[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.