Deportations in the Spring and Autumn of 1942

The Chronological Order of Events

June 7, 1942 - October 13, 1942

June 7, 1942

Due to initiatives so far unknown, an order of General Corneliu Calotescu, Governor of Bucovina, and under the direct control of Major Stere Marinescu, Head of Cabinet, a new group of Jews was deported from among those who were still in Chernovitz. It seems that this plan was aimed at the deportation of those 4,000 Jews who, during the deportation of November, 1941 had been selected to for permission to stay in the town from Dr. Traian Popovici, ex-town mayor who had fallen out of favour by then.

Some of the lists of names were compiled in April at the Governor's office, and two days before the deportation, the county branch of the Rumanian Central Jewish Office was asked to urgently provide the list of the Jews who remained in the town under the Popovici permit.

The Jewish organisations (both in Bucharest and in Chernovitz) received this information in time, but all of their attempts to prevent this disaster were in vain. Leading Rumanian authorities, intoxicated by their illusory military [295] successes, remained deaf throughout the summer of 1942. The clerks were only paying attention and holding out their palms to make a profit from the misfortune of the Jews. Stere Marinescu, for example, received 500,000 lei as monthly allowance from the Jews before the deportation. This, however, did not prevent him from accomplishing the deportation with cruelty and barbarity.

Under his order, patrols of policemen and soldiers joined by representatives of the Town Hall, in the middle of the night, went to the Jewish homes selected according to the prepared lists, and collected approx. 1,000 people, men, women and children, and did not allow them to bring more with them than what they could carry on their backs.

Among the people collected there were a number of Polish citizens who held Chilean passport. Also 66 in-patients from the lunatic asylum were forced to leave, along with the hospital staff, although the latter had residence permits signed by the Governor himself.

Directly after the deportation, the homes of Jews remained empty. Signs prepared in advance were stuck onto the doors which said that the goods inside had became the property of Town Hall. Later they were divided among those Rumanians who laid claim to them; they were given to those hyenas from all social and intellectual strata, who flooded the town in the hope of getting rich. The furniture remained in their hands for a year, when under formal sales contracts it became their property forever.

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June 14, 1942

The second transportation of Jews was collected and sent to Transnistria in the same barbaric manner as the first, with looting and torture. Those living at the old people's home (with people over the age of 80), as well as hospital patients wearing only hospital gowns were taken out of their beds were also included in this transportation. The doctor on duty protested against the taking of patients, and was subsequently arrested.

June 14, 1942

Under the order of the Governor of Bucovina, 450 Jews are deported from Dorohoi. Most are men, breadwinners, who had been in labour service in November 1941, when the first deportation separated them from their wives and children. When they returned from labour service, they found their flats sealed, their families taken away and their property confiscated. They did not even receive permission to remain in the town. If some of them still managed to sneak into the city, patrols surrounded the streets, collected them and took them directly to the railway station.

June 28, 1942

A new Black Sunday for the Jews of Chernovitz. Another Jewish group of about 2,000 is deported. The people are collected at night and at dawn under the same barbaric [297] circumstances as on the two previous Sundays June 7 and 14). They were taken to the sports grounds in Makabi where they were the targets of mockery all day. The operations were once again directed by Major Stere Marinescu. His helpers were Police Commander Traian Ionescu and Manea Bocioaga, who was the co-ordinating officer of Jewish issues in the governorship. Before that time, the latter person had been the financial executive of the governorship. On this occasion, people who had been given permission to stay by the governor were officially deprived of it.

In the evening, before the train departed, Major Marinescu checked the freight-cars. Since he realised that there was still room in them, at about 19.00 hrs he gave an order to collect Jews from a few streets of the Rosa district. The freight-cars were still not completely full, therefore Marinescu gave another order in the middle of the night, according to which, all Jews living in Pitei Street were to be collected. There were people among them who had been given permission to stay only a few hours previously by the selection committee.

