History of The Jews in Bessarabia - The Holocaust

The Holocaust

• 1941: The Einsatzkommandos, German mobile killing units drawn from the Nazi SS and commanded by Otto Ohlendorf entered Bessarabia. They were instrumental in the massacre of many Jews in Bessarabia, who did not flee in face of the German advance.
• July 8, 1941: Mihai Antonescu, deputy prime minister Romania's ruler at the time, made a declaration in front of the Ministers' Council:

....With the risk of not being understood by some traditionalists which may be among you, I am in favour of the forced migration of the entire Jew element from Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be thrown over the border. Also, I am in favor of the forced migration of the Ukrainian element, which does not belong here at this time. I don't care if we appear in history as barbarians. The Roman Empire has made a series of barbaric acts from a contemporary point of view and, still, was the greatest political settlement. There has never been a more suitable moment. If necessary, shoot with the machine gun. (This quote can be found in "The Stenograms of the Ministers' Council, Ion Antonescu's Government", vol. IV, July–September 1941 period, Bucharest, year 2000, page 57) (Stenogramele şedinţelor Consiliului de Miniştri, Guvernarea Ion Antonescu, vol. IV, perioada iulie-septembrie 1941, Bucureşti, anul 2000, pagina 57).

The killing squads of Einsatzgruppe D, together with special non-military units attached to the German Wehrmacht and Romanian Armies were involved in many massacres in Bessarabia (over 10,000 in a single month of war, in June–July 1941), while deporting other thousands to Transnistria.

The majority (up to 2/3) of Jews from Bessarabia (207,000 as of the last census of 1930) fled before the retreat of the Soviet troops. However, 110,033 people from Bessarabia and Bukovina (the latter included at the time the counties of Cernăuţi, Storojineţ, Rădăuţi, Suceava, Câmpulung, and Dorohoi - some other 100,000 Jews) - all except a small minority of the Jews that did not flee in 1941 - were deported to Transnistria, a region which was under Romanian military control during 1941-1944.

In ghettos organized in several towns, as well as in camps (there was also a comparable number of Jews from Transnistria in those camps) many people died from starvation or bad sanitation, or were shot by special Nazi units right before the arrival of Soviet troops in 1944. The Romanian military administration of Transnistria kept very poor records of the people in the ghettos and camps. The only exact number found in Romanian sources is 59,392 died in the ghettos and camps from the moment those were open until mid 1943 . This number includes all internees regardles of their origin, but does not include those that perished on the way to the camps, those that perished between mid 1943 and spring 1944, as well as those that perished in the immediate aftermath of the Romanian army's taking control of Transnistria (see for example Odessa massacre), many other thousands.

In June–July 1941, about 10,000 (mostly civilians) were killed during the military action in the region in 1941 by German Einzatsgruppe D units and on some occasions by some Romanian troops. In Sculeni, several dozen local Jews were killed by the Romanian troops. In Bălţi cca. 150 local civilians were shot by Einzatsgruppe (the young women were also raped), and 14 Jewish POWs by the Romanians. In Mărculeşti, 486 Soviet POWs of Jewish origin (many conscripted locals), who were left behind by the Soviet army because of wounds, in order to avoid being surrounded, were shot. Cca. 40 corpses of Jews were found damped at the outskirts of Orhei, executed either by the German or Romanian units.

From 1941 to 1942, 120,000 Jews from Bessarabia, all of Bukovina, and the Dorohoi county in Romania proper, were deported to ghettos and concentration camps in Transnistria, with only a small portion returning in 1944. The ones who died did so in the most inhuman and horrible conditions. (In the same ghettos and camps there were many Jews from that region as well, responsibility for whose death lies on the Romanian authorities that occupied it during 1941-1944.)

The remainder of the 270,000 Jewish community of the region survived World War II. Mostly these were Bessarabian Jews that wisely retreated before the departure of the Soviet troops in mid-July 1941. However, the only good thing that can be said about their fate during 1941-1944 was that they survived, because the conditions under which they traveled to the interior of the USSR (e.g. to Uzbekistan) in the summer of 1941, and their conditions of life at the arrival were very bad. Cca 15,000 Jews from Cernăuţi, and further 5,000 from elsewhere in Bukovina were saved by the then mayor of the city Traian Popovici. Nevertheless, he was not able to save everyone, and cca 20,000 Bukovinian Jews were deported to Transnistria. At the end of the war, the remaining Jewish community of Bukovina decided to move to Israel.

As a result of the departure of the Romanian intellectuals in 1940 and 1944, of the Bukovinian Germans in 1940-41, of the surviving Bukovinian Jews in 1945, and of the forceful repatriation of Bukovinian Polish to Poland, Cernăuţi, one of the cultural and university "jewels" of both Austria-Hungary and Romania ceased to exist as such, its population (already 100,000 in 1930) being greatly reduced. After the war, some Bukovinian Ukrainians from the countryside, as well as a few Ukrainians from Podolia and Galicia moved to the city. However, these were also generally excluded from the Soviet apparatus and higher positions in the economy and administration, which was formed mostly by people known to be loyal to the Soviet system sent from eastern Ukraine or from other parts of the USSR.