the citizens of Roman that she had to resign from her position

and take refuge in Bucharest, even though her son was a famous Romanian air force pilot.

The situation was even more extreme in regions near the front, particularly in

Bessarabia and Bukovina, where potential rescuers were under the threat of the Roma-

nian and German military. In general, in these areas gestures of solidarity with the Jews

seemed inconceivable.

Still, there were some rescue initiatives undertaken by local people of Bessarabia,

peasants, or elementary school teachers from villages. Up to now, eleven people have

received the title Righteous among the Nations (or it was awarded to their descend-

ants). They were citizens of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova (now the

Republic of Moldova). The case of the school principal from Nisporeni, Paramon Lozan,

is especially impressive: he, together with his wife, Tamara, released all the Jews

confined in the school after discovering that all of them were to be shot. The school

principal paid for his brave gesture with his life.

8. Mircu,

op. cit.

9. Adrian Radu-Cernea,

Pogromul de la Iaºi

Depoziþie de martor

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), p. 66.

10. Mircu,

op. cit.

, p. 37.

288

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Gestures of solidarity and rescue efforts became more numerous in 1942. Around this

time, many Romanians began to sense the official attitude becoming more ambiguous

and hesitant and to see the forms of official persecution becoming more humane or

traditional. The decision of the Romanian government not to adopt the Nazi plan of

extermination grew increasingly noticeable. Undoubtedly, many Romanian upper army

and civilian leaders grew aware of the fact that in the event of an Allied victory and the

war crimes tribunal that would follow in its wake, they had to construct a more positive

image for themselves.

Unlike the Nazi-controlled areas, where massacres were systematic and the ideologi-

cal training of the perpetrators ensured a disciplined and merciless enforcement of the

Final Solution, in some of the Romanian-controlled areas, notably Bessarabia and

Bukovina, there was a general state of disorder. Bestial torture and murder and compas-

sion and rescue were at times equally possible options for local commanders. Contradic-

tory orders led to great confusion and left room for more freedom of action by command-

ers, with consequences that were equally contradictory. The whimsical disposition of a

sadistic officer or NCOs and privates could have catastrophic consequences for thou-

sands of Jews placed under their authority; or, in rare cases, it could lead to the rescue

of some Jews (even by camp commanders).

For example, in a display of great courage and humanity, the commander of the

Vapniarka camp, Sabin Motora, rescued dozens of Jews on his own. Lawyer

I.D. Popescu, commander of the Tiraspol municipal police, also showed remarkable

commitment to saving Transnistria deportees. Although his actions are well documented

by the Jews he rescued, the Yad Vashem commission inexplicably did not grant him the

title Righteous among the Nations.

Another form of protest was to resign in objection

to the continuing atrocities and inhumane living conditions in the camps. Col. Alexandru

Constantinescu, the first commander of the Vertujeni camp, left his position over the

situation of the detainees under his command.

Rescuers and Their Motivations

The rescuers recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations were of

different ages and came from widely diverse social and educational backgrounds:

peasants, workers, pharmacists, lawyers, teachers, army officers, gendarmes, and diplo-

mats. Yad Vashem recently awarded the title to Orthodox priest Petre Gheorghe for

helping Jewish deportees in Transnistria. The names of many other priests have been

listed by survivors, but their cases have not yet gotten to compete for the award. With

firm moral conviction, Queen Mother Elena condemned the planned deportation of the

Jews, and she was granted the title for her efforts.

In most cases, rescues were motivated by the personal relationship between rescuer

and survivor often they were neighbors, friends, or co-workers. There were also a few

11. Dimitrie Olenici, Un protector al evreilor: ofiþerul român I.D. Popescu,

Studia et Acta Historiae

Iudaeorum Romaniae

7 (2002), pp. 353-376.

12. Radu Ioanid,

Evreii sub regimul Antonescu

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997), p. 183.

289

FINAL REPORT

cases in which rescues were ideologically motivated, such as those by members of

antifascist organizations. When no prior personal relationship existed, rescue was based

on a spontaneous manifestation of solidarity and humanitarianism. Anna Pal from Cluj

described her motivation to save a Jewish child in this way:

I simply couldnt shut my eyes to what was happening during that time so I did everything

possible and I heartily took the little Andre giving him shelter. My firm belief that I work for

a good and true cause gave such strength that fear could not capture me.

Half of the rescuers recognized by Yad Vashem have been women. After the war, two

of them married the men they saved and emigrated to Israel. Many of the rescued Jews

struggled to keep in touch with their rescuers and show their gratitude in various forms,

including submitting the Righteous among the Nations paperwork to Yad Vashem. Of

those rescuers recognized by Yad Vashem, most (twenty-eight) came from Northern

Transylvania, and twelve were ethnic Hungarians. The greater frequency of rescue

attempts in this region can be explained by the improving situation of Jews in Romania

near the end of the war, which was in sharp contrast to the ever-worsening situation in

Northern Transylvania. Once the Antonescu regime changed its policy toward the Jews,

Romanian territory became a place of refuge for the Jews of Northern Transylvanian and

Hungary who managed to cross over into Romania. For example, Professor Raoul Sorban

was awarded the Righteous among the Nations medal in 1987, for rescuing Hungarian

and Northern Transylvanian Jews. However, the award was contested by many survivors

and historians,

despite the backing of Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, former Chief Rabbi

of the Cluj Neolog Jewish community.

An Exemplary Hero: Dr. Traian Popovici

Of the Romanian Righteous among the Nations, the case of Dr. Traian Popovici (1892-1946),

the mayor of Cernãuþi, stands out as unique. Popovici defied the orders of Antonescu and

fiercely opposed the ghettoization and the subsequent deportation of Cernãuþi Jews, and

contributed directly to the rescue of thousands of Jews from deportation and death. His

was a case of assuming responsibility for carrying out a moral duty, because to act or to

remain passive is ultimately contingent upon making the decision to accept or reject

participation in an abominable crime, especially when the crime is legally covered.

Immediately after the war, Popovici wrote a book entitled

Confession of Conscience

in which he described the tragedy of Bukovinan Jewry, which he believed to be the

consequence of a barbaric enterprise. At the same time, he also viewed those events

as a Romanian tragedy with deep implications for the moral consciousness of the Roma-

nian nation. Traian Popovici was not an adversary of Antonescu. He confessed, Like

13. Letter of Anna Pal, Yad Vashem Archives, file no. 6540.

14. Randolph L. Braham,

Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded

Rescue Accounts

(henceforth: Braham,

Romanian Nationalists

) (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1998), pp. 95-119; Zoltán Tibori Szabó,

Élet és halál mezsgyéjén. Zsidók menekülése és

mentése a magyar-román határon 1940-1944 között

(

Between life and

death: the escape and rescue

of Jews across the Hungarian-Romanian border between 1940-1944

) (Cluj-Napoca: Minerva, 2001).

290

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

many others in this country I believed in the myth of the strong man, of the honest,

energetic, and well-meaning leader who could save a damaged country.

What was the inner mechanism of Popovicis formidable resolution? Popovici posed

this question to himself and arrived at the following answer:

As far as I am concerned, what gave me strength to oppose the current, be master of my

own will and oppose the powers that be, finally to be a true human being, was the message of

the families of priests that constitute my ancestry, a message about what it means to love

mankind. What gave me strength was the education I received in high school in Suceava, where

I received the light of classical literature, where my teachers fashioned my spirit with the

values of humanity, which tirelessly enlightens man and differentiates him from the brutes.

Yet, many other people received the same education and had the same family tradi-

tion. But, unlike most of the people with similar family and educational backgrounds,

Popovici was able to turn a moral lesson into a philosophy of life and a set of daily ethical

norms. He refused to accept the comfortable escape clauses people around him

offered: official orders, wartime, the advancing enemy, national priorities. In decisive

moments, Popovici was aware that his intransigence compensated for what he called the

moral disorder and the anarchy of most people. He was confident that he would thus

build a basis for asking for forgiveness.

Gestures of Solidarity of Romanian Intellectuals and Artists

Along with the political opposition to the dictatorial regime, there were many acts of

solidarity with the Jewish victims of the Antonescu regimes policies. The instances of

Romanians solidarity with the Jews during those years have not been researched and

emphasized enough. There is no doubt that there were many more cases of rescue during

the Holocaust than are currently known. This is an issue that must be studied thoroughly

in order to present a balanced picture, as close to the reality of the 1940-1944 period as

possible.

Most gestures of solidarity were made by simple people without any kind of financial

or political calculation, who, through their courageous actions, saved Jews from death,

without thinking of any reward. Most often, these acts were not recorded in documents,

but remained alive in the hearts and minds of those Jews who found themselves in

extreme situations and survived only because of the intervention of such Romanians. To

them must be added other categories of citizens with positions in various sectors, such as

culture and the liberal professions as well as economic, administrative, or even military

structures. In addition, high clergymen, leading politicians from the opposition, and

Queen Mother Elena were also involved in rescue efforts between 1941 and 1944.

The decree-law of September 8, 1940, stipulated that Jewish employees of Romanian

theaters be fired. However, some theater managers opposed this. Thus, Constantin

T\nase continued to pay salaries to some Jewish actors (Henrieta Gamberto, Teodora

15. Traian Popovici, Spovedania unei conºtiinþe, in Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã

(Bucharest:

Diogene, 1946), vol. 3, pp. 150-181.

291

FINAL REPORT

Gamberto, N. Stroe). N. Stroe continued to write together with Vasilache, his old friend,

but under a pseudonym. When the Jewish community established its own Barasheum

Theater,

Tãnase often ostentatiously attended the Barasheum shows. In addition, Roma-

nian director Sic\ Alexandrescu, manager of the Theater of Comedy, requested a com-

pulsory labor detachment to be set up in his theater in order to save Jewish actors (Leny

Caler, Agnia Begoslova, Tina Radu, Alexandru Fin]i, Villy Ronea), stage decorators

(W. Siegfried), prompters (Victor and Bebe Godean), and theater clerks from the harsh

conditions of the compulsory labor camps. Also, Ion Vasilescu refused to fire Jewish

actor Eugen Mirea. Lucia Sturdza-Bulandra, manager of the Regina Maria Theater,

maintained her troupe of Jewish actors (Flori C\rbuneanu, Maria Sandu, Alexandru

Fin]i), her Jewish director (Baum) and her prompter (M. Vladimir).

Not only was the

Bulandra troupe publicly reprimanded by Radu Gyr, chief of the Theater Division of the

Romanian Ministry of Culture, for staging a play with a Jewish actress, but it also lost its

government subsidies. Liviu Rebreanu, the manager of the National Theater who refused

to fire Jewish actress Leny Caler, was another example. Teodor Mu[atescu allowed

Jewish scriptwriters Elly Roman and Henri M\lineanu to use his name to sign their

compositions.

Thanks to similar gestures of solidarity, Jewish director Alexandru Braun

directed and created the set and costumes for the drama

Mihai Viteazul

, which was staged

in Craiova in September 1942, in a year of full-fledged repression against the Jews.

On July 14, 1942, the decree-law of December 5, 1941, took effect. Its regulations

stipulated that the Military High Command could use all Jews, ages eighteen to fifty, in

various kinds of work demanded by the public interest, by the needs of the army and

other public institutions for 60 to 180 days a year.

The work detachments were

organized under military command, though the Jews recruited for these departments

were allowed to wear civilian clothes. The workday was nine hours long, with breaks on

official (non-Jewish) holidays. Highly-educated Jews were pointedly assigned all kinds of

jobs that entailed public humiliation shoveling snow, sweeping, and digging ditches in

the city. Some Romanian intellectuals acted to protect Jews and convince authorities to

give educated Jews jobs appropriate to their background. Thus, the head of the Romanian

Institute of Statistics, Sabin Mãnuilã, managed to persuade the military authorities in

charge of the work detachments to put at his disposal 2,800 highly-educated Jewish

professionals.

Others made symbolic gestures of moral support. Well-known actress Silvia

Dumitrescu-Timic\, for example, offered tea and invited the Jews forced to shovel snow

on her street into her home.

Famous Romanian composer George Enescu often took hot

tea to the Jews shoveling snow in the center city (Biserica Albã).

Gala Galaction, priest

and Romanian writer of great renown, once stopped to publicly encourage Jews shoveling

16. Marius Mircu,

Oameni de omenie în vremuri de neomenie

(henceforth: Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

)

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), p. 210.

17.

Ibid.

, pp. 212-213.

18.

Ibid.

, p. 213.

19.

Ibid.

, p. 122.

20.

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 164, July 14, 1941.

21. SRI Archives, documentary fond, file no. 3.116, f. 14.

22. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

p. 215.

23.

Ibid.

p. 216.

292

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

snow (Courage! You are not alone! he said) and then took over the work of an elderly

Jew. Galaction often hugged his Jewish friends when he saw them in the street, and once

he went so far as to help a Jew under surveillance (Emil Feder) to evade the authorities

by driving off with him until the police lost their trail.

Some Jews in labor detachments were fortunate enough to be under the authority of

humane administrators or to be helped by various state employees. In July 1941, around

1,500 Jews from Boto[ani were transported in cattle car trains to Brãila, a forced labor

site (a building on a small dam on the banks of the Siret River). On the way, another

500 Jews from Boto[ani and Hu[i were crowded in the train, too. After they had finished

work in late-October, the authorities left them there to fend for themselves; so, the Jews

pleaded to the detachment commander and his deputy for help. Both men were in the

army reserve and worked as primary school instructors in civilian life. Upon learning of

the Jews desperate situation living outdoors with no means of subsistence Avram

Moisi, the stationmaster in M\r\[e[ti, used his connections to get the Jews on a special

train and send them back to their families in Boto[ani. Moisis initiative would not have

ended successfully had it not been for the cooperation of the two rail traffic specialists

in the Br\ila station (Valeriu T\n\sescu and Constantin Luchian).

Also noteworthy was

M\t\s\reanu, a train driver from Banat who stopped his train in specific places to help

the Jews, close to Station 21 Oravi]a, so that Jews could jump off the train, and near

the Lisava labor camp, so that parcels with food and clothes could be thrown to the Jews

working there.

Some municipal authorities also showed sympathy for the plight of the Jews during

those years. Thus, in May 1941, municipal authorities in the Bucharest satellite village

of B\neasa (mayor Mircea B\lteanu, deputy R\dulescu, and Vasile Calmu[, the town hall

secretary) received 104 Jews evacuated from other rural areas, just as they would have

any citizen in need. Mayor B\lteanu fed them and gave them days off to travel to

Bucharest for work, so that they could support their families. He also took them out of

the police station and the Bucharest recruiting center whenever the local gendarmerie

made round-ups. Once, four Jews were missing from inspection. After finding them in

their homes, they were sent to the train station to be deported. B\lteanu, however,

persuaded army corps Gen. Constantin Niculescu to cancel the order.

The Antonescu regime established concentration camps for Jews in the

Regat

isolate them from Romanian society. They suffered many abuses at the hands of the

camps administrators. But in some cases, camp commanders or their subordinates

displayed more humanity than the rules allowed. For example, in the 3,000-person work

camp at Cotroceni, a suburb of Bucharest, the camp commander, Colonel Agapiescu,

illegally reduced the work schedule for the Jews there to nine hours and to only five

hours a day for Jews with large families.

Agapiescu also used soldiers under his

command and Romanian workers on the site to replace Jews missing during the roll call.

When General Cepleanu came to inspect the camp in September 1942 and found

24.

Ibid.

pp. 224-225.

25.

Ibid.

pp. 46-47.

26.

Ibid.

p. 123.

27.

Ibid.

pp. 185-192.

28.

Ibid.

, pp. 134-143.

293

FINAL REPORT

ninety-six Jews missing, he ordered that they be found and deported to Transnistria.

Faced with this situation, Agapiescu persuaded some officers in the Army High Command,

such as Colonel Locusteanu, Colonel Chirescu and Major Miclescu, to nullify the order.

Agapiescu also did fundraising with wealthy Jews, such as Max Auschnitt to set up a

free food facility for a thousand people and a makeshift healthcare center where Doctors

Popper and Rosenthal, both of whom were Jewish, administered counsel and drugs free

of charge. He allowed Jews to buy food, clothing, and books brought there from the city

and wrote fake medical exemption papers for them. When 300 of his Jews were taken

to Giurgiu to unload a German train and were then prevented from leaving by the

Germans, the commander again used his Army High Command connections to have them

freed. Agapiescu then personally went to Giurgiu to make sure the Germans released

them. After the war he wrote, Is there a greater satisfaction than being greeted by

unknown people in the street? I know they cannot be but the Jews who worked under my

command.

The Romanian gendarmerie can be singled out for abusing Jews and contributing

directly to their physical extermination. There were, however, some exceptions. For

example, NCO Dumitru Pris\caru, of the Tutova-B^rlad gendarmerie, made sure that

400 Jews crowded in the B\cani police station were given adequate medical care and

housing in local homes; he forged the papers of twelve Jews accused of being communist

sympathizers by removing the suspicion note; and although he was ordered to make

the Jewish column walk on, Pris\caru disobeyed the command and eventually arranged

for Jews to be transported by the wagons of local peasants. NCO Pris\caru was conse-

quently reprimanded and imprisoned in Petro[ani.

Constantin Hrehorciuc, chief of the gendarme station in St\ne[tii de Jos, Bukovina,

liberated the Jews from several villages taken hostage by Ukrainian gangs that would

execute between ten and fifteen of them every day. He then refused to send them to the

Storojine] and V\sc\u]i camps.

ªtefan C. Rus, lieutenant-colonel of the Bihor gen-

darme legion (

Legiunea de Jandarmi Bihor

), based in Beiu[ between 1942 and 1944, is

said to have softened orders instituting harsh work conditions for the Jews in his labor

battalions. He also gave them better food and days off and facilitated transportation back

to their homes. After the deportations of Jews from Hungarian-occupied Northern

Transylvania began, he offered refuge to 100 Jews from there and other areas of Hun-

gary.

When some locals in Banila and Ciudei committed robberies and atrocities against

the Jews on July 6, 1941, NCO Ro[u aided and defended the victims.

Between July 4

and July 6, 1941, Romanian officers in Socoli]a and V\sc\u]i saved the lives of Jews

scheduled for execution.

In November 1941, Lieutenant Colonel Dumitru Vasiliu, head of the Ministry of the

Navys work detachment, was informed by Jews living in his apartment building that 200

of them were to be taken to an unknown location the next day.

They asked Vasiliu to set

29.

Ibid.

, pp. 50-56.

30.

Ibid.

, pp. 82-83.

31. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

, pp. 103-104.

32. Ioanid,

op. cit.

, p. 167.

33.

Ibid.

34.

Ibid.

, pp. 192-194.

294

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

up a detachment at the Ministry of the Navy in order to save them. Vasiliu persuaded

Col. Aurel M\linescu of the Army High Command that such a labor detachment was

needed, thereby saving the Jews who were to be deported. Furthermore, since many of

these Jews were poor, he made sure that they and their families were properly fed. He

also had the 200 Jews work in turns thirty people each day.

Carp Valentin, a courier for the Army High Command, attempted to cross the

Dniester River with money and 400 letters for the Jews in the Moghilev camp. The

courier was arrested by the Romanian police in the village of Otaci, Soroca county.

Similarly, Sergeant T.R. Ispr\vnicelu of the Army High Command was arrested for

attempting to deliver twenty-six letters from Jews interned in the Golta camp. The

sergeant was court-martialed, and the Jews were tried.

Two Romanian army specialists of the elite 3

Mountain Troops Batallion (

Bata-

lionul 3 Vânãtori de Munte

) organized a courageous escape for three Jews in Transnistria.

During their leave, specialists Constantin B\r\scu and T.R. La]iu went to the Moghilev

camp in Transnitria and gave military uniforms to two Jewish men and forged papers to

a Jewish woman. In addition, together with the Bucharest police commissioner, Popescu

Gheorghe, Constantin B\r\scu organized the escape of David Edelmanns entire family

from Transnistria. Specialists La]iu and B\r\scu made several other attempts until they

were caught in Transnistria and court-martialed.

NCO Constantin Anghel of the L\pu[na gendarme legion was punished for having

allowed Jews on a train bound for Transnistria to get off the train in railway stations to

buy food on July 10, 1942. He was also accused of conversing cordially with them on

the train during the voyage.

In Tiraspol, Major Iacobescu, commander of the local

gendarmerie, set up workshops for the Jews so that they would not be deported and could

earn a living.

Acts of Solidarity from Ordinary Civilians

In a recent book, Adrian Radu-Cernea, a survivor of the Iaºi pogrom, wrote the follow-

ing about the conduct of the local population: The overwhelming majority of intellec-

tuals and educated people, upper- and lower-middle-class families as well as the employ-

ees of the local town halls and prefectures

did not lower themselves to committing

atrocities during the pogrom. On the contrary, there were many examples of people who

undertook rescue attempts.

The author listed several cases of Iaºi inhabitants who

warned or hid Jews, such as army physician Colonel Iamandi and his high school friend,

Bogdan.

Other locals, such as lawyer Dimitriu and university student Scripc\, initiated

and carried out similar efforts. Orthodox priest R\zmeri]\ and lathe worker Ioan

Gheorghiu were killed because they tried to save Jews.

With the assistance of several

35. ANIC, fond Gendarmerie Inspectorate, file no. 121/1943, p. 287; file no. 79/1943, p. 347; file

no. 78/1943, pp. 42, 191.

36. SRI Archives, documentary fond, file no. 3.118, f. 225; file no. 3.116, f. 14

37. Lya Benjamin,

Realitatea evreiascã

, no. 5, May 1995.

38. Adrian Radu-Cernea,

op. cit.

, p. 66.

39.

Ibid.

40. Ioanid,

op. cit.

, p. 101.

295

FINAL REPORT

other locals, young lawyer Viorica Zosin walked from house to house warning Jews and

even hiding some of them.

The Romanian police severely beat Vasile Petrescu for hiding

a number of Jews in his home.

The chief commissioner of the third police precinct,

which included several Jewish streets in Iaºi (Socola, Nicolina, and Podu Ro[), coura-

geously liberated all the Jews rounded up in the precinct building on June 28, 1941.

Attempts to save Transnistria deportees were severely punished by the regime;

therefore, rescue efforts and they were not few deserve great respect. Unfortunately,

no systematic research has been done on this topic. However, several individual cases are

highly relevant. First, Martha Bibescu, a Romanian aristocrat, public intellectual, and

well known French-language author, took care of the family of journalist Carol Drimer,

who was killed on the Iaºi death train of June 1941. She also successfully used her

connections to liberate Drimers daughter and her family from the Cernãuþi camp.

The

distinguished Romanian doctor, D. Gerota, used his foundation to send 6,000 lei every

month to two Jewish children interned in Transnistria. His humanitarian intentions are

documented in his correspondence.

{erban Flondor, a doctor of agronomics and re-

nowned specialist in heraldry and geneology and son of Iancu Flondor (who played an

important role in uniting Bukovina with Romania), supplied the Jews in the Storojine]

camp with food. Additionally, with the assistance of railway managers, he sent Jews to

Bucharest by locking them in unoccupied sleeping car compartments. While serving as

councilor for the Chamber of Agriculture, he used his train car to take Jews from

Bukovina to Bucharest, where they could hide more easily.

Sonia Palty, a Transnistria deportee, described the humanitarian efforts of agronomist

Vasiliu in the book

Evrei, trece]i Nistrul!

Vasiliu was a Romanian farm manager in

Alexandrovka, who, despite express prohibitions, gave Jews meat rations for a whole

week during the Christmas holidays. He also defended a Jew being beaten by Lieutenant

Cepleanu. In retaliation, Lieutenant Cepleanu informed his father, General Cepleanu, and

Vasiliu was sent to fight in the advanced lines of the Romanian defenses, where he was killed.

Another farm administrator in Transnistria, Vucol Dornescu, then based in Kazaciovka,

saved a group of 120 Jews from being executed by the Germans.

Upon learning that these

Jews were ordered by the Germans to dig their own graves in the field, Dornescu rushed

to the scene on horseback. He asked that the Jews be given to the farm, which he claimed

was experiencing labor shortages. The German officer in charge of the execution agreed

after he was promised farm products in exchange, and the 120 Jews were saved. Dornescu

did the same for many other Jews by visiting camps and persuading commanders that he

needed more labor on his farm. Dornescu also used his trips to Bucharest to deliver

letters and parcels for the Jews.

Many Romanian guards and camp administrators participated in the effort to deliver

letters and parcels, a fact recorded in official documents. Thus, the Gendarmerie

41. Iorgu Iordan,

Memorii

(Bucharest: Eminescu, 1977), vol. 2, p. 328.

42. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

p. 27.

43.

Ibid.

, p. 30.

44.

Ibid.

, p. 60.

45. Emil Dorian,

Jurnal din vremuri de prigoanã. 1937-1944

ed. Marguerite Dorian (Bucharest:

Hasefer, 1996).

46. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

, p. 87.

47.

Ibid.

, pp. 157-182.

296

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Inspectorate of Transnistria issued a report on February 5, 1943, which noted that

Marinescu and Captain Petrescu Teodor, commander of field bakery no. 82 of Berezovka,

deliver letters and money to the Jews in Mostovoi. In March 1943, the General Police

Division reported the following:

We have been informed that various individuals (soldiers and officers on leave, civil

servants or former civil servants, most of them from Bucharest) use expired papers, leave

permits, hospital papers, duty orders, and even forged papers to visit villages in Transnistria

with Jewish deportees to deliver letters and sometimes money. They would help some of them

escape to Romania by giving them military gear and forged or expired papers. On trains, they

travel together. At checkpoints, they take the Jews under their protection and do so energeti-

cally by using their ranks.

Tudor Teodorescu-Brani[te wrote in

Jurnalul de dimineaþã

(January 25, 1945) about

engineer Constantin P\unescu, undersecretary of the Romanian Railway Authority, who

allotted special train cars for the transportation of parcels for local Jews in Moghilev,

Balta, Vapniarka, and Grosulovo. In addition, there are many testimonies that do not

record the names of those who helped the Jews. For example, an unknown Romanian

army sergeant stopped retreating Germans from killing 370 Jews in the Triha]i camp on

March 14, 1944. Although his name remains a mystery, his deed is well known.

Acts of Solidarity in Northern Transylvania

The situation of Jews in Hungarian-occupied Transylvania was worse than in Romania.

According to recent evaluations, 135,000 Jews from Transylvania died during the war.

Hungarian authorities made escape from work detachments punishable by death. For

those who assisted or sheltered escapees, the punishment was also death or prison.

Nevertheless, there were numerous local Romanians and Hungarians who assumed enor-

mous risks to shelter fleeing Jews or help them to cross the border into Romania.

In 1942, soon after Iozsef Szucs was placed in charge of several forced labor battal-

ions, he proceeded to fundamentally improve their situation: he offered shelter, brought

a physician, cancelled arrests and physical punishments, improved food, replaced abu-

sive guards, and instituted the right to rest leave. In 1944, he helped dozens of Jewish

families to leave the ghetto and take refuge in Romania. Unfortunately, Szucs was unable

to save his own Jewish wife and children from deportation.

As a member of the Oradea railway station command, Lt. Kálmán Appán helped Jews

forced to work on the tracks by stamping their assignment papers for long-distance travel

to repair nonexistent damage from accidents that never happened, thereby allowing them

to skip entire workdays. When he was later appointed manager of a soap factory

48. SRI Archives, documentary fond, file no. 3.118, ff. 225-226.

49. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

, pp. 153-154.

50. Marcu Rozen,

60 de ani de la deportarea evreilor din România în Transnistria

(Bucharest: Matrix

Rom, 2001), p. 76.

51.

Ibid.

, p. 51.

52. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

, pp. 103-105

297

FINAL REPORT

(Iohanna), he managed to relocate the factory outside of the ghetto. In this way, Appán

was able to smuggle the thirty-seven Jews hiding in the attic, whom Appáns wife had

been feeding, out of the ghetto. Among these Jews were Rabbi Weiss and his family,

Rabbi Fuchs, and the Iacob Schreiber family. Three weeks later, Nicolae Bodoran

obtained a truck and smuggled all thirty-seven across the border. The Appan family fled

to Budapest after the authorities discovered what had happened, and there they continued

their rescue efforts by opening a shelter for several Jewish families.

Rozalia Antal of Satu Mare, was a former employee and friend of a Jewish doctor,

Sarkany Lipot. With the help of her husband, {tefan Antal, she hid Handler Isidor, her

shop employee, and four other Jews during police raids. When the situation worsened,

they helped the five Jews travel by car to Budapest, where authorities lost their trail.

Rozalia Antal was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations.

Foldes Dezideriu

sheltered several Jews in his home, Zigmund Freund and his brother, Solomon, among

them. When danger became imminent, Foldes and his wife assumed the risk of taking

them to Budapest by train using their sons identity papers. The Foldes also rented a

house where between eight and ten Jews could be found at any given time and gave them

clothes, food, and false identification documents.

Following are several other examples of solidarity and rescue in Northern Transylvania:

Ioan Osan from Baia Mare hid a Jew named Izsaak in his home;

Alexandru Vaida, a

railway worker from Baia Mare, saved the life of porter Zinger and his family;

Alexandru Ritoc, a peasant from Carei, saved Helena Gün and her young daughter;

Nicoarã Pomuþ of Borºa, Maramureº, hid Tobias Yertherger in his home until the town

was liberated by the Romanian army.

Elisabeta Farcaº from Târgu-Mureº hid Abraham

Erno and the Hidegs.

Rozalia Grosz from Dej sheltered Olga Hirsch-Schnabel from

spring to autumn 1944, when the Romanian and Soviet armies liberated Dej.

Ilona Bott

from Timiº-Torontal hid twelve children.

Several rescuers were caught and punished. Veronika Déak, a clerk in the Lazuri

town hall in Satu Mare county, issued fake identity papers for eighteen Jews, who were

consequently saved from deportation. Deak was sentenced to one year in prison.

Emil

Socor from Cluj was jailed for six months for having helped Jews.

Some clergymen also

protested the persecution of the Jews and worked to help them. Gheorghe Mangra,

manager of a religious school in Oradea (

Seminarul Român Unit

), and teacher Emil

Maxim hid several Jewish children in the school building.

53.

Ibid.

, p. 91.

54.

Ibid.

, pp. 96-99.

55.

Ibid.

, pp. 99-100.

56.

Ibid.

, p. 101.

57.

Ibid.

58.

Ibid.

59.

Ibid.

, p. 110.

60.

Ibid.

, pp. 101-102.

61.

Ibid.

, p. 102.

62.

Ibid.

63.

Ibid.

64.

Ibid.

65. Rozen,

op. cit.

, p. 110.

298

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The names of many rescuers remain unknown, as sometimes rescuers would not

reveal their identity. For example, Rabbi Iosef Panet of Ileanda Mare and his nine

children were rescued from the Dej ghetto by shepherds who gave them peasant clothes

so that authorities would lose track of them.

On May 18, 1944, Bishop Aron Marton delivered a sermon in Saint Michael Cathe-

dral in Cluj deploring the persecution of Jews in Northern Transylvania. He was declared

persona non grata

on Hungarian-controlled territory and had to move to Alba-Iulia (in

Romanian-controlled territory), where he remained until the end of the war.

On April 2,

1944, Bishop Iuliu Hossu issued an appeal to the clergy asking them to help the Jews

(

Cãtre preoþi ºi mireni. Chemare pentru ajutorarea evreilor

We call on you brothers to help the Jews not only by thoughts of solidarity, but also with

deeds, as we know that today there can be no better Christian or Romanian deed of human

warmth. Helping the Jews is the most important task ahead of us today.

Acts of Solidarity and Rescue Undertaken by Romanian Politicians

After Wilhelm Fildermans deportation to Transnistria on May 31, 1943, many politi-

cians, including leaders of democratic parties (N. Lupu, I. Maniu, M. Popovici, and

C. Angelescu), assailed Antonescu with protests aimed at Fildermans liberation. After

two months, Filderman was allowed to return to Bucharest. Dimitrie Lupu, Chairman of

the Romanian Supreme Court, helped many Jews through counseling and by bringing

together Jewish leaders (such as Filderman or C.S. Cristian, leader of the Iaºi Jewish

community) with Romanian officials in order to prevent or stop anti-Semitic measures;

Filderman, for example, was given access to Mihai Antonescu and King Michael.

Prince Barbu {tirbey, former vice president of the 1927 Romanian Council of Min-

isters, sent large sums of money to Jews in Transnistria. The police discovered this and

issued the following statement: As a result of our investigation, we have learned that

Barbu {tirbey, owner of the Buftea lands, factories, and castle, once sent 200,000 lei in

cash to help poor Jewish deportees in Transnistria.

On July 14, 1942, Dori Popovici, a former minister in the Averescu government,

leader of the Democratic Union Party of Bukovina, and subsequently leader of the

Peoples Party, sent a letter to Mihai Antonescu vehemently denouncing the deportations

of Jews from Bukovina to Transnistria:

These methods are alien to a civilized country, alien to the spirituality of the Romanian

population in this region, a population educated for fifty years to respect the law and public

morals. These methods were applied without any reason or motivation, and this population was

66. Rozen,

op. cit.

p. 112

67. Randolph L. Braham,

The Politics of Genocide

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),

vol. 1, p. 631, and vol. 2, pp. 1191-1192.

68. Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger,

Istoria evreilor din Transilvania (1623-1944)

(Bucharest: Editura

Enciclopedicã, 1994), p. 175. The existence of this appeal is disputed by Professor Braham, in

Romanian Nationalists

, pp. 207-208.

69. Mircu,

Oameni de omenie

, pp. 60-61.

70. SRI Archives, documentary fond, file no. 3.116, f. 83.

299

FINAL REPORT

condemned to watch convoys of hundreds and thousands of Jews, many of them lifetime

acquaintances or neighbors, being escorted by armed guards in the streets of Cernãuþi with

only what they could carry on those Sunday mornings when church bells announce the

beginning of the mass. This Romanian population had to watch the heartbreaking scene of

thousands of Jews crying and yelling with desperation during this pitiful march in the streets

of the city.

Aurel Socol, a top-ranking PN} member, carried out dangerous activities to facili-

tate the passage of Jewish refugees through Romania. Socol, along with twelve Jewish

refugees from Poland, was caught by the Hungarian authorities and taken to Budapest to

the Gestapo prison at Svabhegy.

The leaders of the historical parties were also involved in saving the Jews. Iuliu

Maniu and Constantin I.C. Br\tianu repeatedly expressed their hope that Great Britain

and the United States would eventually win the war, and the two leaders and their

colleagues adopted a critical stance toward the anti-Semitic policies of the Antonescu

regime. This position was consistent with the National Peasant Party and the National

Liberal Partys hostile rejection of the Antonescu regime. Recently consulted archival

sources show that Iuliu Manius intervention to Ion Antonescu in September 1942 was

decisive in stopping the implementation of the deportation plan to send the Romanian

Jews to the death camps in Poland. The Romanian Secret Intelligence Service closely

monitored every move made by the leaders of these parties. A January 24, 1944, report

of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers on the statements and interventions of

political figures in favor of the deported Jews noted:

Two domestic political groups sought to and did act in favor of the deported Jews: the

Liberals and the National Peasant Party leaders. The leaders and prominent personalities in

these two groups, in concert or individually, intervened by means of memoranda and special

hearings to stop completely the deportations of Jews to Transnistria or at least to slow their

pace in certain areas or with respect to certain guilty persons.

A May 1943 Secret Intelligence Service report mentioned that on August 14, 1942,

Iuliu Maniu was gathering materials on the manner in which the deportations from

Bessarabia and Bukovina had been carried out. Manius theory was that deportations

had been ordered by the Germans, agreed to by the Romanian government, and acceler-

ated by a group of government officials with the aim of appropriating Jewish property;

the overwhelming majority of Romanians reject such barbaric actions.

Unfortunately,

Iuliu Maniu did not intervene in 1941 to stop the massacre of the Jews. Along the same

lines, PN} vice president Ion Mihalache stated on September 14, 1942, that the depor-

tation of Jews was ordered at the suggestion of foreign circles of power and influence,

and they were alien to the humane traditions of our people. Ghi]\ Pop, general

secretary of the PN}, declared on September 16, 1942, that his party opposed the

deportation of the Jews, and other party leaders also protested based on the serious

consequences that the deportations could have for Romania. In his turn, Dr. Nicolae

71. Ancel,

Documents

, vol. 5, pp. 278-287.

72. Carmilly-Weinberger,

op. cit

., p. 174.

73. ANIC, fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 163, ff. 89-90.

74. Ion Calafeteanu (ed.),

Iuliu Maniu Ion Antonescu. Opinii ºi comentarii politice. 1940-1944

(Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1994), p. 171.

300

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Lupu, another PN} leader, declared on September 28, 1942, that he was deeply dis-

turbed by the news of the deportation of the Jews and that he would protest against them

in front of Antonescu.

An extensive report on the activities of the PN} and Iuliu Maniu, from September 1,

1940, to May 1943, mentioned that Maniu was publicly known to have pleaded with

Marshal Antonescu to stop the deportations; he demands that he not be told in which way.

Only when the ambassadors of Turkey, Switzerland, and Sweden show him photos with the

school buildings where Jews were rounded up does he reveal that he tried to convince

Marshal Antonescu that such measures may have deleterious consequences for our coun-

try.

In fact, new archival sources, which have become available only recently, clearly show

that Manius September 1942 intervention had a huge impact on Antonescus decision to

cancel the deportation of the Jews from Romania to the extermination camps of Poland.

A comprehensive Secret Intelligence Service report, dated January 24, 1944, noted

that on September 23, 1942, while in a board meeting at the Bank of Romania, Br\tianu,

leader of the National Liberal Party, stated that he had sent the Marshal a memorandum

analyzing the situation of the Jews in Romania from humanitarian, economic, social, and

foreign policy perspectives.

A note from Richter, written on October 30, 1942, confirms that Dr. Victor Gomoiu

had informed the queen mother that a new group of Jews was to be sent to Transnistria:

The queen mother told the king that what was happening to the people in this country was

awful, that she can no longer stand this, all the more so that her name and the kings will be

connected with the murders of the Jews and so she can expect to remain in history as the mother

of Michael the Terrible. She threatened the king in earnest that unless deportations stop

immediately, she would leave the country. Therefore, the king called prime minister Mihai

Antonescu, who called for a Crown Council meeting, during which it was decided that those

arrested would be set free; moreover, as a consequence of the same initiative

[

of the queen

mother

]

, the Presidency issued a communiqué that confirmed the Crown Council decision.

Another intelligence report mentions that a group of intellectuals (university profes-

sors, high school teachers, writers) sent a memorandum to the royal palace decrying the

fact that many Jews deported from Bukovina and Bessarabia died of hunger, violence,

and cold and argued that deportation becomes, in fact, a methodical and steadfast

method of extermination.

The same memo emphasized, it was only in occupied

countries that could not defend themselves that the Jewish population, in fact only a part

of it, was deported. They went on to caution, a country may also be regarded as an

institution based on international treaties issued from the agreement of the Great Powers

that decide the fate of the world, and we have to build a new unity despite the

hardships of today. The memo also asserted that for two years Romania had been:

...at the forefront of those states persecuting the Jews... In the atmosphere of the most savage

persecution, of incessant falsification of truth, through the cult of hatred and the exasperation

75.

Ibid.

76. ANIC, fond Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet Collection, file no. 163/1940, f. 91.

The report covers the period of September 1940 May 1943.

77.

Martiriul evreilor din România. 19401944. Documente ºi mãrturii

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1991),

p. 224.

78. Ion ªerbãnescu (ed.),

Evreii din România între anii 1940-1944

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997), vol. 3,

part 2, p. 461.

301

FINAL REPORT

of hostilities, we have turned the Jewish problem into the only state problem of Romania. In

the internal order we promoted a sort of anarchic fanaticism, which opened the way to kill,

rob, and oppress. We were and we are ourselves an oppressed nation. With what right can we

complain about oppression by our brothers who remained outside the borders, when we are on

our way to exterminating a minority whose rights to life were granted by the same treaties that

guaranteed our national frontier? It is a duty inspired by concern for the future

[

that demands

]

we stop... the persecution of the Jews who are being led in an organized manner toward a

national catastrophe. Long ago, we passed the limit allowed to a state of law and a state of

human beings. We can wait until the Jewish problem is solved as a whole at the peace

conference, which will decide the fate of all states. There the situation of the Jews from

Romania will be decided, and there the fate of the Jews will be decided, as well.

Solidarity and Rescue Efforts of Clergymen and Diplomats

Rabbi Alexandru {afran wrote that the Orthodox Church leader, Bishop

B\lan, had asked

Antonescu not to transfer authority over southern Transylvanian Jews to the Nazis.

{afran noted that after he told B\lan about the plight of the Jews imprisoned in a building

on Sf^ntul Ioan Nou Street in Bucharest, the bishop pleaded with Mihai Antonescu. As

a result, the prime minister decided that they were to be set free.

In addition, according

to {afrans testimony, Patriarch Nicodim appealed to the government to cancel the order

forcing Jews to wear the yellow star.

Romanian diplomats also became involved in rescuing the Jews, beginning in 1943.

The Romanian Legation in Budapest, headed by Eugen Filotti, issued numerous transit

visas.

The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent instructions to its embassies in

Berlin, Rome, and Athens to protect Jews of Romanian origin.

Constantin Tincu,

representative of the Romanian Consulate in Budapest, participated in the rescue of

hundreds of persecuted Jews who would have otherwise been sent to Auschwitz.

Mihai Marina, chief representative of the Romanian Consulate in Oradea, and a

number of civil servants (Anghel Lupescu, Ion Roma[can, Mihai Hotea, Mihai Mihai)

actively helped Jews in northeastern Transylvania emigrate to Romania.

They would

drive to ghettos, pick up Jews, and drive them across the border in the Romanian

Consulates car. Sometimes, they also gave the rescued Jews some money. On the basis

of a report received by Dr. Kupfet Miksa of the Oradea ghetto as well as his own findings,

Mihai Marina wrote a comprehensive report on what was happening to the Jews sent by

train to Auschwitz. This report was transmitted to Vespassian V. Pella, the Romanian

Ambassador in Switzerland, upon Pellas visit to Oradea. Pella took the report to the

79. ªafran,

op. cit.

, p. 99. His assertions are not confirmed by official documents.

80.

Ibid.

, p. 100.

. Ibid.

, p. 78.

82. Ioanid,

op. cit

., p. 360.

83. Camilly-Weinberger,

op. cit

., p. 176. For more details, see Ion Calafeteanu, Nicolae Dinu and

Teodor Gheorghe (eds.),

Emigrarea populaþiei evreieºti din România în anii 1940-1944,

Document

Collection from the Archive of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Bucharest: Silex, 1993).

84. Mincu,

Oameni de omenie

, p. 109.

85.

Ibid.

, pp. 108-109.

302

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

International Red Cross in Vienna. This report supported the mounting evidence on the

fate of the Jews in the ghettos and in Auschwitz.

Dumitru Metta of the Romanian embassy in Vichy, France, acted on Mihai Antonescus

request that Romanian Jews in France be spared. Over 4,000 Romanian Jews living in

France were saved thanks to various Romanian diplomats, and several hundreds were

repatriated via Nazi Germany.

Constantin Karadjea, head of the Romanian Consulate in

Berlin and, for a short time, head of Consular Services of the Romanian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, made remarkable efforts to rescue Romanian Jews in Germany and

German-occupied countries. In his official reports, he often referred to the extermination

of the Jews in Germany and German-occupied territories and the need to save the

Romanian Jews who lived there.

The Righteous Among the Nations

in Post-Communist Public Discourse

Heavily ideologized and manipulated by communist rule, Romanian historiography also

contributed to the political manipulation of research on Romanias participation in the

Holocaust.

The consequences of this distortion lasted beyond 1990. The excessive

propagandistic concern for Romanias image abroad, rather than sincere concern for

exposing historical truths, also affected how the topic of Romanian rescuers was ap-

proached. For example, there was a unilateral focus on cases of ethnic Romanian rescu-

ers, particularly those acting in Hungarian-occupied Northern Transylvania.

This ap-

proach rendered a twisted image of reality by publicly projecting a deceptive correlation

between the number of rescuers in a specific region to the scope of atrocities in that

region. This manipulation also obscured the atrocities in Romanian-controlled territory

and the responsibility of Romanian perpetrators. More recently, however, a new genera-

tion of historians has emerged. It is legitimate to expect from them an adequate approach

to the topic of the Holocaust in Romania, in general, and of the topic of the Righteous

among the Nations, in particular.

86. Ioanid,

op. cit.

, p. 367

87. Victor Eskenasy, The Holocaust and Romanian Historiography: Communist and Neo-Communist

Revisionism, in Randolph L. Braham (ed.),

The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry

(New York: Columbia

University Press, 1994), pp. 173-236.

88. Braham,

Romanian Nationalists

pp. 233

234; Michael Shafir,

Between Denial and Comparative

Trivialization: Holocaust Negationism in Post-Communist East Central Europe

(Jerusalem:

ACTA, 2002).

303

FINAL REPORT

The List of the Romanian Citizens Awarded

with Title Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem

Agarici, Viorica

File no. 2062
Formerly president of the Romanian Red Cross (

Crucea Roºie

) in the city of Roman,

Agarici helped Jewish survivors from the death train after the Iaºi pogrom.

Antal, Rozalia

File no. 0593
During World War II, Rozalia Antal lived in the city of Satu Mare in Northern

Transylvania. Antal offered to hide her Jewish neighbors, the Handlers, in her home.

Anuþoiu, T. Anghel

File no. 1395
Born in the village of Nistoreºti-Vrancea, Anuþoiu lived in the village of Naruja in the

Vrancea district. From 1938-1944, Anu]oiu was the secretary and representative of the

Great Prince Michael association of war veterans. He warned the Jews that were going to

be arrested in the communities of Bacãu, Braºov, Odobeºti, Piatra-Neamþ, and Buzãu, so

that they were able to flee in time, and he also helped them find places to hide.

Bãiaº, Vasil

Bãiaº, Maria

File no. 615
Vasil Bãiaº and his wife Maria were Romanian peasants who lived in the village of Viile

Dejului, about five kilometers from the city of Dej in Transylvania. In April 1944, when

the ghetto was established in Dej, Bãiaº brought food to his acquaintances, the Steinfeld

family, and offered to hide the boys of the family on his farm.

Beceanu, Dumitru

File no. 3515
A doctor of pharmacy, Beceanu owned a pharmacy in Iaºi and was a reserve officer in the

Romanian army. On June 29, 1941, when the pogrom began in Iaºi, Beceanu urged his

two Jewish employees to hide in his apartment, which was above the pharmacy. About

twenty other Jews also found shelter there.

Cojoc, Gheorghe

File no. 731
Cojoc was a forestry engineer in the vicinity of Târgu-Neamþ. In July 1942, he arranged

with the authorities in the city of Piatra-Neamþ for 50 Jews to work in the forests around

Târgu-Neamþ, thereby rescuing these Jews from deportation to Transnistria.

