The Origins and Onset of the Romanian Holocaust

Introduction

1 Introduction This is a brief study of the origins of the Romanian Holocaust and the first mass killings of Jews by Romanian authorities. It addresses two questions. First, why did the Antonescu government set out to exterminate Jews, those who lived in Romania and those in areas annexed by Romania during the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II? The war, the invasion, and Romania’s alliance with Nazi Germany certainly accommodated a genocidal campaign, “ethnic purification” in the jargon of government leaders, but the war and Axis alignment were not compelling circumstances. Of the Third Reich’s allies, only Romania took that course; in Hungary and Italy the systematic destruction of Jews required the intervention of Himmler’s SS. So why did Romania set out to destroy the Jews in its territories? To answer this question one must look at Romania’s antisemitic history, the subject I take up in the first half of this study. The second question concerns the initial mass killings of Jews by Romanian government agencies—where did the killings take place and when? who were the victims and perpetrators? and who gave the orders? The later chapters of this work are concerned with answering these questions. The first massacres occurred in late June and early July 1941. On Sunday afternoon, June 29, 1941, in the city of Iaşi, several hundred Jews were shot to death in the courtyard of the municipal police station (chestură). Policemen, soldiers, and civilians began rounding them up the night before: invading and ransacking homes, stealing valuables, extorting money, beating and murdering residents. Many survivors of this assault were marched to the police station, some women and children but men for the most part, arms 2 I N T RO D U C T I O N raised, jeered at, spit on, beaten, and shot if they fell behind or dropped their arms. Those who got to the chestură were driven into its courtyard between rows of soldiers beating them with wooden clubs and iron bars, wounding many, killing some. Women and most children were freed around the noon hour. Then, about 2:00 p.m., at the sound of air-raid sirens, the gates were closed and the shooting commenced, lasting off and on for some four hours. That evening and early Monday morning, survivors of the massacre and others , held in the chestură building or elsewhere in the city or caught up in the continuing raids, were herded to the central train station. Here the prisoners, crazed by thirst, some savagely beaten or wounded by gunshots or bayonets, were jammed into the boxcars of two trains. In the intense summer heat each car became a suffocating prison, doors locked shut and air vents closed or boarded over. More than fifteen hundred died in the foul and oven-like wagons of the first train, which meandered south on a halting, weeklong journey to the town of Călăraşi, ordinarily a trip of no more than a day. Nearly twelve hundred dead were removed from the more crowded cars of the second train, which took some eight hours to reach the town of Podu Iloaiei, only 15 miles (25 kilometers) west of Iaşi. Approximately 2,713 perished in the trains, but the total number of those murdered is not known. Romania’s Intelligence Service reported one of the highest estimates, a figure of 13,266, including 40 women and 180 children.1 Romanian Jews call the day of mass murder Duminica ceea (That Sunday) and the trains Trenurile mortuare (The Death Trains). Another massacre of Jews occurred a few miles north of Iaşi two days before “That Sunday.” Soldiers of the Romanian 6th Cavalry Regiment, during a skirmish across the Prut River, had entered the Soviet border town of Sculeni. Before retreating they rounded up some of its residents and brought them back into Romanian territory. Jews were then separated from the rest, and on June 27 at a place called Stânca Rosnovanu two regimental officers and a few soldiers robbed them, forced the young Jewish men to dig burial trenches, and executed them—311 men, women, and children. When Colonel Matieş, the regiment’s commander, was later questioned about the killings he dismissed the victims as deserving no consideration and claimed he had commanded the execution “in conformity with superior orders.”2 On the one hand these mass murders at Stânca Rosnovanu and Iaşi...