2. Mass
Assassinations of the Jews
from Basarabia, Northern Bucovina and the Hertza
region
in the First Months After the Outbreak of the War
(June 22nd -September 1941)
The Romanian army together with
the German army succeeded in a relatively short time
after the outbreak of the war to liberate Basarabia,
Northern Bucovina and the Hertza region.
Sub-units of the Romanian army
together with some local people incited by the new
installed Romanian authorities, unleashed a generalized
massacre killing without any criterion tens of thousands
of men, women, children, their only guilt being that they
were born Jews.
Most of them were driven like
cattle from one locality to another, shot, plundered and
submitted to horrible pains.
At Balti, a part of the Jews
were obliged to dig their own graves, then after being
laid face down were shot with a bullet in their head. In
Tatarasti, district Cetatea Alba, 451 Jews were executed
by order of lieutenant Heinrich Frölich, with the
cooperation of gendarme captain Vetu Gh. Ioan, who took
possession of all the valuable objects belonging to the
Jews. In the night of the 4th to the 5th of August 1941,
from a convoy of 300 Jews from the district of
Storojinet, led by corporal Sofian Ignat, 210 were shot.
On the 6th of August, at 18
o'clock, the gendarmes from the police company 23, shot
200 Jews and throw them into the river Dnestr. Such cases
are numerous and are related in protocols.
1)
In these frightening days on the
secondary roads of Basarabia columns of vagrant Jews were
marching. Everywhere frightening images, with unburied
corpses of children, women, elderly, graves with burned
Jews, plundered houses and devastated synagogues could be
seen.
A column of 300 men from Edinet
lead by Rabbi Iehosua Frenkel, framed by Romanian
soldiers headed for Hotin. Arrived at their destination,
the rabbi's beard was ignited, and then he was
inconceivably tortured and humiliated, so that he died as
a martyr the same day.
Referring to the instigation to
pogroms against Jews, we are reproducing a fragment of
the report found in the archives of the Great general
Staff of the army, written by lieutenant-colonel Al.
Ionescu, chief of Bureau II:
"In order to execute
your telephonic order from 8.07.1943, I have the honor
to introduce the following plan. We began its
execution starting with the 9th of July. The mission
of these teams is to create in the villages an
unfavorable atmosphere to the Jewish elements, so that
the population would try to eliminate them, through
means more adequate and adapted to the circumstances.
At the arrival of the Romanian troops, the atmosphere
must be already created, and even the action
started". 2)
Therefore, in Banila, a little
village on the river Siret, the mayor Muscaliuc organized
and lead bands of murderers who killed many local Jews.
The Romanian priest Stefanovici, refused to enter the
church for the daily service. He told to his
parishioners: "I am ashamed to enter the church, when
my fellow parishioners do such crimes. Shame on
you!"
Bands of Romanian and Ukrainian
pogrom attackers have organized crimes and robberies in
the village of Milie, near Vijnita, in Stanestii de Jos,
near Storojinet, in the towns of Sadagura, Siret,
Seletin, in Lipscani and Briceva and in many other
localities from Basarabia and Bucovina. Thousands of Jews
were savagely murdered using methods of unimaginable
cruelty.
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Dr.
Liviu Berish
Photo
Credit: Vivid.ro
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"At Hertza, as relates the witness Dr.
Liviu Beris, actually living in Bucharest,
after the Romanian troops entered the city on the 5th
of July 1941, the 1,800 Jews who had remained in the
city were brutally gathered in four synagogues and two
basements.
The dwellings of the Jews
were plundered and young girls were handed over to the
military and raped. The city looked distressing, with
furniture and other things thrown out in the street,
destroyed houses with broken doors and windows. The
newly installed administration drew up lists with
suspects, whom they took out from the gathering places
and directed in column to execution. In these columns
were also old people, children and women with babies
in their arms.
A number of about 100 Jews
were lead to the Kislinger mill (near the river of the
city), and other 32 in Chirulescu's garden. The Jews
were forced to dig their own graves and were then
executed. All Jews living in villages surrounding
Hertza were assassinated."
The Romanian army removed a big
number of Jews from Bassarabia over the river Dnestr,
during the first period after the outbreak of the war.
But the German troops turned them back, to Bassarabia,
because they hindered the movement of the German army.
During this movement thousands of Jews were shot or died
by exhaustion. The indications concerning the attitude of
the Romanian army against the Jewish population from
Basarabia and Northern Bucovina given on the 8th of July
1941, in the meeting of the Council of Ministers headed
by Mihai Antonescu, ad-interim president of the
government, are of awful clarity:
"It makes no
difference to me if we enter history as barbarians.
Let's use this historic moment to clean up the
fatherland. If it is necessary then shoot with the
machine gun
I take formally the
responsibility and say there isn't any law
For
two-three weeks there will be no law in force in
Bassarabia and Bucovina
Accordingly, go
on without any forms, take complete
liberty." 3)
After the terror diminished in
intensity, the Jews who remained alive, in the whole
territory of Basarabia, Northern Bucovina and the Hertza
region were gathered and confined into transit camps and
ghettos. The greatest transit camps were organized at
Secureni, Edinet, Vertujeni and Marculesti, and the
biggest ghettos at Kishinev and Cernowitz.
In these camps and ghettos a
high number of Jews died due to misery, diseases and
starvation, and thousands of Jews were lead to different
working sites and then shot.
According to a statistical
calculus drawn up by the well known historic Dinu C.
Giurescu from the beginning of the war and up to the 1
September in these regions 49,419 persons disappeared.
4)
From the balance sheet drawn
up by the author it results that the number of Jews who
disappeared in the genocide period was about 55.000.
5)
At the beginning of September
1941 the Antonescu government takes the decision to
deport to the other side of the Dnestr all Jews from
Basarabia, Northern Bucovina and Hertza, who had remained
alive, as well as those living in Southern Bucovina and
the Dorohoi district.
Unlike the chaotic deportation
from July 1941, the deportations which took place in the
autumn of 1941, beginning with September, were carried
out by deportation centers (transit camps and ghettos),
itineraries, passing points of the Dnestr and included
nearly the whole Jewish population from Romania's
North-East territories.
1)
See, M. Carp: "The Black Book," vol.3, p. 63-67,
Diogene Publishing House, 1996.
2)
See, The Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest 2003
Annexes, p. 227.
3)
See, Benjamin transcripts, July 8th 1941, A.S.B.,
Fond P.C.M.
Cabinet File 475/1941, pp. 103-128.
4)
See, Historical Magazine No. 11 (368), November
1997, p.75
5)
See, Table
No. 3, p. 23