1. The Pogrom and
Death-Trains from Iasi
Only one week after the outbreak
of the war, during the period from June 29th, to July 1st
1941, a pogrom took place in Iasi, organized with
premeditation by the Romanian authorities and Nazi
Germans.
A rumor was launched as a
diversion, namely that the Jews had shot at Romanian and
German soldiers and that they had transmitted luminous
signs to Soviet airplanes. The reports drawn up by the
police of the city Iasi proved the inconsistency of such
rumors and defamation and ascertained clearly that not
even one Romanian or German soldier had been killed or
injured.
In the memorial, presented on
the 2nd of July 1941 to General Antonescu, by General
Leoveanu Emanoil, general director of the police it is
said:
"No injured and no
dead existed in the Romanian troops which were
supposedly shot at, and no bullet signs were found on
the houses or windows
Nor had the Germans any
dead or injured. Consequently the so called attack was
a simulacrum executed with toy arms (at the place
cartridges of this category were found, and crackers
which simulated the firing of automatic
arms)"
"I suppose that the
attackers were legionaries and thieves who wanted to
produce panic, in view to devastate subsequently. They
could disappear in the dark without being discovered."
1)
But let us see how events took
place.
The shots, plunders and crimes
against the Jews had begun sporadically since June 27th
and 28th, 1941.
In the morning of Sunday, the
June 29th 1941, the megaphones of the local authorities
called the Jews to present themselves at the police
station, to be given some certificates. Some of the Jews
showed up freely, others were fetched by
force.
At the police station, the Jews,
several thousands, were plundered, beaten and tortured.
Then, the shooting at the crowd started, a big number
of victims were found in the courtyard of the police
station. Those who succeeded to run away were caught,
beaten to blood and brought back together with other Jews
found in the city. Thus the ferocious massacre went on
for many hours.
In some quarters and public
squares of the city, plunders, tortures and
assassinations against the Jews took place
too.
These massacres were made by
Romanian and German militaries, to which
déclassé elements of the local population
joined.
The Jews, who survived the
massacre at the police station, were formed in columns
and led to the railway station. During the night and the
next morning, they were embarked in two "death trains",
100-150 persons crowded in cattle wagons, hardly being
able to stand person beside person, tormented by the
suffocating heat, thirst and lack of air. About 5,000
Jews were transported in these trains for several days,
to Podul Iloaiei respectively Calarasi
Most of them succumbed in
unimaginable conditions, many of them coming up to drink
their own urine or to lose their minds before
dying.
Over all Europe the Jews were
exterminated by different methods: gassing, shooting,
starving etc. But embarking Jews in hermetically
closed cattle wagons, with lattice windows covered at the
outside by boards, and killing them through suffocation
and dehydration was a method used only in
Romania.
Unlike the behavior of the
criminals from Iasi, we want to mention that of the
Romanian woman, Viorica Agarici, who in the railway
station Roman succeeded to convince the guard to open the
wagon doors and give the dying and thirsty Jews
water.
As Dr. Alexandru Safran,
The Great Rabbi of Geneva says, this woman, as many other
Romanian saviors, represents "the Romanian soul in those
times of Jewish suffering".
Among the survivors of the death
train from Podul Ilioaiei, as an irony of the fate, was
the citizen Marcu Traian, a Christian Romanian, thrown by
error by the criminals in this train. After establishing
his identity on the basis of his wedding certificate No.
47/1940 the gendarmes allowed him to return
home.
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Iancu
Tucherman
(b.
Oct 30, 1922, Iasi - )
Photo
Credit: The editor
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Among the survivors of the
train Iasi-Podul Ilioaiei is Eng. Iancu Tucherman,
actually residing in Bucharest. That's how this witness
describes what happened in the wagon where he was
embarked; "We were crowded in wagons, 100-150 persons. I
was embarked in a wagon in with other 137
persons.
In the wagon in
which I got, like in many other wagons, there was a
layer of cow- manure on the floor, and over it lime
powder was spread.
A worker of the railway
station, dressed with a specific uniform and a red
cap, saw that the small shutters of the wagon were
opened inwardly. He brought a ladder and some planks,
and closed from outside all these small windows,
reducing like this the possibility to have any fresh
air in the wagon.
The train started. The
manure and lime gave out a terrible heat. All of us,
closed in the wagon, began to strip our clothes, some
remaining after a time even in the nude. Then we
realized that something tragic would happen. The train
continued its way with numerous stops and shunting to
secondary lines. It was a very hot summer; the heat in
the wagon became unbearable. Without air and water,
after the first half-hour we had the first
victim.
Some, very thirsty, began
to drink their own urine, some got mad flinging
themselves over others, looking in despair and
delirium for a bit of water from one end of the wagon
to the other. You could not know who is dead or who
was still alive.
At 2 PM after
nine hours of torment, which
seemed to me eternity, the train stopped in Podu
Ilioaiei, a small railway station. The doors of the
wagon opened. From our wagon only 8
survivors got out, the rest of 129 had passed away,
suffocated and dehydrated".
It has to be mentioned that the
death train to Calarasi reached to the destination after
7 days.
The survivors of the death
trains were interned in the camps as Podu Ilioaiei and
Calarasi, and could return home only after six
months.
The total number of victims of
the pogrom from Iasi and the death trains, as established
by the judiciary investigation, was nearly 8.000 people.
2)
1)
See, M. Carp: "The Black Book," vol. II, p. 119,
Diogene Publishing House, 1996.
See also, Dinu G. Giurescu, Historical Magazine No. 11
(368), November 1997.
2)
See, "Martyrdom of Jews from Romania," p. 7,
Hasefer Publishing House, 1991.