304

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Cuciubã, Traian

Cuciubã, Traian (son)

File no. 8923
Together with his son, Cuciubã helped his Jewish friend, Rosenthal, to escape deporta-

tion from a small town in Northern Transylvania in 1944 by passing illegally on the

Romanian side of Transylvania.

Dumitru, Adrian

Strauss-Tiron, Gabriela

Catanã, Maria

File no. 6843
Dumitru, Strauss-Tiron, and Catanã saved a family from Transnistria.

Elena, Queen Mother of Romania

File no. 5106
After turning to various other people, the queen mother and the patriarch appealed

directly to Ion Antonescu, who acquiesced and agreed that those Jews who had not yet

been expelled from Cernãuþi could remain there temporarily. The help sent in 1942 saved

the lives of thousands of Jews who had been expelled to Transnistria. In 1943 and early

1944, the queen mother helped to return thousands of the surviving expelled Jews,

including thousands of Jewish orphans, from Transnistria.

Farkas, ªtefan

Farkas, Rozalia

File no. 5103
In September 1944, Eugen Szabo (formerly Salzberger), a young Jew, was in a forced labor

battalion of the Hungarian army stationed near the city of Oradea. Farkas agreed to hide

Szabo in the cellar of his home, together with eight of his friends from the labor battalion.

Florescu, Constanþa

File no. 4398
During the war, Constanþa Florescu (b. 1908) lived in Bucharest, and from 1941-1944

she sheltered Roza Hendler, whom she had met before the war, in her home and cared for

her devotedly.

Gheorghe, Petre I.

File no. 10060
As an Orthodox priest in Sarovo in the region of Golta, Gheorghe helped and saved many

Jews from the Krivoi-Ozero ghetto in Transnistria.

Ghitescu, Alexandru

File no. 5014
On January 21, 1941, during the Bucharest pogrom, when his neighbor, attorney Joseph

Morgenstern, knocked on his door asking for help, Ghiþescu hid him in his home until

those searching for Jews near the house left.

305

FINAL REPORT

Grosz, Rozalia

Grosz, Bandi

File no. 1549
In May 1944, Bandi Grosz, from Dej in Transylvania, hid Schnable under the wheel of

his truck and smuggled her out of the ghetto.

Hîj, Simion

Hîj, Metzia

File no. 725
Dr. Simion Hîj, a lawyer from Cernãuþi, helped Jewish families. When the evacuation of

the ghetto began, Hîj saved the Jewish families from being rounded up by the Romanian

gendarmerie.

Lajos, Peter

File no. 3941
In 1944, Peter Lajos lived in Cluj (Kolozsvar). He saved Neumanns life by presenting

him under a false identity as Janos Kovacs.

Manoliu, Florian

File no. 9160
Manoliu was a Romanian diplomat in Switzerland involved in saving Hungarian Jews in

1944.

Mãrculescu, Emilian

File no. 4779a
In 1942, after several trips to Cernãuþi, Mãrculescu succeeded in bribing a Romanian

police officer to take five Jews out of jail in the middle of the night on the pretext that he

had to transfer them to the Germans, who were going to execute them.

Moldovan, Valeriu

File no. 5999
Owner of a carpentry shop in Bistriþa, in Northern Transylvania, Moldovan saved the

Fleischman family in 1944.

Motora, Sabin

File no. 2394
A professional officer in the Romanian gendarmerie, Motora was commander of the

Grosulovo and Vapniarka camps. Motora took steps to evacuate the prisoners from

Vapniarka to Grosulovo, closer to the Romanian border, contrary to the order he was

given to transfer them eastward to the Germans. Motora did all he could to save the

lives of Jews, despite the fact that he was risking his military career and his life by

doing so.

306

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Muranyi, Rozsi

File no. 534
During the war, Rozsa Muranyi lived in Oradea Mare in Transylvania. After the German

invasion of Hungary in March 1944, Muranyi hid eight Jews from April 23, 1944 until

October 12, 1944, when the city was liberated.

Nicopoi-Strul, Elisabetha

File no. 3416
Thanks to Nicopoi, Struls family of seven, including his father, mother, and siblings,

were saved during the Iaºi pogrom on June 29, 1941.

Nits, Janos

Nits, Gyula

Nits, Aliz

Janos, Gyula, and Aliz Nits were involved in saving Jews in Northern Transylvania in

1944.

Oniºor, Ioana

Demusca, Letitia

Crãciun, Ana

Crãciun, Pavel

File no. 1406
In May, 1944, the Oni[or family widow Ioana and her children, 21-year-old Victor,

18-year-old Laz\r, 16-year-old Leti]ia, and Ana, who was married to Pavel Crãciun

were peasants living on their farm in the forest, about four kilometers from the town of

Bistriþa in Transylvania. On May 1, two days before the Jews of Bistriþa were interned in

the ghetto and then deported to the extermination camps, four local residents, members

of the Kandel family, fled to the Oni[ors farm, where a hiding place had been prepared

for them.

Paelungi, ªtefan

File no. 6999
Paelungi decided to hide the Leitman family during the war in a remote hut that belonged

to his father.

Pal (Kudor), Anna

Pal, Jeno

File no. 6540
In April 1944, when it became known that the Nazis were interning the Jews of

Transylvania into ghettos, Nissel decided to escape to Romania and hide there, and she

asked Pal, whom she knew from when Pal had worked in her parents home, to hide her

small son. Anna and Jeno Pal (later her husband) agreed to give the child shelter despite

the risk involved in hiding Jews.

307

FINAL REPORT

Pântea, Nona

File no. 3455
In 1941, during the Iaºi pogrom, Pântea offered the six Jews who were then living in her

neighbors homes, a hiding place in her room.

Pocorni, Egon

Pocorni, Nicolina

File no. 2855
Egon Pocorni lived in Bucharest during the war, and in 1942 was appointed manager of

a sugar factory in the village of Derebcin in the county of Moghilev in Transnistria. After

seeing how much the Jews were suffering, he and his wife tried to help them in any way

they could.

Pop, Nicolaie

Pop, Maria

Pop (S\ileanu), Aristina

File no. 7123
Nicolaie Pop, a wealthy, hardworking farmer, lived in the village of Lãpuºul Românesc

in Northern Transylvania. After the Nazis occupied Hungary, Pop offered to hide Hanna

Marmor and her children and provided them with all their needs.

Pop, Valer

File no. 2580
Valer Pop was a senior official in the Hungarian and Romanian administration in

Transylvania. In 1933 Pop married Ilona Jonas, a Jewish woman of the Farkas family of Cluj,

and adopted Katalin-Catherina, Ilonas daughter from her first marriage to Imre-Emerich

Jonas, J.D., who was also Jewish. After the German occupation of Hungary, in March

1944, Pop persuaded his adopted daughter not to wear the yellow patch and succeeded

in hospitalizing his mother-in-law, Lina Farkas, in a hospital of a friend in Cluj in order

to save her from the deportation.

Popovici, Traian

File no. 0499
Dr. Traian Popovici was a well-known attorney from Cernãuþi, who also served as mayor

until 1942. He succeeded in preventing the deportation of 19,000 Jews.

Profir, Grigore

File no. 3514
Grigore Profir, an engineer, was the manager of the Dacia flour mill in Iaºi. In June

1941, when Profir learned that they were rounding up Jews and taking them to the police

station, he brought new workers, took them to the mill, and assigned them to unload

sacks of flour; by doing so he saved them from being murdered.

308

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Puti, Alexa

Puti, Maria

Puti, Todor

File no. 3739
In 1944, Alexa Puti was a Romanian farmer living near the town of Somcu]a Mare in

Transylvania. Alexa Puti hid Solomon in a cave at the edge of the forest near his home.

Maria and Todor, Putis children, helped their father deepen the cave and also brought

Solomon food three times a week.

Simionescu, Constantin

File no. 4892
Simionescu, a Romanian lawyer from Iaºi, was the dean of the bar association there.

During the war, Simionescu helped ten Jews, most of them from the Spiegel, Sapira, and

Siegler families who lived in Iaºi. Simionescu took sixteen-year-old Fred Spiegel under

his wing, together with his brothers, after their father was deported on one of the death

trains, and their mother was arrested because she was discovered carrying flour.

Sion, Mircea Petru G.

File no. 3384
During the war years, Sion was one of the few who actively helped Jews, at great risk to

his own status. After his appointment as a judge of a military court, Sion intervened on

behalf of Jews, and for some he obtained release from the labor camps. He did his utmost

to save them. Sion hid about 15 Jews in his home in Iaºi and on his family estate outside

the city.

ªorban, Raoul

File no. 3499
In May 1944, Prof. ªorban helped Rabbi Carmilly-Weinberger of the Neolog Jewish

community in Cluj to escape to Turda and to meet with Iuliu Maniu in Bucharest in order

to find routes of rescue. In his later testimony, Dr. Carmily-Weinberger stated that

ªorban was the only one who made efforts to help him save the Jews under the Hungarian

occupation.

Stoenescu, Ioana

Stoenescu, Pascu

File no. 566
In January 1941, when the Iron Guard rebellion broke out and their members carried out

a pogrom against the Jews of Bucharest, Stoenescu invited the Donner family to hide in

his home during the three days of the pogrom.

Stroe, Magdalena

Stroe saved a Jewish woman from deportation in 1944 in Northern Transylvania.

309

FINAL REPORT

ªuta, Ioan

File no. 1827
In September 1944, Ioan {uta lived in the city of Satu Mare in Northern Transylvania.

Nine Jews who had escaped from a labor battalion were saved due to ªutas help.

Szakadati, Janos

Szakadati, Juliana

File no. 1812
In 1944, Janos Szakadati and his wife Juliana owned a perfumery in Oradea (Nagyvarad)

in Northern Transylvania. Their store was near the ghetto in which the Germans and

Hungarians had interned the Jews of the city and the surrounding area prior to deport-

ing them to the death camps. The Szakadatis came daily to throw food to the Jews in

the ghetto without receiving anything in return and at great risk to their own lives.

Moreover, from May 1941 until the end of the war, the Szakadatis hid a Jewish girl in

their home.

Toth, Jozsef

File no. 6026
In 1944, Jozsef Toth, a high school teacher, was serving in the Hungarian army and lived

in Cluj, Transylvania, in the home of Ludovic Weissberger. When the Germans began

making preparations to deport the Jews of Cluj, Toth hid Weissberger, his wife Hermina,

their daughter Clara-Luisa, their son Andrei, and the grandmother, Etelca, in the kitchen

of his home.

Tubak, Maria

File no. 4860
On January 21, 1941, gangs of Iron Guard members perpetrated a pogrom against the

Jews in Bucharest. That evening, Maria Tubak and {tefan Marin, who worked in the

lumberyard, stood next to their gate, and when the gangs came to the house and tried to

enter it to remove the Jewish tenants, the two told them there were no longer any Jews in

the house and pointed to the sign as proof that the new owner was a Romanian. They

continued to guard the house until the rebellion was quashed.

Zaharia, Josif

File no. 6177
Josif Zaharia (Zacharias), who belonged to the German-Swabian minority, was the son

of a wealthy farmer who lived in the village of Iecea Marea in the county of Timiºoara.

In 1941, Zaharia came across a frightened 13-year-old boy who was exhausted from

wandering in search of food and shelter. The boy was Benjamin Weiss, from the yeshiva

of the Brisk rabbi in the city of Arad. Zaharia guessed that the boy was Jewish and felt

sorry for him. He obtained false papers for him, taught him to work on a farm, and

employed him on his fathers farm.

310

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The List of the Citizens from the Republic of Moldova Awarded

with Title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem

Lozan, Paramon

Lozan, Tamara

File no. 7338
Paramon and Tamara Lozan lived in the town of Nisporeny in Moldova. Paramon was the

principal of a local secondary school, where his wife also worked as a teacher. When the

area came under Romanian control, Paramon was summoned to open his school, which

was going to serve as a temporary collection point for Jews. Five days later, a rumor was

heard that the Jews interned in the school building were to be killed. To prevent this

disaster, Paramon decided to release the Jews. He was executed a few days later by the

local authorities.

Marchenko, Ivan

Marchenko, Feokla

Marchenko, Leontiy

Marchenko, Nina

Marchenko, Nikita

Marchenko, Tatyana

File no. 8207
The brothers Ivan and Nikita Marchenko lived with their families in R^bni]a, Moldova,

near the ghetto. In March 1944, when the Romanians were retreating from the area, the

members of Galperin family turned to the Marchenkos and asked them for shelter. After

the war, the survivors left the homes of their rescuers.

Morozovskiy, Vitaliy

Morozovskiy, Aleksandra

File no. 7135
Vitaliy and Aleksandra Morozovskiy lived in the village of Mokra in the R^bni]a district

and worked as teachers in the local school. Before the war, one of their pupils was

Grigoriy Farber, a Jewish boy who lived with his parents in the nearby Jewish kolkhoz,

Der Stern

. In December 1941, when the Germans and Romanians had been in control of

Moldova for several months, Farber appeared at the Morozovskiy home and asked for

shelter. The Morozovskiys hid him in the attic of their home and for two months provided

him with all his basic needs.

Nedelyak, Ivan

Nedelyak, Anna

File no. 6990
Ivan and Anna Nedelyak lived with their two children in the Tiraspol suburb called

Kirpichnaya Slobodka. In July 1941, the Nedelyak family offered to give shelter to two

brothers, Yefim and Semeon Mirochnik, the only Jews of Ochakov who remained alive

after the massacre carried out there a week earlier.

311

FINAL REPORT

Pelin, George

Pelin, Varvara

File no. 6853
George and Varvara Pelin were farmers living in the village of Malayeshty in the Tiraspol

district. In March 1944, they sheltered Lev Bruter in their home. Bruter was a young

Jewish native of the town of Kaushany in Moldova whom they had never met before the

war.

Pereplechinskiy, Vladimir

Pereplechinskiy, Mariya

File no. 8303
One day in September 1941, Mariya brought home a young girl, Klavdiya Vainshtein,

who had fled the death pit during the mass murder. Throughout the occupation, Klavdiya

lived with the Pereplechinskiys and was like a member of the family.

Pozdnyakova, Yefrosiniya

Starostina (Pozdnyakova), Zinaida

File no. 7558
Yefrosiniya Pozdnyakova was in her forties and lived with her only daughter Zinaida

(later Starostina) on the outskirts of the city of R^bni]a. She had quite a few acquaint-

ances and friends among the internees of the ghetto, and throughout the occupation, she

and her daughter helped the Jews and supplied them with food. At the beginning of

March 1944, the Germans decided to liquidate the inhabitants of the R^bni]a ghetto.

Some of Yefrosiniyas acquaintances turned to her for temporary shelter in her home.

Yefrosiniya hid these Jewish refugees in her attic. For a whole month, during which

German soldiers robbed and killed the Jews of R^bni]a, Yefrosiniya and her 12-year-old

daughter Zinaida hid more than ten Jews and provided them with their basic needs.

Serebryanskiy, Isaak

Sparinopta, Samuil

Mazur, Ikim

File no. 7750
Isaak Serebryanskiy, Samuil Sparinopta, and Ikim Mazur were Moldovan farmers who

lived in the village of Bro[teni in the R^bni]a district. During the war, in various ways,

the three helped Naum and Raisa Gomelfarb, whose parents, residents of Broshteny, had

been murdered in September 1941. Serebryanskiy prepared a hiding place for Naum and

his sister by digging a pit under the stable. The children, together or separately, hid there

throughout the time they were in the village. Samuil Sparinopta built a secret hiding

place inside the house, behind the Russian stove. Ikim Mazur, who lived at the edge of

the village, kept the children in the barn.

312

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Starostina, Yevgeniya

Starostina, Anna

Starostin, Pavel

File no. 6084
Anna Starostina lived with her mother Yevgeniya and her son Pavel in Chiºinãu. At the

end of July 1941, a ghetto for the Jews was established in Chiºinãu, in which Anna

Starostinas good friend, Ida Binder and her eight-year-old daughter Alla, were interned.

During the early months, Anna and her son Pavel would slip into the ghetto to bring

Binder and her daughter food and clothing. When the Romanians began to deport the

Jews to labor camps in Transnistria, Alla Binder ran to the Starostin family. Anna and her

family took Alla in, looked after her with devotion, and kept her hidden from their

neighbors.

Strashnaya, Mariya

Strashniy, Ivan

Strashnaya, Kseniya

File no. 7347
During the war, Mariya Strashnaya was in her sixties and lived in the village of

Balyavintsy, Brichany district, with her son Ivan, her daughter-in-law Kseniya and her

two young granddaughters. Before the war, the grocery store in the village was owned by

the Gurvits family, and Mariya and her family shopped there. After the Germans occu-

pied the area, Benyamin Gurvits, the owner of the grocery store, appealed to Mariya for

temporary shelter. Mariya did not refuse to shelter her neighbors, and at nightfall

Benyamin Gurvits, his wife Ita, and their children, Yefim and Manya, arrived at her

home and were hidden in the attic.

Tsurkan, Peotr

Tsurkan, Yevgeniya

Savchuk, Makar

Savchuk, Akseniya

File no. 8190
Peotr and Yevgeniya Tsurkan lived in the village of Bulayeshty, Orgeyev district. In

December 1941, they took the Jewish Tselnik family from the town of Grigoriopol into

their home. For several months, the Tselniks stayed in the cellar or the attic, and at the

end of summer 1942, they were moved to the home of Makar and Akseniya Savchuk,

relatives of the Tsurkans, who lived in the same village.

Trials of the War Criminals

General Considerations

The Fascist regime that ruled Romania between September 14, 1940, and August 23,

1944, was brought to justice in Bucharest in May 1946, and after a short trial, its

principal leaders Ion and Mihai Antonescu and two of their closest assistants were

executed, while others were sentenced to life imprisonment or long terms of detention.

At that time, the trials verdicts seemed inevitable, as they indeed do today, derived

inexorably from the defendants decisions and actions.

The Peoples Tribunals functioned for a short time only. They were disbanded on

June 28, 1946,

although some of the sentences were not pronounced until sometime

later. Some 2,700 cases of suspected war criminals were examined by a commission

formed of public prosecutors,

but only in about half of the examined cases did the

commission find sufficient evidence to prosecute, and only 668 were sentenced, many

absentia

There were two tribunals, one in Bucharest and one in Cluj. It is worth

mentioning that the Bucharest tribunal sentenced only 187 people.

The rest were

1. Marcel-Dumitru Ciucã, Introducere, in

Procesul mareºalului Antonescu

(Bucharest: Saeculum

and Europa Nova, 1995-98), vol. 1, p. 33.

2. The public prosecutors were named by communist minister of justice Lucre]iu Pãtrãºcanu and

most, if not all of them were loyal party members, some of whom were also Jews. The complete list

included lawyers Avram Bunaciu (who would inherit Pãtrãºcanus post in 1948), Ion Raiciu, Vasile

Stoican, M. Mayo, Constantin Vicol, Stroe Botez, Ion I. Ioan, Petre Grozdea, Mihail Popilian,

Constantin Mocanu and H. Leibovici; magistrates Ion Pora and ªtefan Ralescu; civil servant Camil

Surdu; and workers Alexandru Drãghici (who would become interior minister in 1952) and Dumitru

Sãracu (a former waiter at Bucharests luxurious Capºa restaurant). See Hary Kuller,

Evreii în

România anilor 1944-1949. Evenimente, documente, comentarii

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), p. 356.

3. The list of those sentenced by the Peoples Tribunal in Bucharest and Cluj, with a short and

strikingly apologetic introduction, is to be found in Cristina Pãuºan, Justiþia popularã ºi criminalii

de rãzboi,

Arhivele totalitarismului

, vol. 7, nos. 1-2, 1999, pp. 150-165. The total provided by

Pãuºan (657) is apparently slightly incomplete.

4. See Zoltán Tibori Szabó, The Transylvanian Jewry during the Postwar Period, 1945-1948,

East

European Perspectives

, vol. 6, at

www.rferl.org/eepreport/

. See also the highly-interesting docu-

ment recording the minutes of a March 27, 1947, meeting between Communist Party officials and

former public prosecutors who were members of the party. Among participants were justice

minister Pãtrãºcanu (according to whom some 200 people had been sentenced for war crimes),

interior minister Teohari Georgescu, Alexandru Drãghici and Avram Bunaciu (see footnote 2),

alongside prosecutors Alexandra Sidorovici, Dumitru Sãracu, Vasile Stoican and Lepãdãescu

[

first

name unknown

]

. See Andreea Andreescu, Lucian Nãstase, and Andreea Varga (eds.),

Evreii din

România (1945-1965)

(Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Resurse pentru Diversitate Etnoculturalã, 2003),

pp. 311-325.

314

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

sentenced by the tribunal in Cluj. One must also note that, in general, harsher sentences

were pronounced by the Cluj tribunal (set up on June 22, 1945) than those passed by the

tribunal in Bucharest. At the latter, Avram Bunaciu (see footnote 2) acted as chief public

prosecutor

and Justice Nicolae Matei presided over the court. There was an obvious

reason for the difference: the Cluj tribunal mostly judged crimes committed by the

Hungarian authorities and their local collaborators in Northern Transylvania rather than

atrocities perpetrated by Romanians under the rule of Marshal Antonescu.

Out of the 481 cases on which the Cluj Peoples Tribunal and its successors ruled, it

passed the capital sentence on 100 people and 163 sentences of life imprisonment. Of

those sentenced, 370 were Hungarian, 83 were German, 26 were Romanian, and two

were Jewish.

The Cluj Peoples Tribunal condemned 30 people to death and 52 to hard

labor for life in two mass trials, one involving 63 defendants and the other, 185. Prison

terms handed down by the Cluj tribunal totaled 1,204 years. It must be remembered,

however, that many sentences had at best symbolic value and that the percentage of the

absentees was particularly high among those sentenced to death or to life imprisonment.

Thus, out of the 185 charged in the first trials, only 51 were in custody while the others

were tried

in absentia

Turning now to the main trial the sixteenth in the series of trials held by the Peoples

Tribunal

the court pronounced thirteen death sentences on the twenty-four defendants,

but six of these (including Horia Sima, leader of the Legionary movement, and Legion-

ary ministers Mihai Sturdza, Ioan Protopopescu, Corneliu Georgescu, Constantin Papanace,

and Victor Iaºinschi) were pronounced

in absentia

and were never carried out. At the

recommendation of the government, King Michael I commuted the death sentence to life in

prison for the former minister of defense, Constantin Pantazi, as well as Radu Lecca, the

government representative in charge of Jewish issues, and the director of the Special

Intelligence Service, Eugen Cristescu. Marshal Antonescu and his foreign minister, Mihai

Antonescu, as well as

Constantin Z.

[

Piki

]

Vasiliu, inspector general of the gendarmerie,

and Gheorghe Alexianu, the governor of Transnistria, were executed on June 1, 1946.

The first trial at the Bucharest Peoples Tribunal ended on May 22, 1945. General

Nicolae Macici was found guilty of the massacres perpetrated in occupied Odessa and

nearby Dalnic on October 21-22, 1941, and was sentenced to death. Twenty-eight other

members of the occupying Romanian forces received prison sentences, the harshest of

which were for life and the lightest for one year behind bars.

On July 1, 1945, King

Michael I commuted Macicis sentence to life imprisonment; Macici would eventually

die in Aiud prison in 1950.

Altogether, Old Kingdom and southern Transylvania-based

5. See document no. 97, in Andreescu, N\stase and Varga,

op. cit

., p. 293, footnote 14.

6. Szabó,

op. cit.

Ibid.

, and Randolph L. Braham, The National Trials Relating to the Holocaust in Hungary, in

idem

(ed.),

Studies on the Holocaust: Selected Writings

(New York: Columbia University Press,

2000), vol. 1, p. 142.

See also Braham for the English translation of the Cluj Peoples Tribunal

judgments.

Procesul mareºalului Antonescu

, vol. 2, p. 211.

. Ibid

., pp. 432-439.

10. See Lucian Nãstase, Studiu introductiv, in Andreescu, Nãstase and Varga,

op. cit.

, p. 21.

11. Andreescu, N\stase and Varga,

op. cit.

, pp. 323-324, footnote 9.

315

FINAL REPORT

Peoples Tribunals pronounced forty-eight death sentences;

but only four were actually

carried out, the others being either commuted to hard labor for life or being pronounced

in absentia.

None of the sentences pronounced in Northern Transylvania was carried out,

and the most important people charged had left the region together with the Hungarian

authorities.

Furthermore, based on a decree passed in early 1950, convicted war criminals who

had demonstrated good behavior, performed their tasks conscientiously, and proved that

they became fit for social cohabitation during their imprisonment became eligible for

immediate release, irrespective of the severity of the sentence received.

Among those

found to be socially rehabilitated were quite a few who had been condemned to life in

prison for crimes committed against the Jews. Many of the liberated would join the

Communist Party. Others, however, would have to wait for the amnesties granted between

1962 and 1964, when the regimes national-communist policies took off and the PCR

needed the support of nationalistic political prisoners and the intellectuals among them,

in particular.

After the fall of the communist regime, the proponents of Marshal Ion Antonescus

rehabilitation (see below) would insist that the trials had been politically motivated and

carried out at the orders of the Soviet occupants. There can be no doubt that the Soviet

Union heavily influenced the outcome of the judicial process and that some of the

indictment counts had little in common with actual facts. Paradoxically enough, however,

it is also at Moscows door that one must lay the blame for the prosecutions inability to

charge many of those included on its initial lists of suspected war criminals. Some of the

suspects were by now fighting on the Allied side (for example, Gen. Nicolae Stavrescu,

one of the masterminds of the Iaºi pogrom in June 1941, would, nonetheless, eventually

be tried for the role he played in the pogrom); others were turncoats protected by

Moscow and even became prosecutors themselves (Major Iorgu Popescu, for example,

who had killed a Jewish student while investigating him under the previous regime, was

now named public prosecutor in the trial of the Iaºi pogrom perpetrators, and Ana Pauker

herself advised against making a case of his past); or the Soviet Union simply neglected

to deliver documents attesting to the atrocities committed on the territories it had

re-annexed, despite repeated promises to do so with the next plane. Meanwhile, many

of the suspects managed to escape abroad.

This would not stop Moscow from soon

accusing the (at that time still not fully communist) government of not hunting hard

enough for war criminals. And, indeed, though the Peoples Tribunals were disbanded in

1946, trials in connection with crimes against peace and other war-linked charges

would continue in the following years on the basis of Law no. 291 of 1945, which

provided for sanctioning those guilty of war crimes or crimes against peace stipulating

sentences of fifteen years to life imprisonment.

12. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, courtesy of Radu Ioanid, United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum.

13. Tibori Szabo,

op. cit.

14. Decret nr. 72 privitor la liberarea înainte de termen a celor condamnaþi,

Monitorul Oficial

March 23, 1950.

15. See Andreescu, Nãstase and Varga,

op. cit.

16. Pãuºan,

op. cit.

p. 150.

316

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

A final note on the postwar trials and collaboration: Jews were also sent before the

Peoples Tribunal for war crimes and collaboration. The most famous involved the

leadership of the Antonescu-era Jewish Center

(Centrala Evreilor

), established on Janu-

ary 11, 1942, which had acted as a sort of

Judenrat

Nandor Gingold, chairman of the

Center and a converted Jew, received a life sentence to hard labor on February 18, 1946,

while his associates Matias Grünberg (alias Willman), A. Grossman-Grozea, and Jack

Leon were sentenced to between twelve and twenty years in prison.

The countrys new

communist rulers would eventually turn Gingoldism into a proxy for fascism when

referring to political adversaries within the Jewish community (not yet communized at

that stage), although the term Jewish fascism was also often used.

The remainder of

this chapter will focus on the treatment of crimes against Jews in the postwar trials.

The Trial of the Major Figures of the Ion Antonescu Government

The trial took place in Bucharest, not Nuremberg, following the commitment made by

the new Romanian government to the Allies in the armistice agreement signed in Moscow

on September 12, 1944; namely, to arrest war criminals and to dissolve and prevent the

re-emergence of pro-Nazi and fascist organizations.

In this context, it should be noted

that, unlike other fascist leaders, Antonescu had neither a party nor a fascist organization

to support him: he disbanded the Iron Guard, which had backed him, as early as

January 1941, following its attempt to seize power.

Generally speaking, steps toward denazification in Romania, such as the abrogation

of the racist and anti-Semitic legislation characteristic of fascist-totalitarian states, were

implemented very slowly. The earliest legislation on the subject of bringing war crimi-

nals and those responsible for the catastrophe in Romania to justice was promulgated as

late as January 20, 1945. War criminals were defined as those who treated prisoners of

war and hostages in a manner contrary to the dictates of international law; ordered or

perpetrated acts of cruelty or liquidations in war zones; ordered or initiated the estab-

lishment of ghettoes, internment, and forced labor camps; carried out deportations for

political or racial reasons; ordered or carried out collective or individual repression,

relocation, and deportation of persons for extermination; perpetuated the use of forced

labor for the purpose of extermination.

17. See Radu Ioanid,

The

Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the

Antonescu Regime,

1940-1944

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), pp. 34-35, and Hildrun Glass,

Muderheiten zwischen zwei Diktaturen: Zur Geschichte der juden in Rumänien 1944-1949

(Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2000), pp. 45-46.

18. Kuller,

op. cit.,

p. 365; Nãstase,

op. cit.

, p. 21. The same tribunal sentenced Vasile Isãceanu, Radu

Leccas chief of staff at the Office for Jewish Issues, to hard labor for perpetuity.

19. For example, at a meeting on October 15, 1945, Vasile Luca, a member of the PCRs Politburo, told

representatives of party-linked mass organizations: What is needed, above all, is a serious struggle

against Jewish Fascist elements. Document reproduced in Kuller,

op. cit.

p. 436.

20. Article 15 of the Armistice Convention between the Romanian government and the governments of

the United Nations, August 23, 1944 (Bucharest, 1984), document 2, p. 709.

21. State law for the punishment of war criminals and law for bringing to justice those guilty for the

Holocaust, Laws no. 50 and no. 51,

Monitorul Oficial

, no. 17, January 21, 1945, p. 415.

317

FINAL REPORT

The laws, as formulated and interpreted, enabled many minor war criminals to evade

incarceration or to escape with negligible punishment; moreover, the actual instigators

of war crimes the journalists, writers, and party functionaries of the two fascist parties,

who had poisoned public opinion by disseminating fascist ideology and anti-Semitism in

the mass media were not punishable under these laws. Furthermore, the legal system

itself was still infested with people who espoused fascist ideology; people who had, in

fact, initiated, implemented, and shaped anti-democratic racial and anti-Semitic legisla-

tion during Romanias six years of dictatorship and fascism (1938-1944).

With the establishment of Petru Grozas communist-dominated government in March

1945, the passage of legislation bringing war criminals to justice was expedited, and the

pace of their sentencing accelerated. The trial of the Antonescu group was based on

Law no. 312 of April 21, 1945, for the tracking down and sanctioning of those guilty

in the disaster of the country and of war crimes. The April 1945 law established two

categories of guilt:
1. Culprits in the countrys disaster were those who, (a) promoted the advance of

fascism or Nazism and having an effective political responsibility allowed the advance

of the German forces in the countrys territory, and (b) after September 6, 1940,

acted for the preparation and carrying out of the above deeds by word, written or any

other means;

2. As culprits of war crimes fifteen possible categories were set, among which:

(a) decided the declaration or the continuation of the war against the USSR and the

United Nations; (b) subjected POWs or hostages to inhumane treatment; (c) ordered

or carried out acts of terror, cruelty or subjugation of the population in areas where

war took place; (d) ordered or carried out collective or individual reprisals with the

aim of political or racial persecution of the civilian population; (e) ordered or

organized excessive labor or organized the transportation of persons with the aim of

exterminating them; (f) commanders, directors, supervisors, and guards of camps of

either POWs, deportees or political inmates, or forced labor detachments, who

treated the persons under their control in an inhumane way; (g) officers of judicial

police or investigators with any claim in political or racial matters, who carried out

acts of violence, torture, or other illegal treatment; (h) prosecutors, civilian or

military judges, who intentionally assisted or carried out acts of terror or violence;

(i) left the national territory with the aim of serving Hitlerism and fascism, and have

attacked the country verbally or in any other form.

Also accused of war crimes

were persons who had illegally acquired property in the wake of the war or through

racist legislation, those who had enacted racist legislation or legislation having a

Hitlerite, Legionary, or racial spirit or had excessively applied such legislation.

The law stated that persons found guilty of the second clause would be punished with

death or a life sentence with hard labor. There were three major categories of political,

military, and judicial activities that were included in this law: (1) participation in the war

against the USSR and the Allies; (2) inhumane treatment (from compulsory labor to

extermination) of POWs, the civilian population in areas of conflict, because of either

22.

Procesul mare[alului Antonescu

, documents, p. 55.

23.

Ibid

., pp. 54-55.

318

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

political or racial motives; (3) Fascist-Legionary propaganda. This last category, which

enabled the

proceedings against journalists and intellectuals who by their ideas sup-

ported the Antonescu regime, the Iron Guard, and the officials and leading personalities

of the propaganda apparatus cannot be found in the criteria of indictments

formulated

at the

Nuremberg trials.

It should be emphasized that that under the sanctioning of this law, politicians in responsi-

ble offices, officers or soldiers of the armed forces, the gendarmerie, and public officials,

as well as those who had spread the fascist and Legionary ideas, were included. Thus,

anti-Semitic doctrines and anti-Semitic policies were represented in the criteria for indict-

ment. Participants in the Holocaust, starting from racial legislation to the mass extermination

of Jews and Roma, regardless of the persons position in the political and institutional

hierarchy of the state, could thus be included in the category of war criminals.

Aside from the trial of Ion Antonescu and his collaborators, there were several other

trials with clear political content. Several former ministers and state secretaries in the

Antonescu government were arrested in 1946, and some of them testified at his trial.

Some of these ministers were freed, only to be rearrested and sentenced in 1949.

Others

faced the judicial system earlier. This group included Gheorghe Leon, Ion Petrovici,

General Grigore Georgescu, General Nicolae Stoenescu, Petre Nemoianu, Geron Netta,

Henric Otetele[anu, Mircea Cancicov, General Gheorghe Jienescu, General Victor

Iliescu, Aurelian Panã, General Nicolae ªova, Horia Cosmovici, Ion N. Fin]escu,

Aurelian Panã, Gheorghe Cre]ianu, Mircea Vulcãnescu, Ion D. Enescu, Neagu Alexandru,

Stavri Ghiolu, General Constantin Niculescu, General Ion Sichitiu, Ion C. Petrescu,

Alexandru Marcu, General Iosif Iacobici, General Eugen Zwidenek, Petre Niculae

Counter-Admiral Nicolae Pãi[, Petre Strihan and Admiral Gheorghe Koslinski.

An-

other highly-publicized trial was that of the journalists who had, through their writing,

supported the former regime and/or incited racial hatred. They were accused of war

crimes and being responsible for the countrys disaster.

The trial ended on June 4,

24. The principle of collective responsibility was applied in this trial, in which several other

dignitaries of the Antonescu regime received harsh sentences. Apart from Petrovici, the group

included: Gen. Radu R. Rosetti, who briefly served as minister of education from January 27 to

November 11, 1941 (when he resigned from the Cabinet), was sentenced to two years in prison in

January 1949 and died in jail in June of the same year; Gen. Gheorghe Potopeanu, who served as

minister of the national economy between January and May 1941, was sentenced to 5 years and

liberated in 1953 (he was sentenced again to 15 years in 1957 for alleged high treason);

Potopopeanu was amnestied in 1963); Aurelian Panã was sentenced in January 1949 to ten years

in prison, where he died; Constantin A. (Atta) Constantinescu, who served as minister of public

works and communications from October 1943 to August 1944, received a 5-year sentence and was

freed in 1953, committing suicide two years later; Gheorghe Docan, who served as minister of

justice from January to February 1941 and resigned, also sentenced to 5 years; Toma Petre

Ghi]ulescu, who was Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economy under Potopeanu and resigned

with him, was also sentenced in absentia to 5 years, but managed to escape serving the sentence,

living in hiding, although he would later be caught and given a life sentence for treason against

fatherland; and Petre Nemoianu, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Agriculture for only 10 days

from September 4-14, 1940, who received a 5-year sentence and died in prison. Every member of

the group was investigated in 1946 and proceedings against them were then dropped. For biogra-

phies see Procese 46 Sentin]e 49 Recursuri,

, no. 48 (December 2-8, 1997).

25. See Ciuc\,

op. cit.

, vol. 1, p. 33.

26. Kuller,

op. cit.

p. 358.

319

FINAL REPORT

1945, with death sentences pronounced

in absentia

against journalists Pamfil {eicaru

and Grigore Manoilescu and prison terms ranging from twelve years (the case of Radu

Gyr, a poet who had been a fervent Iron Guardist) to life for the rest of the defendants.

Other famous trials were those of members of the government set up in exile by Horia

Sima and of journalists who supported it from abroad (General Platon Chirnoagã,

General Ion Gheorghe, who was Antonescus Ambassador to Berlin, Mayor Sergiu

Vladimir Cristi, the former bishop of Odessa, Visarion Puiu, and writer Ion Sângeorgiu,

as well as journalists Alexandru Cuzin, Alexandru Gregorian, Horia Stamate and Vintilã

Horia Caftangioglu were all sentenced to death

in absentia

);

the trial of the former

governor of Bessarabia, General Constantin Voiculescu, who received a life sentence of

hard labor;

and the trial of the main culprits of the 1941 massacres in Iaºi (General

Emanoil Leoveanu, General Gheorghe Barozzi, General Stamatiu, former Iaºi prefect

Colonel Coculescu and former Iaºi mayor Colonel Captaru), which ended in June 1948,

after repeated delays.

However, the punishment of war criminals was never an end in itself. It was partly the

result of pressure applied by the Soviet state and Soviet occupation forces, since many of

the crimes under consideration were committed in the Romanian territories annexed by

the Soviets or on Soviet soil. The trials also revealed the bitter power struggle between

the so-called nationalist camp and the communist camp supported by the Soviet army.

This explains why so many Romanians saw the trials as an anti-national act, an attempt

by foreigners and their local aides to take their revenge against Romanian soldiers who,

according to this perception, gave their lives to liberate Bessarabia and Bukovina. In this

context, the tragedy of the Jews, whether Romanian or in territories under Romanian

control, became secondary and, in most cases, was not the main issue.

The trial of Antonescu and his closest aides was not a purely Romanian affair. The

Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943, the decisions at the Yalta summit on the

speedy punishment of war criminals on February 12, 1945, and the second paragraph of

the Allies declaration issued after the collapse of Nazi Germany on June 5, 1945, all

combined to transform the punishment of Romanian fascist leaders into an issue of

universal justice, into a manifestation of the international community to eradicate the

ideology that had led to such horrific results in Europe. Therefore, the criteria by which

the trial of the Antonescu regime should be assessed are the same as those used to

prepare the Nuremberg indictments, albeit the crimes of the Romanian regime under

Antonescu cannot be equated with that of Germany under Himmler, Göring, Ribbentrop,

and the other Nazi leaders.

The Nuremberg indictment distinguished between four categories of crimes:

Conspiracy

The defendants prepared together and pursued a plan aimed at the

seizure of absolute power and acted with complete understanding for the perpetration

of their future crimes.

27. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio,

op. cit

., and Andreescu, Nãstase and Varga,

op. cit.

p. 324, footnote 14.

28. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio,

op. cit

., and Nãstase,

op. cit.

, p. 2.

29.

Ibid.

30. Kuller,

op. cit.

and Andreescu, N\stase and Varga,

op. cit.

, p. 323, footnote 8.

320

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

. Crimes against peace

: The defendants violated thirty-four international treaties on

sixty-four separate occasions, launched wars of aggression, and caused the outbreak

of a world war.

War crimes

: The defendants ordered or tolerated collective assassinations and torture

on a massive scale, enslaved millions of workers, and ordered looting.

Crimes against humanity:

The defendants persecuted their political adversaries and

racial or religious minorities. They exterminated whole ethnic communities.

Two of the four sections in the indictment as well as other parts of the indictment

could not have served as a basis for accusations against Antonescus regime. The

Conduc\tor

(as Antonescu was called, in imitation of the German term

Fuehrer

) did not

reveal any ambitions to seize absolute power before September 1940 and did not chal-

lenge the legal authorities; in fact, he was chosen to serve as prime minister by King

Carol II himself after a short, but very sharp, political crisis caused by the collapse of

Romanias frontiers. Antonescu did indeed choose his own partners, but only after he

had deposed the king and assumed most of his powers.

Antonescu deepened the totalitarian measures of King Carol II; namely, the first

racist and anti-Semitic laws, which were promulgated as early as August 9, 1940, and

defined Jews by blood and faith, and laid the foundation for subsequent anti-Semitic

legislation.

Romania was not an aggressor in the war, but the victim of the expansionist plans of

the Soviet Union and the territorial aspirations of Hungary. From the Romanian point of

view, participation in the anti-Soviet campaign until August 1941 represented a justifi-

able struggle for national liberation for the release of almost four million Romanians and

60,000 square kilometers

from foreign occupation. It was a campaign in which the

Romanian people enlisted willingly and enthusiastically. The aggressor was the Soviet

Union, which, on June 26, 1940, forced Romania to yield Bessarabia and Northern

Bukovina.

However, in the Antonescu trial the indictment and the verdict avoided any reference

to the following elements: Soviet imperialism; the Soviet threat to the very existence of

the Romanian state; the Soviet military build-up at the new frontiers of the Romanian

state on the Prut and the Danube in 1940-1941; the military incidents provoked by the

Soviets; or the Soviet Unions plans for the further annexation of Romanian soil.

November 13, 1940, Molotov asked Hitler to agree to the Soviet annexation of southern

Bukovina, a territory not even mentioned in the secret protocol, thus going far beyond

the initial Soviet demands, which Molotov described as insignificant.

Only Hitlers

refusal saved the rest of Bukovina from being swallowed up, Russified, and lost to

31. Joe J. Heydecker and Johannes Leeb,

Le Procès de Nuremberg

(Paris: Buchet-Chastel-Correa,

1959).

32. Act de acuzare (Indictment) no. 1, April 29, 1946, Archives of the Ministry of Interior (hence-

forth: AMI), file no. 40010, vol. 1, pp. 1-185, in the Archives of the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum (henceforth: USHMM), Romanian Information Service UC, RG 25.004M,

roll 31. All files of Antonescus trial quoted here are from the USHMM archives.

33. Minutes of a conversation between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin, November 13, 1940, in R.J. Sontag

and J.S. Beddie (eds.),

La vérité sur les rapports germano-soviétiques de 1939 à 1941

(Paris:

France-Empire, 1948), p. 173.

321

FINAL REPORT

Romania forever. Only Nazi German threats to Romanian independence were presented

and debated at the trial. In other words, the tribunal did not allow an open debate of the

alternatives faced by the Romanian government in the fall and winter of 1940, alterna-

tives that Mihai Antonescu clearly defined at the trial: Romania had the alternative of

being occupied like other (neighboring) states or of being politically subjugated to

Germany. This latter situation brought about this trial.

The issue of Bessarabias status as Romanian territory annexed to the Soviet Union

was also taboo, as was the fact that the strategic decision to side with the Nazi German

camp after the collapse of France was, in fact, made by the last governments of King

Carol and by the king himself.

The Holocaust was represented in only 23 percent of the indictment and the whole

corpus of evidence,

and the fate of the Jews was raised in instances when the documents

or events incriminated any of the accused. The references in the indictment focused on

the process of Romanianization and its effects on the social and economic conditions of

the Jewish population, the Iaºi pogrom, the pogrom of Odessa, the deportation of the

Jews to Transnistria, and the extermination camps. During the trial, references were

made to documents and speeches by Ion and Mihai Antonescu. In regard to victims,

10,000 victims were mentioned in the Iaºi massacre, in contrast to the so-called

500 Judeo-communists that the Antonescu government acknowledged immediately

after the pogrom. Likewise, documents were presented on the deportation of tens of

thousands of Jews to Transnistria, but there were no overall, total figures presented on

the number of deportees and their fate. In fact, the trials did not present a clear picture

of what the public could find out about Transnistria after 1989.

During his trial, Ion Antonescu acknowledged that between 150,000-170,000 Jews

had been deported to Transnistria. However, he claimed that the deportation was actually

intended to save the allegedly pro-communist Jews from the populations wrath and that

he could state with certainty that had he not dispatched them to Transnistria, none of

them would have survived. The claim was part of a memorandum written by the former

Conduc\tor

in refutation of the indictment. In the same document, Antonescu stated, I

deported the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina

[

to Transnistria

]

for political

military

security reasons

and for

their own safety

. He claimed that in view of the fact that many

Jews had been acting as Soviet spies, and due to the fact that Iron Guardists were

preparing a St. Bartholomews Night against them in cooperation with the Germans,

the deportation was dictated by both military and safety factors and his intention to save

34. Proceedings of the trial, May 13, 1946, AMI, file no. 40010, vol. 28, p. 8.

35. Conversation with Al. Voitin Voitinovici, in Ion Antonescu,

Citiþi, judecaþi, cutremuraþi-vã!

, eds.

I. Ardeleanu and V. Arimia (Bucharest, 1991), p. 97.

36. See the memo of Gh. Tãtãrescu, one of the last premiers of King Carols regime, May 1, 1943, in

Gh. Buzatu,

România cu ºi fãrã Antonescu

(Iaºi: Moldova, 1991), pp. 91-96. Antonescu claimed at

his investigation that he knew nothing of the proposals made to Nazi Germany by the last two

premiers which included a military alliance and a friendship pact because Tãtãrescu took the

documents with him when he left the prime ministers office (AMI, file no. 40010, vol. 36, pp. 60-61).

See also Mihai Antonescus investigation,

ibid.

, vol. 43, p. 52 (USHMM, RG 25.004, roll 34).

37. În

Procesul mareºalului Antonescu

the general part of the Act of Indictment has 52 pages (pp. 60-112),

Jewish topics figure in pp. 85-86 and 103-112. Also, whenever it was the case, in each of the

defendents indictment their role in massacres of Jews was raised.

322

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the Jews from a terrible fate at the hand of the Germans and pro-Nazi sympathizers in

Romania. Unfortunately, he claimed, carrying out the order of deportation had been

destabilized by the then-dominant spirit. By destabilization the former state

leader was euphemistically referring to the mass executions, death marches, and starva-

tion carried out by the Romanian police and army while implementing his orders. The

harsh early winter conditions, which also made many victims among the belligerent

armies, he claimed had added to the number of casualties among the deported, but this

was also the cause due to which the Germans lost the Moscow battle.

