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.

Dr. Liviu Berish Photo Credit: Vivid.ro

"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.

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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