August 8, 1942

Since German troops arrived in the country, the German embassy attempted for the first time to actively influence the Rumanian government and the general public in order to exterminate the Rumanian Jewish population. Everything so far had taken place exclusively on Rumanian initiatives, [298] and was carried out exclusively by Rumanian authorities. It is natural that the pursuits and crimes they ordered or allowed to happen, were mostly the passive consequences of the influential Nazi mentality. However, Rumania was not forced to do anything by the Germans, except for the demolishing traditional Jewish communities and substituting them with the Jewish Office. There were no ratified obligations to prescribe the persecution and execution of Jews. The occurrences were the consequences of the fact that Rumania had joined the Berlin-Rome axis.

The relatively favourable situation at the front - the German-Hungarian forces were standing in front of Voroniezh, the German-Rumanian troops were approaching Stalingrad as well as Krasnodar and Majkop - induced the Gestapo to start its actions planned a long time ago, whose aim was the complete extermination of Rumanian Jews. These actions had already been started earlier in territories occupied by the Germans.

In the official journal of the German Embassy of Bucharest, the Bukarester Tageblatt, an article appears with the title "Rumanien wird judenrein" (Rumania will be cleared of Jews), which gives a full account of the plan to deport the entire Rumanian Jewish population. The action will be started in the autumn, and must be accomplished by the following autumn.

A similar article - which seems to have been written by the same person - appears in the same day in the Donauzeitung, the official newspaper of the Gestapo in the Balkans, published in Belgrade. Two days later the Volkischer [299] Beobachter publishes the news, too. It is of significance that the Rumanian press remains silent on the issue.

Some days later (August 13) Radu Lecca, Commissioner of Jewish Issues, is called to Berlin to participate in the conference of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) with Gustaw Richter, Head of the Jewish Department of the Rumanian Gestapo.

The content and decisions of the meeting are unknown but can be deducted, since a month later (on September 26-28) German Railways held another meeting in Berlin.

In the absence of the delegation of Rumanian Railways (although invited, they excused themselves by requesting the postponement of the meeting) a decision was made to collect the entire Rumanian Jewish population in Adjud county, from where every second day a transport of 2,000 people was to be started to the death-camp of Belsen in Poland.

August 15, 1942

For some weeks, the Jewish population feel even more threatened than usual. The news of further groups of Jewish deportees from Chernovitz, cause not only pain, but also fear. The latest announcements of the military and civilian authorities (General Command and the Ministry of the Interior), with their stereotyped and hurtful refrains ("they will be deported to Transnistria along with their families"), [300] and news published in the German press - to test public reaction, which arrogantly spread the rumour about the deportation of the entire Rumanian-Jewish population, caused general panic.

The recently leaked news is indeed horrifying. It was learnt simultaneously in Bucharest (from Radu Lecca, government representative of Jewish affairs) and Timisoara (from authenticated local resources):the decision had been made for the deportation of Jews from the major towns of Transylvania and Banat, i.e. from towns close to the Rumanian-Hungarian border: Timisoara, Arad, Beius, Turda, Sighisoara, Brasov.

The leaders of the threatened communities (Dr. S. Ligeti and I. Tenner from Timisoara, Aladar Lakatos from Arad, A. Fellter from Sibiu, etc.) gather in Bucharest to commence activity. They are not supported by the Rumanian Central Jewish Office, but receive assistance from the underground leadership of the Jews. They do everything in their power to hand in requests backed up by documents to all leading forums.

The first benevolent action was taken by doctor Stroescu, family physician of Antonescu and Director of the newly established Palace of War-Invalids, for which he tried to beg Jewish money by all means. He starts an action with great enthusiasm in the interest of Jews, although the condition of this is an amount of 100 million lei collected by Jews from Transylvania and Banat for the Palace of War-Invalids.

