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The Holocaust in Romania

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The Holocaust in Romania
Top, clockwise: Ion Antonescu with Adolf Hitler • Romanian military physicians examine Jews during the stop of the Iasi-Calarasi death train in Săbăoani, 1941  • Bodies being thrown down from a train carrying deported Jews from Iași, 1941  • Murder of Jews by a military convoy between Birzula and Grozdovca, 1941 • Deportation of Jews to Transnistria across Dniester, 1942
Overview
Period1941–1944
TerritoryRomania, Transnistria Governorate
PerpetratorsKingdom of Romania, Iron Guard, civilian mobs
Killed250,000 -380,000 Jews

The Holocaust in Romania was the genocide of Jews in the Kingdom of Romania and in Romanian controlled territories of the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1944. While historically part of the The Holocaust, these actions were mostly independent from the similar acts committed by Nazi Germany, Romania being the only ally of the Third Reich that carried out a genocidal campaign without the intervention of Heinrich Himmler's SS. Various numbers have been advanced by researchers for the lives lost in the genocide, with most estimates in the range of 250,000 to 380,000 to which can be added another 12,000 Romani victims. Another approximately 132,000 Jews from the Hungarian controlled Northern Transylvania were killed during this period by the Nazi with the collaboration of the Hungarian authorities. Romania ranks first among Holocaust perpetrator countries other than Germany.

Background

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See also: Antisemitism in Romania

In the first decades of the 20th century, antisemitic views increased in number and intensity in publications and writings of prominent Romanian figures such as A.C. Cuza, Nichifor Crainic, Nicolae Iorga, Nicolae Paulescu and Ion Găvănescu.[1] Among the main political organisations that took these ideas and built them into an open attack on the Jewish community in Romania was the Iron Guard. Formerly a small political group under the name of Guard of National Conscience, the movement gained in its ranks in 1920 Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Divisions and disagreements within the group and between members led Corneliu and others to leave and form the Legion of Archangel Michael in 1927, and then in 1930 the Iron Guard was created as an organisation to unite it with other nationalist groups. Despite renaming the organisation several times, in the media and public eyes the image and name of Legionaries and Iron Guard stuck for the anti-communist, antisemitic, fascist movement.[2]

Antisemitism was also popularised and promoted by important cultural personalities of the interwar period such as Nae Ionescu, Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, or Constantin Noica[3] and endorsed by the Romanian Orthodox Church.[4][5][note 1]

Antisemitic legislation

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At the end of 1937, the government of Octavian Goga came to power, Romania thus becoming the second overtly antisemitic state in Europe.[6][7] Goga government issued Decree-law no. 169 of 22 January 1938 which invalidated the citizenship law Jews obtained at the beginning of WWI and requiered that all Jews in Romania present their documentation for review. A total of 225,222 Jews lost their citizenship as a result of the law, with many more finding themselves out of job and deprived of political rights.[8] Romania was the second country in Europe after Germany to enact antisemitic legislation, the only one besides Germany to do so before the 1938 Anschluss[9][10] and the only country other than Germany itself which "implemented all the steps of the destruction process, from definitions to killings."[11][12] Antisemitic legislation was not an attempt to placate the Germans, but rather entirely home-grown, preceding German hegemony and Nazi Germany itself. The ascendance of Germany enabled Romania to disregard the minorities treaties that were imposed upon the country after the First World War. The legislation in Romania was usually aimed at exploiting Jews rather than humiliating them as in Germany.[13]

Pogroms and forced labour

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See also: Romania in World War II

The first acts of violence against the Jews started after the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. Romanian troops used the Jews of these regions as scapegoats for their frustration, accusing some of collaboration with the Soviets. Major Vasile Carp, commander of the 86th Mountain Regiment, ordered the execution of several Jews in Ciudei and Zăhănești soon after the enforcement of the Soviet ultimatum. Similar acts took place in Comănești and Coștina. Violence against Jews increased in public places and transports. Jewish soldiers were often expelled from their units, aggressed, or even murdered.[14] Retreating Romanian military personnel clashed with Soviet soldiers near Hertsa in July 1940, and the situation escalated into Dorohoi pogrom during which anywhere between 50 and 200 Jews where murdered.[15] Even more causalities resulted after the army opened fire on civilian refugees in the city of Galați, with hundreds of dead, most of them Jews. Overall, several hundreds or even thousands of Jews were killed in the aftermath of territory loss.[16]

Bucharest pogrom

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Main article: Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom
Ion Antonescu and Horia Sima, the leaders of the National Legionary State, October 1940