At the trial, the dictatorial state established by Antonescu was clearly defined as

fascist, and critics of the courts legitimacy focused on the nature of the court, as if this

fact changed the nature of the wartime Antonescu regime. The court was, as in other East

European states, an ad hoc institution, a peoples court with judges and prosecutors

with no judicial background serving alongside the professional judiciary. The president,

Al. Voitin Voitinovici, was just twenty-eight years old, a distant relation of communist

leader Lucre]iu P\tr\[canu. The public prosecutors were Vasile Stoian, a completely

unknown jurist, Constantin Dobrian, an examining magistrate from Timi[oara, and

Dumitru Sãracu, a worker and former cook lacking any judicial training. The panel of

judges included six judges of the people, drawn mainly from the Communist Party or

its affiliated organizations: two workers and a peasant proposed by the commu-

nists, a worker from the Social Democratic Party, a National Liberal lawyer, and a

housewife from the National Peasant Party.

This composition of the court was and is

used by those who wish to rehabilitate the fascist ideas, in order to shift attention from

the content of the indictments, from the magnitude of crimes committed against Jews and

Roma, and to focus on the lack of judicial background of the prosecution and judges.

Behind the jargon in the acts of indictment and the tone used in the courts, when

reading the material, sanitized of the postwar political context, it is clear that the

Romanian fascists linked the solution of the Jewish question to the rejection of all

Western democratic values, which they declared a Jewish innovation and the embodiment

of a social order created to serve Jewish interests. Thus, not only did they hate Jews, they

also despised the ideas and concepts that had evolved since the French Revolution, which

represented the fundamental values of Western society: liberalism, tolerance, democ-

racy, capitalism, freedom of speech, freedom of organization, free elections, civil rights,

and even the notion of the citizen.

These ideas made Romania ripe for the advent of a

fascist regime in September 1940. In this context it is necessary to emphasize that it was

not the German threat and German supremacy in Eastern Europe alone that promoted the

advent of fascism in Romania: it was also the duplicity of Romanian democratic

leaders, their interpretation of democracy and democratic values, their silent encourage-

ment and tolerance of young hooligans and their violent actions, and their diversionary

anti-Semitic tactics that facilitated the rise of Antonescus regime.

Antonescu never referred to his regime as fascist, but he was able to portray his rule

as springing from the Romanian heritage rather than being an imported formula. He did

not redefine the goals of Romanian nationalism, but rather sought to attain the goals that

had been outlined by his predecessors using fascist means. The ethnic Christian state

38. The verdict, May 17, 1946, AMI, in

ibid.

, vol. 5, pp. 364-366.

39. For more on this, see J. Ancel, Antonescu and the Jews,

Yad Vashem Studies

, 23 (1993), pp. 213-218.

323

FINAL REPORT

that he established in his words, the national totalitarian regime opposed the

demo-liberal regime of the past,

and was a genuine Romanian fascist state based on

Romanian political and social philosophy that adopted Nazi methods of dealing with real

or imaginary ethnic enemies.

The Antonescu regime fashioned its own decisions rather than having them foisted

upon it by the exigencies of an international situation beyond its control: the Romanian

army was sent far beyond the national borders, even into Stalingrad; the anti-Soviet war

was declared a holy anti-communist, anti-Slav, and anti-Jewish war; the huge numbers

of Jewish and Roma victims are the tragic result of this policy; the Jewish presence in

Bessarabia and Bukovina was utterly expunged; many thousands of Russians and Ukrain-

ians were robbed, looted, and shot; the Jewish minority in Romania was plundered,

deprived of all civil rights, and forced to work for the benefit of the Romanian state; the

German plan for the wholesale extermination of the Jews was first accepted and then

rejected; and, last but not least, the Romanian National Bank was transformed into a

depository for plundered cash and valuables.

The full horror of the Antonescu regimes crimes against the Jews, which were the

most wide-ranging and terrible that it committed, were not fully known at the time of the

trial. They were, of course, mentioned and included in the indictment, but given the

fact that crucial Romanian matters were taboo, given the way the trial was organized and

pursued, given the carefully selected audience and the censored press they did not

touch the hearts of many Romanians. The vast majority of Romanians knew about these

crimes (though perhaps not about their full magnitude and results), as the leader of the

National Liberal Party stressed in his deposition: I mean the massacres of Odessa, of

Iaºi and Bukovina, which everyone knew about.

Another factor that weakened the

impact of the revelation of the fascist regimes crimes against the Jews was that between

August 23, 1944, the day of Antonescus arrest, and the date of the trial, the Romanian

people experienced Russian occupation and plunder and the emerging rule of a Commu-

nist Party that had never expressed Romanian interests and had previously been almost

non-existent.

The true extent of the crimes against the Jews and the Roma and Antonescus plan to

cleanse Bukovina and Bessarabia of Slavs are only now being revealed in the wake of the

recent opening of the Romanian archives captured by the former Soviet Union. Newly-

-revealed crimes include the shooting and burning of more than 70,000 Jews in the camps

near the Bug River; the massacre, burning, or deportation of about 80,000 Odessan

Jews (from a large area encompassing Odessa, in which the total number could be around

80,000); the participation of medical teams in these crimes; and the degree of Roma-

nian Army High Command involvement and connivance in these atrocities.

40. As early as November 23, 1940, Antonescu claimed before Hitler that the misfortunes of the

Romanians, the collapse of their frontiers, the domestic disorder, and the absence of a moral will

to resist was due to the disorganization wrought by Bolshevism and Jewry during the days of the old

regime.

Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1933-1945

, series D, vol. 11 (London, 1961),

nos. 381, 664; see also letter dated June 22, 1941, from Antonescu to the leader of the opposition,

Maniu, regarding the definition and nature of his regime, AMI, file no. 40001, vol. 34.

41. See

ibid.

, no. 12, pp. 216-280.

42. Deposition of Constantin I.C. Brãtianu, May 9, 1946, AMI, file no. 40010, vol. 2, p. 260.

324

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

At the time of the trial, the attention and accusations of the prosecution were directed

elsewhere. The court tried to judge Antonescus deeds in light of principles, ideas, and

norms completely alien to Romanian interests; thus, the accusation was made against

both Antonescus regime and the opposition that they did not commit Romania to a

military struggle against Nazi Germany in the manner of Tito in Yugoslavia, the Slovaks,

or the Polish uprising.

One of the objectives of the trial was to discredit those national leaders, parties, and

forces that might have opposed the communist takeover of Romania people such as

Maniu, Br\tianu, and Mihalache of the National Liberal and National Peasant parties

and their close associates. The investigators, the prosecution, and the court sought to

link Maniu and Brãtianu to the fascist regime, to characterize them as conniving with its

criminal deeds, and to present them as tacitly supporting Antonescus plans and deci-

sions, including participation in the anti-Soviet war (with no distinction being made

between captured Romanian territory and the Soviet Union proper). The opposition party

leaders were presented as promoters of fascism, defenders of the capitalists and boyars

interests against the interests of the working class, and so forth. From this point of

view, the trial was the opening sortie in the campaign that culminated in the great

political show trial of 1947 that of Maniu, Brãtianu, and Michalache, among others.

All were to die in prison.

In almost all of the acts of indictment in the trials of the war

criminals there were references emphasizing the fact that the Antonescus regime was

sustained by the active support of the landlords, bankers, and factory owners. For

example, the indictment documents of the Iaºi pogrom stated, Fascism subjugated the

interests of the Romanian people to the interests of the groups of landowners and

bankers, and dragged Romania into the criminal war on the side of Hitler.

The court uncovered an entire network of resistance to Antonescus regime, consist-

ing of communists, workers, peasants, and so-called democratic forces. In fact, however,

such a network did not exist. Since Antonescus regime enjoyed the tacit support of most

Romanians, it did not use terror against Romanian citizens, it had no SS-type organiza-

tion, and it did not place ethnic Romanian citizens in concentration camps. Moreover,

during the period in question, the Communist Party did not exceed more than a few

hundred members, most of them of non-Romanian, and the fear of Soviet occupation was

always greater than the fear of Nazi Germany.

In conclusion, the Soviet occupation and the communist regime imposed on Romania

prevented a real debate on Romanian fascism and Antonescus regime or the defects of

Romanian society and its values. So, any national catharsis was thereby prevented. In

retrospect it seems that, with Antonescus downfall, the Romanians would have been

ready and willing to re-adopt the Western democratic values that the Romanian fascists

43. The relationship between Maniu, Brãtianu, Mihalache, N. Lupu, and others and Antonescus

regime and their role therein is a complex subject that cannot be addressed here. Maniu clearly

opposed attempts to make him co-responsible for the crimes of the regime: The defendants in the

dock are the only ones responsible for their policy he said at the trial. Deposition of I. Maniu,

May 11, 1946, AMI, file no. 40010, vol. 2, p. 293.

44. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Romanian Information (Intelligence) Service (hence-

forth: USHMM/SRI), RG 25.004M, roll 47, fond Anchetã, Trial of the war criminals, The Iaºi

massacre, 1947.

325

FINAL REPORT

had so despised, in the understanding that they suited Romanian interests, preferences,

and culture and because Romania was favorably prejudiced toward the West.

Antonescus regime, like that of Nazi Germany (albeit to a far lesser extent) sacri-

ficed the principles of European civilization and elementary notions of humanity and

violated international law. In so doing, it prompted a moral regression in Romania that

has been felt in the attitudes that emerged toward the postwar trials after 1989.

The Trials of the War Criminals and the Holocaust

At the end of the forties and early fifties, several years after the cessation of the activities

of the Peoples Courts, a new set of trials of accused war criminals took place. The Penal

Code was the legal basis for these trials. For example, in the case of accused Nicolae

Caracaº, the legal basis for his indictment is evident:

In Sentence no. 28 of January 24, 1947, the Military Court of Region 2 sentenced Caracaº

to twenty years of hard detention for a crime punished under Article 193/1 and the confiscation

of property. The Military Tribunal accused Caracaº of the following:

Between July 21, 1941, and March 1942, Nicolae Caracaº, ex-Colonel of the gendarmerie,

served as Commander of the L\pu[na Gendarme Legion.

1. In this capacity, before entering Bessarabia with his units, gave orders that Jews and

political suspects be shot.

2. Ordered by the accused, in the village of Valea Mare, the gendarmes shot a forester by the

name of Ion, suspected of spying.

3. In C\l\ra[i (in Bessarabia), the accused gave orders for the execution of Jews and suspects.

The executions were carried out by Sgt. Nicolae {aptebani, the chief of the gendarmerie

section in C\l\ra[i, by Sgt. Constantin V\caru, by Sgt. Maj. Serghie Mocanu, and other

gendarmes of the forces.

To this four more charges were presented against the accused. The ex-Colonel of the

gendarmerie denied all the charges against him. Moreover, he claimed that the order to

execute the Jews in Bessarabia was given by General Vasiliu, governor of Bessarabia, in

Roman, when the gendarmerie forces about to cross the Prut River were given their

instructions. The reference is to the well-known order by General Vasiliu to cleanse the

land. The whole trial consisted of the testimonies and counter-statements by witnesses

for the prosecution and the defense. The accused rejected accusations of crimes against

Jews claiming:

We are not contesting that there were executions of Jews, but from the administrative

evidence it is evident that these executions were not carried out by gendarmes, but by armed

forces that occupied the territory, and moreover, not under orders from the defendant.

The tendency of the accused from the gendarmerie was to lay all responsibility of the

crimes against the Jewish population on the army. Through the dossiers of the accused

from the gendarmerie this pattern is evident; they tried to make the Romanian army

45. USHMM/SRI, RG 25.004M, roll 15, fond Anchetã, file no. 582, vol. 1.

46.

Ibid.

326

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

culpable by claiming that the Jews passing through areas in Bessarabia on the way to

Transnistria were guarded and were under the responsibility of the military.

Former Major Brotea Dumitru, the second person charged with leading the gendarme

legion in L\pu[na, revealed a significant detail during his trial; namely, that Col. Nicolae

Caracaº was questioned already in 1941 for crimes against Jews. Around November

1941, an inhabitant of Cãlãraºi, named Gavriliþã, filed a charge at the Chi[in\u military

court against Sergeant Major {aptebani of the Lãpuºna Gendarme Legion, chief of the

Cãlãraºi unit, claiming that this NCO, together with local guards, shot an elderly Jewish

woman, robbed her of her two suitcases carrying belongings and jewelry. An inquiry

made at the time revealed that {aptebani recognized the murder of Jewish woman, but

claimed it was on the orders of Colonel Caracaº. Furthermore, it was claimed that Ion

Antonescu and Constantin Vasiliu were given details of a series of abuses committed by

the gendarme forces under the command of Colonel Caracaº, and as a result he was

moved from the command in Lãpuºna to Teleorman.

It is true that from this witness

testimony it is not clear whether the complaints presented to Antonescu about Colonel

Carara[s behavior included his attitude toward Jews, but it could be a possibility.

In the archival dossier of the case, there is a memorandum by Nicolae Caracaº, in

which he opposed his trial held in 1947, claiming that a 1945 inquiry regarding the same

charges had found him not guilty. He wrote that in 1945, without being arrested even

for a moment, the inquiry had found him to be not guilty. However, he was arrested in

September 1947.

These aspects are mentioned because they may serve as arguments in favor of those

who are promoting the juridical rehabilitation of those convicted of war crimes. Such

cases must be clarified, because sooner or later there may occur situations in which

persons directly implicated in the Holocaust may be judicially cleared due to misconduct

at their trial. Once clearance and rehabilitation is given, they are almost impossible to

annul. Prosecutor General Ilie Boto[ referred to such cases in July 2004 cases related

to crimes against humanity.

Another important trial was that of Lt. Col. (res.) Iliescu Dumitru, former com-

mander of the Soroca Gendarmerie Legion, held at Criminal Court S in Bucharest,

contained in File no. 1939/1948. The charge was that, by his order and with his

knowledge, 200 Jews were massacred en masse in Soroca county in 1941.

The charges

were rejected by the accused with the argument that the Jews passing through Soroca

were under the responsibility of the Romanian army. The gendarmerie was responsible

for public order and the security of the local inhabitants and had no responsibility for the

fate of the Jews. This became a leitmotif in the trials of officers and NCOs of the

gendarme legions of Bessarabia.

File no. 218/948 of the Bucharest Court prosecutors office, War Criminals investi-

gations, deals with the case of a civilian who used the political atmosphere to express his

hatred of the Jews. In this context, a citizen could exercise his most primitive mentality

47.

Ibid.

48.

Ibid.

, file no. 582, vol. 3.

49. Declaration on Mediafax.

50.

Ibid.

, roll 15.

327

FINAL REPORT

and attitude. The acts of indictment prepared by prosecutor Nicolae Vl\descu stated the

following:

Rusu Vladimir, age 33, clerk by profession, last address in Dorohoi... in preventive

custody in V\c\re[ti penitentiary... The accused Rusu Vladimir, in July 1941 was in the

township of Sadagura, Cern\u]i county. Following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the

Cern\u]i area, the accused took control of police activities in the area before the entry of the

Romanian troops. On his own initiative he formed a gang of robbers and criminals, which

included the {erbanovici brothers, Sefciuc, Levi]chi, and others. Under his leadership, on the

night of July 5-6, 1941, they shot peaceful civilians of Jewish origin in the villages of Rohosna,

Jucica Nou\ and Sadagora in Cern\u]i county, after which they took over possessions of the

massacred persons.

Another case that demonstrates the aggressive anti-Semitism of civilians was that of

Gavrilovici Constantin, driver at the Iaºi bus depot next to the Iaºi police station, where

on June 29, 1941, a group of Jews tried to find refuge (running from the police station).

The accused took the rifle of a soldier, who had fainted when hearing shooting at the

police station, and started shooting the Jews who tried to find refuge in the depot yard.

He was sentenced to fifteen years for crimes against humanity.

The Penal Code was supplemented by several further legal statutes, which were often

used in combination and allowed the prosecution of persons charged with crimes. For

example, in the case of the Orhei Lot, tried at the Bucharest Court, File no. 204/1950,

the combination of several legislative clauses was used as the basis of the prosecutions

case. From the indictment of the ninety-five persons accused in the Orhei Lot, it is

clear that the new regime used propagandistic political arguments:

With the instauration of the Antonescu regime, the Berlin style of terror, robbery, and

assassination was also introduced in Romania, the same patterns that existed in fascist Europe

from 1933, with the rise of Hitler to power by the capitalists.

From September 6, 1940, racial hatred

[

without mentioning against whom this racial

hatred was turned; authors note

]

was unleashed as Legionary gangs started with killings as

in Dorohoi, becoming more and more vicious during the rebellion and culminating with

massacres during the war. The massacres in Orhei, prosecuted in this trial, were not isolated.

They took place in short intervals or at the same time as other massacres in Iaºi, Stanca

Rozveneanu, Taura Nouã, Gura Cãinari, Mãrcule[ti, Sculeni, Bãlþi, Rauteni, Alexandrei,

Lipscani, Chiºin\u, etc.

On page four of the sentence, there is a description of the massacres, defined as war

crimes, which were carried out against the Soviet people, communists, and Jews. After

graphic details of the bestiality and sadism of the crimes, the sentence returned to the

political aims of the perpetrators and the identity of the victims.

The war of aggression and plunder launched against the peaceful Soviet peoples, imposed

on the Romanian people by a totalitarian regime... The communist activists, the best sons of

the people and the avant-garde of the working class had to be killed as they represented the

danger of death for the bankers and industrialists, the defenders of Hitlerism. Likewise, Jews

also had to be exterminated as a diversion aimed at distracting the attention from the huge

51.

Ibid.

52.

Ibid.

, roll 17, file no. 504/1955, Tribunalul Capitalei, Colegiul II Penal.

328

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

numbers of victims of the war, victims that fell in sacrifice to the interests of the bankers and

industrialists... a sacrifice aimed at giving satisfaction to the bestial instincts of plunder and

destruction long fomented in the propaganda of racial hatred.

The massacres against Jews are most frequently depicted in the prosecution docu-

ments and evidence presented in the indictments dealing with localities in Bessarabia.

The above citation from the trial of the Orhei Lot contains 238 pages with detailed

descriptions of the events in the villages and towns of Bessarabia under the control of the

gendarmerie. However, as seen from those parts of the indictment where the political

background of the crimes is presented, the low priority of the fate of Jews is evident; and

while most of the crimes were committed against Jews, they are addressed last, after the

Soviets and communists, as if the Antonescu regime had the same policy toward the

communists as they did toward the Jews.

The trial against those accused of crimes against the population of Iaºi in fact, the

trial of the accused of the Iaºi pogrom of June 1941 had the same characteristics. The

very name of the trial, of people accused of crimes against the population of Iaºi, does

not focus on the real and only victims of the crimes: the Jews. This situation was

characteristic of the postwar trials, where the details left no doubt as to the identity and

fate of the victims, but the political jargon of the era prevented open discussion about the

victims, Jews, killed because they were Jews. The formula of racial hatred is never

clearly clarified in the documents, as if Jews and racism had no connection.

Fifty-seven people were tried in the Iaºi trial: 8 from the higher military echelons,

the prefect of Iaºi county, and the mayor of Iaºi, 4 military figures, 21 civilians,

22 gendarmes. One hundred sixty-five witnesses, mostly survivors of the pogrom, testi-

fied at the trial. The acts of indictment of the Iaºi pogrom and the environs, in which

223 arrested people were charged (File no. 5260/1947), again show the priorities and

political messages of the era. Several examples detail the perception of the war and the

crimes committed:

In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and France, and especially on the territory of the

Soviet Union... the fascist hordes killed millions of peaceful inhabitants, children, women, the

elderly... intellectuals.

In Romania, fascism turned its murderous face toward the working class...

In Romania, fascism subordinated the people to the interests of the cliques of landowners

and bankers...

The best sons of the people were executed...

After long paragraphs presenting the Marxist viewpoint on fascism and Nazism, the

indictment turned to the Jewish aspect:

Especially criminal was fascist barbarism toward the Jewish population wherever the

occupying forces passed.

Jews lost more than six million victims to fascism. In Poland more than three million Jews

were massacred.

Millions more were exterminated in the other countries occupied by the fascists...

Also in Romania fascism used racism for its criminal purposes, sacrificing thousands and

thousands of human lives, in order to distract the attention of the Romanian people from the

53.

Ibid.

, roll 16.

329

FINAL REPORT

calamity into which it was dragged... The crimes of fascists in Romania cannot be counted, as

uncounted are the damages brought to the people and the country.

The most horrific barbarism of fascism in our country was the massacre of tens of

thousands of the population of Iaºi for the crime of being Jewish.

It was not by chance that the largest number of victims caused by fascism was from the

Jewish population of Iaºi, as Iaºi is the locality where hooligans and paid agents of fascist and

German imperialism, like A.C. Cuza and Corneliu Codreanu, poisoned the youth for decades.

The arguments of the indictment were of four major categories: (1) rumors on the

cooperation of the Jewish population with the enemy; (2) communiqués published by the

authorities, such as in the newspaper

Prutul

of June 27, 1941: All those in the service

of the enemy will meet with capital punishment; (3) army documents, such as Telegram

no. 3313, dated June 29, 1941, from the commander of the 14

Division, which stated

that Soviet parachutists were saved by inhabitants of Iaºi and thus circulated the rumors

that were to be found to be untrue; (4) orders of the local authorities forcing the Jewish

population to hand over all headlights, binoculars, and cameras to the authorities.

The authorities collected large amounts of data and evidence for the Iaºi trial. The

indictment rejected the allegation of the Antonescu government immediately after the

pogrom that some 500 Judeo-communists were executed. The indictment stated that

more than 10,000 peaceful inhabitants of Iaºi were massacred. The investigation file

reconstructed the events in chronological order as they took place in Iaºi, Stanca

Roznovanu, Marcule[ti, and Gura Cãinari, identifying the accused and placing the

charges against them in the relevant laws.

In the second volume of his

Cartea neagrã

Matatias Carp published reports, documents, and testimonies of the accused from the

Iaºi pogrom.

Sentence. Based on art. 3 of Law no. 291/1947 on the punishment of those guilty of war

crimes and crimes against peace, is the following sentencing for crimes committed:

1. Life sentence with hard labor, 100 million lei in damages: Gen. Gheorghe Stavrescu,

Col. Captaru Dumitru, Col. Matieº Emil, Lt. Col. Ionescu Constantin Micandru, Lt. Col.

Marinescu Danubiu, Maj. Balotescu Gheorghe, Maj. Tulbure Emil, Slt. Mih\ilescu Eugen,

Triandaf Aurel, Cristescu Gheorghe, Grigore Petrovici, Cimpoieºi Gheorghe, Staff Sgt.

Mihailov Vasile, Commissar Ion Botez, Sgt. T.R. Manoliu Mircea, Cercel Dumitru Cudi,

Vivoschi Emil, Ghiþã Iosub, Grosu Gheorghe, Lubaº Rudolf, Rusu Dumitru called Gheorghe.

2. Life sentence in harsh conditions and 100 million lei in damages: Col. Lupu Constantin.

3. 25 years hard labor for Andronic Dumitru, Blându] Constantin, Cristiniuc Leon, Laur Ion,

Bocancea Gheorghe, Scobai ªtefan, Aniþulesei Mihai.

4. 20 years of hard labor, 100 million lei in damages to Ciubotãraºu Dumitru, Lazãr Constantin,

Lupu Nicolae, Tãnase Gheorghe, Ciornei Filorian, Dumitru Dumitru, Mãnãstireanu Ion,

Moraru Dumitru, Pãsãrica Alexandru, Parlafes Gheorghe, Velescu Vasile.

5. 20-year harsh sentence, 100 million lei in damages: Constantinescu Dumitru called Albescu.

6. 15 years of hard labor, 100 million lei in damages: Atudorei Dumitru, Dãdãrlat Dumitru,

Gramatiuc Aurel, Miron Nicolae, Rusu Nicolae, Paraschiva Barlaconschi Moro[anu.

7. 5 years of forced labor: Ciobanu Ion called Bãlteanu. Several of the accused were acquitted.

54.

Ibid.

, roll 47.

55.

Ibid.

56.

Ibid.

57. Matatias Carp,

Cartea neagrã

, 2

ed. (Bucharest: Diogene, 1996), vol. 2, pp. 163-164.

330

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Conclusions

There is no doubt that the postwar trials were a product of the legal framework and

judicial perceptions of the era, contrary to those attempting to rehabilitate those accused

of war crimes. The trials were politicized to an extent, as evidenced from the acts of

indictment, which were in line with the ideological framework of the regime. However,

the communist analysis of the nature of fascism, the elements of class struggle, and the

constant references to the Soviet Union should not obscure the fact that at the time of the

trials, when the whole picture was not clear and data was still missing, the various

atrocities against the Jews the killings, the deportations were there to see. Moreover,

the trials of the small fries, which were less politicized, shed more light on the crimes

committed against the Jews.

The trials and their content in relation to the Holocaust did not become a source of

knowledge about the past during the communist period. The trials, except those parts that

could be used for political purposes by the regime, had the same fate as the overall

treatment of the Holocaust. This black hole enabled the emergence of those who

attempted to whitewash Antonescu and his regime and to de-legitimize the trials. Thus,

the trials lost their natural potential to uncover the full extent of the war crimes, of which

Jews were the primary but not the only targets. The opening of the archives will enable

future generations, through the vast corpus of material that was used for the trials, to

learn the extent of the Holocaust in Romania. This is still an almost untapped source,

which should be utilized in Romania in order to understand the past.

The postwar trials raise the same questions in Romania as in other European coun-

tries where trials took place were they aimed at seeking justice, revenge, or also, as a

top priority, perhaps, to de-legitimize those forces that were challenging the communist

takeover? Even if this power struggle was evident in some of the trials, it should not shift

attention away from the truths that Romanian society must face.

Aside from certain errors and awkward moments, aside from a certain penchant to

politicize the trials (particularly the trial of Ion and Mihai Antonescu), the trials of war

criminals had a legal basis. This cannot be denied, as some do in their attempts to

rehabilitate some of the accused on the grounds that the trials were ordered and organ-

ized by the communists. The trials were part of a coherent postwar context and historical

logic and had a similar legal basis to that of the Nuremberg Trials. This legal basis was

inspired from international law on war and wartime situations as well as on the stated

adherence of the victors to the normative statements of peace and humanism.

One peculiarity of the trials was the fact that they established individual and not

collective guilt, which was a form of adherence to a fundamental principle of the rule of

law. What was novel about them was the decision that not only would the one who pulled

the trigger be found guilty, but also the one who contributed to the political and

institutional preparation for mass discrimination and mass murder on the basis of ethnic-

ity, race, or political allegiance. In Romania as well as in other countries, the trials of war

criminals contributed to a public awareness that there was no excuse for committing or

abetting murder against collectives or individuals on the basis of the aforementioned

criteria.

Distortion, Negationism, and Minimalization

of the Holocaust in Postwar Romania

Introduction

This chapter reviews and analyzes the different forms of Holocaust distortion, denial,

and minimalization in post-World War II Romania. It must be emphasized from the start

that the analysis is based

on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museums definition

of the Holocaust, which Commission members accepted as authoritative soon after the

Commission was established. This definition

does not leave room for doubt about the

state-organized

participation of Romania in the genocide against the Jews, since during

the Second World War, Romania was among

those allies and collaborators of Nazi

Germany

that had a

systematic plan for the persecution and annihilation

of the Jewish

population living on territories under their unmitigated control. In Romanias specific

case, an additional target-population subjected to or destined for genocide was the

Romany minority.

This chapter will employ an adequate conceptualization, using both updated recent

studies on the Holocaust in general and new interpretations concerning this genocide in

particular. Insofar as the employed conceptualization is concerned, two terminological

clarifications are in order. First, distortion refers to attempts to use historical research

on the dimensions and significance of the Holocaust either to diminish its significance or

to serve political and propagandistic purposes. Although its use is not strictly confined

to the communist era, the term distortion is generally employed in reference

to that

period, during which historical research was completely subjected to controls by the

Communist Partys political censorship. It is therefore worth noting that while the

definition of the Holocaust refers to a state-sponsored genocide, more recent studies on

the ways in which the Holocaust was ignored and/or distorted as a function of political

interests under communist regimes refer to

state-organized forgetting.

An additional warranted clarification pertains to the use of the concept of

denial

negationism

, rather than the far more widely used term of

revisionism

. The choice stems

1. The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European

Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary

victims six million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for

destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including ho-

mosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous

oppression and death under Nazi Germany (

www.ushmm.org/museum/ council/mission.php

2. For example, see Shari J. Cohen,

Politics without a Past: The Absence of History in Postcommunist

Nationalism

(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 85-118, for the case of Slovakia.

334

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

from the fact that most of those who falsify, distort, and relativize the reality of the

Holocaust label themselves revisionists in order to gain respectability; after all,

historical revisionism is a legitimate act that is always warranted in reexamining what

predecessors have produced. Negationism, by contrast, is not a reexamination of estab-

lished facts or a well-founded critique of prior interpretations; rather, it is a more-or-less

explicit attempt to deny the Holocaust. Revisionism is, therefore, only an alibi, a

euphemism used to counter charges of negation. Thus, this chapter relies on the critique

of revisionism developed by such scholars as Deborah Lipstadt, Michael Shermer, and

Alex Grobman.

These authors believe that while denial is a more accurate term than

revisionism, the term negationism best reflects the true intentions of a revisionist

rewriting of history.

Negationism is defined as the denial that the Holocaust took place and/or the denial

of participation of significant numbers of members of ones own nation in its perpetra-

tion. The negation may be outright and universal or deflective and particularistic.

The specter of negationism is large, but several categories and sub-categories can be

distinguished among its forms. The first category is

integral

outright

denial, which

rejects the very existence of the Holocaust. In Romania, just as in other former commu-

nist countries, integral denial is a wholesale Western import, with no traces of local

originality whatsoever.

However, influences of this Western import can be traced not

only in their Romanian counterparts, but also in other categories of local negationism. It

should be emphasized that the distinctions made between the different forms of negationism

are, above all, of heuristic value. In practice, one would find the same type of argumen-

tation employed in several categories used here.

The second conceptual category is

deflective negationism.

Unlike integral negationism,

the proponents of deflective denial admit the existence of the Holocaust, but channel the

guilt for its perpetration in several possible directions. One may distinguish several

subcategories of deflective negationism, based on the target onto which guilt is de-

flected. The first subcategory is the most predictable: placing blame solely on the

Germans. The second subcategory adds to the former groups depicted as being marginal

in their own society, alleged insignificant accidental occurrences or unrepresentative

aberrations in ones nation the Legionnaires, for example. Finally, the Jews themselves

are the targets of deflection in the third subcategory. Within this third subcategory,

further distinctions are possible, depending on the main argument being used: (1) the

deicidal argument, according to which the Holocaust was the price paid by the Jews for

having killed Jesus Christ; (2) the conspiratorial argument, according to which Hitler

himself was brought to power by the Jews; (3) the defensive argument, according to

which Jews forced Hitler to resort to legitimate measures of self-defense; (4) the

reactive argument, according to which the disloyalty manifested by Jews toward the

3. See Deborah Lipstadt,

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory

(New

York: Plume, 1994); Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman,

Denying History: Who Says the

Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?

(Berkeley: University of California Press,

2000). See also Michael Shafir,

Ex Occidente Obscuritas

: The Diffusion of Holocaust Denial from

West to East,

Studia Hebraica

, 3 (2003), pp. 23-82, particularly pp. 23-63.

4. See Shafir,

cit

and

idem

Între negare ºi trivializare prin comparaþie. Negarea Holocaustului

în þãrile postcomuniste din Europa Centralã ºi de Est

(henceforth: Shafir,

~ntre negare [i

trivializare

) (Iaºi: Polirom, 2002), pp. 33-47.

335

FINAL REPORT

country in which they lived triggered a backlash against them; and finally, (5) the

vindictive argument, which charges the Jews with having planned and implemented the

Holocaust themselves.

The third conceptual category is

selective

negationism

, which is a hybrid of outright

and deflective negationism. Its proponents deny the Holocaust, but only

in their own

countrys specific case

. In other words, selective negationism acknowledges that the

Holocaust occurred

elsewhere

, but denies

any

participation of ones compatriots in its

perpetration. In this case, one is consequently facing a combination in which selective

negationists share denial with outright negationists, insofar as their own nations involve-

ment, and share particularism with deflective negationists when it comes to members of

other nationalities. If one were to look for a specific Romanian note, one is likely to find

it in this particular form of selective negationism. Although not singular in postcommunist

East Central Europe, this note is so predominant in Romania that it becomes remarkable.

Since the category of

comparative

trivialization, which is a form of Holocaust

minimalization, stands apart from the rest, it shall be dealt with in the special section

treating this phenomenon.

Distorting and Concealing the Holocaust under Communism

Despite the antifascist rhetoric of the official propaganda, the history of the Holocaust

was distorted or simply ignored by East European communist regimes. There are several

explanations for this. First, communist ideology was structurally incapable of analyzing

the character and evolution of fascist regimes. Almost to their collapse, communist

regimes continued to abide by the definition of fascism formulated by Georgi Dimitrov

in his 1935 report to the Comintern. Fascism, according to this definition, was the open

terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist

elements of finance capital.

As historian István Deák observed, an ideology that

regards ethnic and religious problems as mere cover-ups for class conflict cannot deal

adequately with a historical process that had as its goal the extermination of all members

of a particular group, whether progressive or reactionary, whether exploiters or part of

the exploited.

Second, communist antifascism did not construe any precise critique of fascist

ideology and its regimes, but, as amply demonstrated by François Furet, it was merely

a power-strategy employed in the communization of Eastern Europe.

The purpose of

Dimitrovs definition was to place fascism at the opposite pole of communism, and the

imprint left on the collective imagination by World War II (at least on the continents

5. Georgi Dimitroff,

The United Front against War and Fascism: Report to the Seventh World

Congress of the Communist International 1935

(New York: Gama, 1974), p. 7.

6. Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary, in Randolph L. Braham (ed.),

Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe

(New York:

Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 99-124. Quotation at p. 118.

7. François Furet,

Trecutul unei iluzii. Eseu despre ideea comunistã în secolul XX

(Bucharest:

Humanitas, 1993),

passim.

For the case of Romania, see Ovidiu Buruianã, Antifascism ºi naþionalism

ca pretexte în strategia de comunizare a României,

Xenopoliana

, 7 (1999), nos. 1-2, pp. 1-16.

336

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

eastern part) was a simplistic ideological binary of communist-fascist confrontation. The

victory of the Soviet Union consecrated this logic, military victory being interpreted as

the victory of communism over fascism; one of the effects of this logic would be that

communists would refuse to acknowledge anyone elses right to call themselves either an

adversary or a victim of fascism.

Third, in the postwar years it became obvious

once more that communism and

fascism had been conniving. It is well known today that while in the Soviet Union

anti-Semitism was officially outlawed, it was unofficially encouraged and disseminated

by the authorities. Those authorities went as far as to prohibit any mention of the

massacres of Russian, Belorussian, or Ukrainian Jews on monuments erected in the

memory of the crimes committed by the Nazis on Soviet territory.

The Black Book

, a

collection of testimonies on the Holocaust compiled by Ilia Ehrenburg and Vasili

Grossman with the aid of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, was banned in the Soviet

Union shortly after it was finalized in 1946 and (partially) translated into Romanian and

English.

Indeed, though the Soviets liberated the Auschwitz camp in January 1945, for

several months they kept silent about what they had found there. In response to questions

by their British allies, they went out of their way to hide the racial dimension of the

atrocities, officially replying that four million citizens had died at Auschwitz.

For the communists, when Jewish martyrdom was not blended in with the general

martyrdom of mankind, it vanished into the martyrdom of specific nations. The Soviets

encouraged the forgetting of the Shoah in Eastern Europe, particularly since some of

these states had been involved in the perpetration of the genocidal project.

Their

discourse on the Holocaust avoided charging tones, partly to eschew arousing the hostil-

ity of populations about to undergo communization, and partly to channel whatever

sentiment of guilt existed in their own direction.

Postwar Romania shared in these attempts to bring about the concealment and/or

the distortion of the Holocaust. As early as 1945, the new regime signaled that it was

unwilling to acknowledge the role played by state institutions and by the ethnic Roma-

nian majority in the perpetration of anti-Jewish atrocities. In July 1945, the local

branch of the Iaºi Communist Party organization unsuccessfully tried to stop the

commemoration of the Iaºi pogrom.

The communist authorities also opposed the

dissemination of Matatias Carps three-volume book,

Cartea neagrã

, on the suffering

of Romanian Jews between 1940 and 1944; all the way to the regimes fall in 1989,

Carps would remain the only serious scholarly work on the Jewish genocide to have

been printed in communist Romania.

The book was published in a small edition and

was soon after withdrawn from bookshops

and no subsequent editions were authorized

8. François Furet,

op. cit.

, pp. 377, 389, 417.

9. Bernard Wasserstein,

Dispariþia diasporei. Evreii din Europa începând cu 1945

(Iaºi: Polirom,

2000), p. 92.

10. Michael Marrus,

The Holocaust in History

(Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987),

pp. 175-176.

11. François Furet,

op. cit.

, pp. 405, 417.

12. Liviu Rotman, Memory of the Holocaust in Communist Romania: From Minimization to Ob-

livion, in Mihail E. Ionescu and Liviu Rotman (eds.),

The Holocaust and Romania: History and

Contemporary Significance

(Bucharest, 2003), p. 206.

13.

Cartea neagrã. Fapte ºi documente. Suferinþele evreilor din România în timpul dictaturii fasciste

1940-1944

, vols. 1-3 (Bucharest: Socec, 1946-1948).

337

FINAL REPORT

after 1948. Moreover, the communist authorities subsequently kept it in the secret

sections of the public libraries.

The trials of Romanian war criminals began in 1945 and continued until the early

fifties, yet they benefited from public attention for a brief period of time only. The more

consolidated the communist regime became, the fewer the reports on the trials carried by

the media. As historian Jean Ancel observes, as early as the end of the local trials that

followed the Trial of the Great National Treason the trial in which Antonescu and his

collaborators were indicted a tendency to distort the nature of the crimes being prosecuted

was already discernable, and Jews began to be eliminated from the role of main victims.

At the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath the Romanian Communist Party

(PCR) was internally divided over how to address recent Romanian history. Two main

opposing trends could be noted. The first approach was advocated by Lucreþiu Pãtrãºcanu,

who implicitly supported a Romanian acknowledgement of guilt. Pãtrãºcanus study

entitled

Fundamental Problems of Romania

(which the author began working on in 1942,

was published in 1944, and reprinted several times up to and including the year 1946)

had a special chapter on state anti-Semitism and the mass, systematic, and methodi-

cal extermination of the Jewish population in Antonescus Romania. Proceeding from

Marxist perceptions of the Jewish problem, Pãtrãºcanu nonetheless did not hesitate to

mention the Romanian states responsibility for a long and horribly cruel series of

anti-Semitic crimes:

Individual and collective assassinations committed by the Legionnaires were followed by

the systematic and methodical mass-murder of the Jewish population. Pogroms were officially

organized, with soldiers and state organs being charged with carrying them out. Thousands

and tens of thousands of people, men, women, children, the elderly, were sent to death by

hunger and frost, being deported beyond River Dniester to wastelands under the harsh winter

conditions. When all the deeds committed in Moldova and beyond the Prut River after June

1941 would be made public, when the thousands of mass executions without trial and without

any other guilt of those thus liquidated but that of being born Jewish would be revealed, when

all these crimes would come to justice, then not only the dictatorships people who ordered

them

[

and

]

not only those who implemented them would have to answer, but so would the

regime in whose name they acted.

According to Pãtrãºcanu, while Germany did indeed exert an influence on Romania,

anti-Semitism nonetheless remains a Romanian phenomenon that must be investigated

not only in what it emulates, but also in what is intrinsic to it

[

authors emphasis

]

His approach was never heeded. The study sold well (it was printed in three editions),

yet it was reviewed unfavorably by Stalinist ideologues.

After a power struggle at the

14. Information provided by the U.S. editor of Carps book, Andrew L. Simon (Matatias Carp,

Holocaust in Romania: Facts and Documents on the Annihilation of Romanias Jews, 1940-1944

Florida: Safety Harbor, 2000), pp. 1-2.

15. See Jean Ancel, Introduction, in

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the

Holocaust

(Jerusalem: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), vol. 11, pp. 13-19; see also the

chapter on the war criminals trials in this report.

16. Lucreþiu Pãtrãºcanu,

Probleme de bazã ale României

(Bucharest: Socec, 1944), p. 211.

17.

Ibid.

, p. 171.

18. Lavinia Betea,

Lucreþiu Pãtrãºcanu. Moartea unui lider comunist. Studiu de caz

(Bucharest:

Humanitas, 2001), pp. 37, 62-63.

338

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

top of the PCR, Pãtrãºcanu was arrested in 1948 and executed in 1954. Although he

would be officially rehabilitated in 1968,

Fundamental Problems of Romania

would never

be reprinted.

It was the alternative approach of coping with the countrys recent past that would be

canonized. Its normative model was provided by the famous

History of Romania

(soon to

be called

History of the Romanian Peoples Republic

), an obligatory textbook whose

editor-in-chief was Mihail Roller.

Rollers textbook embraces Dimitrovs definition of

fascism, presenting autochthonous Romanian fascism as little else than embodying mo-

nopoly capital a movement allegedly lacking popular support, strictly controlled by

Nazi Germany, and intent on plundering the Romanian economy and terrorizing political

adversaries. The textbook only rarely mentions the regimes anti-Semitic policies, and

the few references to them are ambiguous and lack any explanation. The most blatant

distortion emerges whenever reference is made to the victims of fascism, among whom

Jews are never mentioned. Instead, for Roller the advent of the Legionary-Antonescu

dictatorship signified the aggravation of terror measures directed against popular masses

and their leaders

Concentration camps were set up, in which thousands of democratic

citizens were locked. The textbook

does

mention the camps in Transnistria, but no-

where the ethnic identity of its Jewish or Romany inmates. Students can only conclude

that the organized evacuation to, and assassination in the camps targeted the regimes

political adversaries, especially communists. Roller concludes,

[

]

these cruel acts,

the Legionary-Antonescu dictatorship proved its affinity with the crimes committed by

the German Hitlerites in the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen, etc.

Elsewhere, the textbook mentions racial injustices, racial repressions, and meas-

ures intended to bring about the enslavement of co-inhabiting nationalities.

In contrast to Pãtrãºcanu, then, Rollers

History of Romania

replaced Jews and Roma

with communists and Romanians, in general, as the main victims of fascism and ignored

anti-Semitism as a defining trait of Antonescus dictatorship. This approach came to

prevail in all subsequent history textbooks,

even after Roller fell into disgrace in the late

fifties, as well as in official communist histories on the interwar period and on the

Second World War.

The distortion was in no way hindered by the Jewish ethnic origin

of many prominent historians in the first two decades of the postwar years. These Jewish

historians were first and foremost disciplined party soldiers devoted to communism who

viewed their Jewishness as secondary at best.

19.

Probleme de bazã ale României

was often quoted in works about fascism published in the seventies

and eighties, but the chapter on the Jewish question was systematically eschewed. See, for example,

Gh.I. Ioniþã, Un strãlucit analist al procesului de naºtere ºi evoluþie a miºcãrii fasciste în România

intelectualul moldovean Lucreþiu Pãtrãºcanu, in Gh.I. Ioniþã and A. Kareþchi,

Intelectuali ieºeni

în lupta antifascistã

(Iaºi: Institutul de studii istorice ºi social-politice de pe lângã CC al PCR

Sectorul din Iaºi, 1971), pp. 58-86.

20. Mihail Roller,

et al

Istoria României. Manual unic pentru clasa a VIII-a secundarã

(Bucharest:

Editura de Stat, 1947).

21.

Ibid.

pp. 767-768.

22.

Ibid.

, pp. 805-808.

23. Alexandru Florian, Treatment of the Holocaust in Romanian Textbooks, in Randolph L. Braham

(ed.),

The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry

(New York:

Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 237-285.

24. Victor Eskenasy, The Holocaust in Romanian Historiography: Communist and Neo-Communist

Revisionism, in Braham (ed.),

op. cit.

, pp. 173-236.

339

FINAL REPORT

In the immediate aftermath of the war, a revitalization of socio-political anti-Semitism

occurred.

Soviet anti-Zionism and anticosmopolitanism two catchphrases that

concealed an anti-Semitic campaign serving the purpose of political and institutional

purges spread throughout the Eastern bloc during the late forties and fifties and were

used in power struggles at the top of communist parties. Massive Jewish migration also

triggered political problems.

In this context, to which one should add the tension of the

Cold War and the problems posed by postwar reconstruction, the issue of the Holocaust

was systematically avoided in both academia and politics. Historiography underwent a

process of enforced Marxization. Issues such as nationalism and the situation of ethnic

minorities were not priorities under Stalinist research guidelines. The marginalization of

the Holocaust was also the result of strict censorship, limited access to World War II

documents, purges in the community of historians, and the simultaneous promotion of

militant historians educated at the PCRs Institute of History, established in 1951.

Beginning in the sixties, the official discourse and historiography signaled a renewed

focus on nationalist themes. This was made possible by the efforts of PCR leaders to

distance Romania from the USSR and to mobilize elite and popular support for the party.

In general, as in the case of all East-Central European countries, there was a return to the

prewar focus on national history in Romania, with a bias for the ethnic majority. This

ethnocentrism dismissed scholarly interest in the history of ethnic minorities as irrel-

evant even in extreme cases, such as mass deportations and massacres. It also resulted in

continual avoidance of the topic of the Holocaust.

While Rollerism was denounced in the late fifties and while the historical discourse

was re-nationalized in the sixties, the approach to the Holocaust remained the same,

although fascism was re-interpreted. Rollers textbook was criticized for, among other

complaints, proclaiming too radical a break with pre-communist historiography. Ideo-

logical guidelines issued in the late sixties required the integration of communism into

the national history in order to illustrate that communism was the outcome of an organic

evolution.

As a consequence, the problematic past was no longer entirely dismissed, but

was selectively retrieved through discursive strategies that constituted a genuine gram-

mar of exculpation.

These transformations are seen best during the reign of Ceauºescu

(1965-1989), when the communist regime fell back on a local version of national

communism, which combined extreme nationalism and neostalinism.

25. Gheorghe Oniºoru,

România în anii 1944-1948. Transformãri economice ºi realitãþi sociale

(Bucharest: Fundaþia Academia Civicã, 1998), pp. 156-162.

26. Robert Levy,

Gloria ºi decãderea Anei Pauker

(Iaºi: Polirom, 2002), pp. 168 ff and

passim

27. On the communist distortion of Romanian history in general, see Michael J. Rura,

Reinterpretation

of History as a Method of Furthering Communism in Rumania

(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown

University Press, 1961); Dionisie Ghermani,

Die kommunistische Umdeutung der rumánischen

Geschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Mittelalters

(Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1967);

Vlad Georgescu,

Politicã ºi istorie: cazul comuniºtilor români 1944-1977

(Munich: Jon Dumitru,

1981); Al. Zub,

Orizont închis. Istoriografia românã sub dictaturã

(Iaºi: Institutul European,

2000).

