Role in Second World War
After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under the authority of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called Selbstschutz.
Those German colonists and Selbstschutz forces engaged in ethnic cleansing, massacring Jewish and Roma population near their settlements. In the German colony Shonfeld gypsies were burned on farms, and during the winter 1941/1942 German Selbstschutz units participated in shooting (together with Ukrainian militia and Romanian gendarmes) 18,000 Jews. In the camp of Bogdanovka tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades. Heinrich Himmler was most impressed by the Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz and ordered to these methods be copied in Ukraine.
By year 1950 about 253,000 Rumäniendeutsche were expelled and 421,846 remained in Romania. By year 2002 about 60,000 remained.
| Historical population | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1887 | 50,000 | — |
| 1930 | 745,421 | +1390.8% |
| 1939 | 786,000 | +5.4% |
| 1950 | 421,846 | −46.3% |
| 1956 | 384,708 | −8.8% |
| 1966 | 382,595 | −0.5% |
| 1977 | 359,109 | −6.1% |
| 1990 | 200,000 | −44.3% |
| 2009 | 135,088 | −32.5% |
| Starting with the 1930 figures, the reference is to all German-speaking groups in Romania. | ||
Read more about this topic: Germans Of Romania
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