In September 1940 the Iron Guard became part of the National Legionary government, a governing structure which had Antonescu as the absolute leader or Conducător. Almost immediately acts of antisemitism increased aided by the establishment of a Legionary Police that was modelled after Nazi paramilitary units, and the usage of militia type groups such as Corpul Muncitoresc Legionar. In October the Legion started an organized expropriation and deportation of Jews from rural areas, many of the victims moving to the capital to live with relatives or friends. In cities controlled by Legionnaires, such as Câmpulung Moldovenesc, widespread pillage of properties owned by Jews ensued and were often accompanied by beatings, humiliation, and threats such in the case of Câmpulung Moldovenesc' rabbi, Iosef Rubin, who was tortured and then made to pull a wagon which his son was forced to drive.[17]

Grand Spanish Temple in Bucharest after it was set on fire during the pogrom

These actions were exported on a large scale to Bucharest from December same year. In January Legionnaires occupied the Bucharest Police headquarters and other public buildings. Almost 2000 Jews were detained or arrested, and violence erupted in full on 22 January 1941 after the minister of interior ordered the burning of Jewish districts. 125 Jews were killed between 21 and 23 January, 90 of them stripped naked and shot in the forest near Jilava. Rape, torture, and mutilations were standard practice for the perpetrators. All the synagogues were attacked and vandalized, and the Grand Spanish Temple, once consider the most beautiful building of its type in the city, was burnt to ruins.[18]

The pogrom destroyed 1,274 buildings, and after the army ended it on 23 January, it found 200 trucks loaded with jewels and cash.[19]

Iași pogrom and the Death Trains

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Main article: Iași pogrom

Even though Antonescu and the army played a central role in suppressing the Iron Guard, the regime instituted by the marshal continued the same antisemitic policies started by the Legionnaires. The evacuation of the Jews from small towns and villages became a fundamental part of what was known as the "cleansing of the land" - the removal of all "Jewish elements" from the Romanian society. In Moldavia, where a large part of the Jews in Romania lived and where many of the Jews from the occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina sought refuge, four hundred and forty-one villages and small towns were "cleansed" by July 1941. The destination for the people gathered in the ghettos of the larger cities was set to be southern Romania, mainly Târgu Jiu. Approximately 45,000, both locals and those gathered from the countryside, lived in Iași in June 1941 when the order came to "cleanse the city".

Bodies being thrown down from a train carrying deported Jews from Iași

On the evening of the next day, 28 June 1941, army groups, the local police, gendarmes, German soldiers attached to Romanian army, and ad-hoc mobs incited by the media and the secret services descended upon the Jewish population of the city which was accused to have pro-Soviet sympathies, had armed itself and was attacking the army, and even that it signalled enemy planes where to attack. At 9 pm shots where heard through the city and pillaging, rape, and murder of the Jews started. On 29 June the survivors where taken to the train stations, having to walk through the streets filled with dead bodies. There they were then forced into train cargo wagons.[20] In the heat of the summer, with no water or food, and crammed against each other, most of them died before reaching the destination. A survivor recalled:

During the night some of us went mad and started to yell, bite, and jostle violently; you had to fight them, as they could take your life; in the morning, many of us were dead and the bodies were left inside; they refused to give water even to our crying children, whom we were holding above our heads.[21]

From the train that leaved with Călărași as the destination, only 1,011 people survived the seven day journey out of about 5,000. From the train that went to Podu Iloaiei, which is 15km away from the city, 2,000 of the 2,700 people died. In total the massacre started in Iași made up to 14,850 victims.[21]

Forced labour

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Romania issued special IDs for Jews during the war. Such paperwork prevented its holder from being deported to labor camps.

As with the pogroms, Antonescu regime continued the policy of forced labour started during the collaboration with the Iron Guard. The laws adopted in September 1940 that, in broad lines, excluded Jews from public functions and limited the fields of work in which they could activate was supplemented in November with a communique from Antonescu that stipulated that Jews will not be allowed in the army and instead they would have pay a special tax. Those who could not pay the tax had to do labour instead. The measure changed the nature of forced labour from a local antisemitic action to a method of government persecution. Most Jews where ordered to work in their own town or city but groups were selected to perform heavy labour tasks such as building railway tracks. Labour camps where generally deprived of any medical facilities and had poor or non-existent hygiene facilities. Survivors of such labour camps reported they were made to work from sunrise to sunset with a half-hour break, 6 days a week. [22]