28. Andi Mihalache,

Istorie ºi practici discursive în România democrat-popularã

(Bucharest:

Albatros, 2003), pp. 110-111.

29. The term refers to the means employed in attempts to avoid coping with the difficulty of the past

in postwar Germany. See Jeffrey K. Olick and Daniel Levy, Collective Memory and Cultural

Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics,

American Sociological Review

vol. 62, no. 6 (December 1997), pp. 921-936.

340

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

In order to examine the main traits of the communist discourse on the recent past, a

content analysis on a representative sample of authoritative information in the seventies

and eighties has been carried out: two synthetical volumes on Romanian history; the

only books published during the communist regime on the Legion, the Antonescu

dictatorship, and the Iaºi pogrom; and several military histories on Romanias partici-

pation to the Second World War.

This analysis shows:

a) Fascism is presented as being primarily an imported product (alien to the Romanian

people and organically rejected by it), as devoid of popular support (fascism was

not the expression of a mass trend). It is argued that fascism was imposed from

abroad in spite of the ever growing opposition of popular masses to it, in an

unfavorable international context, that it was transplanted into Romania by

foreign imperialist circles and transformed at their pressure into an out-post sup-

ported by a local retrograde minority.

b) Romania is presented as a victim and found innocent of any wrongdoing or crimes.

While highlighting the topic of Western treason, which left Romania alone, and

pushed Romania into the arms of Germany, the authors blame Nazi Germany

exclusively or predominantly for Romanian political developments (e.g., Germany

brought the Iron Guard and Antonescu to power and strictly controlled political,

social, and economic life in Romania), for Romanian decisions (e.g., Germany made

Romania enter the adventure of the War and forced it into implementing terrorist

policies) as well as for atrocities committed by Romanians.

c) The Romanian population is absolved of any guilt. The authors argue that the estab-

lishment of the dictatorship, its decisions, and the Romanian atrocities were not the

outcome of mass will, as they stood in blatant and irreconcilable opposition to the

overwhelming majority of the Romanian people. The Romanian population could

not formulate its opposition at the beginning, yet it gradually expressed its unmiti-

gated hatred and active opposition to the dictatorship and its indignation in regard to

30. Miron Constantinescu, Constantin Daicoviciu and {tefan Pascu,

Istoria României. Compendiu

(Bucharest: Editura Didacticã ºi Pedagogicã, 1969); Constantin C. Giurescu and Dinu C. Giurescu,

Istoria românilor din cele mai vechi timpuri pânã astãzi

(Bucharest: Albatros, 1971); Mihai Fãtu

and Ion Spãlãþelu,

Garda de Fier, organizaþie de tip fascist

ed. (Bucharest: Editura Politicã,

1980); Mihai Fãtu,

Contribuþii la studierea regimului politic din România (septembrie 1940

august 1944)

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1984); A. Kare]ki and M. Covaci,

Zile însângerate la

Iaºi (28-30 iunie 1941)

, pref. by Nicolae Minei (Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1978);

Marea

conflagraþie a secolului XX

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1974) (henceforth:

Marea conflagraþie

);

Gheorghe Zaharia and Ion Cupºa,

Participarea României la înfrângerea Germaniei naziste

(Bucha-

rest: Editura Politicã, 1985);

România în anii celui de-al doilea rãzboi mondial

, vol. I (Bucha-

rest: Editura Militarã, 1989) (henceforth:

România în rãzboi

);

Istoria militarã a poporului

român

, vol. VI (Bucharest: Editura Militarã, 1989) (henceforth:

Istoria militarã

31. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, pp. 526 ff; F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 31, 37,

passim

; F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 9, 11, 14, 19, 27, 38, 86, 91; Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, pp. 20, 33, 76,

passim

;

Marea conflagraþie

, pp. 139 ff; Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, pp. 39 ff;

România în rãzboi

pp. 308 ff;

Istoria militarã

, pp. 367-376.

32. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, pp. 522, 524, 528; Giurescu and Giurescu,

op. cit.

, pp. 652 ff;

F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 31, 258, 288,

passim

; F\tu,

op. cit.

, p. 86,

passim

; Kare]ki and

Covaci,

op. cit.

passim

;

Marea conflagraþie

, pp. 120, 150; Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, pp. 39

ff.;

România în rãzboi

, p. 308 and

passim

;

Istoria militarã

, pp. 363 ff.

341

FINAL REPORT

excesses by building an insurmountable wall of humanitarianism.

Even when these

positions are difficult to uphold, as in the case of the Iaºi pogrom, where the Romanian

army, police, and local population participated in the atrocity,

the authors find a means

of evasion: the blame is either deflected on the German troops and thus externalized and

extra-territorialized; or, alternatively, the blame is diverted to the periphery: Roma-

nian participation is said to have been limited to a few isolated soldiers, deserters,

degenerate elements in the police force, Legionnaires and inebriated civilians.

d) Unlike in the fifties and sixties, the seventies and particularly the early eighties mark

a qualitative separation of the Legionary and Antonescu regimes respectively, with a

severe bias against the former. The Legionnaires are depicted through the usage of

adjectives that evoke marginality and unrepresentativeness: bandits, hooligans,

robbers, murderers, terrorists, traitors, fifth column of Hitlerism. The

authors insist that for the Legionnaires ideology was nothing but an excuse for their

reprehensible deeds.

By contrast, Antonescu appears less bloodthirsty and irrespon-

sible, although mention is made of some of the crimes committed under his com-

mand.

While the deeds of Legionnaires are depicted as being committed out of a

gratuitous propensity to kill, the crimes committed during Antonescus dictatorship

are placed in the context of the state of emergency, which intimates that the

Conduc\tor

had limited freedom of action and that his decisions were motivated by the war as well

as domestic and international circumstances.

e) Anti-Semitism is only seldom presented as an ingredient of fascism. For example, in

the book on the Legion, anti-Semitism is mentioned last among a long list of other

defining features of fascism; it is listed only after anticommunism, hostility to

democracy, irrationality, mysticism, anti-national character, hostility to the working

class, the cult of death, anti-intellectualism, and the apology of war. Even when

mention

made of anti-Semitism, the trait is depicted as being aimed at concealing

the real causes of the economic, social, and political crises of those years and at

diverting the attention of the working class from its struggle against exploiters.

33. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, pp. 529 ff; Giurescu and Giurescu,

op. cit.

, p. 658; F\tu and

Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 37, 86, 130 ff; F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 19, 91, 112; Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

pp. 18, 20, 71, 106 ff; Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

passim

;

România în rãzboi

, pp. 312, 316;

Istoria militarã

, pp. 361, 372.

34. Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii la istoria României. Problema evreiascã

(henceforth: Ancel,

Contribu]ii

)

(Bucharest: Hasefer, Yad Vashem, 2003), vol. 2, part 2,

1933-1944

, pp. 83-124.

35. Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, pp. 25, 73, 75, 89,

passim

36. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, p. 527; Giurescu and Giurescu,

op. cit.

, pp. 650-653; F\tu and

Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

passim

; F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 53-57; Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, pp. 39-50;

România în rãzboi

, pp. 309-314;

Istoria militarã

, pp. 372-373.

37. See, for example, Giurescu who makes no mention whatever of the crimes of Antonescus regims;

F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 275, 280; F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 19, 313 etc.; Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, pp. 61, 73,

passim

; Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, pp. 51 ff;

România în rãzboi

, p. 315;

Istoria militarã

, p. 374 ff.

38. The following two examples are telling: The institutional framework whithin which Antonescu

exercised his dictatorship between January 1941 August 1944 had been estabilished by the

emergency legislation passed under wartime conditions (Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, p. 51);

General Ion Antonescu took over the helm of power in circumstances of an extremely difficult

internal and extrenal situation; as most of his rule was exercised in a state of war, the legislation

made use of was repressive, extremely harsh (

România în rãzboi

, p. 370).

39. F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, p. 85; on p. 37, the authors emphasize that anti-Semitism is not an

important trait of fascist movements.

342

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

the book on the Iaºi pogrom, the two authors claim that it is simplistic and

mystifying to speak of Romanian anti-Semitism at all; then, in a sententious note,

they conclude that unlike in many parts of East-Central Europe, the Romanian land

did not prove fertile to the poisoned seeds of hate.

On most occasions, even when

mentioned anti-Semitism is not explained, but only inserted into an enumeration of

other traits of fascism. Among the books surveyed, only one analyzes anti-Semitism

as a form of racism and lists the anti-Semitic measures of that time. This volume also

admits that anti-Semitism became state policy as early as the times of Carol II.

f) Just as they strive to diminish the importance of anti-Semitism in the fascist credo, the

authors minimize Jewish suffering and narrow the scope of Jewish tragedy. For

example, the

History of Romanians

mentions only the Legions pressures and bru-

talities against Jews.

After first referring to the fate of imprisoned or executed

communists and antifascists,

The Compendium

notes: To the series of murders

committed during the Antonescu dictatorship one can add the pogrom organized in

Iaºi, in which 2,000 people, most of them Jews, were murdered. Many other citizens

of various nationalities, most of them Jews, were interned in labor camps

[

and

threatened with

]

extermination through various means.

Iron Guard

, mention is

made of a well-known and well-documented incident in January 1941, during which

200 Jews were locked in a Legionary headquarters in Bucharest during the Iron

Guards uprising, and ninety of them were later shot in the nearby Jilava forest. The

two authors, historians Mihai Fãtu and Ion Spãlãþelu, cite Carps

Black Book

, but in

their version the 200 Jews are turned into 200 citizens. A few pages on, however,

Fãtu and Spãlãþelu cite Carp correctly, mentioning the number of the pogroms

victims as 120.

The

Contributions

offers the most information about the regimes

anti-Semitic policies and mentions the Transnistria deportations, which is rare. Still,

the terminology employed for this purpose remains ambiguous and is inaccurate:

One of the forms of repression used against the Jewish population was the intern-

ment of the people regarded as dangerous to the security of the state, which usually

meant communists or antifascists, in concentration camps in Transnistria (Rybnitsa,

Vapniarka, and others).

Bloody Days

, the authors cite one of Ceauºescus

well-known references to the Iaºi pogrom: Immediately after the beginning of the

anti-Soviet war, a true pogrom was organized against antifascist forces, during which

2,000 people were killed in Iaºi.

The authors conclude that 3,233 Jews died during

the pogrom, although the documents cited (to which the authors had privileged access

at a time when such access was strictly supervised) indicate much higher figures.

40. Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, pp. 17-18.

41. F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 41, 157 ff.

42. Giurescu and Giurescu,

op. cit.

, p. 653.

43. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, p. 527.

44. F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 337, 341.

45. F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 145, 157 ff, 161.

46. Nicolae Ceauºescu,

România pe drumul construirii societãþii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1975), vol. 11, p. 570; cited in Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, p. 16.

47.

Ibid

., pp. 16, 105,

passim

. Some communist party historians go as far as to admit a figure as high

as 8,000 victims, albeit they do so only in publications targeting foreign readers. See Ion

Popescu-Puþuri

et al.

La Roumanie pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale. Etude

(Bucharest:

Editura Academiei RPR, 1964), pp. 419-450; Gheorghe Zaharia,

Pages de la résistance antifasciste

en Roumanie

(Bucharest: Meridiane, 1974), p. 45.

343

FINAL REPORT

the preface to the book, Nicolae Minei inserts a footnote on the Transnistria deportations,

yet the purpose of the footnote is to distort reality and deflect guilt.

Finally,

The

Participation of Romania in the Victory over Nazi Germany

offers information una-

vailable elsewhere in the volumes examined. First, the involvement of Romanian

troops in atrocities committed on territories where combat occurred is acknowl-

edged. It is furthermore stated that Romanian gendarmerie units that participated in

combat and some troops from the Second and Fourth Armies joined the acts of

cruelty begun by the German Fourth Army, led by Colonel General Ritter von

Schobert, as well as by SS troops. The volume also lists several labor camps in

Chiºinãu, Fãleºti, Limbienii Noi and Bãlþi, in which about 5,000 Jews were interned

in early July 1941.

Mention is also made of 115,520 Jews deported eastward, of

which just 50,741 survived; the rest, it is stated, were murdered by the Nazis, by

epidemic, by malnutrition, and by harsh work conditions. Finally, the authors ac-

knowledge that nomadic Roma were subjected to the same measures.

In brief,

although Gheorghe Zaharia and Ion Cupºa underestimate the number of victims and

the depiction of events is inaccurate and distorted, this book is an exception to

communist-era historiography.

Zaharia and Cupºas example was not heeded by others. The three-volume study on

Romania during the Second World War has only two paragraphs on the victims of the

Antonescu regime, and even those provide meager information. The first paragraph

argues that the PCR was the main target of repression by Antonescus regime, that

numerous communists were executed, and that other communists were interned in

camps, in order to isolate them from society. The other paragraph states only that

Jews were subjected to discriminating policies. When the third volume addresses

Nazi concentration and extermination camps, Jews are not identified as their vic-

tims.

Neither does

The Military History of the Romanian People

do a better job.

Readers would never learn from this volume that during the war Jews perished at the

hand of the Antonescu regime. Its sixth volume mentions only the policy of

systematic reprisals against the Romanian Communist Party.

The Great Conflagra-

tion

exacerbates this type of historic distortion. After enumerating the Nazi labor

48. The deportations beyond the Dniester carried out by the Antonescu authorities were never moti-

vated, explicitly or secretly, by the intent to exterminate those affected. That some would nevertheless

perish was due to three main reasons: abuses committed by some representants of the authorities, who

embezzled funds allocated for food purchasing; criminal excesses by degenerate elements belong-

ing to the surveillance and supervision organs; the intervention of the Nazi

Einsatzkommando

assassins

who, while withdrawing from the East, forced their way into the camps and exterminated the

inmates. See Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, p. 25. It is worth noting that a Jewish historian, Nicolae

Minei, was tasked with writing the preface and thereby legitimize the official version on those events.

49. In actual fact, in Chiºinãu there was a ghetto, while in Fãleºti, Limbienii Noi and in Bãlþi transit

camps were set up ahead of the deportation to Transnistria. See Jean Ancel,

Contribuþii

, vol. 1,

part 1,

1933-1944

; pp. 143-229; Radu Ioanid,

Evreii sub regimul Antonescu

(Bucharest: Hasefer,

1998), pp. 157-191.

50. Zaharia and Cup[a,

op. cit.

, p. 53 and

passim

. The authors do not source the information provided.

51.

România în rãzboi

, pp. 315; see also vol. 3, p. 528; vol. 3 includes two pages dealing with the

danger of revisionism, but the formulations used are ambiguous, and it does not clearly transpire

from them that it is the Holocaust as subject of revisionism that the authors have in mind; see

p. 532 and

passim

52.

Istoria militarã

, p. 375.

344

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

camps, its authors claim that in these camps there were communists and other

antifascists, partisans and

[

French

]

Resistance fighters, Polish, French, Yugoslav,

Dutch, Belgian and Soviet war prisoners, in all several millions of people. Their fate

was sealed: exhausting labor, starvation, misery, filth, followed by the gas chamber

and mass graves. Surprisingly, the volume mentions the Odessa massacre, which all

other texts reviewed here avoid. Not even now, however, are the Jews depicted as its

victims: The Field Gendarmerie executed civilians. Romanian public opinion was

outraged and rejected with disgust and with anger such criminal acts. This was also

the mood of a majority among the Romanian military.

g) The books analyzed insist on the differences between Nazi Germany and Antonescus

Romania as well as on the alleged Romanian exceptionalism in the implementation of

the Final Solution. A section in

Contribution to the Study of the Romanian Political

Regime

reads: Historical reality has sanctioned the truth that insofar as Romania is

concerned, the regime established in September 1940 did not elevate political vio-

lence to the same level of intensity as that encountered in Nazi Germany, Horthys

Hungary, or in other countries... After the January 1941

[

Iron Guard

]

rebellion,

physical violence and terror did not become the main practice and means of exercis-

ing state power; the regimes primary instruments of rule were the dictatorial and

military methods, as well as political, judicial, and economic repression stemming

from, and determined by the fascist ideology. Mihai Fãtu furthermore claims that

Antonescu was not prepared to follow the Nazi model of repression of the Jewish

population and deems the Marshals policy toward that population to have been a

lot more moderate than that of the Nazis.

Herein apparently lies the key for understanding the terminological shift that would

occur in the seventies, which turned Antonescus fascist dictatorship (as his rule was

designated in the first communist documents) into a military-fascist one. The authors

here scrutinized strive to argue that the acts of repression by Antonescus regime were

not based on either an anti-Semitic ethos or on ethnocentric policies, which would have

associated Romania with Nazi Germany; instead, preference was given to presenting

those acts as politically-motivated repressive measures or as measures imposed by mili-

tary circumstances.

In the late eighties, the linguistic construct military-fascist dicta-

torship was in turn sidelined, as it suggested an involvement of the army in politics and

its support of the dictatorship. Antonescus regime would henceforth be labeled either a

personal dictatorship or a totalitarian regime, and military historians would insist

on the fact that the Marshal took all decisions himself and responsibility for their

outcome rests only on his shoulders.

Yet the effort to absolve the army of any respon-

sibility is encountered not only among military historians.

As is well known, nationalist

53.

Marea conflagraþie

, p. 140

[

in the captions under the photographs of camps reproduced on page

141, the Jews were replaced with people

]

; for Odessa, see p. 167.

54. F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 18 ff, 42, 73, 157.

55. Constantinescu

et al.

op. cit.

, pp. 526 ff; Giurescu and Giurescu,

op. cit.

, p. 652 ff; F\tu and

Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

, pp. 275, 350, 353 ff; F\tu,

op. cit.

passim

; Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, p. 35;

Marea conflagraþie

, p. 122.

56.

România în rãzboi

, pp. 313 ff;

Istoria militarã

, pp. 361, 367, 374.

57. F\tu and Sp\l\]elu,

op. cit.

passim

; F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 23 ff., 69 ff.; Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

pp. 73, 75, 89;

Marea conflagraþie

passim

345

FINAL REPORT

ideologies (and Ceauºescus brand of national communism was one of them) perceive the

army as being the epitome of statehood. Deflective and selective negationism are both

reflected in the claim that is made to an alleged Romanian exceptionalism. According to

the authors of

Romania during World War II

(a collective volume), Romania was the

only country in Nazi Germanys sphere of influence where the so-called Final Solution

adopted by Hitler for exterminating the European population of the Mosaic rite was not

implemented.

Similarly trenchant statements about Romanian exceptionalism can be

found in

Bloody Days in Iaºi

, especially in the preface signed by Nicolae Minei, who

makes the argument, The Holocaust did not occur in Romania precisely because with

few and rather insignificant exceptions the swastika-wearing executioners not only did

not enjoy self-volunteered local cooperation, but also encountered outright refusal when

they attempted officially or otherwise to recruit accomplices in the organization of

deportations or other genocidal actions. Minei goes on to argue that of all countries

under Nazi occupation Romania distinguished itself as the only country that had no

ghettos or extermination camps and

[

as the only country that

]

did not deport

[

Jews

]

to the

ovens of Auschwitz or Majdanek, the only country that offered asylum to foreign

Jews.

It is worth noting that Minei was the first in communist Romania to argue that

during the war Romania did not exterminate Jews, but massively saved them.

Interest-

ingly, this is precisely the argument made by representatives of the Antonescu regime in

the postwar trials of criminals of war.

h) The quotations above demonstrate that terms such as Holocaust, Final Solu-

tion, or genocide are systematically avoided when reference is made to the fate of

Jews under Romanian administration, but are perfectly in order when used to designate

the actions of others. For example, according to

Contributions to the Study of Political

Regimes

, the exacerbation of violence by some fascist regimes, such as those in Ger-

many and Hungary, up to the point of

[

the perpetration of the

]

Holocaust was an

expression of their aggressive, expansionist and annexationist policies directed at other

countries and peoples.

Similarly, the contributors to

Romania during the Second

World War

write: From the very outset of the Horthyist occupation

[

of Northern

Transylvania

]

, the measures taken by authorities bore the incontestable mark of a genu-

ine ethnic genocide that had been prepared in detail in order to change the ethnic realities

of the area. In the chapter where this quotation appears, the term genocide is used to

describe the Horthyist policy toward the Romanian population.

One notices that Hun-

gary is paid particular attention and is depicted as being associated with Nazi Germanys

systematic policy of physical destruction of Jews; one also remarks that Hungary is

presented as pursuing the same type of policies toward the ethnic Romanian population

in occupied Transylvania. This is a specific trait of Romanian historiography under

Ceauºescu: while atrocities perpetrated on Romanian territory or Romanian-administered

lands are either ignored or minimized, the anti-Semitic policies of Horthys Hungary are

58.

România în rãzboi

, p. 315.

59. Kare]ki and Covaci,

op. cit.

, pp. 20, 24 ff; see also p. 39,

passim

60.

Ibid.

, p. 20. In order to fully comprehend what the salvation of a massive (some 350,000)

population from an apparently ineluctable destruction really meant, one must take into consideration

the context of the times and the Hitlerites exterminatory obsessions.

61. F\tu,

op. cit.

, p. 16.

62.

România în rãzboi

, pp. 295-306; citation on p. 297.

346

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

thoroughly scrutinized. An emblematic example is

The Horthyist-Fascist Terror in

North-Western Romania

, edited by Mihai Fãtu and Mircea Muºat, which would also

benefit from translation into English. The volume places side by side Hungarys partici-

pation in the Holocaust and the anti-Romanian policies of the Horthy regime.

Blatant as

it might seem, this discrepancy in treatment may be explained by the anti-Hungarian

nationalist policies practiced by the Ceauºescu regime, particularly during the eighties.

A considerable number of history journals from those years

as well as the official media

were mobilized to take part in the image war against the neighboring country. The

Chief Rabbi of Romania, Moses Rosen, became involved in the campaign, the more so

as his anti-Hungarian resentments were perfectly in line with the regimes policies on

this particular issue.

The same anti-Hungarian policies of the regime help explain the

special status enjoyed at that time by Oliver Lustig, a Holocaust survivor from

Hungarian-occupied Transylvania, who is allowed to publish several books on the Nazi

extermination policies because they also contain anti-Hungarian undertones.

Taking

advantage of their special status with the regime, Moses Rosen and Oliver Lustig on

several occasions managed to mention publicly or in print atrocities committed against the

Jews under the Romanian administration, yet the impact of their gesture was limited.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this content analysis. First, given that the

contributions reviewed were made by different authors living in different time periods,

it is striking how uniformly distorted were the discussions on the Holocaust, on fascism,

and, in general, on the events that occurred during World War II. This is evidence that

historiography was, on one hand, strictly controlled and, on the other hand, it respected

PCR-issued ideological blueprints.

Besides, all the historians authorized to write on

such sensitive topics as the Holocaust were well positioned in the PCR as affiliated

63. Mihai Fãtu and Mircea Muºat (eds.),

Teroarea horthysto-fascistã în nord-vestul României (septembrie

1940 octombrie 1944)

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1985), and

Horthyst-Fascist Terror in North-

western Romania. September 1940 October 1944

(Bucharest: Meridiane, 1986).

64. Remarkable among them is the popularized history journal

Magazin istoric

, launched in 1967 with

support from the Institute for Historical and Social and Historical Studies affiliated to the PCRs

Central Committee. This institute replaced the former Institute of

[

Communist

]

Party History.

65. See, for example,

Remember. 40 de ani de la masacrarea evreilor din Ardealul de Nord sub ocupaþia

horthystã

(Bucharest: Federaþia Comunitãþilor Evreieºti din România, 1985).

66. For example, Oliver Lustig,

Jurnal însângerat

(Bucharest: Editura Militarã, 1987), translated into

English as

Blood-Bespotted Diary

(Bucharest: Editura ªtiinþificã ºi Enciclopedicã, 1988).

67. As of June 1986, Moses Rosen received permission to commemorate the Iaºi pogrom within the

Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities (FCER). However, information on the commemora-

tions would be allowed to appear in print only in the FCER publication

Revista cultului mozaic

whose distribution in Romania itself was very small, but which benefited from a large distribution

abroad. The publication had English and Hebrew summaries, thus managing to create outside

Romania a cosmeticized image of how the Holocaust was being treated under Ceauºescus regime.

Oliver Lustig managed to slip into an article published in 1986 one of the rare references to

Antonescus responsibility for the death of between 70,000-80,000 Jews in Transnistria, but the

article in which he did that could easily be considered as belonging to the category of selective

negationism. See Excepþie? Da, a fost o excepþie,

România literarã

, November 7, 1986.

68. Compare Nicolae Ceauºescu,

Istoria poporului român. Texte selectate

(Bucharest: Editura Militarã,

1988), pp. 337-608;

Împotriva fascismului. Sesiunea ºtiinþificã privind analiza criticã ºi demascarea

fascismului în România, Bucure[ti, 4-5 martie, 1971

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1971);

Comitetul

antifascist român

(Bucharest: Editura Politicã, 1985) etc.

347

FINAL REPORT

researchers of the PCR Institute of Historical and Socio-Political Studies or of the Center

for Research on Military History and Theory headed by the presidents brother, Ilie

Ceauºescu.

Second, it is obvious from these texts that the ideological message prevails over

science and that the historiography on the Second World War is fully mobilized in the

service of Romanias self-victimization, self-lionization, or acquittal of guilt. As a

consequence, it is not surprising that the undertones of historical discourse changed with

shifts in the regimes profile: as the eighties progressed and official nationalism and the

cult of personality became more strident, historiography became even more nationalist

and selective.

Third, the way fascism was approached continued to be heavily influenced by

Dimitrovs definition of the phenomenon. Romanian historians would distance them-

selves from Dimitrov only when necessary to embellish Romanian history even further.

They did not perceive anti-Semitism as crucial for the characterization of fascism or as

relevant to Romanian political culture. Subsequently, the Jews are not perceived as the

main victims of Nazi-like murderous policies. The volumes scrutinized reveal a clear

intention to distort the specificity of the Holocaust by positing that communists and

ethnic Romanians in general were its main victims. This pattern is contemporaneous with

the revival of anti-Semitism a development tolerated by Ceauºescu in the works of

various court writers who, after 1989, would become leading figures of postcommunist

Romanian negationism.

In general, the policy of communist Romania vis-à-vis its

Jewish citizens was extremely ambiguous, as communist Romania offered, in the words

of B. Wasserstein, one of the most paradoxical blends of tolerance and repression in

Eastern Europe.

Unlike all other communist bloc countries, Romania entertained good

relations with Israel. This policy was generally motivated by considerations of foreign

policy as well as by the economic benefits of Jewish migration to Israel. Ceauºescus

concern for his image abroad meant that anti-Semitism was formally repudiated and the

Jewish community was granted a certain degree of autonomy.

The same considerations

prompted the signing of an agreement on cooperation (involving the exchange of docu-

ments and holding joint symposia) between PCR historians and Yad Vashem historians in

the eighties. Yet powerful ideological constraints prevented Romanian historians from

taking advantage of the agreement, and its impact on Holocaust research in Romania was

minimal.

Foreign policy considerations again, explain why a few studies admitting in

low-voice that Antonescus regime was responsible for some atrocities against Jews were

69. Vlad Georgescu, Politics, History and Nationalism: The Origins of Romanias Socialist Person-

ality Cult, in Joseph Held (ed.),

The Cult of Power. Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century

(Boulder: East European Monographs, 1983), pp. 129-142; Michael Shafir,

Romania: Politics,

Economics and Society. Political Stagnation and Simulated Change

(London: Frances Pinter, 1985).

70. For example, see F\tu,

op. cit.

, pp. 15 ff.

71. Michael Shafir, The Men of the Archangel Revisited: Anti-Semitic Formations among Commu-

nist Romanias Intellectuals,

Studies in Comparative Communism

, vol. 16, no. 3 (Fall 1983),

pp. 223-243.

72. B. Wasserstein,

op. cit.

, p. 163.

73. Dennis Deletant,

Ceauºescu ºi Securitatea. Constrângere ºi disidenþã în România anilor 1965-1989

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1998), pp. 200-205.

74. Victor Eskenasy,

op. cit.

, pp. 187, 191.

348

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

presented by Romanian historians at international colloquia abroad and in languages of

international circulation. But it is just as relevant that these studies were never published

at home, in Romanian translation.

Fourth, a distinction was gradually introduced between the National Legionary

State and the Antonescu dictatorship as part of a quasi-official strategy to discreetly

rehabilitate Marshal Antonescu. The marks of this strategy emerged in the seventies

and become more obvious in the eighties.

There were several identifiable reasons for

the emergence of this strategy: the immersion of PCR-affiliated historians in the

exoneration of the Romanian state and society of involvement in anti-Semitic atroci-

ties; the concern of military historians to absolve the Romanian army and its com-

mand responsibility for wartime involvement in crimes; and the romanticizing of

Antonescu by some writers who were gravitating around the party leadership.

Also

important was the role of Iosif Constantin Drãgan, a former Iron Guard sympathizer,

who became a millionaire in the West and later a

persona grata

with Romanias

dictator. Having metamorphosed into Antonescus most fierce advocate, Drãgan con-

tributed to the campaign waged abroad by the regime to rehabilitate the Marshal and

recruited domestic and foreign historians into the rehabilitation drive. Among them

were Mihai Pelin, Gheorghe Buzatu, and Larry Watts. Four volumes of documents

portraying Antonescu positively were published in the West under Drãgans supervi-

sion, at a publishing house he owned in Italy.

Before 1989 and long after, these

documents were inaccessible to the great majority of Romanian researchers, but Drãgan

obtained them due to his excellent rapport with the regime in general, and with Mircea

Muºat and Ion Ardeleanu, censors of the history department of the PCRs Central

Committee in particular.

Fifth, it is evident that all the authors discussed in this

section strived to minimize the scope of atrocities committed on Romanian territory or

in the territories administered by the Romanian government and to deny Romanian

participation in the Holocaust. Most postcommunist Romanian negationism has roots

in communist-era historiography on the Holocaust. The victimization and lionization

of Romanians, their substitution of Jews in the posture of main victims of Nazism,

the deflection of responsibility, the minimization of the real scope of atrocities,

self-flattering exceptionalism, the rehabilitation of Antonescu as well as many other

manifestations were to reproduce themselves in various forms in postcommunist

negationism.

75.

Ibid.

passim

76. Randolph L. Braham,

Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of

Unfounded Rescue Accounts

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 49 ff; Victor

Eskenasy,

op. cit.

, pp. 184 ff.; Dennis Deletant,

op. cit.

, pp. 185 ff.; Liviu Rotman,

op. cit.

pp. 209 ff.

77. For example, Marin Preda,

Delirul

(Bucharest: Editura Cartea româneascã, 1975).

78. Iosif Constantin Drãgan (ed.),

Antonescu. Mareºalul României ºi rãsboaiele de reîntregire

, vols. 1-4

(Venice: Nagard, 1986-1990).

79. Victor Eskenasy, Istoriografii ºi istoricii pro ºi contra mitului Antonescu (henceforth: Eskenasky,

Istoriografii [i istoricii), in Randolph L. Braham (ed.),

Exterminarea evreilor români ºi ucraineni

în perioada antonescianã

, (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), pp. 313-346; Michael Shafir, Reabilitarea

postcomunistã a mareºalului Ion Antonescu:

Cui bono

? (henceforth: Shafir, Reabilitarea

postcomunist\ a mare[alului Antonescu), in Braham (ed.),

op. cit.

, pp. 400-465.

349

FINAL REPORT

Holocaust Denial in the Postcommunist

Public Discourse: Examples

In postcommunist Romania, Holocaust denial has been a diffuse phenomenon, which has

manifested itself in politics, in academia, and in the mass media. The Greater Romania Party

(

Partidul Rom^nia Mare

PRM) and its affiliated publications have yielded the most

consistent database of negationist statements and actions during the past 15 years of

transition. Yet, Holocaust denial is not the exclusive monopoly of anti-democratic Romanian

extremists. Individuals, groups, and organizations with centrist and democratic credentials

have also contributed to this phenomenon. It is emblematic that ideological differences

among parties suddenly vanish when reference is made to Marshal Ion Antonescu.

In 1991 the Romanian Parliament observed a minute of silence to commemorate

forty-five years since the execution of Marshal Antonescu. On the initiative of Petre

Þurlea, a member of the National Salvation Front, the government party of those years,

legislators bowed their heads in memory of Antonescus service to his country.

Eight

years on, when the parliamentary majority in the legislature had changed, National

Peasant Party Christian Democratic (

Partidul Na]ional-}\r\nesc Cre[tin [i Democrat

PN}CD) Senator Ioan Moisin submitted to the upper house a draft resolution in which

Antonescu was described as a great Romanian patriot who fought for his country until

death. According to Moisin, Antonescu did not participate in the Holocaust and,

furthermore, he had saved the lives of millions of Jews when he refused to carry out

Hitlers order to deport them to Germany.

This time around, the resolution was,

however, rejected. Yet, during the 1996-2000 coalition of the CDR (which included the

PN}CD and the PNL) with the USD and the UDMR, Attorney General (

Procurorul

General

) Sorin Moisescu filed an extraordinary appeal (

recurs în anulare

), against

sentences passed after the Second World War on six members of the Antonescu govern-

ment found guilty of crimes against peace.

Eventually, Moisescu withdrew the appeal

and the controversial procedure, which allowed the Attorney General to appeal sentences

even after judicial procedure had been exhausted, has been since rescinded.

Nor is this admiration for the Marshal confined to politicians. In the nineties the

mainstream daily

România liberã

published an op-ed entitled Tear for a National

Hero; the authors, Ion Pavelescu and Adrian Pandea, were gratified that, after

forty-four years, history finally allows Romanians to shed a tear and light a candle for

Ion Antonescu.

In turn, the popular daily

Ziua

launched a campaign in 1995 to

name one of Bucharests main boulevards after Ion Antonescu, claiming that Antonescu

was no Hitler, Mussolini, or Horthy. He did not kill Jews but saved Jews.

80.

Monitorul Oficial al României

, no. 132, May 31, 1991; Michael Shafir, Marschall Ion Antonescu:

Politik der Rehabilitierung,

Europaische Rundschau

, vol. 22, no. 2 (1994), 55-71, reference at

page 59; William Totok,

Der Revisionistische Diskurs

(Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2000), p. 91.

81. Mediafax, June 14, 1999.

82. Michael Shafir, Reabilitarea postcomunistã a mareºalului Ion Antonescu, pp. 410-413; Braham,

op. cit.

, p. 68.

83.

România liberã,

June 22, 1990.

84.

Ziua

, August 12, 1995.

350

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The dismantling and/or restructuring of communist-era research institutions the

PCR CCs Institute of Historical and Socio-Political Studies, the Center for Research on

Military History and Theory, or the Social and Political Sciences Academy did not lead

to the disappearance of the negationist discourse practiced under their aegis during the

dictatorship. On the contrary, former PCR-affiliated historians established new networks

based on informal relationships in politics, the press, or civil society that provided new

forums for expressing old ideas. Gheorghe Buzatu, for example, became the head of the

Iaºi-based Center for History and European Civilization with the Romanian Academy

(

Academia Românã

), where he and others would publish several pro-Antonescu and

anti-Semitic tomes. In 2000, Buzatu was elected senator for the Greater Romania Party,

where he joined former PCR colleagues: communist-era military historians, nationalist

writers, PCR activists, members of the communist secret police, the

Securitate

and

others who shared sympathy for Antonescu and the anti-Semitic imagery. (After 1989,

many of these people joined the PRM. For example, the former communist-era censor of

historical research, Mircea Muºat, was PRM deputy-chairman until his death

in 1994.)

Buzatu also joined the Marshal Ion Antonescu Foundation, set up in 1990 by Corneliu

Vadim Tudor and Iosif Constantin Drãgan, as was a Marshal Ion Antonescu League. The

two bodies merged in September 2001, but the new organization was eventually renamed

League of Marshals; the change came in the wake of Emergency Ordinance no. 31/2002,

which prohibits the cult of personalities found guilty of war crimes and of crimes against

mankind. Eventually, Buzatu would take over the leagues chair from Drãgan. League

members included numerous negationists, such as Radu Theodoru and Ilie Neacºu, who

at that time was chief editor of the anti-Semitic review

Europa

. Numerous negationists

with roots in the communist past would contribute articles to

Europa

and/or the

C.V. Tudor-owned

România Mare

. Among them one found Maria Covaci and Aurel

Kareþki, the authors of the book on the Iaºi pogrom discussed earlier in this chapter.

Many other examples could be provided, and all lead to the same conclusion: after

1989, historians and nationalist activists educated by the communist regime maintained

some degree of solidarity. Above all, they kept alive and even enhanced the pro-Antonescu

negationist political discourse.

Paradoxically, one of the side-effects of the year 1989 might be called the democra-

tization of negationism. Beyond the hard-core nucleus just discussed, numerous other

voices advocate negationism in one way or another, groups are taking positions in

defense of its propagation and publications disseminate negationist views. This is a

heterogenous world and motivations are just as varied, ranging from nationalism, xeno-

phobia, a penchant for conspiracy theories and authoritarianism, antidemocratic inclina-

tions, ignorance, nostalgia, fascination with interwar intellectuals affiliated with the

radical right to the anticommunist version of anti-Semitism. The sociological profiles of

Romanian negationists are even more varied and complex. For this reason, this chapter

will discuss categories of negationist discourse as an analytical starting point, rather than

proceeding from groups or individuals. What follows are but a few examples from among

a huge amount of negationist manifestations.

351

FINAL REPORT

Integral Negationism

Ten years ahead of his 2004 conversion to philosemitism, PRM leader Corneliu Vadim

Tudor wrote that recently he had learned that English and American scholars

are

contesting the Holocaust itself, providing documentation and logical arguments proving

that the Germans could not gas six million Jews, this being technically and physically an

impossibility. The Holocaust, he added, was nothing but a Zionist scheme aimed at

squeezing out from Germany about 100 billion Deutschmarks and to terrorize for more

than 40 years all those who do not acquiesce to the Jewish yoke.

In Romania, no author embraced more eagerly and more fully the negationist argu-

ment than Radu Theodoru. A former air force pilot, he became a founding member of

the PRM and a deputy chairman of that party, yet after a conflict with Tudor, Theodoru

was expelled from the party. In 1995 Theodoru published an article in

Europa

, in which

he bluntly stated: I am a supporter of the revisionist historical school led by the French

scientist, R. Faurisson. Faurisson, he added, was the victim of disgusting moral and

physical pressure for the simple fact that he doubted the existence of gas chambers.

went on to list Western negationists, starting with Leuchter and ending with Leon

Degrelle, leader of the Belgian fascist movement, on whose infamous open letter to

Pope John Paul II Theodoru insisted at length.

Degrelle, Theodoru wrote, had produced

two comparative columns that demonstrate that the real genocide was that committed

by the British-American bombings, by the two American A-bombs on Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, by the mass assassinations in Hamburg and Dresden and not at Auschwitz,

which is used by Zionist propaganda to squeeze out of defeated Germany fabulous

amounts of money. It was Zionist propaganda that had imposed on

[

international

]

public opinion the fabulous number of six million assassinated Jews. The revisionist

school, however, demonstrates, according to Theodoru, that the number of victims

packed into a gas chamber could not have physically fit to reach the number of gassed

victims attributed to the Nazis. This, as is well known, is one of French negationist

Robert Faurissons main claims. The revisionist school Theodoru wrote, is nothing

short of an A-bomb thrown by conscientious historians on the propagandistic construct

put in place by the craftsmen of the Alliance Israélite Universelle for, having demon-

strated that at Auschwitz and the other camps no genocide by gassing had occurred,

[

they

implicitly

]

pose the problem of revising the Nuremberg trials. In turn, that revision

calls for revising the trial of Third

Reich

Germany as a whole and hence questions

the tribute paid by postwar Germany to Israel and world Jewish organizations from

pensions to all sorts of subventions.

The article in

Europa

was said to be the first in

85. In order to boost credibility, the negationists often refer to demonstrations by scholars,

scientists and authoritative specialists who either remain anonymous or prove at the end of the

day to have acquired notoriety precisely because of their negationist postures. Often enough, the

negationists parade scientific rigor by making use of footnotes, bibliographies, documentary

annexes, indexes, citations from documents or from the works of established historians.

86.

România Mare

, March 4, 1994.

87.

Europa

, a weekly launched in May 1991 is no longer in print.

88. Lipstadt,

op. cit.

, p. 11.

89. Radu Theodoru, Lumea, România ºi evreii,

Europa

, no. 189, May 3-17, pp. 1, 11.

352

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

a serialized new book by Theodoru, whose title was announced as

Romania, the World and

the Jews

. The book itself was published in 1997, but under the title

Romania as Booty

, and

it apparently sold well enough for a second, enlarged version, to be brought out by a different

publisher in 2000, with the article in

Europa

serving as the volumes introduction.

Theordorus steadfastness in emulating Western negationist models was once again

displayed in his 2000 volume,

Nazismul sionist

, whose title is inspired from the work of

French negationist Roger Garaudy. In this tome, he claimed that the Holocaust has been

turned into the most lucrative Jewish business ever, becoming a business that has

enriched the so-called witnesses, who fabricated series of aberrant exaggerations and

pathological descriptions of life in Nazi camps. The managers of that business had

introduced the Holocaust in school curricula, PhDs are being written on the subject,

writers engaged in fiction on the topic make a nice profit from it, and so-called

documentary movies such as

[

Claude Lanzmanns

]

Shoah

in fact nothing but subtle or

gross mystification are constantly produced, alongside the holding of so-called scien-

tific conferences and articles in the mass media. The combination managed to set in

place a complex system of misinformation, of brain-washing, of psychological pressure

and succeeded in imposing forgery as an emotional reality. Theodoru exhorted the

reader to display human dignity and adopt the ideas of

historical revisionism

and the

positions of its advocates, who became the target of Zionist Nazism, a movement that

uses physical and legal terror, press lynching, attacks, social isolation and economic

persecution against them. According to Theodoru, the importance of the revisionist

approach resides in its capacity to analyze the entire Nuremberg trial and evidence; it

was a trial of revenge staged by winners against losers. Theodorus own characterization

of the Nuremberg trials was: a trial organized by Zionist Nazism against German

Zionism, more specifically a trial staged by Judaic Nazism against Aryan Nazism.

Nothing but a scuffle among racists.

Deflective Negationism

This category of Holocaust denial is widespread, both in statements made by politicians after

the demise of communism and in history books. As early as 1990, former National Liberal

Party (Partidul Na]ional Liberal PNL) Chairman Radu Câmpeanu called for Antonescus

rehabilitation, describing the Marshal as a great Romanian. In support of his appeal,

Câmpeanu shifted the blame for the atrocities committed during the Holocaust on Germany

and Hungary. He claimed that during the war Romania had been a Nazi-occupied country for

all practical purposes. Nonetheless, he said, nowhere else in the Nazi sphere of influence had

there been fewer crimes against Jews than in Romania. At most, one could count

60,000 victims, but by no means were there between 300,000-400,000 victims in Romanian-

-administered territories. The only Romanian province where it would be justified to speak

of a Holocaust was Hungarian-occupied Northern Transylvania, from where Jews were

90.

Idem

România ca o pradã

(henceforth: Theodoru,

Rom^nia ca o prad\

) (Oradea:

Alma, 1997,

and Bucharest: Miracol, 2000).

91.

Idem

Nazismul sionist

(henceforth: Theodoru,

Nazismul sionist

) (Bucharest: Miracol, 2000),

pp. 23-24. Authors emphasis.

353

FINAL REPORT

deported by the Horthy authorities. As for Antonescus role, he tried and was partially

successful in defending Romanias Jewish community, he said.

One should note that Antonescus transmogrification into a defender of Romanian

Jewry is also shared by the selective negationists.

Magnate Iosif Constantin Drãgan,

who is the main financer of Antonescus selective negationist cult, was claiming in 1993

that a statue in Antonescus memory had been erected in Haifa to honor the protector

and savior of Romanian Jews, of whom nearly 500,000 live happily in Israel.

In his

memoirs, Drãgan claimed that forced labor was a means designed by Antonescu:

...in order for the Jews to be better protected and to place them under the shield of the military

code and military legislation. Driven by this noble purpose, Marshal Antonescu decreed the

mobilization of all Jews in Romania for civil duties put

on par with military ones

, in the service

of the motherland, which was in war. Thus, over 500,000 Jews were saved (according to

official statistics, but in actual fact maybe as many as 700,000) of which 400,000 contributed

to the establishment of todays State of Israel and making up a quarter of their countrys

current population... I am told that in Israel, in Tel Aviv, a street has been called after Marshal

Antonescu. However, historical justice is yet to produce the names and the confession of those

who wore

[

Romanian

]

military uniforms in the firing squad that shot the Marshal

[

authors

emphasis

]

Prominent members of the Ceauºescu historians corps continued to display their

deflective interpretations after the change of regime. In 1991, at the time of the com-

memoration marking fifty years since the Iaºi pogrom, Maria Covaci wrote in

Europa

that the massacre had been perpetrated by the Hitlerite troops. As for those who

perished in the Transnistria camps, the blame for their death should be placed on the war

itself, epidemics, and (again) on the Hitlerite troops. One thing was clear for Covaci: the

Romanian army had perpetrated no massacres or pogroms.

The pogroms anniver-

sary was a good opportunity for Aurel Kareþki (joint author with Covaci of the controver-

sial

Bloody Days in Iaºi

) to sing the praise of the solidarity with Jews said to have been

displayed by the entire Romanian people.

In a volume published in 1992, Mircea Muºat

dubbed the Iaºi massacre a Hitlerite-Legionary pogrom.

Attempts to deflect the guilt for the Holocaust on the Jews are not missing from

Romanian negationism. Before his conversion to philosemitism, Corneliu Vadim

Tudor was unhesitatingly employing deicidal arguments. In 1996, he was convinced

that he was chosen to fulfill a messianic task: Gracious God has a plan with me,

namely, to remind them

[

the Jews

]

that they cannot infinitely crucify Jesus. One year

later, Tudor was confessing to love Jesus Christ so dearly as to be unable not to think

every day of who had mocked Him, who spat on Him, who stoned Him, who placed

92. Interview with William Totok, November 2, 1990. Fragments of the interview were broadcast on

Totoks radio show, Rumäne erwache! Nationalistische Tendenzen im postkommunistischen

Rumänien, RIAS-Berlin, February 5, 1991.

93. See Shafir,

Între negare ºi trivializare

, pp. 72, 110.

94.

România Mare

, January 7, 1994.

95. Iosif Constantin Drãgan,

Europa Phoenix

(vol. 3 in a 4-volume memoir whose joint title is

Through

Europe

) (Bucharest: Europa Nova, 1977), pp. 562-563.

96. Maria Covaci, Un adevãr restituit istoriei,

Europa

, no. 34, July 1991.

97. A. Kareþki, A existat un întreg popor solidar cu suferinþa evreilor,

Europa

, no. 26, July 1991.

98.

1940. Drama României Mari

(Bucharest: Editura Fundaþiei România Mare, 1992), p. 217.