[301] At the same time they gained the support of His Holiness Balan, the Metropolitan of Transylvania. The old High Priest travelled from Paltinis to Bucharest just for this reason. His Samaritan action was supported fully by Her Majesty Elena, the Queen Mother. It is said that this dramatic issue was decided in the royal palace over lunch, to which Balan His Holiness, the Metropolitan, Ion Antonescu and the Queen were invited, and where Her Majesty supported with dignity and extreme firmness the cause of those persecuted.

They also received the active support of His Excellency Monsignor Andrea Cassulo, Papal Nuncio, and His Excellency Rene de Weck, Ambassador of Switzerland, who did not hesitate to lend the support resolutely and unambiguously.

It will always be a secret, which of these actions was the crucial one. So far not even the decision is known with which Antonescu modified the murderous decision. However, the fact is that the leaders of the Jewish communities were informed, (even if not concretely and finally) that the idea of deporting of Jews from Transylvania and Banat was abandoned.

September 13, 1942

On the occasion of the Jewish New Year, Cordel Hull, the American Secretary of State, turned to Jews living in every part of the world with a moving speech, in which he placed [302] emphasis on the solidarity of the American and Jewish nations.

Rumanian public opinion was strongly influenced by the speech, which caused strange reactions.

The Rumanian press, for instance, commented on the speech with a certain sense of respect. Even the blackmailing gutter newspaper, Porunca Vremii, abandoned its aggressive and vulgar tone temporarily. The Editor-in-Chief of the paper, I. P. Prudeni, writes this under the title "The Meaning of a Speech" in the issue of September 15, 1942:

"Our aggravated hatred is mixed with the reserved admiration we feel in seeing the stubborn will to believe, calculated resignation and the special strength of bearing suffering and persecution. The basic virtue of the Jews lies in the unusual strength with which they manage to land on their feet after each disaster. This is what the issue looks like after removing the vulgar insults from among the hostility which never solves anything."

One ex-minister of Antonescu's strongly refuses to be a member of the government again. He gives the following reason to his friends: "Haven't you read Cordel Hull's speech? Why should I fight the Jews right now?"

The Minister of the Interior, General Dumitru Popescu, calls to Dr. W. Filderman for an audience, who he had not met for more than a year since he was dismissed from the leadership of the community. The General literally told him this: "Although you are not the legal leader of the Jews, I [303] must turn to you with my request. You must remember my announcements which were repeated many times, that I do not agree with what is being done against the Jews. But my power is restricted to as far as the Prut. Therefore, it is not in my power to do anything now. The deportation campaigns are in General Vasiliu's hands, who - it seems - has made an agreement with the Germans. Please, tell the Jews not to hand in requests to me in which they ask me to exempt them from deportation or to give them time since I cannot help them in any way

The audience lasted a long time, and was repeated the following day on the minister's request. He showed a keen interest in the details of Jewish issues and expressed his indignation at what was happening to the Jews. He did not forget to disassociate himself from the persecution of Jews, which were initiated and carried out by the government, of which he was a member. He again asked Dr. Filderman to pass the aforementioned request to the Jews.

However, on exactly the same day the Minister of the Interior had said these things (September 22, 1942, on the day of Yom Kippur), while he was getting rid of the responsibility of past and present, the organs led by him did the following:

1. The Central Police Station of the Capital sent 148 Jews to Transnistria (with their families), who were accused of having avoided labour service.

2. Policemen and police officers, on behalf of the National Centre of Rumanianisation, removed the old people from [304] the Elisabet old people's home, which became the property of the above-mentioned organisation.

3. The Gendarmes of Mostovoi (Berezovca county) helped the SS rob and kill 600 Jews, who had been brought there from the Old Kingdom and Transylvania two weeks before under the order of the Ministry of the Interior.

However, it is also true, that General Dumitru Popescu was a little more far-sighted than the Ministry of Propaganda, and people similar to him also started to compete to win certificates proving their good behaviour.

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