3. Deportation of the Jews
from the Dorohoi district
On the 5th of November 1941, the
authorities informed the Jewish population from the city
of Dorohoi that they are to be evacuated to
Transnistria
All the Jews evacuated from the
district's other localities (Darabani, Radauti-Prut,
etc.) were gathered up in Dorohoi. The total number of
Jews who lived here before the evacuation was about
12,000.
The deportation began on the 7th
of November 1941, and took place in the same conditions
as in Southern Bucovina.
The first deportees were the
Jews from Darabani. As they had already been evacuated
from their small town in June, they were scantily dressed
in summer clothes, having few luggage.
On the 8th of November the Jews
from Saveni and Mihaileni were evacuated in the same
conditions. The deportation of the Jews from Dorohoi took
place the 12th and 13th of November.
The Dorohoi district belonged to
the Old Kingdom, but due to an arbitrary new
administrative division, it was enclosed into the
Government of Bucovina, and that was the reason for the
disaster of the Jews from this district.
Between the Jews deported from
Dorohoi district were many former veterans of the war,
invalids, orphans and war widows. The wives and children,
whose husbands and fathers were concentrated in forced
labor camps, in different places of the country, were
also evacuated.
Due to the intervention of the
Jewish Community of Bucharest, personally of Dr. W.
Fildermann, the government transmitted an order to
suspend the deportation.
According to the declarations of
several public officers, this order was hidden by the
leaders of the district, and was registered and applied
only after the departure of the train with
deportees.
Among the anti-Semitic
personalities of the district Dorohoi, who intervened in
Bucharest insisting for the deportation of the Jews, are
to be mentioned colonel Barcan, prefect of the district,
Jean Pascu, mayor of the city, the pharmacist Gheorghe
Timus, the president of the selection commission, Dr.
Felix Nadejde, the district's chief doctor, the lawyer
Adam and others.
At the railway station the Jews
were searched before getting on the train and most of
their goods were taken away.
The cattle wagons were locked
and guarded during the journey by gendarmes. The
deportees had to relieve themselves in the wagons. During
the trip some elderly froze and died.
In Cernowitz station a young Jew
forced the wagon door and tried to get out to drink
water, but was shot by the gendarmes.
After arriving at Atachi, the
Jews got out from the train, but were allowed to take
with them only those things that they could carry with
their hands. The things left in the train were
plundered.
They passed the Dnestr by ferry,
as the bridge had been destroyed during the
war.
On the other side of the river
was the city Moghilev. Some remained in Moghilev, but
most of them were organized in columns and taken on foot,
to different localities inside Transnistria.
The men, from different
compulsory labor detachments, who had returned to
Dorohoi, found their homes empty, mostly plundered and
their wives and children deported to
Transnistria.
By a memorial, addressed to
Marshal Antonescu and the government, they solicited the
return of their families to Dorohoi.
The resolution applied on the
memorial reflects the purification policy of the Romanian
authorities: "The Jews have to go and fetch their
evacuated families," with other words they should be
deported to Transnistria.
The Jewish Central Office from
Romania had drawn up a dossier with the names and first
names of those whose families were deported to
Transnistria while they were in different compulsory
labor detachments.
This dossier contains 818 heads
of family, who during the deportation of their families,
were at the embankment building site Braila, at a
bridge-earthwork Lipcani, at the detachments Zvoristea,
Craiova, Bucharest, Serpenita, Battalion 7-Roads, Edinita
and at the ready made clothes workshop, Iasi.
The next year, on the 14th of
June 1942, a new group of 450 Jews from Dorohoi was
deported, mostly formed of men from the labor
detachments, whose families had been deported earlier on
November 1941. The fate of these last deportees was
particularly tragic.
The train with these deportees
arrives at Serebria, near Moghilev, on June 20th 1942,
but they were not given the permission to get out from
the train. In return, their families from Moghilev are
allowed to join them, and they left together, farther
away towards the Bug, the convoy increasing in this way
to 950 persons.
The convoy arrived on the 3rd of
July 1942 in Oleanita Tulcin district, from where they
were taken to the quarry on the banks of the river
Bug.
In August 1942, colonel Loghin,
the Prefect of the district Tulcin, on the request of the
German Todt organization, send across the Bug, 3.000
Jews, among them being also the Jews from Dorohoi. They
were closed up in the camp Tarasivca, put to different
exhausting works and gradually killed by the
Germans.
On the 10th of December 1943,
the last survivors from this group were shot by the
Germans and thrown in a common grave. Only about 50 Jews
from Dorohoi, who succeeded to run away from the camp
survived from those deported on June 1942.
From the district Dorohoi
(without Hertza region) about 10,000 Jews were deported
to Transnistria. 1)
It has to be underlined that,
during the deportation period, in autumn 1941, according
to the secret note No. 8597/October 5th, 1941,
transmitted by the Chief of the Military Office to the
Governors of Bucovina and Basarabia, all the Jews who
were to be deported, were obliged to deposit at the
National Bank their hard currency, gold coins, jewelry
and precious metals, as well as their cash.
In change, at a totally
unfavorable rate, they received German Occupation Marks
(Kassenscheine), money without any guaranty, generally
refused by the natives from Transnistria.
1)
See, Table
No. 5, p. 23
.