[Continuation
--2]
On the 27th of October 1941, at
21:00 o'clock the commander of the fourth Romanian army
from Odessa transmits the following telegraphic message:
"We report that the coded order No 563/October 24,
1941 was executed."
On the 13th of November 1941, at
the meeting of the Council of Ministers with the
governors of Basarabia, Bucovina and Transnistria,
Marshal Antonescu, among other things specified the
following:
"I said that 200
Jews must be shot for each dead and 100 Jews for each
wounded. Has this been done?"
At this, Prof. Gh. Alexianu,
governor of Transnistria, answered:
"They were shot and
also hanged on the streets of Odessa."
1)
It is estimated that the number
of those who were killed is at least 25,000.
The retired colonel Ovidiu Anca,
in the interview recorded on video tape given on
September 2003, at the venerable age of 95 years old,
stated, among others:
"Between 1941-1944 I
was active on the east front with the rank of major.
After the blowing up of the building of the Romanian
Army's Head Quarters in Odessa, I brought personally,
from the post office, the reprisals order from
Bucharest, that the
specialist in codes
decoded it in front of me and of general Trestiorenu.
What has surprised me very much --and that's something
that I'll never forget -- has been the fact that at
the end, the order has established also a number of
22,500 (which were to be executed -- the author's
note) specifying that those should be Jews from
Odessa." 2)
Gheorghe Alexianu, the governor
of Transnistria declared at his trial that "from
information taken from the people to whom I have spoken,
between 15,000 to 20,000 people were
executed".
The Romanian authorities
delivered to the Germans 3.000 Jews, for their 15 dead,
which were shot and buried in an ancient ditch from
outside Odessa.
In the shorthand report of the
meeting of the Council of Ministers, on December 16th
1941, the following order of marshal Antonescu to prof.
Gh. Alexianu, is recorded:
"Put them into
catacombs, push them into the Black Sea, but take them
out from Odessa. I don't want to know anything. A
hundred of them can die, thousand can die, all can
die
Just take them all out from Odessa".
3)
Governor Gh. Alexianu fulfilled
exactly the order received from Marshal Ion Antonescu; he
had even made deportations before the order was
issued.
During the months
October-November 1941, thousands of Jews from Odessa were
deported on foot, to the district Golta, in the camps
Bogdanovka, Dumanovka and Akmecetka.
At the beginning of the year
1942, according to the order of Gh. Alexianu, governor of
Transnistria, other tens of thousands of Jews from
Odessa, who remained alive after the reprisals, were
deported to the district Berezovka. The deportation was
carried out in January-February 1942, by train.
Concerning the deportation of the Jews from Odessa in
January and February 1942, the mayor of the city, Gherman
Pantea, addressed to the governor of Transnistria, Gh.
Alexianu, on the 20th of January 1942, a letter in which,
among others he wrote:
"I have reported to
you both verbally and in writing that this
evacuation is unfair and inhuman, and now, in the
middle of the winter, becomes barbarous.
Even more, on December 3, 1941, I have reported to you
in writing that the Jewish population of Odessa is
harmless for the safety of Odessa, but on the
contrary, it is working for the rebuilt of the city
and nobody thinks of any plots or
revolts." 4)
Crowded in cattle wagons, a keen
cold wind blowing through the windows, thousands of
exhausted and sick Jews died in standing position, and
the dead continued to stand frozen in the same position,
because there wasn't place to fall.
On their arrival after some days
at Berezovka, the gendarmes forced the survivors to
discharge the dead from the wagons. The frost bitten and
ill was separated and lead to a place from where they
never returned. The Jews, who remained alive, set out on
foot, in columns, driven by the gendarmes, to different
camps. Along this "way of death" (through Mostovoi and
Lidovici), the fields were covered with the corpses of
those who being exhausted fell, or were shot, because
they were unable to march with the convoy. After arriving
at the destination and being interned into the camps, the
majority of them died of cold, starving and illness, or
simply were taken and shot by the Ukrainian policemen,
enlisted into the SS troops.
Significant is the fact that in
the note No. B2 of the military cabinet of May 12th 1942,
it is stated:
"The High
Headquarters reports that during the period from March
10th -- to April 24th, a number of 4,047 Jews confined
in camps in the district Berezovka, were shot by
German policemen. After the execution the German
police burned the bodies. The high Headquarters wants
to be informed, if German policemen can have such
initiatives on territory under Romanian
administration."
Marshal Antonescu, put on this
note the following resolution:
"It is not the
attribution of headquarters to be concerned about this
problem."
As we have shown above, tens of
thousands of native Ukrainian Jews, from Odessa and other
localities were killed in the camps Bogdanovka,
Dumanovka, Akmecetka and in other camps and ghettos or
were sent across the Bug, and handed over to the German
troupes. These German troupes killed them nearly all,
after having used them at different kinds of work. The
Saraga report, drawn up in the year 1943 shows that, on
that time, from the local Jews only 13,000 survived. Radu
Leca, commissary for Jewish problems, affirms that on the
20th of November 1943, about 20,000 native Ukrainian Jews
were alive. 5)
If we admit the last number, it
results that from the about 135,000 native Ukrainian
Jews, about 115,000 were exterminated under Romanian
authority.
1)
See, Benjamin transcripts, Nov. 13, 1941, A.S.B.
Fond P. C. M.
Cabinet File 477/1941, pp. 10-11, 52-53.
2)
Dr. Hary Kuller &endash; An unpublished new document
about the anti-Jewish reprisals in Odessa (October 1941)
F.C.E.R. &endash;C.S.L.E.R.
--the Bulletin of the Center of the Museum and of the
historical archive of the Jews in Romania, no. 10/2004,
p. 36.
3)
See, Benjamin transcripts December 16th 1941, A.S.B. Fond
P.C.M., Cabinet File 478/1941, pp. 110, 112, 120, 153,
158.
4)
See, Cristian Troncota: "Glory and Tragedies," Nemira
Publishing House, 2003, p. 77.
5)
See, Radu Ioanid: "Jews Under the Antonescu Government" -
pp. 302, 348, Hasefer Publishing House, Bucharest,
1997.