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INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Him on the cross and who nailed Him. The Jews did it. The Jews of 2000 years ago and

the Jews of all times.

Conspiracy theories, which are widespread in Romania,

100

apply to the treatment of

the Holocaust, too. In the eyes of Theodoru, Hitler was nothing but a puppet in Jewish

hands to scare Jews into running to Palestine,

101

while in the respectable Writers Union

weekly

România literarã

, writer Ion Buduca was claiming in April 1998 that anti-Semitism

was a Zionist ploy to advance the purpose of Jewish emigration.

102

In a tract published

one year later, Buduca switched to the defensive argument, insinuating that the Jews had

forced Hitler into self-defense. They were not only historically guilty for Germanys

defeat in World War I, but also of having started a war on Hitler in 1934, by declaring

a boycott of Nazi German goods.

103

The same defensive argument abounds in negationist literature. As early as 1993,

Europa

editor-in-chief Ilie Neacºu (who would eventually become a PRM parliamentar-

ian), was writing: Hitler did not butcher Jews from the Valley of Jordan, but from his

own courtyard in Berlin, where after World War I Judass descendants had become

masters over German economy, culture, and politics.

104

To this category also belongs the

argument developed by journalist Vladimir Alexe. In a 2002 article published (by coin-

cidence or not) on Hitlers birthday April 20 in the Ultra-secret Files supplement

of the daily

Ziua

, Alexe purports to not only bring evidence that international Jewry

had declared war on Hitler, but also that the famous

Kristallnacht

was nothing but a

provocation engineered by world Jewry. Its purposes are alleged to have been twofold:

to provoke mass emigration from Germany to Palestine and to obstruct British plans for

dividing Palestine between Jews and Arabs.

While some negationists are ready to admit that repressive measures were applied

against Jews of necessity, they go out of the way to emphasize that these were little

other than punitive reactions to the lack of loyalty displayed by Jews toward Romania.

The main argument rests on the large-scale support allegedly rendered by Jews to the

Soviet occupation forces in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in 1940 and on the

alleged Jewish participation not only in humiliating or torturing the retreating Romanian

army, but in the physical liquidation of Romanian military personnel. Viewed from this

perspective, the June 1940 Dorohoi and Galaþi pogroms, the pogrom in Iaºi, the atroci-

ties committed in Transnistria (whenever they are acknowledged, even in minimalist

terms) can all be explained in terms of self-defense and/or spontaneous revenge on the

Jews for their deeds in 1940.

This reactive argument has several versions. In some, Jewish guilt is total; in others

it is only partial, yet amplified by what the arguments proponents call the complex

and tense circumstances specific to the war. This second scenario would have the

responsibility for atrocities remain indeterminate by switching the focus from the

99.

România Mare

, no. 302, 1996, and no. 356, 1997, cited in Andrei Oiºteanu,

Imaginea evreului

în cultura românã. Studiu de imagologie în context est-central european

, 2

ed. (Bucharest:

Humanitas, 2004), pp. 366-367.

100. George Voicu,

Zeii cei rãi. Cultura conspiraþiei în România postcomunistã

(Iaºi: Polirom, 2000).

101. Theodoru,

România ca o pradã

, p. 9.

102. Ioan Buduca, Care-i buba?,

România literarã

, no. 15, April 22-28, 1998.

103.

Idem

, Viþelul de aur,

Contemporanul Ideea europeanã

, no. 37, September 30, 1999.

104. Ilie Neacºu, Rabinul suferã de hemoroizi,

Europa

, April 6-13, 1999.

355

FINAL REPORT

regimes own criminal project to the unfortunate general context of the war. Typical of

this scenario is the work of Alex Mihai Stoenescu, an employee of the Defense Minis-

trys public relations department. In his book

Armata, mareºalul ºi evreii

despite mini-

mizing the scope of the Iaºi massacre, Stoenescu unequivocally deplores the fact that

people lost their lives. But instead of pointing out the planned nature of the atrocities, he

argues that the deaths of thousands of civilians in the death trains were the outcome of

negligence rather than a consequence of deliberate action. He claims that the Jews

crammed into cattle cars were suspected of being communists, and the process of

selection occurred in a tense atmosphere that led to the death of so many innocent

people. He concludes that this was not the first time in history that hundreds or even

thousands of innocents had paid for the deeds of a handful of

[

Jewish communist

]

culprits.

105

A similar argument was propounded by Adrian Pãunescu, one of the authors of the

cult of Ceauºescu turned post-communist politician (Pãunescu was a senator for the

Romanian Labor Party and then for the Romanian Social-Democratic Party). In an article

published in 1994, he argued that none of the Romanians who fought for the restoration

of the Nations unity (starting from Marshal Antonescu down to the last soldier) has

acted in the blood-stained manner in which wars force people to act against enemies

because they were acting against Jews. The only and fearsome rationale for the

terrible crimes in Bessarabia was to administer punishment to the Bolsheviks... Romania

did not kill Jews

[

just

]

because they were Jews.

106

Jewish guilt for the war and its outcome is prominent in the works of historian

Gheorghe Buzatu. His views on the Holocaust and his admiration of Antonescu were on

record long before 1995, when Buzatu published a booklet at the Iron Guardist

Majadahonda publishing house. In a noticeable performance, Buzatus booklet reverses

the perspective: rather than being a perpetrator of the Holocaust, Romania had been its

victim. This time around, the discourse is no longer on Romania as a victim of Nazi

Germany, as used to be the case in communist historiography. Romania underwent a

Holocaust at the hand of the Jews, and the year 1940 marked its beginning.

107

The booklet would eventually make it as a separate chapter in a 1996 volume based

on research Buzatu conducted in Soviet archives. Although this tome purports to deal

with Romanians in the Kremlins archives, most of its heroes were either Jews or had

Jewish spouses, and all served Soviet power, becoming prominent leaders in post-World

War II Romania.

108

In its book version, the brochure underwent significant changes. For

example, it is no longer stated that the Jewish attacks on the Romanian army in summer

1940

undoubtedly influenced

Antonescus

ulterior behavior vis-à-vis the Jewish prob-

lem

109

Implicitly, in 1995 Buzatu was acknowledging that Antonescu had ordered in

1941 that Jews be deported from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Transnistria. This

is now vanishing. But Buzatu keeps in the quotation that shows Antonescu as stating on

105. Alex Mihai Stoenescu,

Armata, mareºalul ºi evreii

(Bucharest: RAO, 1998), p. 280.

106. Adrian Pãunescu, Nici jidani, nici profitori,

Totuºi iubirea

, no. 184, April 7-14, 1994.

107. See Gheorghe Buzatu,

Aºa a început Holocaustul împotriva poporului român

(henceforth: Buzatu,

Aºa a început Holocaustul

) (Bucharest: Majadahonda, 1995).

108.

Idem

Românii în arhivele Kremlinului

(henceforth: Buzatu,

Românii în arhivele Kremlinului

)

(Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 1996).

109.

Idem

Aºa a început Holocaustul

, p. 40. Authors emphasis.

356

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

October 19, 1941, that the crimes perpetrated in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in

1940 against the Romanian army had been essentially of Jewish inspiration and execu-

tion.

110

Buzatu himself referred to those events as a

[

Jewish

]

crime against the Roma-

nian people. More important, in both versions one finds the assertion that July 1940 is

the date marking

the Holocaust

[

directed

]

against the Romanian people during the

1939-1945 World War II and later on

[

authors emphasis

]

111

The last form of deflective negation and by far the most insulting to the memory

casts the Jews in the role of perpetrators of the Holocaust. Ion Coja, a Bucharest

University philology professor whose sinuous political career took him from one politi-

cal party to another, was a candidate for the position of Bucharest mayor in the local

elections of 2004. The main point on his electoral platform was the rehabilitation of

Marshal Antonescu. In 1996 he was close to being designated a candidate for Romanias

presidency. In an open letter addressed to the late president of the FCER, the late

professor Nicolae Cajal, Coja wrote in February 1997 that the January 1941 Bucharest

pogrom had never taken place. Its 120 victims, some of whom were hanged on hooks at

the slaughter house with the inscription Kosher meat on them were all an invention

the best proof being that when the communists took power nobody had been put on trial,

although so many Jews were then in the party leadership. Jews may have died during the

January uprising against Antonescu, Coja claimed in another letter to Cajal, but nobody

has ever proved that the Iron Guard committed the crimes.

112

The Iron Guard did not

commit the assassination of historian Nicolae Iorga either, Coja would claim in a book

published in 1999. That assassination was part of a plot ordered by the KGB, which had

infiltrated the movement. And Coja is heavily hinting in the book it is a well-kept

secret that the KGB was in the hands of the occult. The same occult would eventu-

ally order the assassination of Nicolae Ceauºescu, as indeed it would commission the

liquidation of Romanian-born scholar Ioan Petru Culianu in the United States in May

1991 knowing that the scholar had discovered the secrets of its world domination.

113

September 2003, building on another absurdity published by journalist Vladimir Alexe

the same month (in the daily

România liberã

114

) claimed that before the 1941 Bucharest

pogrom Antonescu had sealed a secret pact with the underground Communist Party, Coja

would conclude that the Jewish victims of the pogrom had been liquidated by their own

co-religionists (dressed in the green shirts of the Legionnaires) who were communists

serving the Soviet interest: to compromise the Iron Guard and end its partnership with

Antonescu.

115

Just a few months later, however, Coja turned the tables once again on his

never-ending tales, now claiming to be in the possession of a notarized testimony of a

nonagenarian witness to the events, according to whom the bodies hanged at the slaugh-

ter house were of Iron Guardists massacred by Jews.

116

110.

Ibid.

and Buzatu,

Românii în arhivele Kremlinului

, p. 230.

111.

Ibid.

, pp. 29 and 222, respectively.

112. Ion Coja,

Legionarii noºtri

(henceforth: Coja,

Legionarii noºtri

) (Bucharest: Kogaion, 1997),

pp. 156-169. Citation on p. 167.

113.

Idem

Marele manipulator ºi asasinarea lui Culianu, Ceauºescu, Iorga

(henceforth: Coja,

Marele

manipulator

)

(Bucharest: Miracol, 1999).

114.

România liberã

, September 3, 2003.

115.

România Mare

, no. 689, September 26, 2003.

116.

Ibid.

, no. 706, January 23, 2004.

357

FINAL REPORT

Selective Negationism

Nowhere in East Central Europe is this type of Holocaust denial (which acknowledges

the perpetration of the Shoah provided that it is not extended to compatriots participa-

tion in the genocide) more widespread than in Romania. It rejects any state (Romanian),

regime (Antonescu and his governmental team and army) or Legionnaire responsibility

for the Holocaust. As deflective negationism does, this discourse stems from a self-

-exonerating nationalist strategy.

Throughout the nineties Buzatu edited or prefaced a number of volumes presenting

the Iron Guard and its leader in a favorable light.

117

Until only recently, Buzatu was still

willing to admit that the Guard had indulged in crime, although he exonerated it by

depicting the offense as an autochthonous reaction to Bolshevism and its crimes, in

which Jews had been allegedly prominently involved. As he formulated it in an article

published in

România Mare

on December 22, 1995, Crime Begets Crime. More

recently, however, he fully embraced the postures of selective negationism that Coja has

been displaying from the start.

In July 2001, Buzatu and Coja organized in Bucharest a symposium whose title

Has there been a Holocaust in Romania? was telling in itself. The symposium was

divided into two panels. The first examined the questionable occurrence of the Shoah

in Romania, while the second focused on the reasons for the existence of a powerfully-

-institutionalized anti-Romanianism. At the conclusion of this conference, Coja estab-

lished the League for the Struggle against Anti-Romanianism (LICAR) and appointed

himself chairman. The symposiums resolution was published, among other places, in

the Iron Guardist journal

Permanenþe

in both Romanian and pigeon English.

118

The

document was signed pro forma by Coja and emblematically assumed the selective

negationist posture. Its authors, it was stated, want to make clear that we have nothing

to do with those people and opinions contesting as a whole the occurrence of the Jewish

holocaust

[

sic!

]

during World War II. It said that Jews have suffered almost every-

where in the Europe

[

sic!

]

of those years, but not in Romania, and it added that

testimonies of trustworthy Jews prove that the Romanian people had in those years a

behavior honoring human dignity

[

sic!

]

In support of their affirmations, the participants raised several arguments. They

started by presenting excerpts from what they claimed was the 1955 testimony of the

former leader of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Wilhelm Filderman,

before a Swiss court. The document has never been produced and whether it really exists

is doubtful.

119

The alleged testimony had been mentioned for the first time in a 1994

volume in an editors note written by American historian Kurt Treptow, who was residing

117. For example, Kurt W. Treptow and Gheorghe Buzatu,

Procesul lui Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (mai,

1938)

(Iaºi: n.p., 1994), or Gheorghe Buzatu, Corneliu Ciucaru and Cristian Sandache,

Radiografia

dreptei româneºti

(Bucharest: FF Press, 1996). When the seventieth anniversary of the establish-

ment of the Legion was marked in Iaºi the Movements Capital Buzatu delivered a

conference videotaped and marketed by Timiºoara Iron Guardist publisher Gordian. See Gordian,

Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail. 70 de minute împreunã cu Miºcarea legionarã. Iaºi, 24 iunie 1997.

118. See

Permanenþe

, no. 7, July 2001.

119. See Shafir,

Între negare ºi trivializare

, pp. 92-95.

358

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

in Romania.

120

Treptow, whose pro-Legion and pro-Antonescu sympathies were well

known, had long benefited from support on the part of the Romanian authorities.

121

Coja

wrote that it was from this tome that he had first learned about the existence of the Swiss

testimony.

122

According to Treptow, the document could be found in the archives of the

Buzatu-managed Iaºi Center for European History and Civilization. However, Buzatu

was eventually forced to admit that the alleged testimony had been simply lifted from

an article published in the tabloid

Baricada

. The tabloids editors claimed to have

received it from Matei Cazacu, a historian of Romanian origins born in France. Upon

being contacted by the Theodor Wexler, the vice president of the Filderman Foundation,

Cazacu declined any knowledge of the document.

123

In his address to the symposium, as well as in an article published in the recently-launched

Revista Mareºal Ion Antonescu

, Coja brought another witness to the stand of Roma-

nian innocence: former Romanian Chief Rabbi Alexandru ªafran.

124

The nonagenarian

Jewish leader was said to have offered the son of Gheorghe Alexianu (the Governor of

Transnistria executed in 1946 together with Antonescu) a book with a dedication exon-

erating his father of any crimes.

125

Political scientist Michael Shafir investigated the

allegation by contacting Dan ªafran, the grandson of the former Chief Rabbi. From his

hospital bed, ªafran directed Shafir to his memoirs, in which Alexianu is mentioned only

once and is described as famous for his cruelty.

126

The resolution of the Coja-Buzatu symposium also embraces Cojas position on the

Iron Guards non-participation in the Bucharest 1941 pogrom. As Coja had already done

in the past, the resolution claims that the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal had investi-

gated all

[

wartime

]

crimes against humanity and that the Legionary movement has also

been investigated. Prosecutors, however, are said to have reached the conclusion that the

movement cannot be charged with any wrong doing, any genocidal crime. The legend

about the movements acquittal of charges has been created and disseminated by exiled

Iron Guardists (see below), while Coja has diligently promoted it in Romania.

127

As is

well known, the Nuremberg International Tribunal never dealt with crimes other than

those committed by Nazi Germany.

128

120. The volume is Sabin Manuilã and Wilhelm Filderman,

Populaþia evreiascã în timpul celui de-al doilea

rãzboi mondial

(Ia[i: Editura Funda]iei Culturale Rom^ne, 1994). Treptow cites the testimony on

pp. 8-12. He would again cite

from

it (while avoiding indicating the source) in Kurt Treptow

(ed.),

A History of Romania

(Iaºi: The Center for Romanian Studies, The Romanian Cultural

Foundation, 1995), pp. 485, 499-500. This tome was massively disseminated abroad by the

Romanian Cultural Foundation, which enlisted the help of Romanian embassies for the purpose.

121. Several Romanian officials and some historians were forced to face an embarrassing situation in

2002, when Treptow was put on trial and sentenced for pedophilia.

122. Coja,

Marele manipulator

, pp. 298-299.

123. See

Baricada

, no. 26, July 1991, and Lya Benjamin, Consideraþii pe marginea pretinsului

testament,

Societate ºi culturã

, no. 4, 1995, pp. 39-43.

124. For details, see Shafir,

Între negare ºi trivializare

, pp. 95-96.

125. Ion Coja, Simpozion internaþional: Holocaust în România? (henceforth: Coja, Simpozion

internaþional) (1-7),

România Mare

, August 13-24, 2001.

126. Alexandru ªafran,

Un tãciune smuls flãcãrilor. Memorii

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), p. 86.

127. Coja,

Legionarii noºtri

, pp. 98-111, as well as his polemic with Zigu Ornea in

Dilema

, August

11-17 and August 25-31, 1997.

128. I. Deák, J.T. Gross and T. Judt (eds.),

Procese în Europa

Al doilea rãzboi mondial ºi consecinþele

lui

(Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2003),

passim.

359

FINAL REPORT

In 2001, Buzatu endorsed the publication by the Center for History and European

Civilization, which he headed, of a foul brochure authored by the young PRM parlia-

mentary deputy Vlad Hogea. Entitled

The Nationalist

, the brochure is a collection of

articles previously published in

România Mare

or the PRM weekly

Politica

. It also

includes some pamphlets published in the Iaºi tabloid

Atac la Târgu Ieºilor

, which are

called by Hogea studies. One of these studies is titled What Holocaust? with the

subtitle Marshal Antonescu protected Romanias Jews. Hogea, too, is citing Fildermans

testimony alongside historians who, he says, treated the 1940-1944 period with objec-

tivity. Among the names mentioned are Buzatu, Ioan Scurtu, Valeriu-Florin Dobrinescu,

Iosif Constantin Drãgan, Mircea Muºat, General Ion Gheorghe, and Colonel Gheorghe

Magherescu. These historians, he claims, relied on documents that clearly demonstrate

that the Jews in Romania were not subjected to extermination by the Antonescu re-

gime.

129

The brochures anti-Jewish rhetoric is shrill, and the author does not hesitate

to rely on the authority of Julius Streicher, the infamous Nazi Jew-hater executed in

Nuremberg as a war criminal. It is hardly surprising, then, to find Hogea writing that

the Jewish-Khazar anti-Christs tried to overcome their complex of spiritual inferiority

by fully bestializing their affective experiences; or that Both Bolshevik Marxism and

savage capitalism were invented by the same bearded rabbis and money-changers who at

secret meetings would endlessly bumble words and devise ever and ever newer protocols

to enslave the goyms

[

non-Jews

]

130

Hogeas book triggered a press scandal, but the politician did not lose his parliamen-

tary seat, although his writings were in clear breach of the Romanian Penal Code. Buzatu

submitted a formal resignation from the directorship of the Iaºi Center, yet continued to

maintain a

de facto

control over the institution.

As illustrated by the implementation of governmental Emergency Ordinance no. 31 of

March 13, 2002, selective negationism is sometimes encountered not only among ex-

tremist intellectuals or politicians, but also among state officials. Approved by the

Cabinet under international pressure prior to Romanias joining NATO, the ordinance

bans the activity of fascist-like organizations and the display of racist and xenophobic

symbols, as well as the cult of personalities found guilty in court of crimes against peace

and humanity, as Antonescu had. The ordinance also prohibits the erection in public

space (with the exception of museums or research institutions as part of research activi-

ties) of statues or memorial plaques commemorating such persons, and the naming of

streets and other public places after them. Finally, Ordinance no. 31/2002 prohibits

publicly denying the Holocaust and its consequences. Penalties ranging from fines to

fifteen years in prison are stipulated for these offences.

131

Before the decree went into force, between six and eight statues had been erected in

Antonescus memory, and twenty-five streets or squares as well as the Iaºi military

cemetery of Leþcani, had been named after him. Other memorials dedicated to the

Marshal had an ambiguous status, as it was not clear whether the space where they stood

129. Vlad Hogea,

Naþionalistul

(Iaºi: Academia Românã, Centrul de Istorie ºi Civilizaþie Europeanã,

2001), pp. 60-66.

130.

Ibid.

, pp. 44, 56,

passim

131. Mediafax, March 18, 2002,

Monitorul Oficial al României

, March 28, 2002,

www.indaco.ro

360

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

was public or private.

132

Two years after the decree went into force there were still streets

named after Antonescu in major cities such as Cluj-Napoca, Câmpulung-Muscel, or

Târgu-Mureº.

133

In Timiºoara, it took internal as well as international pressure to con-

vince the municipal council to change the name of the Antonescu Boulevard, and another

street was named after Iron Guardist Spiru Blãnaru.

134

Soon after the decree was ap-

proved, Coja published yet another negationist booklet, yet prosecutors did nothing.

135

Moreover, the Romanian government was in breach of its own decree soon after its

issuance, when Ion Antonescus portrait was put on display at the governments official

seat (Palatul Victoria), as part of an exhibition of portraits of Romanias former heads of

government. The U.S. Helsinki Commission promptly denounced the act, and it used the

opportunity to criticize delays in the dismantling of Antonescus statues.

136

In defense,

the minister of culture, Rãzvan Theodorescu, retorted that all statues had been demol-

ished, with the exception of Antonescus bust placed in the yard of a church he built in

Bucharest. With regard to the portrait, the minister argued that the government head-

quarters do not qualify as public space, as access to the building is restricted.

137

This

was a weak argument because the government is a public institution par excellence.

The fate of Ordinance no. 31/2002 remains uncertain. After it was submitted for

approval to Parliament, MPs proposed various amendments that, if adopted, would dilute

its effects. Thus, headed by former party chairman Mircea Ionescu-Quintus, MPs of the

center-right PNL in the Senates Defense Committee were joined by colleagues from the

132. According to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, since 1993 six statues have been

erected in the memory of the Marshal in Bucharest, Iaºi, Jilava, Slobozia, Piatra-Neamþ and

Târgoviºte (Mediafax, March 18, 2003). The memorial in Jilava, on the place of Antonescus

execution, is a large cross (

troiþa

). Two more statues in S\rma[ and Cãlãraºi were mentioned

in an U.S. Helsinki Committee protest letter (

idem

, June 28, 2002). The mayor of Cãlãraºi denied

that the statue in his town was displayed on public space, saying that the bust was on the grounds

of the Marshal Ion Antonescu League and therefore on private ground (

Jurnalul naþional

, July 2,

2002). According to the information of this chapters authors, at the time Emergency Ordinance

no. 31/2002 was issued, there were three statues displayed in public space, namely, in Slobozia,

Piatra-Neamþ, and the Iaºi military cemetery of Leþcani. Four monuments were arguably in public

space: the cross in Jilava, on prison grounds administered by the Justice Ministry, a bust in the

courtyard of a Bucharest church built by Antonescu, an additional bust on the grounds of a church

in S\rma[, Mureº county, and the Cãlãraºi monument. Attempts to erect statues in Antonescus

memory had been filed by either prefects or local administration authorities in Târgu-Mureº,

Piteºti and Drobeta-Turnu-Severin. A plan to erect a statue to Antonescu initiated by former Cluj

mayor Gheorghe Funar was approved by the town council, foiled by the prefect, and was pending

before the courts, with the trial being moved from Cluj to Iaºi. For the number of streets named

after the Marshal see Mediafax, March 18, 2002.

133. See Medifax, November 18, 2003 (Târgu-Mureº), and Rompres, February 9, 2004 (Cluj-Napoca).

Oradea was also among the Romanian towns that kept a street called after the Marshal long after

the ordinance was issued (see William Totok, Mistificãri ºi falsificãri,

Observator cultural

no. 156, January 21-27, 2003), but eventually renamed that street.

134. Interview with William Totok in

Divers

, no. 10, March 18, 2004.

135.

Holocaust în România (?)

Suitã de documente ºi mãrturii adunate ºi comentate de Ion Coja în

folosul parlamentarilor ºi al autoritãþilor implicate în elaborarea, aprobarea ºi aplicarea

Ordonanþei de Urgenþã nr. 31/2002 a guvernului României

(Bucharest: Kogaion, 2002). The title

cited here is that on the interior cover. The outer cover displays no question mark, which made the

brochures marketing possible.

136.

Adevãrul

, June 29-30, 2002.

137.

Cotidianul

, May 28, 2002, and Mediafax, June 29, 2002.

361

FINAL REPORT

extreme-right PRM in proposing several substantial amendments. They claimed that the

Holocaust was a diffuse concept that needed clarification; and it was also claimed that

the article in the ordinance prohibiting Holocaust denial infringes on human rights in

general and on the right to freedom of expression in particular.

138

This position was also

embraced by a prominent member of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights

in Romania-Helsinki Committee.

139

Subsequently, although the PNL leadership dis-

tanced itself from the opinions of its representatives on the Defense Committee,

140

the

Judicial Committee of the Senate endorsed the amendments approved by the Defense

Committee. More significantly, the Judicial Committee unanimously adopted an amend-

ment proposed by Senator Gheorghe Buzatu.

The amendment defines the Holocaust as the the systematic massive extermination

of the Jewish population in Europe, organized by the Nazi authorities during the Second

World War.

141

In other words, by definition there was no Holocaust in Romania, since

the extermination of Jews there had not been organized by the Nazi authorities, but by

Romanias authorities themselves.

142

The amendment thus fits hand-in-glove into Buzatu

and his supporters selective negationist conceptual framework, according to which the

Holocaust was perpetrated elsewhere. If Parliament approves the ordinance under this

formulation, the legislation becomes irrelevant.

Finally, it must be stressed that the Wiesel Commission itself was set up as a

consequence of a long controversy with international echoes, stirred up by a governmen-

tal communiqué that may itself be viewed as an exemplification of selective negationism.

On June 12, 2003, at the end of a brief communiqué concluding a cooperative agreement

between the National Archives of Romania and the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum in Washington, D.C., a sentence stated that Romanias government encourages

research concerning the Holocaust in Europe including documents referring to it and

found in Romanian archives but strongly emphasizes that between 1940-1945 no

Holocaust took place within Romanias boundaries.

143

The statement triggered numer-

ous domestic and international protests, including an official protest from Israel.

144

President Iliescu commented that the statement should have never been made.

145

The government promptly acted to undo the damage. On June 17, 2003, it stated that

the Antonescu regime, which at that time represented the Romanian state had been

guilty of grave war crimes, pogroms, deportations to Transnistria, mass dislocations of

a sizable part of Romanias Jewish population to territories occupied and controlled by

the Romanian army, employing discrimination and extermination, which are part of the

138.

Cotidianul

, April 15, 2002.

139. See Gabriel Andreescu, Contra extremismului, nu împotriva libertãþii,

Observator cultural

no. 111, April 9-15, 2002, and Necesitatea amendãrii Ordonanþei de urgenþã no. 31 privind

organizaþiile ºi simbolurile cu caracter fascist, rasist sau xenofob,

Revista românã de drepturile

omului

no. 23, 2002, pp. 8-19.

140. Mediafax, April 17, 2002.

141.

Ibid.

, June 5, 2002.

142. For a pertinent criticism of this amendment see Andrei Oiºteanu, Holocaust: `ncercare de

definire,

Dilema

, no. 518, February 28, 2003.

143. Rompres, June 12, 2003.

144. For further details, see Michael Shafir, Negation at the Top: Deconstructing the Holocaust

Denial Salad in the Romanian Cucumber Season (henceforth: Shafir, Negation at the Top),

Xenopoliana

, vol. 11, nos. 3-4 (2003), pp. 90-122.

145.

Evenimentul zilei

, June 18, 2003.

362

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

sinister mechanism of the Holocaust. Consequently, the statement said, the Romanian

government assumes its share of responsibility for the crimes initiated by the Antonescu

regime.

146

Influences of Western Negationism

Western negationism made a substantial contribution in the emergence and spreading of

a similar trend in Romania by supplying the ensemble of arguments used by integral

negationism and also by influencing deflective and selective negationism. Radu Theodoru,

the only well-known Romanian advocate of integral negationism, closed one of the

chapters of his

Nazismul sionist

by welcoming the publication in Romanian of

The

Founding Myths of Israeli Politics

, the revisionist book written by the brilliant

philosopher, sociologist, and political scientist Roger Garaudy.

147

Theodoru recom-

mended for further reading the works of other revisionist historians such as David

Irving, Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, Jürgen Graf, Carl O. Nordling, and Carlo

Mattogno.

148

Mattognos

The Myth of the Extermination of Jews

had been already serial-

ized in 1994-1995 by

Miºcarea

, the publication of the Movement for Romania, and

Grafs works would soon be printed in far-right publications as well as in volume format

(in 2000).

149

Negationist articles published in the West were translated in numerous Romanian

extreme-right publications throughout the transition period. In 1995, the PRM weekly

Politica

published in sequels in eight consecutive issues, various articles from the French

review

Annales dhistoire révisionniste

. In 1994,

Miºcarea

published a review signed by

Silviu Rareþ on the work of such negationists as David Irving, Maurice Bardèche, Paul

Rassinier, Pierre Guillaume, Richard Harwood, Udo Walendy, Ernst Zündel, R. Faurisson,

and Arthur Butz. Larry Watts

150

and Mircea Ionniþiu

151

turned Irving into a legitimate and

respectable scholarly authority by citing his work in arguments meant to exonerate

Antonescu. In 1994

Miºcarea

also published the text of a lecture Irving gave at the

notorious negationist Institute for Historical Review in the winter of 1990/1991. The text

was titled Let the Auschwitz Ship Sink.

152

It is worth noting that many of the books in translation that popularize negationist

literature are published by the Bucharest printing house Samizdat, subsidized by Iosif

146. Mediafax, June 17, 2003.

147. Roger Garaudy,

Miturile fondatoare ale politicii israeliene

(Bucharest: ALMA TP, 1998). For

the reception of the book in Romania, see George Voicu,

op. cit

pp. 160, 166; George Voicu,

Teme anti-Semite în discursul public

(henceforth: Voicu,

Teme antisemite

) (Bucharest: Ars Docendi,

2000), pp. 132-139; and Michael Shafir, The Man They Love to Hate: Norman Maneas «Snail

House» between Holocaust and Gulag,

East European Jewish Affairs

, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 60-81.

148. Theodoru,

Nazismul sionist

, pp. 27-28.

149. Jürgen Graf,

Martori oculari sau legile naturii?

(Bucharest:

Samizdat, n.d.

[

2000

]

150. See Larry Watts,

O Casandrã a României: Ion Antonescu

(Bucharest: Editura Fundaþiei Culturale

Române, 1993), p. 379.

151. See Mircea Ionniþiu,

Amintiri ºi reflecþiuni

(Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicã, 1993), pp. 118,

160.

152. See

Miºcarea

nos. 8-9 and 10, May and June 1994.

363

FINAL REPORT

Constantin Drãgan.

153

The name of the printing house is identical with the name

German-born Canadian negationist Ernst Zündel gave to his Holocaust-denying com-

mercial enterprise (a cynical borrowing of a word that became synonymous for intel-

lectual resistance under the totalitarian Soviet regime). Samizdat is only one of the many

printing houses that specialize in this kind of topic, with Antet as its fiercest competitor.

Among other books, Samizdat published

Hitlers Political Testament

and Garaudys

Founding Myths of Israeli Politics

. The latter book ended up in a criminal ruling against

Garaudy in a French court. Yet the translation of the book was well received in Romania,

not only by extreme-right publications, but also by mainstream figures, which defended

the book in the name of free speech.

Romanian negationists and anti-Semites in general are very fond of publications

dealing with the international Jewish conspiracy, a category appropriate for the books

mentioned in the previous paragraph. Autochthonous or translated literature on the

Jewish conspiracy is far too large to be discussed here at length.

154

Yet, it was unusual to

witness aside from the predictable applause with which the publication in Romanian

translation of Garaudys book was met by the Sibiu-based pro-Legionary

Puncte

cardinale

intellectuals of liberal persuasion coming to Garaudys defense in the name

of free speech. Literary critic and university professor Nicolae Manolescu (at that time

also a prominent member of the PNL leadership) was joined by journalist Cristian Tudor

Popescu, the editor-in-chief of the mainstream daily

Adevãrul

. For Popescu, the sentenc-

ing of Garaudy was on par with convicting Descartes.

155

If the books Romanian

defenders could argue, as Manolescu did, that Garaudy did not entirely negate the

Holocaust in

The Founding Myths

, having only objected to some exaggerations, the

claim could no longer be made for a 1999-published translation of his volume

The Trial

of Israeli Zionism: Unmasking the International Zionist Conspiracy

, where the negationist

argument is embraced full-scale.

156

Yet none of his defenders in Romania saw it neces-

sary to distance themselves from the positions they had earlier displayed.

153. See the anonymously-authored book

Marea conspiraþie mondialistã: Hitler contra Iuda

whose

inside cover reveals that the tome was in fact printed by the Drãgan Group Print. Although the

name Drãgan is not uncommon in Romania, there is no room for mistaken identification the

name of the Drãgan-owned Butan Gas Company appears alongside. The book is said to be a

translation from French and the author feared the consequences of revealing his true identity

because of the Fabius-Gayssot legislation in France. He therefore uses the cynical nickname of

Sam Izdat, which has a Jewish sound. The volume ends with the words: Hitler is dead.

Heil

Hitler

! (p. 344, authors emphasis).

154. See for example: Jan van Helsing,

Organizaþiile secrete ºi puterea lor în secolul XX

(Bucharest:

Samizdat, 1997), 2 vols.; Nicolae Trofin,

Strategia diabolicã a forþelor oculte pentru instaurarea

noii ordini mondiale

(Cluj-Napoca: Risoprint, 1997), vol. 1; Serge Monaste,

Protocoalele de la

Toronto: Naþiunile Unite contra creºtinismului

(Bucharest: Samizdat, n.d.); David Duke,

Bazele antisemitismului ºi sionismului ca rasism. Trezirea la realitate

(Bucharest: Antet XX,

n.d.).

155. See N. Manolescu, Holocaustul ºi Gulagul,

România literarã

no. 9, March 11-17, 1998, and

Cristian Tudor Popescu, Cazul Garaudy: libertatea gândirii taxatã drept antisemitism,

Adevãrul

December 12, 1996; Condamnarea lui Descartes,

ibid.

, March 2, 1998; see also Totok,

op. cit.

p. 109, footnote 44, for a full listing of Romanian intellectuals of otherwise democratic

persuasion who came to Garaudys defense on this occasion.

156. Roger Garaudy,

Procesul sionismului israelian. Demascarea conspiraþiei sioniste mondiale

(Bucharest: Samizdat, 1998). See also Voicu,

Teme antisemite

p. 137.

364

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Western influence is also felt in the case of deflecting negationism. When writer Ion

Buduca and journalist Vladimir Alexe cast the blame for the beginning of the Holocaust

on the Jews (see above), they in fact reproduce the revisionist argument first made by

Bardèche and later by Verrall, Harwood, Faurisson, Irving, and Ernst Nolte.

157

The

controversial Nolte

158

was last among the revisionists to adopt this position, and his

influence on Romanian selective negationism is particularly powerful.

Influences of the Romanian Exile

Romanian expatriates played a crucial role in reproducing and spreading negationist

arguments both before and after 1989. Before delving into the argument, it is important

to note the distinction that should be made between intellectual and political exiles on

one hand and the masses of refugees on the other hand, i.e., between the active

minority and the diaspora caught in processes of assimilation in host countries. Between

the two, there is not necessarily a relationship of representativeness. The politically

mobilized Romanian exile has had, in general, a right-wing orientation, and it is

notorious that the extreme Right has been over-represented among its ranks when it came

to publishing.

159

It must be stressed, however, that the exile is not a compact and homogenous group

whose main distinctive feature, as it were, would be found in negationism. Rather, one

deals in this case with a kind of interface between the world of those who live in the

country and the world of those who live abroad; hence, what forms of negationism are

encountered is largely dependent on the type of links existing between different social

environments as well as on the personal history of each expatriate. In addition, it should

be mentioned that although exile is a historical phenomenon similar to that encoun-

tered in the case of other East European exiles and is thus doomed to disappearance,

the Romanian exile has displayed both before and after the communist period a remark-

able capability of self-reproduction. In fact, the demise of the communist regime has

acted as a stimulating factor in the dissemination of negationist outlooks. The ascribed

symbolic value of the exile and its acknowledged elite status make possible for it to

exert on the home country an influence far superior to the relatively modest social status

of its members in the host counties. Finally, it should also be emphasized that the exile

157. See Lipstadt,

op. cit.

, p. 50 (Bardèche), p. 110 (Harwood) and p. 213 (Irving); Pierre Vidal-Naquet,

Assassins of Memory. Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust

(New York: Columbia University

Press, 1992), pp. 38-42 (Harwood and Faurisson); Ernst Nolte, Standing Things on Their Heads:

Against Negative Nationalism in Interpreting History, in

Forever in the Shadow of Hitler?

Original Documents of the

Historikerstreit

Concerning the Singularity of the Holocaust

(translated

by James Knowlton and Truett Cates) (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993), pp. 149-154.

158. Richard E. Evans,

In Hitlers Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from

the Nazi Past

(London:Pantheon, 1989),

passim

159. See Vasile Dumitrescu,

O istorie a exilului românesc (1944-1989) `n eseuri, articole, scrisori,

imagini etc.

(Bucharest: Victor Frunzã, 1997); Florin Manolescu,

Enciclopedia exilului literar

românesc (1945-1989)

(Bucharest: Compania, 2003); Silvia Constantinescu,

Exil. Oameni ºi

idei

(Bucharest: Curierul românesc, 1995), as well as the special issue of the journal

Secolul XX

1997/1998 on the Romanian exile.

365

FINAL REPORT

produced not only negationism-prone personalities, but also intellectuals whose contri-

bution to revealing the true dimension of the crimes of the Legionnaires and Antonescus

regime has been remarkable. Suffice it to mention here the works of Dr. Ion Solacolu and

William Totok, both living in Germany.

Integral Negationism

Although the advocates of integral negationism were peripheral to the Romanian diaspora,

they played a crucial role in linking domestic supporters of Romanian national-communism

with the networks of the exiled Romanian extreme-right, whose texts they managed to

popularize in the country. One such agent of integral negationism was the expatriate

group that ran a Romanian bookshop in Paris (

Librairie roumaine du savoir, antitotalitaire

The owner, George Dãnescu-Piºcoci, is also the distributor and editor of Romanian Iron

Guard literature as well as French negationist literature (of the

La Vieille Taupe

circle).

He is notable for having been the main promoter of Garaudys

Founding Myth

. As

Bernard Camboulives has shown, the group associated with this bookshop is not much of

a former center of anticommunist struggle. Rather, it is more of a a den for spreading

revisionist and negationist outlooks directed against the dominant Western beliefs.

Even just a superficial examination of the librarys anti-totalitarianism shows that it is

nothing short of a means serving those who question the gas chamber to give vent to

their ideas, Camboulives wrote.

160

Integral negationism was also imported from the West with the help of exiled Iron

Guard members. For a while, the main publication embracing Legionary positions was

the Timiºoara-based

Gazeta de vest

whose editor-in-chief was Ovidiu Guleº a sup-

porter of the Horia Sima wing of the movement.

161

Gazeta de vest

as well as the

Gordian publishing house, which specialized in Iron Guard literature and its dissemina-

tion was financed by the Iron Guardist Zaharia Marineasa. After the death of Horia

Sima in 1993, and until his own death in 1997, Marineasa was a member of the Interior

Command Group of Legionary veterans, whose chief was Mircea Nicolau.

162

Marineasa,

who spent twenty-one years in jail under both Antonescu and the communists, also

financed several other publishing outlets specializing in the dissemination of the move-

ments propaganda in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Sibiu and Chiºinãu. He died

shortly before the January 1998 launching of the Bucharest-based publication

Permanenþe

The publication also a Sima-wing outlet has Nicolau as editor-in-chief.

163

While

Gazeta de vest

and the rival Codreanu-wing

Miºcarea

have since ceased publication, the

Legionary Sibiu-based monthly

Puncte cardinale

continues to appear regularly. In the

meantime, one more Iron Guardist monthly,

Obiectiv legionar

, is being printed in

Bucharest. Its editor-in-chief is ªerban Suru, to whom the veterans of the movement

deny the status of authentic Legionnaire.

160. Bernard Camboulives, Un scandal: librãria românã din Paris,

, no. 735, April 6-12, 2004,

p. 16.

161. Ovidiu Guleº,

Cum am cunoscut Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail

(Timiºoara: Gordian, 1992),

pp. 13-22.

162.

Idem

Zaharia Marineasa, Prezent! Garda de Fier dupã Horia Sima

(Timiºoara: Gordian, 1998),

pp. 4 and 19.

163. See

ibid.

, pp. 3, 54-55.

366

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The importance of these publications must not be exaggerated, but their local and

international influence should not be ignored. When it was still active,

Gazeta de vest

sold 2,000 copies and

Puncte cardinale

was distributed mainly abroad.

164

The

neo-Legionary group in Timiºoara developed important connections with extreme-right

parties abroad or with the extremist International Third Position (ITP). Moreover,

Gordian used to publish a Romanian edition of ITPs main publication,

Final Conflict

165

and the ITP adopted the Legions forms of organization (the nests),

166

as did the

Portuguese National Revolutionary Front.

167

The Timiºoara Legionnaires were in contact

with the British extreme-right League of Saint George as well as with the youth organi-

zation of the German extreme-right National Democratic Party. The German Office for

the Protection of the Constitution took note of these meetings.

168

The group went on

pilgrimage to Spain several times, to Majadahonda, where the Guards martyrs Ion

Moþa and Vasile Marin died fighting in the Spanish civil war.

International links, in particular with extreme-right Western anti-globalization circles

and notably with French groups of Alain de Benoist persuasions are also maintained by

The New Right (

Noua Dreaptã

ND), an extremist group set up in 1994 by Bogdan

George Rãdulescu.

169

(This group must not be confused with the 2000-established

Noua

Dreaptã

led by Tudor Ionescu, which publishes a journal with the same name on the

Internet,

170

nor with

Partidul Dreapta Naþionalã

PDN, led by Radu Sorescu and Cornel

Brahaº, which used to publish the journal

Noua dreaptã

171

Rãdulescus

Noua dreaptã

publishes the magazine

Mãiastra

, and some of its members have published in

Generaþia

dreptei

a publication close to the Union of Right-Wing Forces (

Uniunea Forþelor de

Dreapta

), until that party merged with the National Liberal Party. ND follows in the

footsteps of the PDN on the issue of the Roma. Even by extreme-right standards, the

anti-Roma racism displayed by the

Noua Dreaptã

group is shrill. This attitude is also

reflected in the manner in which the group treats the issue of the Romany Porrajmos

(Holocaust). A review of historian Viorel Achims book on the history of the Roma in

Romania grossly distorted his findings about the deportation and the extermination of the

Roma under the regime of Marshal Antonescu.

172

As for Tudor Ionescus ND, it is

164.

Ibid.

, p. 26, and interview with Gabriel Constantinescu in

Puncte cardinale

, April 1999.

165. In 1999,

Gazeta de vest

published ITPs Declaration of Principles, and the ITP in return let the

group headed by Guleº use its web site for disseminating Legionary propaganda. See Declaraþie

de principii: Poziþia a Treia Internaþionalã,

Gazeta de vest

, no. 149, March 1999, pp. 22-27, and

the 1999 site

dspace.dial.pipex.com/third-position

166. See Noile structuri ale Poziþiei a Treia engleze,

Gazeta de vest

, no. 36, December 1997, p. 54.

167. See Roger Griffin,

The Nature of Fascism

(London: Routlege, 1994), p. 166.

168. See the photos published in

Gazeta de vest

, no. 125, September 1996, and no. 128, December

1996, as well as

http://www.verfassungsschutz.de

169. On the groups international contacts, see Gerald Pruvost, Noua dreaptã europeanã a fost

reprezentatã ºi de România,

România liberã

, September 23, 1997.

170. See Cine suntem?,

http://www.nouadreapta.org

171. On the PDN and its anti-Semitism, see Michael Shafir, Marginalization or Mainstream? The

Extreme Right in Post-Communist Romania, in Pal Hainsworth (ed.),

The Politics of the Ex-

treme Right: From the Margins to the Mainstream

(London: Pinter, 2000), pp. 247-267, notes on

pp. 255-258.

172. Bogdan-Ioan Matei, review of Viorel Achim,

Þiganii în istoria Românei

(Bucharest: Editura

Enciclopedicã, 1998), in

Mãiastra

, vol. 3, no. 4 (2001), pp. 61-63.

367

FINAL REPORT

revealing that the first Romanian negationist sentenced under Ordinance no. 31/2002

came from the ranks of this organization (He was pardoned shortly after, though.) The

man, Gheorghe Opriþa,

173

had started his career as a historian of the Iron Guard at the

Gordian publishing house and in the pages of

Gazeta de vest

174

Selective and Deflective Negationism

Defying geographic distance, exiled Iron Guardist Traian Golea, who lived in Florida,

USA (he died in September 2004), has had far more influence in his country of origin

than Dãnescu-Piºcoci. In 1996, Golea published a pamphlet

175

disseminated in Romania,

in what may be considered a good illustration of the circulation of ideas between the

exile and autochthonous selective negationists. Goleas booklet embraces positions which,

in the Romanian context, may be traced back to the former regimes nostalgics, such as

Pavel Coruþ, a former

Securitate

officer turned best-selling thriller writer. Golea de-

scribes President Iliescus entourage as former communists now serving the New World

Order. Antonescu, he claims, cannot be considered to have been a war criminal just

because he forged an alliance with Hitlers Germany in the war for Bessarabias recu-

peration. To do so would be tantamount to accusing Roosevelt and Churchill of being

communists because they allied themselves with the dictator Stalin. Golea proceeds to

absolve the Iron Guard of charges of fascism, claiming in line with the myth

mentioned above that the Legion of Archangel Michael was discharged by the Inter-

national Nuremberg Tribunal. The accusation of participation in the Holocaust laid at

Antonescus door, he writes, is nothing but a malevolent exaggeration invented by late

Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen and similar statements by Elie Wiesel can only be attributed

to a sick fantasy. His argument emulates Faurissons model.

176

Embracing the deflective-

-reactive argument, Golea goes on to show that the repressive measures taken by

Antonescu against the Jews were the result of their philo-communist and anti-Romanian

attitudes. He repeatedly cites Buzatu as the main authoritative scholar. Predictably,

Golea concludes that there has been no Holocaust in Romania.

173. See

Evenimentul zilei

, July 17, 2003. Opriþa was sentenced to two years and six months for

nationalist-chauvinist propaganda and received a similar 30-month sentence for selling, dissemi-

nating, producing, and possession of artifacts carrying fascist, racist, and xenophobic symbols.

