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81 C h a p t e r 7 Duminica ceea (That Sunday) Saturday, June 28, signs of trouble in Iași: Aron Stievel, part owner of a textile factory with an office on Stradă Stefan cel Mare, described the Sabbath morning as “heavy with silence.” Ordinarily he would have gone to the factory in order to pay workers but decided to have two of his Christian employees take and distribute the money. These two had told Stievel he should leave the city and stay away until the following Wednesday, that “great disorders ,” which Christians but not Jews were prepared for, were about to take place. On the same day Stievel’s partner was advised by a policeman, who he paid for information, that the two owners should stay off the streets and keep hidden. Engineer Israel Schleier said that from the day war began (June 22, 1941) Jews felt an impending but undefined threat, a feeling that intensi- fied with each bombing and the rumors that followed: of Jews flying Soviet bombers or directing pilots to their targets from the ground with lanterns or red sheets or assisting enemy agents who had parachuted into the city. Schleier recalled feeling extremely anxious on Saturday, the more so as the day’s events unfolded: word that several Jews had been murdered; the arrest of prominent intellectuals, activists, and communist sympathizers; and the appearance of signs posted on houses and public buildings calling for blood: “Romanians! With each Jew you kill you kill a communist. The time for revenge has come!” and “Kill the yids! Every yid is a communist! Liquidate forever those who threaten us!”1 On Saturday afternoon Jewish residences in the slaughterhouse district came under attack. Leading the action was Sergeant Manoliu with soldiers from the 13th Infantry and 24th Artillery regiments, joined by some ci- 82 C H A P T E R 7 vilians and German troops whose commander was told by Manoliu that Jews in the area were signaling enemy planes with their radios. The violence, which district police would not or could not stop, was only brought to an end after the arrival of Chief Chirilovici, Garrison Commander Lupu with a platoon of gendarmes, and Major Scriban, praetor (chief legal officer) of the 14th Infantry Division. Some of the perpetrators were arrested but Scriban soon released them, including Sergeant Manoliu who had already murdered six Jews with the assistance of Corporal Nicolau. In a report dated four days later, Romania’s director general of police Emanoil Leoveanu expressed astonishment at the release of “this assassin.”2 The general’s report is probably the second (i.e., later) of two quite different reports Leoveanu drew up, both with the same date (July 2, 1941), number (58), and his signature. It belongs to a class of documents intended by officials who created them to show, should they later be called on to answer for their actions, that they had acted responsibly.3 The general assault against Jews was set off about 9:30 Saturday evening by flares or rockets launched over Iaşi by one or more planes followed by real and/or simulated gunfire that erupted throughout the city. Top municipal and regional police officers and representatives of the two major Romanian military units headquartered in the area, 3rd Army and 14th Infantry Division, were at the municipal police station (chestură) at that time. The gathering of these officials at this time and place indicates they knew what was about to happen and were prepared to exact some level of control over the action. In response to reports that began coming in from district police posts that Romanian and German troops in the city were being shot at, these officials sent out teams of police and gendarmes to protect military units and search out and arrest the alleged shooters. General Stavrescu, 14th Infantry division commander, and von Salmuth, German 30th Army Corps commander, also sent out patrols. General Antonescu responded to the action late Saturday night by making Garrison Commander Constantin Lupu military commander of Iaşi, an authority he assumed the next morning. In addition he ordered that all residents living in places from which shots had been fired be arrested (except children), summarily investigated, the guilty immediately executed, and those harboring such criminals punished in the same way. He further commanded that all Jews of Iaşi (including women and children) be evacuated from the...

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