The jews of bessarabia the holocaust period

 

 

wrest it away from Romania. Einzatzgruppe D served this purpose well in Bessarabia.  

It, perhaps, even initiated it.  Its basic strategy was to destroy the Romanian 

administration.  It was not a difficult task since the Romanian clerks were prone to 

corruption.  The German reports indicate that the Romanians were not anti-Semitic 

enough and that the local population received them much more happily than they had 

the Romanians.  As a result, there was a sort of competition between the Germans and 

the Romanians to see who could be crueler towards the Jews.  This fact explains the 

terrible behavior of the Romanians towards the Jews as they did not want to give up 

Bessarabia to the Germans. 

The Einzatzgruppe were not reticent and robbed belongings of the deported Jews.  In 

February 1942 watches and valuables were confiscated during a mass execution.  

Some of the valuables were sent to Berlin and the rest was divided among the 

Einzatzgruppe members and their collaborators in the Wermacht.  Some of the watches 

were sold and the money was used to pay salaries.  

DEPORTATION OF THE JEWS OF BESSARABIA TO TRANSNISTRIA 

The deportation of the Jews of Bessarabia across the Dniester was done in two stages.  

The first stage, in July-August 1941, was full of cruel acts.  The Tighina agreement 

about Transnistria was signed on August 30 of that year.  The Romanian authorities 

were clear in their intentions.  During a speech given on July 3, 1941 by the vice prime 

minister Mikhai Antonescu, to government functionaries, it was announced that the 

ethnic cleansing – these are his words-will be done by deportation or isolation in labor 

camps.  This would be done to the Jews and to other nationalities whose loyalty is in 

question.  There could also be enforced emigration, if necessary.  This would be 

announced by the provincial authorities and would be directed at the Jews. 

From the end of July 1941 the Jews of Bessarabia were deported to the eastern banks 

of the Dniester.  The commander of the gendarmes in Czernowitz reported that 20,000 

Jews were deported from Khotin district to the other side of the Dniester.  At the 

beginning of August the gendarmes from Soroka sent 12,000 Jews to the eastern side 

of the Dniester. 

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At the same time the Romanian reports inform us that the Germans were refusing to 

accept the Jews in Mogilev Podolsk and that those sent across the Dniester were being 

sent back to Bessarabia.  Einzatzcommand 10b reported that on August 26 6,000 Jews 

from Mogilev were returned to Bessarabia and many of them were murdered. The 

actual number of those killed during August will probably never be known.  The 

Germans shot them in place and the Romanians shot them when they returned from 

the other side of the river so there would be very few Jews left. 

The reason given for returning the deportees to the other side of the Dniester, 

according to historian Brozati, is that the area on the eastern banks of the river (soon 

to be called Transnistria) was closer to the front and there was still military activity 

there. 

In spring 1942 the Germans tried to repeat the event.  This time they attempted to 

send the Jews from Transnistria across the Bug River to areas held by the Germans.  

Eichmann himself intervened since this was against the systematic destruction 

philosophy of the Germans.  On April 14, 1942 Eichmann demanded from the German 

Foreign Ministry to inform the Romanian government that, with the assistance of the 

secret police, he will stop all “illegal” transports across the Bug.  Eichmann also 

stressed that the German army would suffer great losses if hordes of Jews would arrive 

there.  There were also difficulties in providing supplies and all this would undermine 

the plan to rid Germany of Jews. 

There is not much information about the first stage of deportation.  One witness 

account describes the concentration of the Jews of Bricheni and Lipkany in Edinets 

towards the end of July 1941.  They were sent on foot through Ataki to Mogilev.  They 

walked for three days, including the children, a distance of 55 km.  In the villages of 

Rusan and Climautsi they were robbed by local peasants and Romanian gendarmes.  

Many died on the way.  At the end of the month the caravan reached Mogilev where 

there were Jews from Secureni and Noua-Sulitsa.  In Mogilev there were about 20,000 

deportees.  They were left outside of the town, without any guards, without food or a 

place to sleep.  A week later saw the arrival of SS men and Ukrainian police. They 

evicted the witness and other deportees a distance of 6 km to the village of Scazineti.  

There they were put in abandoned barracks, without guards.  They had to find food in 

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the fields.  Two weeks later they were brought back to Mogilev to again cross the 

Dniester back to Bessarabia.  The Romanians opposed their return.  The deportees 

found out that the first groups that were returned to Bessarabia were shot by the 

Romanians.  The group was sent back to Scazineti where they remained until the end 

of August.  Again the SS men arrived and sent them through winding roads back to 

Bessarabia.  This time they crossed the Dniester at Yampol.  After 4 days of marching 

along the river, many of the deportees were murdered by the SS men.  Another witness 

reports that the waters of the Dniester were filled with bodies of those murdered and 

those who drowned. 

In Bessarabia the returnees were received in Coshautsi by Romanian gendarmes.  They 

again robbed the deportees and raped the women.  The next day a commission from 

Soroka arrived in Coshautsi and confiscated any valuables still left.  They were then 

divided into groups and transferred in various ways to Vertujeni.  Their escorts did not 

even allow them a drink of well water and they had to satisfy their thirst from the 

puddles along the road.   

On August 30 the “agreement to cleanse” was signed in Tighina- to deport Jews to the 

new territory which would be under Romanian watch, but supervised by the Germans.  

It will be called Transnistria.  This was the beginning of the second phase of 

evacuation, planned by the Germans.  According to the Tighina agreement the 

Romanians were obliged to lock the Jews in concentration camps. 

The Romanian military government only began to function in September and October 

of 1941.  The area was under German supervision before that.  On September 1, 1941, 

the general commander of the police sent a secret telegram to the commander of the 

gendarmes in Tighina telling him that as of September 6 the evacuation of the Jews 

would begin.  They would go in groups of 1,000.  Gendarmes were needed to 

accompany them as well as wagons for baggage.  The Romanian military command 

demanded from the gendarmerie to give an exact number of Jews in the camps of 

Bessarabia.  The exchange of letters about the topic indicates that there was an order, 

probably given orally by Antonescu, to begin evacuation on September 15.  In fact the 

evacuation began on September 16, 1941 when a caravan of 22,150 Jews left Vertujeni 

according to the plan.  The rows of evacuees moved along previously designed routes.  

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