The Holocaust in Romania: the destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu regime, 1940-1944

382 Pages·2008·19.452 MB·English

by  Ioanid, Radu

The Holocaust in Romania

RADU IOANID
THE HOLOCAUST
IN ROMANIA
The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies
Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944
WITH A FOREWORD BY ELIE WIESEL
AND A PREFACE BY PAUL A. SHAPIRO
~
IVAN R DEE
CHICAGO 2000
PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
The paperback edition of this book carries the ISBN 1-56663-771-6 (978-1-56663-771-8).
THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA. Copyright © 2000 by Ivan R. Dee, Inc. All rights
reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. For
information, address: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1332 North Halsted Street, Chicago 60622.
Manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.
Translated from the French by Marc J. Masurovsky, CyberTrans International.
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The
assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained herein are those of the author. They do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Ioanid, Radu.
[Evreili sub regimul Antonescu. English]
The Holocaust in Romania : the destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the
Antonescu regime, 1940-1944 I Radu Ioanid.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56663-256-o (alk. paper)
1. Jews-Persecutions-Romania. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Rornania.
3· World War, 1939-1945-Gypsies-Romania. 4· Gypsies-Nazi persecution
Romania. 5· Romania-Ethnic relations.
I. Title.
DS135.R7I6513 2000
940·53'18'09498--dc21 99-43229
Contents
Foreword by Elie Wiesel vii
Preface by Paul A. Shapiro xi
Acknowledgments XV
Introduction xvii
Maps xxvi
I The Legal Status of the Jews in Romania 3
2 The Massacres Before the War 37
3 The Massacres at the Beginning of the War 62
4 Transit Camps and Ghettos, Deportations, and Other
Mass Murders I I o
5 The Massacres in Transnistria I 76
6 Life in Transnistria I 95
7 The Deportation, Persecution, and Extermination of the Gypsies 225
8 The Survival of the Romanian Jews 238
9 The Fate of Romanian Jews Living Abroad 259
IO Antonescu and the Jews 271
I I A Summing Up 289
Documentary Sources 297
Notes 299
Index 339

Foreword
by Elie Wiesel
1 DO NOT hesitate to say it: Radu loanid merits the recognition of all those
who are interested in that history which has so lamely become known as
the Holocaust. His work treats an unfortunately little-known subject: the
tragic fate of the Jewish communities in Romania. Only a few historians,
such as the great Raul Hilberg or Dora Litani, among others, have ad
dressed it in their works. In fact, Radu Ioanid often leans upon them, but
his work explores more fully the Evil which reigned in Transnistria, be
tween the Bug and Dniester, the two great rivers in Ukraine. His work,
based as it is on material from unpublished archives, thus constitutes a
new contribution to this field.
Of Romanian origin, the author brings a special sensitivity to this
subject. He knows the enemy. He follows him step by step in his hunt for
the Jews from town to town, from decree to decree, from spontaneous
pogroms to organized persecutions, from the traditional hatred to the
physical liquidation; he shows the victims first in their homes, then in
the ghettos, and finally, in death. One might say that his goal is to confront
the enemy with its own crimes which, in a sense, were "more cruel" but
more savage for being less structured in their brutality than those of the
Germans.
While there were no gas chambers in Transnistria, everything else
was there: not one community was spared; all were decimated. Two hun-
[vii]
[viii] Foreword
dred fifty thousand Jews perished there in thousands and thousands of
ways. There was the terror, the threats, the nocturnal death marches, the
sealed wagons, the starvation, the plagues, the humiliations, the public ex
ecutions, the fires: from time to time, the reader, his heart broken and ex
hausted, will stop in the midst of a page, incapable of absorbing one more
image, or one more scream.
The orders came from on high, from Marshal Ion Antonescu himself.
All, or almost all, were executed with more or less enthusiasm. Romani
ans, Germans, and Ukrainians outdid one another in cruelty. Everywhere
it was the same. In the towns as in the villages, summer as in winter, being
Jewish meant subjection to torment and torture. How can one read the of
ficial report of the Romanian General Constantin Trestioreanu without
shuddering from horror and disgust? "I hanged (or had hanged) around
five thousand people, mostly Jews, in the public squares of Odessa"? You
read well: 5,000 gallows, 5,000 human beings swayed by the wind, before
the eyes of the whole population. Or the testimonies of the thousands of
Jews locked up in furnaces set on fire by Romanian soldiers? "Some Jews
appeared at the windows and, to escape the flames, begged the arsonists
to shoot them, pointing at their heads and hearts." According to a survivor
or a soldier, about 35,000 Jews were burned alive or hanged in the city of
Odessa alone. Another source cites a more "charitable" figure: only
25,000 in Odessa and Dalnic.
How to explain so much cruelty, manifested on so many levels, by
Romanian society? Why were there so few interventions (there were, but
they were rare and weak) on behalf of the victims? From the simple sol
dier to the most powerful officer, from the anonymous employee to the
bureaucrat invested with the superior and implacable authority of the
State, the Jews-and later the Gypsies-could not expect any measure of
pity or humanity.
To understand the process which led to the paroxysmal violence to
ward the Romanian Jews during the war, Ioanid supplies us with docu
mented details of the day-to-day anti-Semitism that preceded it. Ancestral
religious influences, absurd accusations of deicide, the need for a scape
goat, economic factors, everything is there. But the author does not con
tent himself with an evocation of the past; he insists also on revealing the
present in all its ugly and confusing ambiguity. How to understand the
popularity of Antonescu after the fall of the Communist dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu? Streets bearing his name, statues erected, elected officials ob-
Foreword [ix]
serving a moment of silence to honor his memory: has the nation then so
quickly forgotten his bloody misdeeds, the atrocities he ordered, his
crimes against humanity, and his death sentence?
It takes tremendous force to read this book from cover to cover. But
the author had still more to write it. Yes, indeed, Radu Ioanid merits our
gratitude.