The tribunal also suspended him from exercising his civic rights for a five-year period. However,

Opriþa promptly defied the sentence by publishing an article on the website managed by Tudor

Ionescu. See Neostalinism în România: apariþia infracþiunii de a studia ºi reapariþia proceselor

politice,

http://nouadreapta.org

174. See Grigore Opri]a,

Garda de Fier: o carte pentru tânãrul român

(Timiºoara: Gordian, 1994).

175. Traian Golea, Regizarea unei condamnãri a poporului român: personalitãþi politice americane ºi

internaþionale atacã România pe baza unor minciuni ºi calomnii,

Romanian Historical Studies

(Florida, 1996). See also the Neo-Legionary Nationalist Romania Page edited by Nicolae Niþ\ at

http://pages.prodigy.net/nnita/garda.html

176. See, for example,

http://www.abbc.com/zundel/index.html

368

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The Comparative Trivialization of the Holocaust

The category of comparative trivialization is complex, but it basically refers to the

abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust, of banalizing its

atrocities, or conditioning the memory of this tragedy. Here, several additional clarifica-

tions must be made. First, the comparative methodology has been, and remains, a basic

instrument in historical studies, and is naturally a legitimate methodology in the study of

the Holocaust, as well. As early as the fifties, and with increasing frequency over the past

twenty years, numerous studies were published comparing the Holocaust with other

genocidal phenomena the communist atrocities in Ukraine and other parts of the

former USSR and Asia, the Armenian Genocide perpetrated at the order of the Turkish

authorities during World War I, as well as more recent genocides.

177

On the other hand,

postwar historiography has paradigmatically treated the Holocaust as an essentially

unique phenomenon. There is by-and-large a consensus among important historians on

the uniqueness of the Holocaust, although the criteria for this uniqueness are not the

same for every scholar. Most of these historians agree that the specific difference

between the Holocaust and other genocides rests in the intended totality

178

of the Final

Solution, which aimed at all Jews wherever they lived, and made no exceptions (e.g.,

through collaboration or conversion of the enemy into a New Man, which was

possible in the case of communist repressions).

During the past two decades, the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been subjected to

intense debates.

179

Suffice it to mention that in their proximity, a trend was born that

hijacked the legitimate use of comparisons for the purpose of minimizing the Holocaust.

A valuable and legitimate cognitive instrument used for improving historical knowledge

and for the delimitation of similarities and differences between comparable phenomena

has thus been turned into a strategy of denial, of minimalization, and of banalization of

the Holocaust.

The negationists and those promoting trivialization by comparison abuse the multi-

-layered meanings of the term uniqueness to accuse Jews of trying to build a mo-

nopoly on suffering for lucrative purposes.

180

They engage in these allegations despite

the fact that experts on the Holocaust have repeatedly shown that its uniqueness is not

argued in order to transform the tragedy of the Jews into the only collective suffering that

should be paid attention or into a tragedy incomparable to any other, but in order to draw

attention to the extreme specificity of the Nazi collective project.

181

The theme of the

177. See, for example, Alan S. Rosenbaum (ed.),

Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Compara-

tive Genocide

(Boulder, Colorado, Oxford: Westview Press, 1996); Yves Ternon,

Statul criminal.

Genocidurile secolului XX

(Iaºi: Institutul European, 2002).

178. Yehuda Bauer,

Rethinking the Holocaust

(New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001),

p. 49.

179. Wulf Kansteiner, From Exception to Exemplum: The New Approach to Nazism and the Final

Solution,

History and Theory

, vol. 33, no. 2 (May 1994), pp. 145-171.

180. The theme was recently resurrected in the wake of the publication of Norman Finkelstein,

The

Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

(London and New York:

Verso, 2000).

181. Bauer,

op. cit.

, pp. 39 ff.

369

FINAL REPORT

monopoly on suffering is sometimes present in academic studies too. In his famous

introduction to

The Black Book of Communism

(1998), Stéphane Curtois wrote:

After 1945 the

Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of

twentieth-century mass terror... More recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide

in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented the

assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the communist world. After all, it

seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a

genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When

faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand.

182

Curtoiss final remarks are a charge against the Jews. He further added that commu-

nist regimes

have victimized approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approxi-

mately 25 million of the Nazis

183

. The remarks triggered numerous controversies,

including among contributors to the

Black Book

some of whom distanced themselves

from Courtoiss calculation of victims as well as from some of his presumptions in the

Introduction.

184

This dispute is beyond the focus of this study, but it is important to

note that Courtoiss controversial propositions have had a great impact in Eastern Europe,

where prominent politicians and intellectuals have uncritically embraced them.

185

The comparison to the

Gulag

has trivialized the Holocaust in three ways. The first

was described by Alan S. Rosenbaum and Vladimir Tismãneanu as competitive martyr-

ology.

186

Based on the number of victims, this argument contests the uniqueness of the

Holocaust and the special attention it has benefited from; second, the argument also

attributes the absence of a proper memorialization of the

Gulag

to the alleged monopoly

exerted over international collective memory by the Holocaust; finally, the same argu-

ment often accuses the Jews of having been instrumental in establishing the communist

regimes a charge aimed at explaining and retroactively justifying the Holocaust.

But, as already mentioned, the Holocausts uniqueness does not rest in the number of

victims it produced. Furthermore, if the memorialization of communism in Eastern

Europe is on shaky grounds, this is neither due to an alleged monopoly exercised by

the memorialization of the Holocaust, nor is it so because of some Jewish complicity

in obstructing its exercise. Rather, the phenomenon is due to the absence of social,

political, and academic inclination in these countries to study, assume responsibility for,

and properly memorialize communism.

187

Finally, studies undertaken thus far as well as

182. Stéphane Courtois, Introduction: The Crimes of Communism, in

The Black Book of Commu-

nism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 23.

183.

Ibid.

, p. 15.

184. Ronald Aronson, Communisms Posthumous Trial,

History and Theory

, vol. 42 (May 2003),

pp. 222-245.

185. Shafir,

Între negare ºi trivializare

, pp. 115 ff.; for Romanias case, see also below.

186. Alan S. Rosenbaum, Introduction, in Rosenbaum (ed.),

op. cit.

, p. 2; Vladimir Tismãneanu,

Martirologie competitivã? Reflecþii asupra

Cãrþii negre a comunismului

, in

Încet spre Europa.

Vladimir Tismãneanu în dialog cu Mircea Mihãieº

(Iaºi: Polirom, 2000), pp. 201-211.

187. Helga A. Welsh, Dealing with the Communist Past: Central and East European Experiences

after 1990,

Europe-Asia Studies

vol. 48, no. 3 (May 1996), pp. 413-428; for Romanias case,

see Adrian Cioflâncã, Politics of Oblivion in Postcommunist Romania,

Xenopoliana

, vol. 9

(2001), nos. 1-4, pp. 107-114.

370

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

this report

188

demonstrate that the stereotype that would have the Jews as having played

a key role in the process of communist East European takeovers is lacking any empirical

basis and is little other than a political myth with anti-Semitic undertones. Fascist

political formations and political regimes of fascist type had incessantly fostered the

theme of Judeo-Bolshevism in their propaganda, and after 1989, the focus of attention on

Jewish PCR members and leaders had been widely used in Eastern Europe in order to

obfuscate the contribution of the ethnic majority.

189

It is accurate to assert that Jewish

adherence to communist parties has been relatively elevated in the initial phase of

communism. Yet the assertion must be amended by several caveats. The anti-fascist,

egalitarian, and humanist communist message transformed the communist parties into a

refuge for ethnic minorities. Against the background of the political atmosphere of the

mid-twentieth century, these parties alone appeared to offer opportunities for salvation

and social mobility to the marginalized or those persecuted on ethnic grounds.

190

Jews

did not adhere to communism due to their Jewishness; on the contrary, they did so in the

name of internationalism, as a sort of identity-strategy that would, they hoped, reduce

the burden of ethnicity.

191

After the communist advent to power, the number of Jews in

communist parties as well as in the newly established government institutions mattered

less than the visibility of Jews in authority positions, which was something difficult

to accept by the local masses and elites, imbued as they were with anti-Semitic

stereotypes.

192

The situation of the Jews in the communist bloc changed dramatically in

the fifties, once Stalinist anti-Semitism became official policy.

193

Finally and most

importantly, it must be emphasized that the advent of Communist regimes in Eastern

Europe has been a complex process made possible in the first place by the Soviet

military occupation and political pressure, by the support or the passivity of majorities

in local populations (irrespective of their ethnic background), and by the international

context.

This is the background against which the Holocaust-

Gulag

comparison is employed

not for a better understanding of Nazi and communist crimes, but in order to avoid the

memorialization of the Holocaust or to condition assuming responsibility for it on the

188. See chapter 1.4.

189. Leon Volovici, Anti-Semitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: A Marginal or a Central

Issue?,

Acta. Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism

, no. 5 (1994), pp. 16-17; Vladimir

Tismãneanu,

Fantasies of Salvation. Democracy, Nationalism and Myths in Post-Communist

Europe

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999),

passim

[

Fantasmele salv\rii. Democra]ie,

na]ionalism [i mit `n Europa postcomunist\

, Ia[i: Polirom, 1999

]

190.

Idem

Stalinism for All Seasons. A Political History of Romanian Communism

(henceforth:

Tism\neanu,

Stalinism

) (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003),

p. 77,

passim

; Jan T. Gross, Pânza încâlcitã: analiza stereotipurilor legate de relaþiile dintre

polonezi, germani, evrei ºi comuniºti, in Deák, Gross and Judt (eds.),

op. cit.

, pp. 102-171.

191. Tismãneanu,

Stalinism

; Robert Levy,

op. cit.

, p. 156,

passim

; Ianoºi,

Prejudecãþi ºi judecãþi

(Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), p. 74,

passim

; Johnson,

O istorie a evreilor

(Bucharest: Hasefer,

2003), pp. 352 ff.

192. Historian Jan T. Gross notes that the persistence of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth after 1945 does

not tell much about the role played by Jews in the communist regime, but much about how

unseemly, how jarring, how offensive it was to see a Jew in

any

position of authority (Gross,

op. cit.

, p. 133, authors emphasis). For a similar interpretation, see Oni[oru,

op. cit

., p. 160.

193. Tismãneanu,

Stalinism

, pp. 127 ff.

371

FINAL REPORT

(chronological and pathological) primacy of the

Gulag

. Quite frequently, Nazi policies

are being justified as a response to communism. This type of argumentation penetrated

academic debate during the so-called

Historikerstreit

(Historians Quarrel) in the second

half of the eighties. Several German historians, of whom the most prominent was Ernst

Nolte, argued that Nazism both emulated communism and was a reaction to it. Viewed

from this perspective, the Holocaust was also deemed to have been inspired by commu-

nist criminal practice, whereas Nazi atrocities were said to be explainable by wartime

conditions, to have nothing specific about them when compared with other twentieth-century

atrocities.

194

The attempt to normalize the Holocaust and to lessen the indictment

against Nazism was promptly amended at the time by many important historians, who

showed that Nolte had no evidence to back up his hypotheses.

195

As early as the seventies, in response to Noltes

Germany and the Cold War

, Ameri-

can historian Peter Gay forged the concept of comparative trivialization, which is also

used in this chapter, to describe an attempt to bring about the humanization and the

elaboration of a sophisticated apology of Nazism by pointing, indignantly, at crimes

committed by others.

196

Unlike Gay, however, the concept of comparative trivialization

as here employed applies also to non-German (including Romanian) wartime and postwar

depictions of the Holocaust.

A distinction is made among several categories of comparative trivialization: (1)

the

competitive comparison

, which holds that atrocities worse or at least equal to the Holo-

caust have been committed, and that, consequently, the Holocaust does not merit special

status; in the Romanian case, for example, reference is made to atrocities committed

against Romanians by Nazis, Hungarians, and Jews, to atrocities committed against

communists by Antonescu, and others; (2)

the banalizing comparison

which normal-

izes the Holocaust by assimilating it to violent events that regularly occur in the history

of the mankind, such as wars; the Holocaust is presented as a regrettable, yet unsurprising

outcome of war; (3)

the parochial comparison

in which the situation of the Jews in

Romania is depicted as having been better than their situation in Nazi Germany or in

states subject to similar circumstances; (4)

the deflective comparison

, which considers

fascism and the Holocaust to be the outcomes of communism, with the latter, in turn,

often being a synonym for Jews according to negationist logic; (5)

the transactional

comparison

in which acceptance of the past and fascist crimes is predicated on accepting

the assumption by Jews of responsibility for communist and other crimes perpetrated in

Romania and elsewhere in the world.

The intellectual and political profile of those who engage in comparative trivialization

is very diverse. One finds in the same category strange bedfellows: negationists and

extremists alongside personalities whose profile is democratic and whose reputation is

otherwise excellent. This heterogeneity warrants a separate analysis. For now, suffice it

to note that it is an illustration of the exceedingly confused ideological and cultural

makeup of postcommunist transitions. This sub-chapter merely attempts to depict the

194. Geoff Eley, Nazism, Politics and the Image of the Past: Thoughts on the West German

Historikerstreit

1986-1987,

Past and Present

, no. 121 (November 1988), pp. 171-208.

195. Evans,

op. cit

196. Peter Gay,

Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture

(Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. XI-XII.

372

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

situation as it stands at the moment of the studys writing; in other words, it is an

inventory listing the different forms of comparative trivialization by conceptual catego-

ries as well as reviewing as fully as possible the variety of social actors engaged in one

form or another of comparative trivialization. This may explain why personalities of high

reputation who are on record having deplored the Holocaust, yet at other times have

made hazardous and self-contradicting statements are mentioned here. It must be empha-

sized that their inclusion is not in any way geared at presenting a global evaluation of

either their intellectual work or personality; rather it is aimed at drawing attention to the

negative impact that risky formulations might have on public opinion and the Romanian

cultural and political environment.

Our scrutiny begins with those negationists who also indulge in Holocaust trivialization.

Once more, Professor Cojas profile is imminently prominent. He makes use of banalizing

and parochial comparisons to claim that the situation of Jews under Antonescu was not

as grave as people might believe. In 2002, Coja denounced as a lie that Jews were sent

to the camps in Transnistria just because they were Jews. Only two categories of Jews

ended up in Transnistria: those who were not Romanian citizens and had illegally

crossed the border, which was normal due to wartime conditions, and the Bessarabian

and Bukovinan Jews, who were suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies or proved to entertain

them. But such camps, according to Coja, had also existed in the United States during

the war for Japanese suspected of non-loyalty to the nation. Detainment conditions in

Transnistria, according to a letter sent by Coja to former U.S. First Lady Hilary Clinton

as representative of LICAR and of the

Vatra Româneascã

(Romanian Hearth) Union, had

been by far superior to those the U.S. and Canadian Japanese had in concentration

camps set up by the Roosevelt administration.

197

It might be true, Coja conceded that

the identification of traitor-Jews had been carried out with a certain amount of

approximation. It may have led to the inclusion of Jews who had been loyal to Romania

among those deported, while possibly leaving out non-loyal Jews. The explanation,

however, ought to be sought in the abnormal wartime conditions: À la guerre comme

à la guerre!

198

The camps in Transnistria, Coja claimed, never were extermination

camps, since practically any Jew could leave for whatever destination, except Romania

proper.

199

Or, as he put it at the 2001 symposium, those concentration camps (how

lugubrious this denunciation sounds!)... were nothing but villages. No barbered wire,

no military watch. They only had a few gendarmerie, patrolling only during the night,

order

to defend the Jews

against Ukrainian civilians, who, for various reasons, could

have acted violently against the Jews

[

authors emphasis

]

200

The parochial comparison is widespread due to the myth that makes Antonescu and

his regime into saviors of Jews. The argument is based on deliberate misinterpretation

(dating back to the communist regime and largely popular in the nineties

201

) of the

reasons that forced the regime to change its policies towards Jews and Roma as of late

1942. The change, however, was but a tactical and opportunist attempt of adaptation to

197.

România Mare

, July 26, 2002.

198. Coja, Simpozion internaþional,

loc. cit.

199.

Idem

Marele manipulator

p. 183.

200.

Idem

, Simpozion internaþional,

loc. cit

201. Michael Shafir, Reabilitarea postcomunistã a mareºalului Antonescu,

loc. cit.

373

FINAL REPORT

the altered conditions on the front line. Yet, the change is depicted as reflecting a

humanitarian gesture. The negationists retroactively project policies toward Jews in the

second part of the war to the first period of Antonescus dictatorship, while minimizing

or ignoring the pogroms and the deportations. It is even claimed that Jews in Transnistria

were protected by Antonescu, who offered them refuge in Romania and allowed them to

continue on to Palestine.

202

In fact, Antonescu was apparently unaware of the Hungarian

Jews presence in Romania.

203

As Randolph L. Braham has shown, the explanation for

this unusual act of the Romanian authorities lies elsewhere.

204

The Romanian negationists claim that in Transnistria the Jews benefited from living

conditions superior to those Romanians at home had to endure during the war. For

example, one of the most terrible camps in Transnistria, Vapniarka, was described by

Tudor Voicu in an article published in

România Mare

in August 2002 as having a

movie-house. Antonescu, Tudor Voicu wrote, had been the savior of Romanian Jewry,

only to find himself after the war accused by the ungrateful Jews of anti-Semitism.

205

Radu Theodoru also mentions the alleged Vapniarka cinema, but he does so using a

deflective negationist explanation, which is unusual for him an integral negationist.

The blame for atrocities committed at Vapniarka and elsewhere, Theodoru claims,

should be laid at the door of The Jewish inmate Kommisars and of communists whom

the authorities had failed to identify as such.

206

In 1999, Coja admitted that Jews in

Transnistria had died of hunger or illness, because Antonescu rightly saw no reason to

spend the countrys war-strained budgetary resources on Jews who were not Romanian

citizens, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Romanians were confronting hunger

and a lack of medicine on the Eastern front.

207

Pãunescu has also contributed to the

banalization of the Holocaust. According to the poet-turned-politician, it would have

been impossible for Jews not to be among the victims of such a tremendous war; but

Pãunescu takes a step further: Antonescu, he claims, deported Bessarabia and Bukovina

Jews to Transnistria in order to save them from the starvation that ethnic Romanians were

enduring back at home.

208

Nor have only Romanians embraced the argument. According to Larry L. Watts, a

U.S. historian who resides in Bucharest, the Marshal had been the de facto protector

of Jews against plans to implement the Final Solution, because he shared the Western

standards... concerning human and fundamental civic rights.

209

202. For the first instance in postcommunist times when the claim was made, see Mareºalul Antonescu

i-a salvat pe evreii din România. Un dialog Raoul ªorban Adrian Pãunescu, Bucureºti, 17 ianuarie,

1996,

Totuºi iubirea

, nos. 3, 4, 5 (January-February 1996).

203. According to Radu Lecca, had Antonescu been aware of the presence of Hungarian Jews on

Romanian territory, he would have ordered the law to be implemented and they would have been

shot. See Radu Lecca,

Eu i-am salvat pe evreii din România

(Bucharest: Roza Vânturilor, 1994),

p. 289.

204. Braham,

Romanian Nationalists

passim

;

idem

, Naþionaliºtii români ºi viziunea disculpabilizantã

a istoriei. Folosirea Holocaustului în scopuri politice, in

idem

(ed.),

Exterminarea evreilor români

ºi ucraineni

, pp. 73-88.

205.

România Mare

, August 18, 2000.

206. Radu Theodoru,

Mareºalul

(Bucharest: Miracol, 2001), p. 38.

207. Coja,

Marele manipulator

, p. 184.

208.

Totuºi iubirea

, no. 12, April 2-9, 1992.

209. Watts,

op. cit.

, pp. 392-393.

374

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

The transactional comparison is often intertwined with deflection: indulging in

semantic abuse, the negationists employ Holocaust as a linguistic construct to call for

recognizing the Holocaust against the Romanian people perpetrated by Jews or the

Red Holocaust inflicted by them on mankind. In 2001, PRM leader C.V. Tudor stated

that Romanians are awaiting the time when the holocaust (sic!) perpetrated against

Romanians, by no means a lesser one than the holocaust (sic!) perpetrated against the

Jews, will be officially acknowledged.

210

As early as 1991, Tudor was telling his readers

that the Jews brought Bolshevism and terror to Romania

211

A full decade on, he had not

changed opinion: interviewed on a private television channel, he said that Stalinist

Romania had been led by Jews. In what was purported to be a display of bravery, he

continued: Are people scared of saying this? I shall tell it; let them shoot me, let them

lock me up because I dare tell the historical truth.

212

In 1992-1993, PRM Senator Mihai

Ungheanu published a long serial in

România Mare

on The Holocaust of Romanian

Culture, which was eventually turned into a volume attributing to Jews and only to Jews

the plight of imposing the zhdanovist line and of destroying physically and spiritually the

postwar Romanian intelligentsia.

As has been mentioned, the discourse of prominent political personalities entails

formulations that raise the suspicion of indulging in comparative trivialization. In an

interview with the Israeli daily

Haaretz

, President Iliescu said in 2003 that the Holo-

caust was not singular to the Jewish people and that many others, including Poles,

perished in the same way. Iliescu asserted that, in the course of the war, Jews and

communists were evenly treated by the Nazis and used the example of his own father who

died at the age of 44, only one year after liberation from a concentration camp. The

interviewing journalist pointed out that only Jews and Roma were targets of Nazi exter-

mination, but the President did not change his statement at that time.

213

However, the

Presidents speech of October 12, 2004, on the occasion of the first commemoration of

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania, demonstrated that the President has fully

grasped and internalized the dimensions of the Holocaust and the role played by Romania

in it.

According to our conceptual categories, Iliescu had engaged in a competitive com-

parison. Predictably, the interview sparked criticism in Israel and the United States.

214

The controversy stirred by the presidential interview had among its consequences the

establishment of the Wiesel Commission.

The position of Romanias other post-communist president was also somewhat am-

biguous. On one hand, in a 1997 message to the FCER, President Emil Constantinescu

emphasized that the planners of this unforgivable genocide were not Romanians; on

the other hand, he acknowledged that the Romanian authorities had organized deportations,

set up concentration camps and promulgated racial legislation and that the death of

innocents can be neither forgiven, nor undone, nor forgotten... As president of all

210.

România Mare

June 22, 2001.

211.

Ibid.

, October 25, 1991.

212. Interview on the OTV channel, July 31, 2002. In the same interview, Tudor questioned the death

of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

213.

Haaretz

English edition, July 25, 2003,

www.haaretzdaily.com

. Romanian transcript of the

interview in the daily

Evenimentul zilei

, August 26, 2003.

214. Shafir, Negation the Top,

loc. cit.

375

FINAL REPORT

Romanian citizens... it is my duty to keep alive the memory of Jews who fell victim of

the genocide.

215

Constantinescus statement had only a minor echo in Romania. Except for the FCERs

publication

Realitatea evreiascã

, no media outlet carried it in full not even the national

radio and television. Among the few who reacted was historian Floricel Marinescu. He

published in

Aldine

, a nationalist and fundamentalist weekly supplement of the demo-

cratic opposition daily

România liberã

, a highly critical article on Constantinescus

statement, where he indulged in both competitive and deflective comparative trivialization:

From a strictly quantitative perspective, the crimes perpetrated in the name of communist

ideology are far larger than those perpetrated in the name of Nazi or similar ideologically-minded

regimes Yet no prominent Jewish personality

[

from Romania

]

has apologized for the role

that some Jews have played in undermining Romanian statehood, in the countrys Bolshevization,

in the crimes and the atrocities committed

[

by them

]

... Proportionally speaking, the Romani-

ans and Romania suffered more at the hands of the communist regime, to whose oncoming the

Jews had made an important contribution, than the Jews themselves had suffered from the

Romanian state during the Antonescu regime....The Red Holocaust was incomparably more

grave than Nazism.

216

Surprisingly enough, shortly thereafter, Marinescu was appointed a presidential

councilor. His ideas were shared by many Romanian intellectuals close to the center-right

political parties that were at the countrys helm during Constantinescus presidential

term (see above).

217

Influences of the Romanian Exile

Three influential personalities of the Romanian exile display recurrent usage of compara-

tive trivialization formulations in essays and books published in Romania: Paul Goma,

Monica Lovinescu, and Dorin Tudoran.

One of the few anti-communist dissidents forced into exile in the late seventies, in

recent years Goma has produced several tracts

218

in which he demands that the Red

Holocaust perpetrated on the Romanian people with a significant Jewish contribution be

acknowledged and assumed by them. The leitmotif of his well-publicized latest book,

The Red Week

, is rendered by the following quote: The Red Holocaust, planned by

them too, began for us, Romanians,

one year earlier than theirs:

[

it started

]

on June 28,

215.

Realitatea evreiascã

, nos. 49-50, April 16 May 15, 1977.

216.

România liberã

, March 7, 1998.

217. See Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Fascisme et communisme en Roumanie: enjeux et usage

dune

comparaison, in Henry Rousso (ed.),

Stalinisme et nazisme: Histoire et mémoire

comparées

, (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1999), pp. 201-246.

218. Paul Goma, Basarabia ºi «problema»,

Vatra

, nos. 3-4 (2002), pp. 43-41, and nos. 5-6 (2002),

pp. 32-46, as well as

Jurnalul literar

, nos. 5-10 (March-April-May 2002), pp. 1, 8-9;

idem

Basarabia,

Jurnalul literar

(Bucharest), 2002;

idem

Sãptãmâna roºie 28 iunie

3 iulie 1940 sau

Basarabia ºi evreii

(henceforth: Goma,

S\pt\m^na ro[ie

) (Chiºinãu: Museum, 2003, and Bucha-

rest: Vremea XXI, 2004); this latter book was also serialized in

România liberã

s supplement

Aldine

. For a well-informed reply, see Radu Ioanid, Paul Goma între Belville ºi Bucureºti,

Observator cultural

, no. 177, June 15-21, 2003.

376

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

1940

and it is not over even today

[

authors emphasis

]

219

Goma argues that after the

cession of Bessarabia and Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Jews (adults and children)

committed many acts of aggression against, and humiliation of the Romanian army. They

are said to have acted both on Soviet orders and out of racial hatred and hate of

Romanians. Nearly all Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, he writes, acted

in that Red Week against all Romanians (p. 171). Goma unequivocally and repeatedly

acknowledges Romanian responsibility and even a collective guilt for what he calls

the abominable pogrom in Iaºi, as well as for the deportations to Transnistria (pp. 20,

240, 248, 319),

220

yet he argues that the truth forbidden for half a century (p. 256) is

that those atrocities were exclusively committed out of an urge to avenge, in circum-

stances specific to wartime, the earlier murders committed by the Jews. He makes no

mention of Antonescus anti-Semitic policies and denies the existence of Romanian

anti-Semitism. Goma vows everlasting gratitude toward the Liberating Marshal

(p. 244). On nearly every page, he dwells on the alleged Jewish culpability for bringing

communism to Romania (for several pages he lists names of Jewish communists), for

having made money out of monopolizing suffering (pp. 10, 115, 183-199) and for having

committed murders that darkened and drew blood from the entire 20

century. As

a consequence, Goma demands that these unpunished executioners be tried by a

Nuremberg II tribunal (pp. 95, 170, 217, 274).

This book illustrates a discursive register typical of trivialization through comparison

and constitutes a synthesis of negationism and anti-Semitism that can hardly be found in

a Romanian-language publication. On the other hand, if Goma excels through radical-

ism, he is not very original. Similar ideas in different formulations traveled in the

right-wing circles of the Romanian diaspora and were echoed in Romania proper. Thus,

on April 27, 1993, columnist Roxana Iordache wondered in the daily

România liberã

when Jews will kneel down before Romanians and ask for pardon for what they had

done to them. The huge

Red Holocaust

of German-based Romanian author Florin

Mãtrescu circulated similar ideas. The book received a positive review in January 1996

in the respectable weekly

România literarã

The monopoly of suffering topic became even more prominent in Romania and in

the Romanian diaspora after the publication of Stéphane Courtois

Black Book of Com-

munism

. Thus, in the second half of the nineties, two Romanian exiles, Dorin Tudoran

(a courageous anticommunist dissident who lives in the United States) and Monica

Lovinescu (who has lived in Paris since the immediate aftermath of the war) apply to

Romania the critique that Stéphane Courtois and J.F. Revel aim at the refusal of the

Western political and intellectual Left to condemn and critically explore communism

with the same energy with which the Left denounces fascism. Thus, in a string of articles

he wrote for

România literarã

221

Tudoran blames the Jewish lobby for its suspect,

219. Goma,

Sãptãmâna roºie

, 2004, p. 20.

220. One can find also deflective accents in Gomas book, the author claiming, like Ion Coja, that the

Legionnaires that killed Jews during the Iron Guard rebellion were, in fact, Jews dressed in Iron

Guard uniforms. Goma cites, in Antonescus defence, normal Jews such as N. Minei and

Al. ªafran. On this occasion, he mentions Fildermans testimony, which in Gomas version turns

into a document legalized in New York in 1956 (p. 22) thus displaying Cojas influence on him.

221. Dorin Tudoran,

Nepoþii gorniºtilor (I-II),

România literarã

, no. 12, April 1-7, 1998, and

no. 13, April 8-14, 1998; Mitologii recurente,

ibid.

, no. 16, April 29 May 5, 1988; ªantajul

(I-II-III),

ibid.

, no. 19, May 20, 1998, no. 20, May 27 June 2, 1998, and no. 21, May 3-10,

377

FINAL REPORT

indecent, counterproductive monopoly over this centurys suffering. He wonders

why the Jews have the right to an international lobby that would spare us from amnesia,

while we, the rest, are doomed to remain merely the victims of the

Gulag

and have no

right to indict the Red Holocaust (no. 12/1988). In one of these articles, Tudoran quotes

a problematic statement by Courtois (who speaks of a single-minded focus on the Jewish

genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity, which,

Courtois claims, has prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magni-

tude in the communist world) to conclude: This is how it was possible to have this

indecent monopoly over tragedy and over pain. This is how it was possible, this arrogant

exclusivity over memory, remembrance, and commemoration. This is what made possi-

ble the blackmail, this is how debate was repressed, this is how taboos were declared

(no. 29/1998). Like Courtois, Tudoran never charges the Jews directly as accomplices in

instituting an amnesia on the Red Holocaust. Rather, he only hints at it in the rhetori-

cal questions that litter his articles.

The same incriminating inference based on the Courtois model is to be found in

articles published by two remarkable intellectuals and friends of Tudoran and Lovinescu

Nicolae Manolescu, editor-in-chief of

România literarã

, and Gabriel Liiceanu, philoso-

pher and director of the Humanitas publishing house. After deploring the sentence

passed on Garaudy in France, Manolescu writes: Is anyone afraid of losing the mo-

nopoly over unveiling crimes against humanity? Well, it seems that the loss of such a

monopoly is of concern to some people. Yet it is unfair and immoral to gag those who

deplore the millions of victims of communism just out of fear that not enough people

would be left to deplore the millions of victims of Nazism.

222

While Manolescus formulations are closer to those of Tudoran, Liiceanus are nearer

to Courtoiss, the Romanian philosopher is more explicit than the French historian is. In

a 1997 speech delivered on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Federation

of Jewish Communities in Romania, Liiceanu wondered: How was it possible for one

who, at a certain moment in history had to wear the victims uniform, to later don the

garment of the executioner?

223

The concern was not novel with Liiceanu. Back in 1995,

in an editors note to the translation of a book on Romanian anti-Semitism published by

Humanitas, he had distanced himself from those who are ever-ready to speak up as

victims, but forget to testify as executioners.

224

Later in his diary, published in 2002,

Liiceanu elaborated: Is it that difficult to understand that one first settles accounts with

the evil one has encountered

, that uprooted ones own life, that highjacked ones own

1998;

Gimnastica de întreþinere sau pretextul Sebastian,

ibid.

, no. 22, 10-16 June 1998;

Iubeºti poporu?,

ibid.

, nos. 23-24, June 17-23, 1998; Practica ºi doctrina,

ibid.

, no. 26,

July 1-7, 1998; Logica genocidarã,

ibid.

no. 27, July 8-14, 1998; Chestiunea epistemologicã,

ibid.

no. 28, July 15-21, 1988; Ocultarea sau Comuniunea Sovieticã,

ibid.

, no. 29, July

22-28, 1998; Moscova ºi monitorizarlâcul,

ibid.

, no. 30, July 22 August 4, 1998; Lectura

de rasã,

ibid.

, no. 32, August 12-18, 1988.

222. Nicolae Manolescu,

op. cit

.; Cum am devenit rinocer,

Rom^nia liber\

no. 32, August 12-18,

1998. He adds that the monopoly is highly comfortable.

223. Gabriel Liiceanu, Sebastian, mon frère,

, April 29 May 5, 1997, reprinted in

Declaraþie

de iubire

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001), pp. 5-23.

224.

Idem

, Nota Editorului, in Leon Volovici,

Ideologia naþionalistã ºi problema evreiascã în

România anilor 30

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995), p. 7.

378

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

history and whose effects one cannot rid oneself of even ten years after its departure

from the scene?... Whence the vain refusal of co-habitation in sufferance? Whence this

claim, admitting no counterclaim, to being a

unique victim

[

authors emphasis

]

225

Monica Lovinescu has, in turn, posed questions; yet, she also has several firm

answers. In the foreword to

Diagonale

, a volume comprising articles she had published

over the years in

România literarã

, she wrote the following: Is it really necessary to

wonder if the resurgence of the antifascist obsession is not in fact aimed at hiding the real

murders of communism and their perpetrators? The question is, of course, rhetorical,

and the answer is yes. Right-wing negationism is now followed by, and even more

widespread than, left-wing negationism.

226

The concept of left-wing negationism is

borrowed from J.-F. Revel. In a laudatory review of Revels

The Grand Parade

, Lovinescu

wrote that he has managed to unmask the mechanism employed for transforming

the

duty to commemorate

the victims of Nazism into an excuse to impose on us

the obligation

to forget

the Gulag

[

authors emphasis

]

227

But Revel, in turn, relies on several academic

sources, including Ernst Nolte

228

and Alain Besançon. If Noltes brand of revisionism

has been discussed in the first section of this study, it must be pointed out that Revel

misquotes Besançon when he writes, according to the formula suggested by Besançon,

the hypermnesia of Nazism diverts attention from the amnesia of communism.

229

Indeed, Besançon authored the two phrases, yet he never argued in his

Le malheur du

siècle

that the hypermnesia of Nazism diverts attention from the amnesia of commu-

nism.

230

He just noted with regret that Nazism and communism are being memorialized

differently and provided several reasons for the discrepancy, yet none of those reasons

may legitimately constitute a basis for Revels interpretation. Revels book ensured that

Besançons opus was popularized with Revels distortion in right-wing intellectual mi-

lieux in France

231

(including those of the Romanian diaspora there

232

). It is worth noting

that Revels reading of Besançon is quoted on the Internet sites of extreme-right groups

and publications.

233

It is important to point out at this stage that Besançon, Revel, and Courtois do not

share the same opinions. Thus, Besançon correctly pleads for comparing and commemo-

rating Nazism and communism with the same care, whereas Revel and Courtois blame

225. Gabriel Liiceanu,

Uºa interzisã

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002).

226. Monica Lovinescu,

Diagonale

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002), p. 6.

227.

Ibid.

, p. 175.

228. Revel,

Marea paradã. Eseu despre supravieþuirea utopiei socialiste

(Bucharest: Humanitas,

2002), published in France in 2000. The citation from Nolte is taken from the exchange of letters

between the German historian and François Furet, published in Romanian translation as

Fascism

ºi communism

(Bucharest: Univers, 2000), pp. 127-128.

229. Revel,

op. cit.

, p. 111.

230. Alain Besançon,

Le malheur du siècle. Sur le communisme, le nazisme et lunicité de la Shoah

(Paris: Fayard, 1998; Romanian edition, Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999).

231. For example, Jean-François Revel, Devoir de mémoire et communisme,

Le Figaro

, February 12,

2001.

232. See, for example, the dialogue between Dan Culcer and Paul Goma in

Asymetria. Revista de

culturã, criticã ºi imaginaþie

, 1, no. 2 (November 2000),

http://www.asymetria.org/

culcergomafrench.html

233. Besançon is cited

via

Revel on the Internet sites of several radical-right groups and publications.

379

FINAL REPORT

the problems with the commemoration of communism on the commemoration of the

Holocaust. This is the key difference between benign comparison and comparative

trivialization. Revel forces the comparison into an over-interpretation serving his anti-

communist discourse, while Courtois does the same by inserting an incriminating insinu-

ation directed at the Jews. In Romania, prestigious intellectuals such as Tudoran,

Manolescu, and Liiceanu preferred to popularize the opinions of Revel and Courtois

rather than that of Besançon, and they did so by using provocative concepts (Red

Holocaust, monopoly on suffering, Judeocentrism) that are widely popular in

radical-right circles.

Beginning to Come to Terms with the Past

Romania is just beginning to confront its own past and assume responsibility for it.

Unavoidably, ambiguities persist at this stage, but there are indications that political and

intellectual elites are somewhat more inclined to start coping with the countrys darker

periods in its past than was the case a few years ago. The setting up of the Commission

for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania is proof in itself of a movement in that

direction.

While in historiography selective negationism remains an important trait,

234

a number

of historians approach the Holocaust with professionalism and honesty. ªerban Papacostea

and Andrei Pippidi stand out for having reacted very early against attempts to rehabilitate

Antonescu.

235

Lucian Boia undertook a deconstruction of the myths of the Legion and of

Antonescu as well as stereotypes about Jews.

236

Dinu C. Giurescu was the first Romanian

historian to have dedicated an entire chapter to the fate of Romanian Jewry during the

Holocaust in his 1999 published

Romania in the Second World War

237

Institutes specializing in research on the history of the Holocaust have been estab-

lished. Among these, special mention should be made of the Center for the Study of

Jewish History in Romania, which acts under the aegis of the FCER and, as of 1990, has

pioneered research on the Holocaust. Thus far, this institute has published five volumes

of documents on this topic.

Scientific colloquia were organized at several research institutes that function within

the Romanian Academy. Remarkably, the Center for History and Military Theory Re-

search (formerly a bastion of pro-Antonescu negationist historians) has been turned into

a respectable research institution.

238

Institutes or research centers specializing in Jewish

234. Illustrative is the position of Dan Berindei, president of the Romanian Academys History Section,

who said: There was no Holocaust in Romania. There were deportations to Transnistria, an

antechamber of the Holocaust, yet there was no Holocaust

per se

(

Jurnalul naþional

May 8, 2002).

235. On Papacostea, see Shafir, Reabilitarea postcomunistã a mare[alului Antonescu,

loc. cit.

, and

Eskenasy, Istoriografii ºi istoricii,

loc. cit

. Most of Pippidis articles on Antonescu are to be

found in his

Despre statui ºi morminte. Pentru o teorie a istoriei simbolice

(Iaºi: Polirom, 2000).

236. Lucian Boia,

Istorie ºi mit în conºtiinþa româneascã

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997);

idem

România: þarã de frontierã a Europei

(Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001).

237. Dinu C. Giurescu,

România în al doilea rãzboi mondial

(Bucharest: ALL Educational, 1999).

238. For evidence, see Mihail E. Ionescu and Liviu Rotman (eds.),

op. cit

380

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

history were set up at universities in Cluj, Bucharest, Craiova, and Iaºi, and publications

specializing in Jewish history and the Holocaust came into being, as well. Professional

journals edited at research institutes with an established scholarly tradition started open-

ing their pages to the publication of articles dealing with the tragedy of Jews and Roma

during the Second World War. School textbooks are undergoing a process of revision and

improvement, though a great deal remains to be done in this respect, and inaccuracies

still abound.

239

Publishing houses are translating a relatively large number of books on

Jewish history, though it must be mentioned that the bulk of these volumes are still put

out by the FCER publishing house Hasefer. A young generation of historians, not yet

very visible and largely concentrating for now on publishing studies on narrow topics,

gradually begins to make its presence felt and to demonstrate that it is capable of tackling

the Holocaust period from new perspectives.

Unfortunately, for now there is no genuine readiness to perceive the history of Jews

in Romania as part of Romanias own history. This artificial division is a major obstacle

on the road to a critical assessment of Romanias national past.

239. See Felicia Waldman, Reflection of the Jewish Problem and the Holocaust in Romanian School

Textbooks (1998-2002),

http://www.goethe.de/MS/buk/archiv/material/feliciawaldmanengl.doc

Findings and Recommendations

Historical Findings

Statement of Fact and Responsibility

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of Euro-

pean Jewry by Nazi Germany, its allies, and collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Not

only Jews were victimized during this period. Persecution and mass arrests were perpe-

trated against ethnic groups such as Sinti and Roma, people with disabilities, political

opponents, homosexuals, and others.

A significant percentage of the Romanian Jewish community was destroyed during

World War II. Systematic killing and deportation were perpetrated against the Jews of

Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Dorohoi county. Transnistria, the part of occupied Ukraine

under Romanian administration, served Romania as a giant killing field for Jews.

The Commission concludes, together with the large majority of bona fide researchers

in this field, that the Romanian authorities were the main perpetrators of this Holocaust,

in both its planning and implementation. This encompasses the systematic deportation

and extermination of nearly all the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina as well some Jews

from other parts of Romania to Transnistria, the mass killings of Romanian and local

Jews in Transnistria, the massive execution of Jews during the Iaºi pogrom; the system-

atic discrimination and degradation applied to Romanian Jews during the Antonescu

administration including the expropriation of assets, dismissal from jobs, the forced

evacuation from rural areas and concentration in district capitals and camps, and the

massive utilization of Jews as forced laborers under the same administration. Jews were

degraded solely on account of their Jewish origin, losing the protection of the state and

becoming its victims. A portion of the Roma population of Romania was also subjected

to deportation and death in Transnistria.

Determining the Number of Victims

The number of Romanian Jews and of Jews in the territories under Romanias control

who were murdered during the Holocaust has not been determined with final precision.

However, the Commission concludes that between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and

Ukrainian Jews were murdered or died during the Holocaust in Romania and the territo-

ries under its control. An additional 135,000 Romanian Jews living under Hungarian

382

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

control in Northern Transylvania also perished in the Holocaust, as did some 5,000

Romanian Jews in other countries. Referring to Romania, Raul Hilberg concluded that

no country, besides Germany, was involved in massacres of Jews on such a scale.

Cognizant of the enormous responsibility that has been placed in its hands, the

Commission determined not to cite one conclusive statistic as to the number of Jews

killed in Romania and the territories under its rule. Instead, the Commission chose to

define the range of numbers as they are represented in contemporary research. Further

research will hopefully establish the exact number of victims, though there may never be

a full statistical picture of the human carnage wrought during the Holocaust in Romania.

Between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews were killed in Bessarabia and Bukovina by Roma-

nian and German troops in 1941. Between 105,000 and 120,000 deported Romanian Jews

died as a result of the expulsions to Transnistria. In Transnistria between 115,000 and

180,000 indigenous Jews were killed, especially in Odessa and the counties of Golta and

Berezovka. At least 15,000 Jews from the

Regat

were murdered in the Iaºi pogrom and

as a result of other anti-Jewish measures. Approximately 132,000 Jews were deported to

Auschwitz in May-June 1944 from Hungarian-ruled Northern Transylvania. Detailed

information about the origin of these statistics, the calculation, and references are

provided in the relevant chapters of the report.

A high proportion of those Roma who were deported also died. Of the 25,000 Roma

(half of them children) sent to Transnistria, approximately 11,000 perished. Centuries-old

nomadic Roma communities disappeared forever.

Evolution of Destruction

The story of the near destruction of Romanian Jewry during the Second World War is

filled with paradoxes. Throughout the twenties and thirties, the anti-Semitic propaganda,

instigation, and street violence of the Iron Guard poisoned the political atmosphere and

stirred up Romanians animosity toward the countrys Jewish population. During the

period in which it played a role in government, from mid-1940 through to January 1941,

it spearheaded the enactment of anti-Semitic laws and decrees that severely damaged the

Jews and prepared the way for their destruction by vilifying them and depriving them of

rights, property, dignity, and, for the most part, the organizational and material means of

self-defense. The victims of the Legionnaire pogroms of January 1941 were few in

number compared to those who perished at the hands of the Romanian government,

army, and gendarmerie later on. While the Iron Guard advocated violent action against

the Jews and is often blamed for the Holocaust in Romania, and while many former

members of the Iron Guard and many Iron Guard sympathizers took part in the system-

atic forced deportations and murders of Jews that began in 1941, the Iron Guard as an

organization had been banned by the time most of the killing took place, and its leader-

ship (most of which had fled to Nazi Germany under SS protection) played no role in the

countrys government. Direct responsibility for the Holocaust in Romania falls squarely

on the Antonescu-led Romanian state.

In Romania, as in Hungary in 1941 and Bulgaria in 1942, anti-Jewish discrimination

was compounded by geography. Jews were killed first and foremost in territories that had

changed hands and were annexed to these countries. In Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia,

383

FINAL REPORT

territories once lost to and then regained from the USSR, Jews were being deported and

murdered, while in Bucharest, paradoxically, leaders of the Jewish community were

engaged in a dialogue with the government aimed at saving them. Branded enemies of the

Romanian nation along with the rest of their kinsmen by an ugly official propaganda,

those leaders nevertheless proved able to maintain channels of communication with

Romanian officials.

Although the Romanian leadership and bureaucracy shared Germanys desire to

liquidate the Jews, they coordinated their efforts with the Germans with difficulty and

only for limited periods. Differences over matters of style, timing, and methodology

triggered negative reactions from the Germans, who were often angered by the Romani-

ans inefficient pogrom techniques, the improvised nature of the death marches, the

haste of Romanian officials in pressing huge columns of deportees across the Dniester in

1941 and the Bug in 1942, and the fact that the Romanians often did this with little clear

plan for what to do with the Jews once they were there, or even expected the Germans

to handle the problem for them. In addition, in early 1943, Romanian policy was

influenced by Realpolitik. German pressure to hand over the Jews of Old Romania

produced a counter-effect: no foreign power would be allowed to dictate to Romanian

nationalists what to do with their Jews.

In the summer of 1942, the Antonescu regime agreed in writing to deport the Jews of

the Regat and southern Transylvania to the Nazi death camp in Belzec, Poland, and was

planning new deportations to Transnistria. Yet only months later, the same Romanian

officials reversed course and resisted German pressure to deport their countrys Jews to

death camps in Poland. Initially, Romania had also approved the German deportation of

Romanian Jews from Germany and German-occupied territories, which resulted in the

death of about 5,000 Romanian citizens. But when the shifting tides of war changed

minds in Bucharest, thousands of Romanian Jews living abroad were able to survive

thanks to renewed Romanian diplomatic protection. And while Romanian Jews may have

been deported en masse to Transnistria, thousands were subsequently (if selectively)

repatriated. Ironically, as the vast German camp system realized its greatest potential for

killing, the number of murders committed by the Romanians decreased, as did the

determination with which they enforced their countrys anti-Semitic laws. Such contra-

dictions go a long way toward explaining the survival of a large portion Romanias Jews

under Romanian authority.