A Law-Decree was further released in August 1941, which institutionalized forced labour as a state instrument. Official reports counted 84,042 Jews, aged eighteen to fifty, in the recruitment centres. Cases where those forced to work for the state could not perform the task and could not pay a tax to exempt them from forced labour, or even if they somehow failed to show up, were punishable with deportation.[23]

Romania and The Holocaust

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The "wholesale slaughter of Jews" in Romanian-occupied Soviet territories was "a genocide operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution". Romania also rejected Nazi designs on its Jews, ultimately declining to deport Romanian Jews to the Belzec concentration camp.[24] Romania even took the lead in the Holocaust for the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa. This was acknowledged by Adolf Hitler on 19 August 1941: "As far as the Jewish Question is concerned, it can now be stated with certainty that a man like Antonescu is pursuing much more radical policies in this area than we have so far." The regime of Ion Antonescu had been killing Jewish women and children, clearing entire Jewish communities, while Nazi Germany was still massacring only Jewish men.[25][26][27][28]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ "The Romanian Orthodox Church defined its attitude toward Jews prior to June 1941, the start of the war against the USSR. In 1937, almost one year before the law for the revision of citizenship was passed, the Church openly expressed its support for such measures. Patriarch Cristea, as prime minister of the country, implemented a strong anti-Semitic program as a result of which many Romanian Jews were stripped of their Romanian citizenship and marginalized."(Popa 2017, p. 41.).

References

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  1. ^ Lucian Tudor: The Romanian Iron Guard: Its Origins, History, and Legacy, page 69
  2. ^ Lucian Tudor: The Romanian Iron Guard: Its Origins, History, and Legacy, pages 70-79
  3. ^ International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania; Friling, Tuvia; Ioanid, Radu; Ionescu, Mihail E., eds. (2005). Final Report. Iași: Polirom. ISBN 978-973-681-989-6.
  4. ^ Chirot, Daniel (2001-06-01). "Radu Ioanid. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Forewords by Elie Wiesel and Paul A. Shapiro. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee; in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. 2000. Pp. xxiv, 352". The American Historical Review. 106 (3): 1086–1087. doi:10.1086/ahr/106.3.1086. ISSN 0002-8762.
  5. ^ Popa, Ion (2017). The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust. Indiana University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt2005xm6. ISBN 978-0-253-02956-0.
  6. ^ Brustein, William (13 October 2003). Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521774789 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Ioanid, Radu (20 April 2022). The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538138090 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 41.
  9. ^ Weinbaum, Laurence (31 January 2004). "Where Memory is a Curse and Amnesia a Blessing: A Journey Through Romania's Holocaust Narrative". Institute of the World Jewish Congress – via Google Books.
  10. ^ Kar dy, Viktor (1 January 2004). The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era: A Socio-historical Outline. Central European University Press. ISBN 9789639241527 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ Sorkin, David; Sorkin, Professor David (Professor) (14 September 2021). Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691205250 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ Stenberg, Peter (31 January 1991). Journey to Oblivion: The End of the East European Yiddish and German Worlds in the Mirror of Literature. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802058614 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Hollander, Ethan J. (25 October 2016). Hegemony and the Holocaust: State Power and Jewish Survival in Occupied Europe. Springer. ISBN 9783319398020 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 83-84.
  15. ^ Jean Ancel (2002). History of the Holocaust - Romania (in Hebrew). Vol. I. Israel: Yad Vashem. pp. 363–400. ISBN 965-308-157-8..
  16. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 86.
  17. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 111-112.
  18. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 112-115.
  19. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 115.
  20. ^ Final Report 2005, p. 120-125.
  21. ^ a b Final Report 2005, p. 126.
  22. ^ Michelbacher, Dallas (2020). Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944. Indiana University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvzcz5jm. ISBN 978-0-253-04738-0.
  23. ^ Michelbacher, Dallas (2020). Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944. Indiana University Press. p. 28-38. doi:10.2307/j.ctvzcz5jm. ISBN 978-0-253-04738-0.
  24. ^ Ion Popa, Indiana University Press, Sep 11, 2017, The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust, p. 30
  25. ^ Maksim Goldenshteyn, University of Oklahoma Press, Jan 20, 2022, So They Remember: A Jewish Family’s Story of Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine, p. 8
  26. ^ Midlarsky, Manus I. (17 March 2011). Origins of Political Extremism: Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139500777 – via Google Books.
  27. ^ Valeria Chelaru: Tradition, Nationalism and Holocaust Memory: Reassessing Antisemitism in Post-Communist Romania, page 73
  28. ^ Roland Clark: New models, new questions: historiographical approaches to the Romanian Holocaust, page 304
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