Documents do record some instances of Romanians both civilian and military

rescuing Jews, and many of these have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous

Among the Nations. But these initiatives were isolated cases in the final analysis

exceptions to the general rule, which was terror, forced labor, plunder, rape, deportation,

and murder, with the participation or at least the acquiescence of a significant proportion

of the population.

The treatment of the Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria triggered a

series of external and internal appeals, which influenced Ion Antonescus decision to

cancel the planned deportations from Moldavia, Walachia, and southern Transylvania.

Swiss diplomats tried to intervene. The question of whether the Papal Nuncio appealed

on behalf of the Jews is still a matter of debate and merits further research. The

American War Refugee Board, established in January 1944, was involved in the rescue

of orphans from Transnistria. International Red Cross representatives visited some ghet-

tos in Transnistria in December 1943 and were involved in the rescue of orphans from

384

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

this area. The Jewish Agency, the World Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Emergency

Committee in the United States appealed to the Romanian government to put a stop to the

persecution of the Jews. Within the framework of the negotiations with Radu Lecca at the

end of 1942, the Jewish Agency proposed to transfer the Jews who had survived in

Transnistria first to Romania and then to enable them to leave. The ransom plan was

viewed as a possibility to make the Romanian government change its policy or at least to

win time. And, indeed, various liberal, or simply decent, Romanian politicians and

public figures occasionally intervened on behalf of the Jews or Roma.

It must be remembered, however, that voices of moderation were not the only ones

clamoring for Ion Antonescus attention. He also received numerous pleas to proceed

still more vigorously against Romanian Jewry. In an October 1943 memorandum, the

so-called 1922 Generation (former Legionnaires and Cuzists) demanded that all the

assets of the Jews be transferred to the state in order that they might be placed in the

hands of pure-blooded Romanians. (Although by that date the assets of the Jews, with

few exceptions, had already been transferred to the state.) These diehards continued to

demand the mandatory wearing of a distinctive insignia by all Jews and the prohibition

of Jews from numerous professions. The radical and final solution of the Jewish

question, they wrote as if the recent course of the war had been completely lost on

them, must be carried out in conjunction with

[

the plan for

]

the future Europe. When

the repatriation of Jews from Transnistria began, Gheorghe Cuza, son of A.C. Cuza of

the National Christian Party, and Colonel Barcan, prefect of Dorohoi, publicly protested.

Romania under Antonescu was a dictatorial regime, and Antonescus orders could

condemn to death the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina, just as they might allow for the

survival of most the Jews of Moldavia and Walachia. The entire repressive military,

police, and judicial apparatus was mobilized against the Jews during the first half of the

war. Official propaganda successfully presented the Jews as the most important domestic

enemy, as Moscows or Londons agents, and as the main cause of Romanias economic

difficulties. Acceptance of these lies weighed more heavily than fear as an explanation

for the lack of protest against the regimes policies.

The Antonescu regimes anti-Jewish policies drew strength from a long history of

anti-Semitism among Romanian political and intellectual elites. They also directly bor-

rowed from the ideology of both the fascist Iron Guard and the single-mindedly anti-Semitic

National Christian Party. Longstanding propaganda stances of both parties found their

way into Antonescus positions. Many civil servants in mid-level positions were former

members of the National Christian Party. Moreover, the regimes anti-Semitic legislation

was typically fascist and sometimes overtly inspired by Nazi racial laws, even though

Romanias first anti-Semitic legislation was already issued by the National Christian

Party government in December 1937 before its alliance with Nazi Germany.

The idea of forced emigration had found widespread support among fascist and

non-fascist anti-Semites in many European countries during the interwar period. The

Nazis had promoted such a solution before 1939. In Romania, the Legion of the Arch-

angel Michael and the National Christian Party had propounded this doctrine, which

Antonescu wholeheartedly assimilated. Some historians have argued that forced emigra-

tion was the intent of the regimes program, but the main tools employed by Antonescu

and his regime in their plan to eliminate the Jews from Romania were executions,

deportations, forced labor, and starvation.

385

FINAL REPORT

If the anti-Semitic policies and practices of the Antonescu regime were inspired by

hatred, the behavior of its bureaucrats was guided for the most part by petty, pragmatic

criteria, which sometimes lent its practice a distinct, opportunistic flavor. Perhaps Raul

Hilberg described the essence of the situation best when he wrote,

Opportunism was practiced in Romania not only on a national basis but also in personal

relations... The search for personal gain in Romania was so intensive that it must have enabled

many Jews to buy relief from persecution... In examining the Romanian bureaucratic appara-

tus, one is therefore left with the impression of an unreliable machine that did not properly

respond to command and that acted in unpredictable ways, sometimes balking, sometimes

running away with itself. That spurting action, unplanned and uneven, sporadic and erratic,

was the outcome of an opportunism that was mixed with destructiveness, a lethargy periodi-

cally interrupted by outbursts of violence. The product of this mixture was a record of

anti-Jewish actions that is decidedly unique.

The result was tragedy for innumerable Romanian Jews, while also leaving the door

to salvation open for many. For example, when it became evident that Romanianization

was having a negative effect on the economy, Antonescu curtailed this extra-legal proc-

ess. Bureaucratic inefficiency and disorganization also helped. The haste to destroy the

Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina created a chaotic situation, which provided oppor-

tunities for Jews to improvise means of surviving the process. At first it seemed only a

matter of time before the government would deport the Jews of Walachia and Moldavia

those deemed less treasonous, according to the official line, than the Jews of Bessarabia

and Bukovina but still deserving of dispatch to the German death camps in occupied

Poland. But as time passed, the calculation that it would be useful to have some Jews still

alive at the end of the war saved the surviving Jews from this fate.

Internal and external appeals, misunderstandings in Romanias relations with Ger-

many, but mostly Mihai Antonescus early realization that the war on the Eastern front

might be lost impeded completion of the extermination plan. By fall 1942, a second

phase in Romanian policy had begun. Ion Antonescu remained a violent anti-Semite (in

fact, in February 1944, he voiced regret at not having deported all the Jews), but as the

war dragged on, pragmatic and opportunistic considerations became more and more

dominant in Romanian decision-making.

When Romania joined Nazi Germany in a war against the Jewish people, the Antonescu

regime drew on pre-Nazi Romanian anti-Semitic and fascist ideologies to initiate and

implement the Holocaust in Romania. The Romanian state utilized the army, gendarme-

rie, police, civil servants, journalists, writers, students, mayors, public and private

institutions, as well as industrial and trade companies to degrade and destroy the Jews

under Romanian administration. The orders were issued in Bucharest, not in Berlin.

When the Antonescu government decided to stop the extermination of the Jews, the

extermination did stop. The change in policy toward the Jews began in October 1942,

before the Axis defeat at Stalingrad, and deportations were definitively terminated in

March-April 1943. Discussions regarding the repatriation of deported Jews followed.

The result of this change in policy was that at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived.

Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more

Jews than any country other than Germany itself. The murders committed in Iaºi,

Odessa, Bogdanovka, Domanovka, and Peciora, for example, were among the most

hideous murders committed against Jews anywhere during the Holocaust. Romania

386

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

committed genocide against the Jews. The survival of Jews in some parts of the country

does not alter this reality.

In light of the factual record summarized in the Commissions report, efforts to

rehabilitate the perpetrators of these crimes are particularly abhorrent and worrisome.

Nowhere else in Europe has a mass murderer like Ion Antonescu, Hitlers faithful ally

until the very end, been publicly honored as a national hero.

Official communist historiography often tried to dilute or completely deny the re-

sponsibility of Romanians in the slaughter of the Jews, placing all blame on the Germans

and déclassé elements in Romanian society. In postcommunist Romania, political and

cultural elites often chose to ignore and sometimes chose to encourage pro-Antonescu

propaganda, which opened the door to explicit Holocaust denial and the rehabilitation of

convicted war criminals. There have been few public voices in opposition to this domi-

nant trend.

Contemporary Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on its findings and conclusions, the International Commission on the Holocaust in

Romania makes the following recommendations.

Public Awareness of the Holocaust

Acceptance of the Report

The government of Romania should issue an official declaration acknowledging the

report of the Commission and adopting the entirety of its contents and conclusions.

Publication of the Commissions Report

The full report of the Commission, once accepted and endorsed by the president of

Romania, shall be published in Romanian and English and made available in both print

and Internet editions. Consideration should also be given to publishing a French lan-

guage version.

Dissemination of Summary Findings

The full report shall be distributed throughout the country to all libraries, schools,

universities, and other educational and research institutions. At the same time, the

Commission shall also prepare an abridged summary report of its findings, and all efforts

should be undertaken to ensure its widest distribution. The Commission recommends

that this could include publication in newspapers or journals as well as the preparation

and publication of a paperback book version that would be distributed to each household

in Romania, just as the government of Sweden distributed copies of the publication,

Tell

Ye Your Children

, to every household in Sweden.

387

FINAL REPORT

Public Information Efforts

Special consideration should be given to engage the media in order to enhance public

interest in the report and the primary sources on which it is based. Efforts should be

made to organize conferences and roundtable discussions on radio and television that

make use of Commission members and experts to disseminate the report and its findings.

Holocaust Education in Romania

One of the most basic reasons for the creation of the Commission has been the need for

correcting and supplementing what is currently known about the Holocaust in Romania.

The long-term success of the Commission will, in no small measure, be judged by its

impact on the teaching of the Holocaust to present and future Romanian students.

Review and Preparation of Textbooks

Many Romanian textbooks currently in use that do refer to the Holocaust present

incomplete or even factually incorrect information. The Commission recommends that

the Ministry of Education create a working group, in cooperation with experts of the

Commission and appropriate international institutions, with the purpose of reviewing,

correcting, revising, and drafting appropriate curricula and textbook material on the

Holocaust based on the findings of the Commissions report, with the goal of completing

this work as soon as possible but no later than June 2006. In doing so, consideration

should also be given to describing the historical experience of Jews and Roma in

Romania prior to their persecution during the Holocaust.

Commission Publication of Material Inserts

In order to ensure that the findings of the Commission are quickly integrated into school

curricula, the Commission should prepare its own (age-specific) materials as a free-standing

insert for primary and secondary school use. Those institutions with experience in

teacher training (e.g., Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

should be asked to assist in providing the necessary instruction to Romanian teachers on

how to use this new material.

Higher Education

Universities and the Romanian Academy should be called on to organize conferences and

symposia on the Holocaust in Romania. Colleges and universities should be encouraged

to establish courses on the subject, not only for their students but also for professional,

cultural, and public opinion leaders in the country. In so doing, they should address the

long tradition of anti-Semitism in intellectual circles, which provided a foundation for the

Holocaust and current negationist trends.

388

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

Teacher-Training and Resource Sharing

The Ministry of Education should commit itself to the long-term training of teachers

qualified to teach about the Holocaust. Several national initiatives in the area of Holo-

caust education and remembrance are already underway. These include a one-week

course offered by the National Defense College, the participation of master teachers in

Yad Vashem seminars, and the Romanian application for membership in the International

Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. These initiatives

should be commended and supported. Consideration should be given to the creation of

a national network that would aid in the distribution and sharing of materials and

resources for teaching the Holocaust.

Commemoration of the Holocaust

Government Observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day

The government of Romania has adopted October 9 as the official date of Holocaust

commemoration. The Commission calls on the President and government to mark this

date in several appropriate ways, including proclamations by the President and the prime

minister, convening a special session of the Parliament, a public display of mourning,

such as draping official flags in black and a having a national moment of silence, and

organizing seminars and discussions in the media and at universities and other public

institutions.

Educational Programs to Mark Remembrance Day

The Ministry of Education and schools throughout Romania should organize special

programs and assemblies to mark the commemoration date. Consideration should be

given to holding essay contests, inviting Holocaust survivors to speak of their experi-

ences, and other means of engaging students interest.

Other Commemorative Events

Religious leaders should be encouraged to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day through

an interfaith ceremony and service. Additional efforts should be made to engage religious

leaders and theological students in the subject, so that they can include the Holocaust in

their studies and their sermons.

[

Note: When October 9 falls on a weekend, the proposed programs for schools,

Parliament, and other institutions should be scheduled on a nearby weekday.

]

389

FINAL REPORT

Holocaust Memorials and Exhibitions

A national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Romania should be erected on

public property in Bucharest. Additionally, there are several mass graves of Holocaust

victims on Romanian territory (most notably victims of the Iaºi pogrom), and they

should be properly identified and maintained by the government of Romania.

Furthermore, consideration should be given to the establishment of permanent exhi-

bitions on the Holocaust in Romania at the National Historical Museum in Bucharest and

at other regional museums. Likewise, a traveling exhibition on the Holocaust should be

produced for use throughout the country.

Local authorities, particularly in former centers of Jewish populations, should be

encouraged to find ways to recognize their prewar Jewish communities as well as to

commemorate the Holocaust. For example, this could be accomplished with special

exhibits in local museums, memorial plaques at historically significant sites, and the

restoration of the Jewish names to streets and public squares.

Documentation of Holocaust Victims

Every effort should be made to document the names of Holocaust victims in Romania.

The Romanian government and its archival institutions and repositories should assist Yad

Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in their work of collecting

information and digitizing their findings.

Archival Access

Access to Holocaust-related records in the Romanian government archives is essential for

present-day and future historians to do their work. The Commission calls on the Roma-

nian government to remove all impediments to access and further recommends that a

central Holocaust-related archive center be established in Bucharest at the Central Uni-

versity Library or the Library of the Academy.

Unfinished Matters

In offering its recommendations for furthering awareness and understanding of the

Holocaust in Romania, the Commission draws attention to several contradictory and

detrimental matters that require swift and positive resolution:

Reversing the Rehabilitation of War Criminals

Since the fall of communism in Romania, we have witnessed the rehabilitation of various

war criminals who were directly responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust. These

include, for example, the noted war criminals Radu Dinulescu and Gheorghe Petrescu,

whose rehabilitation was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. The government of

Romania must take every measure available to it to annul their rehabilitation and, in any

390

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

case, should forcefully, unequivocally, and publicly condemn these war criminals (and

others like them) for their crimes.

Accepting Responsibility for Perpetrators of Crimes during the Holocaust

The government must also demonstrate that Romania accepts responsibility for alleged

Romanian war criminals through actions that include, but are not limited to: initiating

prosecution actions for war crimes against individuals in cases where this remains a

viable possibility; implementing all provisions of international law and all treaty obliga-

tions that pertain to the treatment of war criminals; and cooperating fully with other

governments in keeping with the highest standard of international practice in such

matters.

Correcting and Enforcing Legislation on Holocaust Denial and Public Venera-

tion of Antonescu

Romanian legislation presented in March 2002 bans fascist, racist, and xenophobic

organizations and symbols. It prohibits the denial of the Holocaust. It also makes illegal

the cult of all persons guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity (for

which Antonescu was sentenced to death), including erecting statues, mounting plaques,

and naming streets or public places after such people. Although many public monuments

dedicated to Antonescu have been dismantled, there are still streets bearing his name.

His portrait still hangs in some government buildings, which must be considered public

space. Holocaust denial literature continues to be published and sold freely. Further-

more, two commissions of the Romanian Senate proposed amending the law by defining

the Holocaust as limited only to actions organized by Nazi authorities, thereby excluding

the Romanian experience in which Romanian officials, and not the Nazis, organized the

exterminations.

The Commission calls for the formal adoption of the legislation without any changes

and urges the government and its agents to enforce all of its provisions and all other

existing legal provisions in this area.

Implementation and Follow-Up

The Commission recommends that the government of Romania establish a permanent

agency, commission, or foundation that will be responsible for monitoring and imple-

menting the recommendations listed above and fostering the study of the Holocaust in

Romania.

Afterword

Both the decision of creating the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania and

the publishing of its Report represent an emblematic act in the evolution of how the modern and

recent history in Central and East European countries is perceived, of understanding all its stages

from the perspective of such tragic and singular episodes in their uniqueness: Holocaust, the

Second World War, the communist concentration regime.

The reevaluation of our own past, which coincides, in most cases, with its restructuring

according to new data that were occulted till recently, new facts and new responsibilities, is or

should be simultaneous to the process of political, academic, educational and at last but not least

civic assuming of the events.

The impact of the re-arranged facts in their natural order on the public consciousness and

political media is stunning and takes all forms: from the speechless acceptance in front of the

historic evidence to the denial that is stuck in the matrixes of the past.

Looking back, understanding, accepting and assuming are the more difficult the more post-

-communist European societies confront themselves in order to reach the understanding of the

core of the tragedy that is the Holocaust with the temptation of absolving themselves through the

difficulties of the transition, or to give up in front of victimizing tendencies, of situating in the

confluences of varied written and re-written historiographies. Coming back to the very beginning

of the Romanian Holocaust means, today, assuming the fact that this episode was written in varied

tones during the last decades of Romanian historiography. Initially, almost all references to

Holocaust were removed, not tolerated or even forbidden and, when resurfaced, they mirrored the

myths of a new generation, absolved of any responsibility, evolving to new comparative approach,

which was minimizing the number of victims and the political decisions of that moment.

We can say that the real democratization of the discourse concerning the Holocaust does not

concomitantly begin with the process of catharsis of the Romanian society, but it is triggered under

our own eyes through the publishing of the Report of the International Commission on the

Holocaust in Romania and the assuming of its recommendations by the political elite and civil

society on the whole.

The report comprises, as a whole, the attempts from the last decade of the previous century of

rewriting the history of the Romanian Holocaust, approaching the study of this tragic episode from

the right perspective. Consequently, the Report has a double valence: it ends a period marked by

singular voices preoccupied by the writing of the Romanian historiography chapter concerning the

Holocaust, by peripheral polemics on the same phenomenon, that were left in shadow in compari-

son with other fundamental debates that the civil society involved into. Therefore, the Report puts

and end to this quite long temporal sequence by approaching difficult and long time avoided

subjects: the evolution of the Jewish question, the internal development of anti-Semitism, the

territoriality of Holocaust, the real succession of historical events, the sinister balance sheet of

victims and political responsibility.

The Report appears as a huge, yet not exhaustive, collecting corpus of varied writings, attempts

of publishing documents, depositions on the Romanian Holocaust initiated by historians, along

with survivors, writers, artists, representatives of mass-media.

392

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

However, one cannot talk about a real debate concerning the implications of Holocaust and this

is the fact that gives the incipient character to the Report of the International Commission on the

Holocaust in Romania. This Report represents a stage in studying and recommending an educa-

tional step in order to preserve the memory of cohabitation with the Jewish community in

Romania.

At the same time, the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania marks the

beginning of an analytical process on the nature of contemporary phenomenon of anti-Semitism

and its connections with the new threats towards the global security.

I do consider that, by appropriating the Report, Romania proves political courage by accept-

ing its own past and reconciling with its own national consciousness, skipping all the steps of the

recent history I just tackled. The report has an outstanding character in a region where Holo-

caust remained a subject of political debate. The assimilation of recommendations by the

Romanian political class, as a whole, demonstrates the irreversibility of the democratization

process, which entitles us to be in a dignified manner an equal member in the family of

European nations.

The Report also leads the way to the components of our national identity that have special

meanings for the centers of Romanian spirituality, especially in Moldova, which have a long

tradition of cohabitation with the Jewish communities. These places gave Romania a large number

of Jewish personalities who had a major contribution to the political, economic, social, scientific

and cultural life, while the fates of others were tragically affected by the pogroms and deportations

of those years.

The professionalism and objectivity of the Report should be noted, as it was conceived on

the basis of the existing archives in Romania. The Romanian and foreign experts who accom-

plished this remarkable scientific work in an extremely short time benefited from the collabo-

ration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Yad Vashem

Institute in Jerusalem, whom we thank to once more. We also want to thank the American

Jewish organizations, especially to Bnai Brith International and American Jewish Commit-

tee, for the constant help they granted for years during Romanias efforts of reconciliation

with its own past.

An important role in facilitating the access to the archives for the editing of the Report

belonged to the agreements signed in the last decade between the United States Holocaust Memo-

rial Museum in Washington and varied Romanian institutions which have archives dating from the

Second World War. These superb efforts must continue in order to ease the implementation of

recommendations contained in the conclusions of the Report. Supporting these efforts and stages

has a huge importance, as they are meant to present the errors of the past and to ensure the

education of the young generations in the spirit of truth.

They are even more necessary as the Jewish community had a tremendous contribution to the

Romanian history, culture, science and economy for centuries.

The tragic experience of the Holocaust constrains us to continue our efforts of the last years

and to assume the responsibilities that we have in the wake of this phenomenon. The education on

Holocaust and the research of this phenomenon will make impossible the reoccurrence of such

tragedies by establishing the spirit of dialogue and tolerance among all members of the Romanian

society, regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliation.

I do believe that the history of Jewish communities, the reenactment of their diverse life before

the Second World War, the history of anti-Semitism and Holocaust are all fields of research and of

stimulating the educational process, which havent been explored till now. It is a new way in a new

Europe and everything comes at a time when the reform in the Middle East is widely debated.

Concepts are changing, they migrate across disciplines at an astonishing speed while we, as an

entire civil society, are the architects of this change. The alterity is a trait of our own national

consciousness, a point of reference and of permanent self defining.

Index

Abraham, Ernö 297

Abraham, József 267, 276

Ábrahám, Samu 274

Abromeit, Franz 271

Achim, Viorel 7, 223-224, 226-231, 233-240,

266

Adamovici, Iulian, Captain 132

Agai, Andor 269

Agapiescu, Colonel 292-293

Agarici, Viorica 287, 303

Agy, Zoltán 276

Aiud 314

Akmechetka 146, 149-150, 179

Aknaszlatina 277, 282

Alba-Iulia 237, 265, 298

Albert, Lázár 269

Aldea, Aurel, General 78

Alecsandri, Vasile 25, 45

Aleºd 271-272

Alexandrei 329

Alexandrescu, Sicã 291

Alexandrovka 295

Alexandrudar (Aleksandrodar) 232

Alexe, Vladimir 354, 356, 365

Alexianu, Gheorghe 51, 139, 141, 147-148,

151, 154-155, 159-161, 165-167, 233, 252,

314, 358

Altshuler, Mordechai 178

Aluniº 268

Amsterdam 173

Ananiev 158

Ancel, Jean 7, 32-33, 36, 41, 51, 53, 58,

61-69, 72, 82, 84-85, 111-112, 114-115, 118,

119-120, 122-126, 128-129, 131-133, 135,

136, 139-140, 149, 152, 154, 157, 162-164,

166, 168-175, 177, 179, 187, 192, 200, 206,

207-209, 211-212, 215-216, 221, 238, 243,

244, 247-249, 251-252, 286, 299, 322, 337,

341, 343

Andreescu, Andreea 313-315, 319

Andreescu, Gabriel 361

Andronic, Dumitru 329

Angelescu, C. 298

Anghel, Constantin 294

Aniþulesei, Mihai 329

Ankara 63, 127, 252

Anop, Alexandru 83

Antal, István 270

Antal, Rozalia 297, 303

Antal, ªtefan 270, 297

Antalffy, Pál 268

Antonescu, Ion, Marshal 10-12, 19-20, 26,

31, 39, 43, 46, 51, 54-55, 57-58, 60-69, 82,

87, 91-93, 99-101, 103-105, 109-122, 124,

125, 127-128, 133-141, 144-145, 147, 151,

152-153, 159, 168-175, 177, 181-186, 188,

190, 192-197, 199-203, 205-216, 219, 223,

225-228, 237-241, 243-254, 283-286, 289,

290, 292, 298, 300, 304, 315-318, 321, 326,

341, 347-350, 358, 360, 362, 383-385

Antonescu, Mihai 61, 63-69, 92, 96, 114,

121-122, 125-127, 134, 137, 140-141, 161,

168, 170-174, 181, 190, 200, 209-211, 215,

219-220, 244, 283-286, 288-290, 292, 298,

299-302, 313-314, 316-325, 327-330, 337,

338, 340-346, 348, 350, 352-353, 355-362,

365-367, 371-373, 375-376, 379, 381-386,

390

Anuþoiu, T. Anghel 303

Apa 271

Apostolescu, Major 155

Appán, Kálmán 296, 297

Appán, Maria 297

Arad 170, 237, 309

Ardeal.

See

Transylvania

Ardeleanu, Ion 321

Ardud 271

Arendt, Hannah 72

Argeº 214, 230

Argetoianu, Constantin 42

Arimia, V. 321

Aronson, Ronald 369

396

INDEX

Atachi 139

Atanasescu, Constantin, General 82

Athens 75, 301

Atudorei, Dumitru 329

Auschnitt, Max 293

Auschwitz 270, 275, 278, 301-302, 336, 338,

345, 351, 362, 382

Australia 253

Austria 20, 173, 174, 250, 256

Austro-Hungary 21, 32, 255, 258

Averescu, Alexandru, Marshal 29-30, 32, 298

Avital, Colette 7

Azov Sea 165

Bacãu 200, 216, 248, 303

Baia Mare 263, 270-272

Baia Sprie 272

Baker, Andrew 7

Baky, László 260

Balanovka 145

Balkans 253

Balla, Lt. Col. 275

Balogh, Károly 272

Balotescu, Gheorghe, Major 329

Balta 142-144, 167, 177, 231, 233-235, 239,

296

Balta Verde 239

Baltic Sea 73-74

Banat 20, 81, 215, 284, 292

Band 273

Bandel, David 126

Banila 293

Bányai, Pál 275

Barábas, Andor 275

Barbãlatã, Malca 158

Barbul, Gheorghe 60, 82, 114

Barcan, Colonel 384

Barlaconschi Moroºanu, Paraschiva 329

Bardèche, Maurice 362, 364

Barozzi, Gheorghe, General 319

Baruch, Bernard 94

Basarabeanu, Gheorghe 172

Batiz 271

Bauer, Yehuda 368

Baum 291

Bãcani 293

Bãgulescu, General 93

Bãiaº, Maria 303

Bãiaº, Vasil 303

Bãiþa 268

Bãlan, Nicolae, bishop 252, 286, 301

Bãlãceanu 152

Bãleanu, Ion 93, 329

Bãlteanu, Mircea 292

Bãlþi 66, 78, 82, 106, 130-132, 219, 327, 343

Bãneasa 292

Bãrãscu, Constantin 294

Bãrãgan 225

Bãsescu, Traian 17

Bârlad 25, 216, 293

Bârsana 276

Beceanu, Dumitru 287, 303

Bechi, Filip, Major 132

Beclean 269

Beddie, J.S. 320

Bedö, Géza 274

Begoslova, Agnia 291

Beiler, Miller 114

Beiuº 293

Belgium 174, 344, 351

Belgrade 69, 75

Belzec 11, 67-69, 169-171, 249, 383

Bemberger-Stemmann, Sabine 58

Bender 106

Benditer, I. 58

Benjamin, Lya 7, 41, 50, 52-54, 66, 72, 81,

134, 138-139, 145, 182, 186, 200, 210, 212,

247, 286, 294, 358

Benoist, Alain 366

Benoschofsky, Ilona 262

Berbeºti 276

Bercovici, Ely 104

Berecki, Ernö 268

Berentes, László 272

Berettyóújfalu 272

Berezovka 147, 153-168, 178-179, 231, 233,

234, 246, 248, 250, 296, 382

Bergdorf 158

Berindei, Dan 379

Beriº, Liviu 7

Berlin 12, 23, 35, 39, 41, 53, 57, 59-62, 64,

66-67, 69, 113, 161, 164, 170-171, 173-174,

246, 250, 301-302, 319-320, 327, 353-354,

385

Bernadovka 164

Berºad 250

Bertalan, István 272

Besançon, Alain 378-379

Bessarabia 10, 20-21, 26, 33, 39, 41, 49,

52-54, 59, 63, 65-66, 68, 71-87, 96-100,

106, 120-122, 124, 126-128, 131-142, 145,

146, 150, 158, 162, 169, 173, 175-179, 185,

191, 208-211, 214, 219, 238, 243-245, 247,

397

INDEX

248-249, 251, 253, 256, 284-285, 287-288,

299-300, 319-321, 323, 325-326, 328, 354,

355-356, 367, 372-373, 375-376, 381-385

Betea, Lavinia 337

Bethlen, Béla 268

Beudiu 268-269

Bezidu Nou 273

Bibescu, Martha 295

Bideanu, Augustin 76

Biharia 272

Biharkeresztes 272

Bihor 256, 263, 273, 293

Binder, Alla 312

Binder, Ida 312

Biró, Balázs 275

Bistriþa 263-264, 272, 282, 305-306

Bistriþa-Nãsãud 256, 263, 272

Bivolaru, Mircea, Lieutenant 146

Bixad 271

Black Sea 73, 141, 228, 246

Blãnaru, Spiru 360

Blânduþ, Constantin 329

Bobâlna 269

Bobango, Gerald J. 36

Bobric 145

Boca, Valerian 85

Bocancea, Gheorghe 329

Bocicoiu Mare 277

Bocskor, Loránt, Colonel 274

Bodoran, Nicolae 297

Boér, Endre 270-271

Bogdana 294

Bogdan Vodã 277

Bogdanovka 145-150, 153, 157, 178-179, 385

Bogopolski 155

Bohemia 173-174, 250

Böhm, Johann 59

Boia, Lucian 379

Boldizsár, Pál 268

Bolivia 102

Bolliac, Cezar 24-25

Bonda, István 274

Borbély, Kálmán 272

Borcescu, Traian 120-121

Borgida, József 271

Borod 272

Boroº, Ioan, Captain 85

Boroºneu Mare 275

Borºa 268, 277, 297

Bossy, Raoul 72

Botez, Ion, commissar 329

Botez, Stroe 313

Botiza 277

Botoº, Ilie 326

Botoºani 248, 392

Bott, Ilona 297

Braham, Randolph L. 7, 258-262, 264, 267,

268, 270-373, 276-280, 283, 285, 289, 298,

302, 314, 335, 338, 348-349, 373

Brahaº, Cornel 366

Braºov 303

Bratislava 280

Bratslav 165, 166

Braun, Alexandru 291

Bravicea 106

Brãila 23, 292

Brãileanu, Traian 93

Brãtescu-Voineºti, Ion Al. 92

Brãtianu, C.I.C. 190, 238, 246, 286, 299-300,

323-324

Brãtianu, Gheorghe 30, 39-40

Briceni (Brichany) 106, 130-131, 135, 312

Brisk, rabbi 309

Broscãuþi 129

Broºteanu, Emil, Colonel 156, 163

Broºteni (Broshteny) 311

Brotea, Dumitru, Major 326

Brunschvig, Leon 90

Bruter, Lev 311

Bucharest 7, 12, 17, 23, 29, 31, 35, 38-39,

42, 54, 60-63, 65-66, 74-75, 98, 100-101,

104, 110-114, 118, 120, 122, 124-126, 133,

154, 156, 159, 163-165, 173, 189, 195-196,

200, 209, 220-221, 225, 240, 250, 283, 286,

287, 290-292, 294-296, 298, 300-301, 304,

307-309, 313-314, 316, 321, 326-327, 329,

335-343, 346-349, 352-358, 360, 362-366,

370, 373, 375, 377-380, 383, 385, 389

Buchsweiler, Meir 158-159, 162, 164

Buciumi 270

Budapest 264, 268, 270, 272, 280, 297, 299,

301

Budeºti 276

Budineþ 129

Buduca, Ioan 354, 364

Buftea 298

Bug 10, 66, 138-139, 142-150, 158-162, 165,

166-167, 169, 177, 231, 234-235, 237-238,

244, 323, 383

Buhuºi 251

Bukovina 10, 20, 21, 26, 41, 49, 51, 63, 65,

66, 68, 71, 74-75, 81, 84, 86-87, 96, 106,

119-121, 126-129, 132-135, 138-140, 142,

145-146, 158, 162, 173, 175-179, 208-211,

398

INDEX

219, 238, 243-245, 247-248, 251, 285, 287,

288, 293, 295, 298-300, 319-321, 323, 373,

376, 381-385

Bulayeshty 312

Bulgaria 68, 75, 173-174, 328, 382

Bumbeºti 118

Bunaciu, Avram 313-314

Bungur (forest) 264, 268-269

Buruianã, Ovidiu 335

Butz, Arthur 362

Buza 268

Buzatu, Gheorghe 321, 348, 350, 355-359,

361, 367

Buzãu 303

Caftangioglu, Vintilã Horia 319

Cahul 106

Cairo 252

Cajal, Nicolae 356

Cajal Marin, Irina 7

Calafeteanu, Ion 173-174, 250, 299, 301

Caler, Leny 291

Calmuº, Vasile 292

Calotescu, Corneliu, General 139-140, 244

Camboulives, Bernard 365

Campus, Eliza 195

Canada 164

Cancicov, Mircea 318

Captaru, Dumitru, Colonel 122, 319, 329

Captaru, Nicolae 120, 123-124

Caracaº, Nicolae 325-326

Caraºeu 271

Carei 270-271, 297

Carlyle 94

Carmilly-Weinberger, Moshe 268, 289, 298,

299, 308

Carol al II-lea, King 10, 32, 36, 39-40, 42-44,

46, 48, 50-52, 72, 76, 80-81, 83, 86-87, 110,

116, 182, 196, 320-321, 342

Carp, Horia 35

Carp, Matatias 46, 66, 109, 111, 113, 115, 118,

122-123, 126, 129, 143, 179, 201, 209, 131,

133, 136, 140, 143, 149, 152, 163-164, 166,

167, 175-177, 179, 194-196, 200-201, 208,

210-211, 243-244, 247, 251, 290, 329, 336,

337, 342

Carp, P.P. 24

Carp, Valentin 294

Carp, Vasile, Major 84

Carpathians 77, 278

Carpatho-Ruthenia (Kárpátalja) 256, 261-262,

265, 276, 278-279

Cartaica 163

Catanã, Maria 304

Catousea 163

Caucasus 67, 165

Cazacu, Matei 358

Cãlãraºi (Bessarabia) 106, 325

Cãlãraºi (Ilfov) 112, 119, 126, 360

Cãlinescu, Armand 42-43, 46, 50, 52

Cãrbuneanu, Flori 291

Cãuºeni (Kaushany) 311

Câmpeanu, Radu 352

Câmpina 200

Câmpulung 138, 186

Câmpulung de Tisa 277

Câmpulung Moldovenesc 112, 186

Câmpulung-Muscel 360

Cârlibaba 77

Cârnova 132

Ceauºescu, Ilie 347

Ceauºescu, Nicolae 90, 283, 339, 342, 345,

347, 353, 355, 356

Cefa 272

Cehei 270

Cehu Silvaniei 270

Cepeleuþi-Hotin 131

Cepleanu, General 292, 295

Cepleanu, Lieutenant 295

Cercavschi-Jelita, Emanoil 148, 160-161

Cercel, Dumitru (alias Cudi, Tigrel) 329

Ceremuº 77

Cernãuþi 41, 68, 78-79, 82, 85, 100, 129, 131,

143, 166, 169, 177, 200, 210, 218-219, 248,

283, 289, 295, 299, 304-305, 307, 327

Cetatea Albã 78-79, 82, 128, 131

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 34

Chelcea, Ion 225

Chiochiº 268-269

Chiper, Ioan 106

Chiriacescu, Mihai, Colonel 86

Chirnoagã, Platon 71, 319

Chiºinãu 76-79, 82, 97-98, 106, 124, 131,

136-137, 146, 175, 200, 210, 219, 245, 312,

326-327, 343, 365, 375

Churchill, Winston 94, 367

Ciano, Galeazzo 42, 93, 256

Cihrin 163

Cimiºlia 106

Cimpoieºi, Gheorghe 329

Ciobanu, Ion (alias Bãlteanu) 329

Ciobanu, Vasile 59, 60

399

INDEX

Cioflâncã, Adrian 7, 369

Cioran, Emil 47-49

Ciornei, Filorian 329

Cireº 129

Ciubotãraºu, Dumitru 329

Ciuc 256, 263, 273, 275-276

Ciucã, Marcel-Dumitru 72, 225, 247, 313,

318

Ciucea 268

Ciudei 84, 129, 293

Ciupercã, Ioan 7, 58

Ciupercã, Nicolae 151

Ciurea 154

Clejan, Herman 209, 249, 251

Climãuþi-Soroca 131

Clinton, Hilary 372

Cluj 237, 256, 262-265, 267-269, 273, 280,

281-282, 289, 297-299, 305, 307-309, 313,

314, 360, 363, 365, 380

Coca-Niculescu 152

Coculescu, General 319

Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 28-29, 35, 37, 39,

42-48, 50, 110, 114, 253, 329, 365

Codrescu, I.C. 25

Cohen, Shari J. 333

Coja, Ion 356-358, 360, 372-373, 376

Cojoc, Gheorghe 303

Comãneºti 84

Constantin, Ion 71

Constantinescu, Alexandru, Colonel 288

Constantinescu, Constantin (Atta) 318

Constantinescu, Dumitru (alias Albescu) 329

Constantinescu, Emil 374-375

Constantinescu, Gabriel 366

Constantinescu, Miron 340-342, 344

Constantinescu, Silvia 364

Constantiniu, Florin 71, 74-75

Conta, Vasile 25, 45

Copalnic-Mãnãºtur 271

Corneºti 77

Coruþ, Pavel 367

Cosãuþi 139, 176

Coslav 135

Cosmovici, Horia 318

Costea, Emil, Lieutenant 130

Costeºti 129

Coºbuc, George 32

Coºtina 84

Coºtiui 277

Cotmani 131

Cotonea 163

Courtois, Stéphane 369, 376, 378-379

Covaci, Maria 340-345, 350, 353

Covasna 275

Cracow 278

Craidorolt 271

Crainic, Nichifor 35-38, 48, 53, 92-93, 96, 116

Craiova 118, 239, 291, 365, 380

Crasna 270

Crãciun, Ana 306

Crãciun, Pavel 306

Crãciunel 277

Creianu, Gheorghe 318

Cretzianu, Alexandru 76, 79

Crimea 158-159

Cristea, Miron, Patriarch 36, 50

Cristescu, Eugen 66, 122, 126, 314

Cristescu, Gheorghe 329

Cristi, Sergiu Vladimir, Major 319

Cristian, C.S. 298

Cristiniuc, Leon 329

Criºana-Maramureº 21

Croatia 68, 173-174

Csáky, István 256

Csegezi, Károly 270-271

Csenger 271

Csengeri, Mayer 274

Csóka, László 270-271

Csordácsics, Jenö 275

Cuciubã, Traian 304

Cuciubã, Traian (son) 304

Cudznea 163

Culcer, Dan 378

Culianu, Ioan Petru 356

Cupºa, Ion 340-341, 343

Curticãpeanu, V. 32

Cuza, A.C. 10, 27-29, 31-45, 47, 62, 81, 102,

116, 123, 329, 384

Cuza, Alexandru Ioan 23

Cuza, Gheorghe 40, 384

Cuzin, Alexandru 319

Czarist Empire (Russian Empire) 20, 81

Czechoslovakia 58, 68, 255-256, 328

Czeisberger, Péter 272

Dagani, Arnold 166

Dallin, Alexander 150-152

Dalnic 151-153, 178, 314

Danube 26, 225, 228, 320

Danzig, Samu 277

Darabani 219

Darvas, Mór 274

Davidescu, Gheorghe 75, 173, 179, 250

400

INDEX

Davidescu, P., Colonel 140

Davidescu, Radu 140, 162, 169, 173, 179,

244, 245

Dawidowicz, Lucy S. 182

Dãdãrlat, Dumitru 329

Dãnescu-Piºcoci, George 365-367

Dârja 268

Deák, István 335, 370

Déak, Veronika 297

Debreczeni, Miklós 272

Degrelle, Léon 351

Dej 264, 268-269, 282, 297-298, 303, 305

Deleanu 152

Deletant, Dennis 179

Deményi, N. 270-271

Demusca, Letiþia 306

Derebcin 307

Derecske 272

Désaknai, Miklós 269

Deutsch, Ernö 270

Dianu, Romulus 94-95

Dimitriu 294

Dimitrov, Gheorghi (Dimitroff, Georgi) 335,

338, 347

Dincã, Ilie 239

Dinu, Nicolae 301

Dinu Gheorghiu, Mihai 7

Dinulescu, Radu 244, 389

Dnieper 134, 138, 253

Dniester 10, 26, 77, 98-99, 133, 135-136,

138, 140, 142, 146, 158, 172, 176, 229,

236, 238, 240, 244, 246, 249, 294, 337,

343, 383

Dobre, Bãnicã 47

Dobre, Florica 72

Dobrian, Constantin 322

Dobrinescu, Valeriu Florin 71, 75, 259

Dobrogea 20

Docan, Gheorghe 318

Dogan, Matei 39

Dogaru, N., Captain 239

Dolj 119

Domanovka 146-150, 153, 157, 179, 385

Don 67

Donner (family) 308

Dorian, Emil 295

Dorian, Marguerite 295

Dornescu, Vucol 295

Dorneºti 112, 129

Dorohoi 53, 84-85, 119, 124, 138, 140, 143,

176-177, 186, 210-211, 219, 238, 248, 250,

251, 327, 354, 381, 384

Dragomir, Alexandru, Under-Lieutenant 85

Dragomireºti 276

Dragoº, Titus 186, 189

Drãgan, Iosif Constantin 71, 115, 127, 348,

350, 353, 359, 363

Drãghici, Alexandru 313

Dresden 351

Drimer, Carol 295

Drobeta-Turnu-Severin 50, 360

Drumont, Edouard 34, 98

Dubossary 158-159

Duca, Ion 46, 48

Dudás, János 275

Dudeºti 98, 113

Dueben 131

Duke, David 333, 363

Duma, Ioan Cezar 183

Dumitra 272

Dumitrescu, Vasile 364

Dumitrescu-Timicã, Silvia 291

Dumitru, Adrian 304

Dvoreanka 163

Easterman, A.L. 40

Edelmann, David 294

Edineþ 82, 130, 137

Eftimie, Vasile, platoon leader 132

Ehrenburg, Ilia 149, 154, 156-157, 165, 336

Eichmann, Adolf 68-69, 127, 144, 161, 170,

171, 177, 259, 264, 278-279

Elekes, Ferenc 269-270

Elena, Queen Mother 216, 239, 286, 288,

290, 304

Eley, Geoff 371

Eliade, Mircea 47-49, 54, 90

Elias, Alexandru 7

Eminescu, Mihai 22, 26-27, 32, 45

Endre, László 260-261, 263-264, 267-268,

271-276, 278, 280

Endrödi, Barnabás 272

Enescu, C. 40

Enescu, George 238, 291

Enescu, Ion D. 318

Engelberg, Oszkar 269

England 57, 81, 94, 252, 336

Eskenasy, Victor 302, 338, 347-348, 379

Estonia 73

Eugen, Radian 99

Europe 24, 28, 40, 53, 55, 57, 61, 65, 67, 69,

73, 75, 90, 94-96, 98, 101, 107, 114-115,

401

INDEX

224, 250, 255-256, 281, 313, 334, 336, 353,

358, 369-370

Evans, Richard E. 364, 371

Fabricius, Wilhelm 38-39, 42-43, 62

Farber, Grigoriy 310

Farkas (family) 307

Farkas, Lina 307

Farkas, Pál 276

Farkas, Rozalia 304

Farkas, ªtefan 304

Farcaº, Elisabeta 297

Faurisson, Robert 351, 362, 365, 367

Fãcãoaru, Gheorghe 224

Fãcãoaru, Iordache 224

Fãleºti 106, 130-131, 134

Fãlticeni 131, 200

Fãtu, Mihai 340, 342, 344, 346

Feder, Emil 292

Fehér, András 275

Fehérgyarmat 271

Fejér, János 277

Fekete, József 269

Fekete, Maria 269

Felvidék 256

Fenichel, József 268

Ferenczi, Béla 275

Ferenczy, László, Lt. Col. 260, 263-264, 278,

279

Filderman, Wilhelm 28, 69, 83, 101, 103-104,

117, 120, 138, 193, 200, 205-211, 215-220,

247-239, 252, 298, 357-359, 376

Filó, Ferenc 274

Filotti, Eugen 301

Finkelstein, Norman 368

Finland 73, 249

Finþi, Alexandru 291

Fischer, József 268

Fisher, Julius 142

Fizeºu Gherlii 268

Fleischman (family) 305

Flondor, Iancu 295

Flondor, ªerban 295

Florescu, Constanþa 304

Floreºti 130-131

Florian, Alexandru 7, 338

Focºani 216

Földes 297

Földes, Dezideriu 297

Forgács, József 267

France 40, 42, 51-52, 54, 57, 59, 60, 76, 81,

174-175, 250, 256, 302, 320-321, 328, 358,

363, 377-378

Franco Bahamonde, Francisco 47

Frankfurt 280

Freund, Solomon 297

Freund, Zigmund 297

Frigan, Major 128

Friling, Tuvia 7

Frunzã, Victor 364

Fuchs, rabbi 297

Furet, François 335-336, 378

Gaáli, Ernö 276

Gafencu, Grigore (Grégoire Gafenco) 51-52,

71-72, 74

Galaction, Gala 291-292

Galaþi 53, 82, 84-85, 97, 131, 200, 216, 354

Gálfy, Dezsö 274

Galicia 33

Galperin (family) 310

Gamberto, Henrietta 290

Gamberto, Teodora 290-291

Garamvolgyi, Albert (Béla) 269

Garaudy, Roger 352, 362-363, 365, 377

Gaskó, Mikulas 282

Gavriliþã 326

Gavrilovici, Constantin 327

Gay, Peter 371

Gayda, Virginio 94, 101

Gaysin 166

Gayssot 363

Gazda, András 269-270

Gãvãnescu, I. 169

Gâdea, ªtefan 239

Gecse, József 269

Georgescu, C., Captain 79, 147

Georgescu, Corneliu 314

Georgescu, D.C. 20

Georgescu, Grigore, General 318

Georgescu, Teohari 313

Georgescu, Vlad 339, 347

Gergely, Gyula 271

Germany 9-12, 19, 28, 30, 32, 38-43, 46-47,

51-55, 57-62, 64, 68-69, 73-76, 86, 87, 94,

101, 113, 116, 127, 164, 173-174, 207, 214,

215, 225, 246, 250, 252-253, 255-256, 262,

283-285, 302, 219, 321, 324-325, 333, 337,

338-340, 343-345, 349, 351-352, 354, 355,

358, 365, 367, 371, 381-385

402

INDEX

Gerota, D. 295

Ghelmegeanu, Mihail 83

Gheorghe, Ion, General 319, 359

Gheorghe, Petre I. 288, 304

Gheorghe, Teodor 301

Gheorghieni 275

Gheorghiu, Ioan 294

Gherla 263, 266-269

Ghermani, Dionisie 339

Ghiolu, Stavri 318

Ghiþescu, Alexandru 304

Ghiþulescu, Toma Petre 318

Gigurtu, Ion 37, 46, 52-53, 76, 86-87, 182,

185, 192

Gilãu 268

Gingold, Nandor 212-214, 216, 316

Giuleºti 276

Giurescu, Constantin C. 340-342, 344

Giurescu, Dinu C. 71-72, 105, 179, 340-342,

344, 379

Giurgiu 293

Glasner, Akiba 268

Glass, Hildrun 7, 59, 316

Glod 277

Glogojanu, Ion, General 151

Glückstahl 158

Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de 34

Göbl, Carol 24

Godean, Bebe 291

Godean, Victor 291

Goebbels, Joseph 62-63, 67, 101, 140

Goga, Octavian 10, 19, 21-22, 25-26, 29-33,

37-44, 51, 59, 62, 81, 91-92, 97, 116-117,

185, 192, 223, 253, 284

Gold, Hugo 129

Goldstein, Ernö 274

Goldstein, Natan 123

Golea, Traian 367

Golta 146-149, 158, 167, 177-179, 231, 233,

234-235, 240, 246, 294, 304, 382

Goma, Paul 375-376, 378

Gomelfarb, Naum 311

Gomelfarb, Raisa 311

Gomoiu, Victor 300

Göring, Hermann 63, 319

Gorsky, Vasile 233

Gösi, Istvan 275

Grabviþi 142

Gradovka 163

Graf, Jürgen 362

Gramatiuc, Aurel 329

Graur, Nicuºor 286

Great Britain 40, 42, 51, 94, 253, 299

Greater Romania 19-20, 22, 27, 29, 33, 44,

48, 54, 175, 284

Greece 253

Gregorian, Alexandru 319

Grigoriefca 133

Grigoriopol 312

Grobman, Alex 334

Gross, Jan T. 358, 370

Gross-Liebenthal 158

Grossman, Vasili 149, 154, 156-157, 165, 336

Grossman-Grozea, A. 316

Grosu, Gheorghe 329

Grosulovo 219, 296, 305

Grosz, Bandi 305

Grosz, Rozalia 297, 305

Groza, Petru 317

Grozdea, Petre 313

Gruia, Ion V. 54, 182

Grünberg, Matias (Willman) 316

Guillaume, Pierre 362

Guleº, Ovidiu 365-366

Gün, Helena 297

Gunther, Franklin Mott 140

Gura Cãinari 131, 329

Gura Humorului 219

Gura-Kamenca 130

Gurvits, Benyamin 312

Gurvits, Ita 312

Gurvits, Manya 312

Gurvits, Yefim 312

Gutman, Yisrael 217

Gutman, Tzwi 114

Gyapay, László 264

Gyr, Radu 47, 291, 319

Habsburg Empire 81

Hacohen, Menachem 7

Haft, Cynthia J. 217

Haifa 353

Haimovici, Jean 125

Haimovici, Max 165

Hainsworth, Paul 366

Haiti 253

Halberstadt 159

Halcintz 142

Hamburg 351

Handler (family) 303

Handler, Isidor 297

Haracsek, József 271-272

Harwood, Richard 362, 364

403

INDEX

Hasdeu, Bogdan-Petriceicu 25, 45

Hatmanu, Dumitru 129

Hauffe, Arthur, General 65-66, 138, 147, 160

Haynes, Rebecca 58

Hâncu, Dumitru 286

Heinen, Armin 31, 44, 59

Held, Joseph 347

Helmer, József 274

Helsing, Jan van 363

Hendler, Roza 304

Henner, Ferenc 274

Hermann, Dezsö 268

Herseni, Traian 50

Herþa 71-73, 75-76, 80, 86, 129, 210, 219

Heydecker, Joe J. 320

Hida 268

Hideg (family) 297

Hilberg, Raul 131, 179, 382, 385

Hillgruber, Andreas 42, 58, 69, 253

Himmler, Heinrich 62-63, 66, 68, 109, 125,

126-127, 159, 253, 319

Hiroshima 351

Hirsch-Schnabel, Olga 297

Hitler, Adolf 10, 19, 34, 38, 42, 47, 53, 55,

60-63, 65, 67, 69, 93-95, 113, 116, 122,

127, 134, 136, 138, 140-141, 168, 170-172,

207, 220, 244, 252-253, 256, 259, 279, 284,

320, 323-324, 327, 334-345, 349, 354, 363,

365, 367, 386

Hîj, Metzia 305

Hîj, Simion 305

Hlihor, Constantin 71, 75

Hliniþa 129

Hoare, Reginald 42

Hodoº, Alex. 96, 98, 101-102

Hoettl, W. 110

Hoffmeyer, Horst, commander 159, 161, 165

Hoffnungstal 158

Hogea, Vlad 359

Holland 174, 250

Hollóssy-Kuthy, Lajos 267

Höpfner, Hans-Paul 57

Horia, Vintilã 48, 319

Horthy, Miklós 207, 259-260, 324, 346, 349,

353

Horváth, Ádám 274

Hossu, Iuliu, bishop 298

Hotea, Mihai 301

Hotin 78, 82, 129-131, 175-177

Howard, Harry M. 58

Hrehorciuc, Constantin 293

Hriþcu, Petre 83

Hudiþã, Ioan 286

Huedin 267-268

Hullmann, Ferenc 277

Hungary 10, 20-21, 32, 68, 87, 96, 172-174,

201, 207, 255-262, 265-266, 270-272, 276,

277-280, 284, 289, 293, 306-307, 315, 320,

321, 335, 344-346, 352, 382

Huºi 200, 216, 292

Iacobescu, Major 294

Iacobici, Iosif, General 128, 151-152, 295,

297, 318

Iacov, Metropolitan of Moldavia 36

Ialomiþa 112, 119, 209

Iamandi, Colonel 294

Iampol 131, 135-136, 139, 177

Iancu, Carol 22-26, 29, 31, 33, 37, 41

Ianoºi, Ion 370

Iasca 139

Iaºi 10, 33, 44, 66, 99, 105, 119-126, 179,

196, 200, 206, 208-209, 216, 218, 243-244,

248, 285, 287, 294-295, 298, 303, 306-308,

315, 319, 321, 323-324, 327-329, 336, 340,

341-342, 346, 350, 353-355, 357-360, 376,

380-382, 385, 389

Iaºinschi, Victor 112, 314

Ibrãileanu, Garabet 27, 398

Icloda 268-269

Iecea Mare 309

Iernuþei 275

Ieud 277

Ileanda 269

Ileanda Mare 298

Iliescu, Dumitru, Lt. Col. 326

Iliescu, Ion 7, 9, 15, 361, 367, 374

Iliescu, M., Colonel 164

Iliescu, Teodor 149

Iliescu, Victor, General 318

Ililescu, General 143

Illinyi, László 276

Ilva Mare 272

Ilva Micã 272

Imrédy, Béla 277

Imre-Emerich, Jonas 307

Inoteºti 126

Ioan, Ion I. 313

Ioanid, Radu 7, 44, 53, 72, 179, 185, 194,

200, 230, 233, 288, 293-294, 301-302, 315,

316, 343, 375

Ion, forester 325

Ionescu, Alexandru, Lt. Col. 128

404

INDEX

Ionescu, Constantin Micandru, Lt. Col. 329

Ionescu, Mihail E. 7, 102, 113, 227, 336, 379

Ionescu, Nae 48-49

Ionescu, Radu, Captain 152

Ionescu, ªtefan 94

Ionescu, Tudor 366-367

Ionescu, Vasile 7

Ionescu-Quintus, Mircea 360

Ioniþã, Gh.I. 338

Ionniþiu, Mircea 362

Iordache, Roxana 376

Iordachi, Constantin 238

Iordan, Constantin 60

Iordan, Iorgu 295

Iordãneºti 129

Iorga, Nicolae 27-30, 33, 46, 48, 96, 110, 116,

356

Iosub, Ghiþã 329

Irving, David 362, 364

Isãceanu, Vasile 316

Iscovici, Manase 125

Ismail 82

Isopescu, Modest 146-150, 167, 178, 240

Isprãvnicelu, Constantin, sergeant 294

Israel 11, 68, 289, 347, 351, 353, 361, 374

Israel, Golda 149

Istrate, Gh. 47

Italy 10, 40, 42, 47, 68, 75, 81, 101, 173, 207,

215, 256, 259, 348

Iunian, G. 40

Ivangorod 165

Iványi, András 268

Izsaak 297

Jadova Nouã 129

Jadova Veche 129

Jakobovics, Lajos 270

Jakobovits, Mór 277

Jaross, Andor 262

Jávor, Ernö 274

Jelavich, Barbara 23

Jerusalem 18, 68, 170-171, 280, 286, 392

Jibou 270

Jienescu, Gheorghe, General 318

Jijia 77

Jilava 46, 110, 114, 342, 360

Jmerinka 145, 177

John Paul II, Pope 351

Johnson, Paul 370

Jonas, Ilona 307

Joós, Andor 274

Jordan Valley 354

Jósika, János 269

Joszovits, Lipót 277

Józan, Miklós 265

Jucica-Nouã 327

Judt, T. 358, 370

Jugastru 167

Julievka 163

Juralevka 168

Kaganovici 96

Kálmán, G. Szentpály, Lieutenant 275

Kameneþ-Podolski 259

Kamenev, Lev Borisovich Rosenfeld 95

Kamina Balka 235

Kandel (family) 306

Kansteiner, Wulf 368

Karadjea, Constantin 302

Karady, Victor 90-91

Kareþchi, Aurel 338, 340-345, 350, 353

Karsai, Elek 262

Kassa 278-279, 281

Kassay, János 269

Kasztner 268

Katalin-Catherina 307

Katarzi 158

Katz, M. 142

Kazaciovka 295

Keitel, Wilhelm, Field Marshal 65, 172

Kemecsey, István 270

Kenyérmezõ 265

Keszner, Jenö 277

Killinger, Manfred von 64-66, 69, 93, 136,

159, 161, 168, 173, 214, 250

Kirovograd 265

Kirpichnaya Slobodka 310

Kiss, László, Lt. Col 274

Klein, Gyula 268

Kligenfuss 173

Kogan, Haim 148

Kogãlniceanu, Mihail 22, 25, 45

Ko³akowski, Leszek 90

Kolosovka 167-168

Komáromi, László, Major 275

Konotkauti 142

Konya, Captain 274

Konyuk, József 277

Körmendi, Géza 274

Koslinski, Gheorghe, Admiral 318

Kovacs, Lajos (Neumann) 305

Kozlov, Lieutenant-General 79

405

INDEX

Kozma, István 274

Krasznai, László 270

Krausnick, Helmut 125

Krausz, Ferenc 277

Kriniski 163

Kristoffel, Franz, Captain 166

Krivoi-Ozero 145-146, 304

Kuales, Norbert 272

Kuller, Harry 313, 316, 318-319

Kun, Béla 96

Kurievca 167

Kutshurgan 158

Lacu 268

Ladijin 143

Laignel-Lavastine, Alexandra 375

Lajos, Peter 305

Lakadár, József 269

Lakatos, András 268

Landau 147, 158-159, 162, 233

Lanzmann, Claude 252

Latvia 73

Laþiu, Aurel 294

Laur, Ion (alias Jorj) 329

Lavy, Théodor 131, 205, 210

Lazãr, Constantin 329

Lazuri 297

Lãpuº 269, 307

Lãpuºna 133, 326

Leahu, Gheorghe 23

Léb, Zsigmond 268

Lecca, Radu 39, 67-69, 118-119, 170-171, 173,

199, 201, 213-216, 314, 316, 373, 384

Lechinþa 271-272

Léderer, Dezsö 274

Leeb, Johannes 320

Lehnár, Zsigmond 269

Leibovici, H. 313

Leitman (family) 306

Leitner, Sándor 273

Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 95

Leon, Gheorghe 318

Leon, Jack 316

Leordina 277

Leoveanu, Emanoil, General 319

Lepãdãtescu 313

Leþcani-Iaºi 359-360

Leviþchi 327

Levy, Daniel 339

Levy, Robert 339, 370

Lichtenfeld 162, 164

Liebenthal 158

Liiceanu, Gabriel 377-379

Limbenii Noi 137, 343

Lincãuþi 131

Lipcani 106, 129-131

Lipot, Sarkany 297

Lipscani 327

Lipstadt, Deborah 334, 351, 364

Liptai, Dezsö 274

Lisava 292

Lisbon 252

Lisinovka 163

Litman, S.M. 220

Lithuania 73, 166

Little Siret 77

Liubashivka 146

Livada 268

Livada Micã 271

Livezeni 118

Locusteanu, Colonel 293

Loghin (prefect of Berezovka) 160, 166

Lóhr, Tivadar, Lt. Col. 276

London 55, 246, 323, 347, 364, 366, 368,

370, 384

Lovas, Irma 275

Lovinescu, Monica 375-378

Lower Bistriþa 272

Lozan, Paramon 287, 310

Lozan, Tamara 287, 310

Lubaº, Rudolf 329

Lublin 170

Luchian, Constantin 292

Lucincic 142

Lucineþ 142

Ludo, I. 35

Luduºanu, V. 155-156

Lueger, Karl 32

Lujerdiu 268

Lulay, Leó 278

Lunca Bradului 275

Lungu, Corneliu Mihai 7

Lupaºcu, Gheorghe 83

Lupescu, Anghel 301

Lupu, Constantin, Colonel 121-122, 124, 244,

329

Lupu, Dimitrie 298

Lupu, Nicolae, dr. 138, 247, 286, 298, 300,

324

Lustig, Oliver 346

Luther, Martin 66, 68, 170-171

Lvov 141, 165

Lyon 175

406

INDEX

Macartney, C.A. 257

Macici, Nicolae, General 151, 245, 314

Madagascar 102

Madgearu, Virgil 46

Magherescu, Gheorghe, Colonel 359

Maiorescu, Theo 94

Maitova 163

Májay, Ferenc 274

Majsai, Tamás 258

Mamina, Ion 72, 75

Manea, Vasilica 72

Mangra, Gheorghe 297

Manic 268

Maniu, Iuliu 32, 127, 170, 216, 243, 246,

286, 298-300, 308, 323-324

Manoilescu, Grigore 319

Manoilescu, Mihail 53, 60, 256

Manolescu, Florin 264

Manolescu, Nicolae 363, 377, 379

Manoliu, Florian 305

Manoliu, Mircea, sergeant 329

Manoliu-Manea, Maria 71

Manuilã, Sabin 20, 175, 227, 291, 358

Mara 276

Maramureº 49, 81, 257, 259, 265, 276-277,

297

Marchenko, Feokla 310

Marchenko, Ivan 310

Marchenko, Leontiy 310

Marchenko, Nikita 310

Marchenko, Nina 310

Marchenko, Tatyana 310

Marcu, Alexandru 311

Mareº, N. 113

Marghita 272

Mariaschin, Daniel S. 7

Marin, ªtefan 309

Marin, Vasile 48

Marina, Mihai 301

Marineasa, Zaharia 365

Marinescu 296

Marinescu, Danubiu, Lt. Col. 329

Marinescu, Floricel 375

Mariska, György, Lt. Col. 269-270

Malines 174

Marmor, Hanna 307

Marrus, M. 336

Márton, Aron, bishop 265, 298

Marton, Ernö 268

Marton, Zsigmond 274

Matei, Bogdan-Ioan 366

Matei, Nicolae 280, 314

Mateiaº 268

Mátészalka 271

Matieº, Emil, Colonel 229

Matievka 167

Mattogno, Carlo 362

Mauthausen 338

Maxim, Emil 297

Mayo, M 313

Mazarini, General 286

Mazur, Ikim 311

Mãlãieºti (Malayeshty) 311

Mãlineanu, Henri 291

Mãlinescu, Aurel, Colonel 294

Mãnãstireanu Ion 329

Mãrãºeºti 292

Mãrculescu, Emilian 305

Mãrculeºti 130-131, 137, 326-327, 329

Mãtãsãreanu 292

Mãtrescu, Florin 376

Mânecuþã, Ion Colonel 132

Mârzescu, George 46

Medieºu Aurit 271

Meggyesi, Lájos 263

Menyhért, Ferenc 268

Mérk 271

Metta, Dumitru 302

Mica 269

Micescu, Istrate N. 42

Michael I, King 216, 303, 314

Micula 271

Middle East 392

Miege, Wolfgang 59

Miercurea-Ciuc 258, 276

Miercurea Nirajului 273

Mihai, Mihai 301

Mihail, Ioan, Captain 124

Mihail, Paul 72

Mihailov, Vasile, staff sgt. 329

Mikhaylovka 163

Mihalache, Andi 339

Mihalache, Ion 286, 299, 324

Mihãilescu, Eugen, slt. 329

Miksa, Kupfer 301

Minei, Nicolae 340, 343, 345, 376

Mirceºti 126

Mircu, Marius 85, 129, 283, 287, 291, 293,

295-296, 298

Mirea, Eugen 291

Mireºu Mare 271

Mirochnik, Semeon 310

407

INDEX

Mirochnik, Yefim 310

Miron, Nicolae 329

Mironescu, C. 99, 100

Miskolc 277

Mitki 145

Mocanu, Constantin 75, 81

Mocanu, Serghie, sgt. maj. 325

Mociulschi, Colonel 112

Moghilev 65, 135-136, 139, 142-143, 167,

219, 294, 296, 307

Moisei 277

Moisescu, Sorin 349

Moisi, Avram 292

Moisin, Ioan 349

Mokra 310

Moldavia 20-23, 29, 36, 41, 84-86, 120-122,

131, 134, 200, 216, 243, 246-247, 250, 252,

383-385

Moldova 95, 99, 100, 310-311, 337, 392

Moldovan, Valeriu 305

Molnár, Ferenc 269

Molnár, Suchi 269

Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich 10, 59, 71,

73-75

Mommsen, Theodor 34

Monaste, Serge 363

Moraru, Dumitru 329

Moravia 173-174, 250

Morduhovici, Mila 152-154

Morgenstern, Joseph 304

Morozovskiy, Aleksandra 310

Morozovskiy, Vitaliy 310

Moscow 71, 73-75, 78, 97, 175, 280, 315-316,

319, 322, 384

Moskovits, József 268

Mostovoye (Mostovoi) 153, 157, 159, 162,

163-165, 167, 267, 250, 296

Motora, Sabin 288, 305

Moþa, Ion 47

Müller, Gustav 170

Müller, Heinrich 68

Munich 60, 65-66, 127, 134, 256

Munkács (Mukacevo) 261, 276, 278-279

Muntenia 20

Muranyi, Rozsi 306

Murãraºu, D. 27

Mureº 273, 360

Mureº-Turda 256, 263, 273-275

Mussolini, Benito 38, 47, 58, 93, 207, 253,

349

Muszyna 278

Muºat, Mircea 71, 346, 348, 350, 353, 359

Muºatescu, Teodor 291

Nadasdia 268

Nagasaki 351

Nagy, Jenö 270-271

Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas M. 31-32, 38-39,

43-44

Nagyilonda 269

Narev 73

Naruja 303

Nasal 268

Nãneºti 276

Nãsãud 272

Nãstase, Lucian 313-316, 319

Nãsturaº, Constantin (Poiana Volburã) 166

Neacºu, Ilie 350, 354

Neagu, Alexandru 318

Neamþ 38

Nedelcu, Florea 38

Nedelyak, Anna 310

Nedelyak, Ivan 310

Negel, Elefterie 97

Negreºti-Oaº 271

Nemerci 142

Nemirov 165-166

Nemoianu, Petre 318

Netea, Vasile 92

Netta, Geron 318

Neumann 305

New York 376

New Zealand 253

Nica, Vasile, Colonel 144

Nicaragua 253

Nicodim, patriarch 209, 301

Nikolaev 147-148, 160, 162, 175, 179, 234

Nikolaevka 153, 160

Nicolau, Mircea 365

Nicolescu, Lenuþa 72

Nicopoi-Strul, Elisabetha 306

Niculae, Petre 318

Niculescu, Constantin, General 137, 175, 177,

286, 292, 318

Niculescu, Gheorghe 239

Nimigea de Jos 272

Nisporeni 287

Nissel 306

Nistoreºti-Vrancea 303

Nits, Aliz 306

Nits, Gyula 306

408

INDEX

Nits, Janos 306

Noica, Constantin 48-49

Nolte, Ernst 364, 371, 378

Nordling, Carl O. 362

Northern Bukovina: 10, 52-54, 71-73, 75-80,

82-84, 86-87, 97, 99, 129, 131, 135, 137,

173, 177, 185, 191, 214, 219, 249, 253, 256,

284, 320, 354-356, 376, 382

Northern Transylvania 10-11, 61, 87, 169, 171,

172, 177, 201, 237, 253, 255-268, 276-281,

283-284, 289, 293, 296-298, 302, 304-309,

314-315, 345, 352, 382

Noua Suliþã 129-130, 133

Nova Candeli 163

Novaya Odessa 160

Novaya-Uman 163

Novak, Franz 278

Noveanu, Vasile 76

Novo America 162-163

Nuremberg 54, 65-66, 183, 207, 280, 316,

318-320, 330, 351-352, 358-359, 367, 376

Nuºfalãu 270

Obersalzberg 113

Obodovka 145

Ocna ªugatag 276

Odessa 11, 78-80, 82, 133, 141, 144-148,

150-164, 167, 175, 177-179, 236, 244-247,

314, 319, 321, 323, 344, 382, 385

Odorheiu 263, 273-274

Ohlendorf 141

Oiºteanu, Andrei 354, 361

Ojtózi, Sándor 268

Ökörmezö 276-277, 280

Olãneºti 139

Old

Regat

(Old Kingdom) 81-84, 117, 127,

186, 199, 209-211, 214, 219, 314

Oldson, William O. 28

Olenici, Dimitrie 288

Olick, Jeffrey K. 339

Oltenia 20, 243

Onceºti 276

Oniºor, Ioana 306

Oniºor, Lazãr 306

Oniºor, Victor 306

Oniºoru, Gheorghe 339, 370

Opaschi, Victor 7

Oppermann, Commissioner General 148, 160,

161

Opriþa, G. 367

Oradea (Nagyvarad) 263-265, 272-273, 281,

282, 296-297, 301, 304, 306, 309, 352, 360

Oraºu Nou 271

Oraviþa 292

Ordentlich, Ferenc 269

Órendi, Gusztáv 272

Orgeyev 312

Orgoványi, József 272

Orhei 133, 211, 327-328

Ornea, Z. 36, 48, 358

Orosz, József 268

Ossobi 175

Osváth, Zoltán 272

Osan, Ioan 297

Otaci 294

Otchakov (Ochakov) 167, 231-233, 235, 310

Oteteleºanu, Henric 318

Oþeºti 104

Ozarineþi 142

Paelungi, ªtefan 306

Paksy-Kiss, Tibor, Colonel 265, 267, 272,

274, 281

Pal (Kudor), Anna 289, 306

Pal, Jeno 306

Palade, Ion, Colonel 139

Palaghiþa, S. 113

Palangeanu, Emil, General 213

Palestine 11, 27, 68, 102, 354, 373

Palty, Sonia 295

Panã, Aurelian 318

Panca 129

Panciu 189, 208

Pandea, Adrian 349

Paneth, József 269, 298

Pantazi, Constantin 72, 314

Panticeu 268

Papacostea, ªerban 379

Papanace, Constantin 314

Papen, von 42

Papp, Géza 267

Papp, János, Colonel 274

Papp, Zoltán Rogozi 270

Paris 23, 51, 320, 365, 376, 378

Parlafes, Gheorghe 329

Pasinca 142

Pasztai, Ernö, Lt. Col. 272

Pauker, Ana 315, 339

Paul, Andrei (Endre Pollák) 280

Paulescu, N.C. 33, 35, 44-45, 47, 54

Pavelescu, Ion 349

Pãdure 157

Pãdureni 268

409

INDEX

Pãiº, Nicolae, Counter-Admiral 318

Pãsãrica, Alexandru 329

Pãtrãºcanu, Lucreþiu 313, 322, 337-338

Pãtrãuþi 129

Pãun, Marin 234

Pãunescu, Adrian 355, 373

Pãunescu, Constantin 296

Pãuºan, Cristina 313

Pântea, Nona 307

Pârlita 130

Peciora 142-143, 145, 385

Pelin, George 311

Pelin, Mihai 71-72, 82, 348

Pelin, Varvara 311

Pella, Vespassian V. 301

Pereplechinskiy, Mariya 311

Pereplechinskiy, Vladimir 311

Persson, Goran 12

Petalã, Marcel, Colonel 128, 154

Péterffy, Jenö, Lt. Col. 265, 273

Pethes, István 269-270

Petrescu, Gheorghe, Colonel 244, 389

Petrescu, Ion C. 318

Petrescu, Teodor, Captain 296

Petrescu, Vasile 295

Petroºani 118, 293

Petrova 277

Petrovici, Grigore 329

Petrovici, Ion 318

Pfefferman, Jenö 270

Piatra-Neamþ 192, 216, 303, 360

Pincas, Josef M. 206

Pintér, Captain 274

Pippidi, Andrei 7, 29, 253, 285, 379

Pir 270

Pirkler, Ernö 270

Piteºti 230, 360

Plasa Nistrului 131

Plãºnilã, Major 125

Ploieºti 200

Pocorni, Egon 307

Pocorni, Nicolina 307

Podoleanca 162-163

Podolsk 259

Podu Iloaiei 126, 209

Podu Roº 295

Poienile de Munte 277

Poienile Izei 276

Poland 52, 67-68, 73, 169-172, 174, 243,

246, 250, 252, 277, 299-300, 328, 383, 385

Polánkai, Géza 275

Poliakov, Léon 89-90

Polichron, Dumitrescu, Colonel 155

Pomescu, A. 96

Pomuþ, Nicoarã 297

Pop (Sãileanu), Aristina 307

Pop, Gheorghe T. 38

Pop, Leonida C. 93

Pop, Maria 307

Pop, Mircea 93

Pop, Nicolaie 307

Pop, Valer 62, 307

Popescu, Cristian Tudor 363

Popescu, Gheorghe 294

Popescu, I.D. 288

Popescu, Ion, Major 163

Popescu, Iorgu, Major 315

Popescu, Lorin 98

Popescu, Marin, General 82, 132

Popescu, Stelian 97

Popescu, Titus, Captain 139

Popescu Lupu, Savin 99

Popescu M\l\ie[ti, I. 36

Popescu-Puþuri, Ion 342

Popilian, Mihail 313

Popoveni 239

Popovici, Bogdan Florin 225, 247

Popovici, Dori 298

Popovici, Mihai 298

Popovici, Traian 177, 283, 289-290, 307

Popoviciu, Aurel 100-101

Popp, Ghiþã 299

Popper, dr. 293

Popper, Karl 90

Pora, Ion 313

Portugal 247

Potopeanu, Gheorghe 318

Pozdnyakova, Yefrosiniya 311

Prague 174

Preda, Marin 348

Predeal 243

Presov 278

Prisãcaru, Dumitru 293

Prislop 77

Profir, Grigore 287, 307

Protopopescu, Ioan 314

Protopopescu, J.D. 35

Prundu Bârgãului 272

Prut 66, 77-79, 84, 96, 99, 119, 129, 133,

200, 243, 320, 325, 337

Pui 268

Puiu, Visarion, bishop 319

410

INDEX

Puti, Alexa 308

Puti, Maria 308

Puti, Todor 308

Quay dOrsay 42

Rademacher 161-162

Radu, Tina 291

Radu-Cernea, Adrian 287, 294

Rahó 276

Raiciu, Ion 313

Ralcu, Ioan, General 82

Ralescu, ªtefan 313

Rapujineþ 131

Rasdelnia 158

Rassinier, Paul 362

Rastadt 161-165

Raºcu, Ioan, General 82

Rauch (brothers) 114

Rauteni 327

Rãdãuþi 138, 186

Rãdulescu 292

Rãdulescu, Bogdan George 366

Rãdulescu, Ilie 101-102

Rãdulescu-Motru, C. 93

Rãstoliþa 275

Rãºcani 137

Rãut 77, 133

Rãuþel 137

Rãuþeni 327

Rãzmeriþã, Alexandru 50, 294

R^bni]a 105, 139, 142, 167, 177, 310-311, 342

Râmniceanu, Iancu Florea 126

Rebreanu, Liviu 97, 291

Rednik, Sándor Gyulafalvi 276-277

Reghin 263-264, 273, 275-276, 282

Remeþi 277

Renan 34

Republic of Moldova 135, 175, 287, 310

Reteag 269

Reuth, Ralf Georg 63

Revel, Jean-François 376, 378-379

Rezina 135, 139, 211

Ribbentrop, Joachim von 10, 53, 59, 61, 64,

65, 69, 71, 73-74, 75, 93, 125, 127, 133,

136, 171-172, 256, 319

Richter, Gustav 60, 64, 66-69, 144-145, 168,

169171, 173-174, 177, 212, 214, 253, 300

Ricsóy-Uhlarik, Béla 261

Rhineland 255

Rintelen, Emil von 171

Rioºanu, Alexandru, General 65, 100, 135

Ripeaki 163

Ritoc, Alexandru 297

Ritter, Karl 136

Ritter, Robert 224

Rhodesia 102

Rodna 272

Rodna Mountains 77

Rogger, Hans 31, 44

Rogozna 145

Rohosna 327

Roller, Mihail 338-339

Rome 42, 301

Roman 121, 126, 131-132, 169, 216, 287,

303, 325

Roman, Elly 291

Romanaþi 119

Romania 7, 9, 10-13, 15, 17-21, 23-28, 30-33,

36, 38-47, 49-55, 57-65, 67-69, 71-77, 81,

83-84, 86-87, 89, 91-95, 97-98, 101-106,

109, 111-112, 115-120, 122, 124-127, 129,

136-138, 140-141, 150-151, 168, 173, 175,

177-178, 181-187, 190-191, 196-201, 205,

206-221, 223-228, 230, 236-237, 240, 241,

246, 249, 251-253, 255-256, 259, 269, 280,

281, 283-287, 289, 295-296, 299-302, 304,

306, 313, 316-317, 320-325, 327-330, 333,

334-340, 343-349, 351-363, 366, 667, 369,

371-377, 379-393

Romaºcan, Ion 301

Romuli 272

Rona de Jos 277

Rona de Sus 277

Ronea, Villy 291

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 367, 372

Ropalã, Cãtãlin 96

Ropcea 129

Rosen, Moses 346-347

Rosenbaum, Alan S. 368-369

Rosenberg, Alfred 38-39, 43, 93, 161

Rosenberg, Samuel 271

Rosenne, Meir 7

Rosenrauch, Shimon 166

Rosenthal 304

Rosenthal, dr. 293

Rosetti, Radu R., General 29, 318

Rosner, István 271

Rostochi-Vijniþa 129

Rostov 165

411

INDEX

Roºu, Nicolae 48

Rotaru, Jipa 150

Roth, Andrei 105

Rothschild, Joseph 57

Rotman, Liviu 7, 102, 227, 336, 348, 379

Rousso, Henry 375

Rozavlea 277

Rozen, Marcu 179, 296-298

Rubin, Iosif 112

Rura, Michael J. 339

Rus, ªtefan C., Lt. Col. 293

Ruscova 277

Russia 23, 63, 65, 67, 96, 97, 150, 155, 158,

176, 199

Rusu, Dumitru (alias Gheorghe) 329

Rusu, Nicolae 329

Rusu, Vladimir 327

Sadagura 327

Sajofalva 277

Salazar, António de Oliveira 93

Sãliºte 277

Sallós, Ferenc 274

Salmuth, von, General 124

Salonta Mare 272

Salzburg 69

Sámi, Béla 269

San 73

Sandache, Cristian 38, 357

Sandu, Maria 291

Sapira (family) 308

Sárközi, Béla 270-271

Sárosi, Gyula 268

Sarovo 304

Sárrét 272

Sárvári, Colonel 276-277

Satu Mare 257, 259, 263-264, 267-272, 281,

282, 297, 303, 309

Savchuk, Akseniya 312

Savchuk, Makar 312

Sãbãoani 126

Sãcel 277

Sãcueni 272

Sãlaj 256, 263, 269-270

Sãlard 272

Sãnãtescu, Constantin, General 72, 85-86

Sãpânþa 277

Sãracu, Dumitru 245, 313, 322

Sãrmaº 360

Sângeorgiu, Ion 319

Sângeorgiu de Pãdure 273

Sânmartin 268

Sânnicoarã 268

Sârbi 276, 280

Schickedanz, Arno 38

Schilling, János 268

Schleier, Israel 126

Schloss Klesheim 259

Schlutter 147-148, 160, 162

Schmidt, Imre 275

Schmidt, Paul K. 65

Schnable 305

Schobert, Eugen von 253, 343

Schreiber, Iacob 297

Schröder, Major 274

Schulenburg, von 74

Schwartz, Zoltán 271

Schwimmer, Jenö 274

Scobai, ªtefan 329

Scripcã Mircea 294

Sculeni 327

Scurtu, Ioan 7, 71, 75, 81, 359

Sebastian, Mihail 49, 72, 285, 377

Secureni 137

Sefciuc 327

Seini 271

Seltz 158

Seminki 166

Serebryanskiy, Isaak 311

Serghie, Constantin, Captain 85

Sfântul Gheorghe 263, 273-276

Sfeclã, Petre 83

Shafir, Michael 7, 283, 302, 334, 347-349,

353, 357-358, 361-362, 366, 369, 372, 374,

379

Shapiro, Paul A. 7, 31-33, 38, 40-43

Shermer, Michael 334

Siberia 211

Sibiu 208, 363, 365

Sic 268

Sichitiu, Ion, General 318

Sidorovici, Constantin 168

Siegfried, W. 291

Siegler (family) 308

Sighetu Marmaþiei 276-277, 281

Sihna 77

Sima, Horia 54, 62-63, 76, 103, 110-111, 113,

207, 314, 319, 365

Simferopol 158

Simion, Auricã 109-111, 187, 190

Simionescu, Constantin 308

Sinaia 200

412

INDEX

Singer 271

Singer, Ernö 274

Singer, Zoltán 269

Sidorovici, Alexandra 313

Sion, Mircea Petru G. 308

Siret 85, 119, 129, 200, 219, 243, 292

Slavici, Ioan 26

Slivina 167

Slobodka 154, 310

Slovakia 173, 253, 256, 278, 333

Smârcea, Doina 75

Smolenszki, László 272

Smolka, Heinrich 272

Snagov 46, 110

Socol, Aurel 299

Socoliþa 293

Socor, Emil 33, 297

Solacolu, Ion 365

Solomon 308

Solomon, Iancu 85

Someº 256, 263, 268-269

Somorlyai, János 269

Son, Aurelian, General 86

Sontag, R.J. 320

Sorescu, Radu 366

Soroca 82-83, 131, 219, 294, 326

Sortirovka 154-155

South Africa 253

Sovata 273

Soviet Union (USSR) 10, 53, 57, 59, 61, 63,

64, 67, 71, 73-76, 80, 82, 94-96, 117, 141,

143, 160, 169, 199-200, 208-209, 253, 256,

259, 280, 284-285, 315, 320, 323-324, 328,

330, 336, 376

Spain 47, 247, 366

Sparinopta, Samuil 311

Spãlãþelu, Ion 340-342, 344

Speyer 158

Spiegel (family) 308

Spiegel, Fred 308

Sréter, János 269

Stalin, Iosif Visarionovici 74, 96, 367

Stalingrad 69, 94, 165, 172, 252, 323, 385

Stalino 165

Stamatiu, General 319

Stamatu, Horia 48

Stan, L. 225

Stancu, Ion 235

Starodinskii 154

Starostin, Pavel 312

Starostina (Pozdnyakova), Zinaida 311

Starostina, Anna 312

Starostina, Yevgeniya 312

Stavrat, Olimpiu, General 128-130

Stavrescu, Nicolae, General 123, 315

Stavrescu, Gheorghe, General 123, 329

Stãnculescu, Colonel 151

Stãnescu 137

Stãnescu, M. 174

Stãneºti 129

Stãneºtii de Jos 293

Stânca Roznovanu 329

Steinfeld (family) 383

Steltzer 162, 173, 179, 250

Stenzler, Jacob 131

Stockholm 12, 252

Stoenescu, Alex Mihai 72, 83, 85, 355

Stoenescu, Ioana 308

Stoenescu, Nicolae, General 318

Stoenescu, Pascu 308

Stoian, Vasile 322

Stoica, Hagi, Colonel 78

Stoican, Vasile 313

Storojineþ 82, 84, 129, 133, 219, 293, 295

Stransky, Hermann, Major 122

Strashnaya, Kseniya 312

Strashnaya, Mariya 312

Strashniy, Ivan 312

Strauss-Tiron, Gabriela 304

Streicher, Julius 359

Streitman, H. 212-214

Strejnicu 46, 110

Strihan, Petre 318

Stroe, Magdalena 308

Stroe, N. 291

Strohschneider 267

Stumpp, K. 158

Sturdza, Michel 43, 314

Sturdza-Bulandra, Lucia 291

Suceava 84, 138, 186, 290

Sudetenland 256

Suhaia (Suhaja) Balca 165, 234

Suha-Verba 164-165

Supuru de Jos 270

Supuru de Sus 270

Surdu, Camil 313

Surduc 270, 276

Suru, ªerban 365

Svábhegy 299

Sweden 174, 300, 386

Switzerland 173, 300-301, 305

Szabo, Eugen 304

413

INDEX

Szabo, Zoltan Tibori 289, 313-315

Szakadati, Janos 309

Szakadati, Juliana 309

Szaplonczai, László 277

Szász, Ferenc 267

Szász, Gerö 276

Szeged 275

Szekely Land (Þara Secuilor) 258, 263, 273,

274, 276

Székely, József 267-268, 274

Szentiványi, Gábor 275

Szentkúti, András 268

Szentpáli, Kálámán 275

Szlávi, László 269

Szofer, Manón 274

Sztójay, Döme 260, 269, 272

Szücs, Jozsef 296

ªafran, Alexandru 82-83, 111-112, 206, 209,

221, 301, 358, 376

ªafran, Dan 358

ªapira, Leon 131

ªaptebani, Nicolae, sergeant 325-326

ªaraga, Fred 218

ªargorod 142-143

ªeicaru, Pamfil 22, 33, 35, 92, 94, 97, 99,

319

ªerb, Theodor, General 85

ªerbanovici (brothers) 327

ªerbãnescu, Ioan 200, 300

ªieu 272, 277

ªimleul Silvaniei 263-264, 269-270, 282

ªintereag 269

ªiºcanu, Ion 72-74

ªoldan, C. 100

ªomcuta Mare 271

ªorban, Raoul 289, 308, 373

ªova, Nicolea, General 318

ªteflea, Ilie, General 65, 121-122, 128

ªtirbey, Barbu 286, 298

ªuta, Ioan 309

Taar, Kázmér 267

Takács, Jenö 269

Takáts, government commissioner 269

Talos, Mátyás 274

Tamás, Károly 271

Tamási, Lajos 268

Târgoviºte 200, 360

Târgu-Jiu 105, 119, 121-122, 239, 243

Târgu-Mureº 262-264, 273-276, 282, 297,

360

Târgu-Neamþ 303

Târgul Secuiesc 275

Tarlef, Major 139

Tarnow 278

Taura Nouã 327

Tãnase, Constantin 290-291

Tãnase, Gheorghe 329

Tãnãsescu, Valeriu 292

Tãºnad 270

Tãtãranu, Gheorghe 154-155, 179

Tãtãranu, Nicolae, General 66, 138, 144, 147,

151, 154-155

Tãtãrescu, Gheorghe 30-31, 36, 39, 46, 52,

321

Teaca 273

Técsö 276

Tecuci 216

Tel Aviv 7, 129, 136, 158, 166, 200, 205,

283, 353

Teleorman 326

Tenescu, Florea, General 78

Teodorescu, Aurelian 225, 247

Teodorescu-Braniºte, Tudor 94-95, 296

Teoharie, Gheorghe, Captain 85

Ternon, Yves 368

Tharaud, Jean 40

Tharaud, Jérôme 40

Theodorescu, Rãzvan 360

Theodoru, Radu 350-352, 354, 362, 373

Theresienstadt 173

Third Reich: 60-64, 83, 109, 126, 159, 167,

168, 170, 173, 175, 250, 255-256, 259, 278,

351

Tighina 66, 131, 138-140, 148, 152, 160, 229

Timiºoara 170-171, 237, 309, 322, 357, 360,

365-367

Timiº-Torontal 297

Tincu, Constantin 301

Tippelskirch, General 62

Tiraspol 139, 141, 148, 154, 156, 158-159,

177, 288, 295, 310-311

Tismãneanu, Vladimir 57

Tito, Iosif Broz 324

Tolan, Isaia 98

Tolescu, Ion 47

Topliþa 275

Topor, Ion, General 128, 132, 139, 244

Torouþiu, I.E. 28, 96

414

INDEX

Toth, Jozsef 309

Tóth, Lajos 276-277

Tóth, Mátyás 275

Totok, William 7, 349, 353, 360, 363, 365

Transnistria 10-12, 26, 52, 65-67, 104, 119,

120, 127, 130, 135, 138-170, 172, 175-179,

198, 200-201, 206, 208, 215-220, 225-241,

243, 247-248, 250-252, 293-296, 298-300,

303-304, 307, 312, 314, 321, 326, 338, 342,

343, 346, 353-355, 358, 361, 372-373, 376,

379, 381-384

Transylvania (Ardeal) 11, 20-21, 32, 67, 69,

81, 103, 112, 117-118, 127, 134, 169, 186,

199, 214-215, 219, 246, 249, 252, 265, 284,

286, 289, 293, 296, 303-309, 314, 345-346,

383

Treblinka 338

Trei Scaune 256, 263, 273, 275-276

Treptow, Kurt W. 357-358

Trestioreanu 151

Triandaf, Aurel 126, 329

Trianon 255

Trifa, Viorel 36, 54, 110

Trihaty 167-168, 235, 296

Trip 271

Trofin, Nicolae 363

Troncotã, Cristian 126

Trotzky 95

Tselnik (family) 312

Tsurkan, Peotr 312

Tsurkan, Yevgeniya 312

Tubak, Maria 309

Tudoran, Dorina 375-377, 379

Tudor, Corneliu Vadim 350-351, 353

Tudose, Dumitru, Colonel 137

Tulbure, Emil, Major 329

Tulcin 166-168, 177

Turda 170, 237, 273-275, 308

Turkey 173, 300

Turnu-Severin 256, 360

Þibulovca 143

Þurlea, Petre 349

Udvari, József 269

Uganda 102

Ugocsa 257

Ukraine 65-66, 135, 144, 147-148, 158, 161,

165, 167, 172, 176, 253, 259, 276, 281,

368, 381

Ungheanu, Mihai 374

Ungheni 82, 132

United Principalities 23

United States of America (USA) 36, 54, 81,

94, 164, 252, 299, 333, 356, 372, 374, 376,

384

Upper Bistriþa 272

Urals 139, 244

Urbán, László 267-268

Uriºor 269

Uritzky 95

Uriu 269

Urziceni 118

Vadu Izei 276

Vago, Bela 217

Vago, Raphael 7

Vaida, Alexandru 297

Vaida-Voevod, Alexandru 30, 32

Vainshtein, Klavdiya 311

Vajai, Imre 272

Vajai, Sándor 271

Valea Borcutului 271

Valea lui Mihai 272

Valea Mare 325

Vãleanu 173

Vama 271

Vapniarka 104-105, 142-143, 167, 219, 250,

288, 296, 305, 342, 373

Varga, Andreea 313-315, 319

Várhelyi, Tibor 271

Vartic, pretor 129-130

Varvarovka 167-168

Vásárhelyi, János 265, 267

Vasilache 291

Vasilescu, Ion 291

Vasiliu, (Piki) Constantin, General 131, 145,

137, 173, 177, 214, 219, 230, 240-241, 249,

295, 314, 325-326

Vasiliu, Dumitru, Lt. Col. 293-294

Vaslui 216

Vazdovka 146

Vãcaru, Constantin, sergeant 325

Vãcãreºti 98, 104, 113

Vãcãreºti (prison) 45, 47, 327

Vãlenii de Munte 28

Vãratec, Vitalie 72-74

Vãscãuþi 293

Veesenmayer, Edmund 279

Velcescu, Matei, Colonel 154-155

415

INDEX

Velescu, Vasile 329

Veress, Jenö 268-269

Verrall, Richard 364

Versailles 57-58, 81, 255

Vertujeni 136-137, 139, 176, 288

Veselinovo 156-157, 160, 162-163

Vichy 174, 302

Vicol, Constantin 313

Vidal-Naquet, Pierre 364

Vidraºcu 155

Viega, Francisco 44

Vienna 10, 32, 173-174, 255-256, 278, 280,

302

Viile Dejului 303

Viile Satu Mare 271

Vijniþa 129, 219

Vilna 73

Vincze, István 275

Vindiceni 142

Vinkler, Lajos 271

Vinnitsa 171-172, 178

Vinoi 142

Vistula 73

Viºeu de Jos 277

Viºeu de Sus 276-277, 281-282

Viºoianu, C. 285-286

Vivoschi, Emil 329

Vladimir, M. 291

Vlasca 119

Vlãdescu, Nicolae 327

Vlãdescu, Ovidiu Al. 211

Vogel, Ignátz 277

Voicu, George 7, 354, 362-363

Voicu, Tudor 373

Voiculescu, Constantin, General 132, 136-137,

139-140, 200, 245, 319

Voitinovici, Voitin Al. 321-322

Volovici, Leon 7, 27-28, 32, 36, 48-49, 285,

370, 277

Voronezh 259

Voznesensk 162

Vulcãnescu, Mircea 318

Walachia 21-23, 243, 246-247, 252, 383-385

Waldman, Felicia 380

Walendy, Udo 362

Warsaw 137

Washington 7, 18, 140, 339, 361, 392

Wasserstein, Bernard 336, 347

Watts, Larry 348, 362, 373

Weber, Eugen 31, 43-44, 47

Weinberger, Manó 269

Weinberger, Samu 269

Weiss, Aureliu 243

Weiss, Benjamin 309

Weiss, rabbi 297

Weissberger, Andrei 309

Weissberger, Clara-Luisa 309

Weissberger, Hermina 309

Weissberger, Ludovic 309

Weizmann, Chaim 67

Welsh, Helga A. 369

Wexler, Teodor 358

Wiesel, Elie 7, 12, 15, 361, 367, 374

Wilhelm, Hans Heinrich 125

Winkelmann, Otto 279

Xenopol, Alexandru D. 27, 33, 45

Yertherger, Tobias 297

Yugoslavia 253, 255, 258-259, 324

Zaharia (Zacharias), Josif 309

Zaharia, Gheorghe 241, 340-343

Zalantai, János, Colonel 274

Zalãu 269-270

Zavadovka 163

Zãhãneºti 84

Zielle, Hirsch 125

Zimnicea 239

Zinoviev, Alexandre 90

Zinoviev, Grigori Ievseievici 95

Zonlachie 131

Zosin, Viorica 295

Zsigmond, János 274

Zündel, Ernst 362-363

Zupania 77

Zwidenek, Eugen, General 318