MATATIAS CARP THE BLACK BOOK THE SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS IN ROMANIA 1940 – 1944 Vol. III TRANSNISTRIA "DACIA TRAIANA" NATIONAL PUBLISHING AND GRAPHIC ARTS SOCIETY BUCHAREST – SARINDAR STR. 5-7-9 1947 1 EXPLANATIONS This volume comprises a series of facts and documents which made it possible to re-enact the tragedy suffered by both the deported and the local Jews in the region situated across the Dniester. As the deportation to Transnistria was the outcome of an ample action of crimes and persecutions which had happened a long time before in the territories that were later affected by massive deportations (the Bukovina, Bessarabia and the Dorohoi County), it was only natural that this research should comprise all these actions. The volume is formed of 7 chapters, each chapter having 2 divisions. One refers to the historical review, a mere recording of the facts and persecutions and the other contains a series of documents on which the greatest part of the statements from the first division are based on. The documents have been numbered. To facilitate the research, at the end of each paragraph of the historical review, was specified (between brackets) the number of the documents they refer to. Chapter V comprises a third division of legislative chronology that comprises all the legal or quasi-legal decrees or ministry decisions applicable only for the deported Jews. The published documents were reproduced partly according to photocopies and in most cases after original documents. Some documents were reproduced after simple copies but only after having been thoroughly checked to ensure that they are entirely genuine. 2 GENERAL HISTORICAL REVIEW World War II represents the greatest degree of degradation in human civilization. Each war contains the damned germ of human savageness. It is only natural that such a long confrontation in time and space, this universal war, which had forced powers to confront each other like enraged enemies, awakened ancestral instincts which, once out of control, destroyed and annihilated without mercy. World War I had already shown the horrifying examples of the vile depths to which twentieth century man was capable of sinking, especially the Teutons. It is enough to mention the relics of culture destroyed in Louvain or Reims, the persecution suffered by the inhabitants of occupied territories: the deportations that took place in Belgium and Northern France, the murder of prisoners, the introduction of poisonous gases and many more. It was to be expected that a new confrontation capitalizing on the latest scientific developments would, in its cruelty and barbarity, surpass anything ever recorded in the history of war. Every piece of writing by experts published during the apparently calm period of 1920 - 1939 predicted the cruel nature of the war to come with a sense of horror, or sometimes haughtiness. None of these publications, however, was endowed with an imagination capable of forecasting the horrifying reality experienced by mankind between 1939 and 1945. The main victims of the barbarity which broke loose were European Jews living on territories under the occupation or influence of Germany. In the percentage ratings the Jewish people are No.1 in the list of war victims (63% of the 9,500,000 European Jews were killed)1. Taking into account the total number of victims, they lie in second position after the Soviet Union; concerning the endured suffering, however, theirs surpassed the suffering of any nation at any time. It is superfluous to repeat here the frightening meaning of insignificant geographical names which from now on will constitute immense chapters in history, i.e. Drancy, Belsen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Maidanek, etc.; First among these is Transnistria. 1 Statistical Memento, vol. II, page 17 (World Jewish Congress Edition) 3 There is no such province, county or district indicated on one single map or geography textbook of Ukraine, Czarist Russia or the Soviet Union. Transnistria, as a geographical entry, had not existed prior to July 1941, and, of course, will never exist in the future. As the scene of an endless series of indescribable suffering, and the burial ground of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Transnistria will remain only as one of the terrifying chapters in history. For three years part of the Ukraine, the rich and fertile soil north of the Black Sea as far as the Dniester and the Bug was known by that name. The Romanian government of Ion Antonescu was entrusted with governing and exploiting it. Centuries of Jewish life and suffering had been linked to this land. The mystical spirit of Bal Shem, whose armchair from the synagogue in Shargorod was devoutly protected by deported Jews even when they were threatened with death from every direction, lingered over the area. It was from here that Shalom Aleichem selected a great number of his protagonists, one of whom, Tevie, the milkman, was born and lived in the narrow street which still bears his name. The Biluists, the pioneers of the Jewish national renaissance, passed through this land. It was also here, in the large city of Odessa, that one of the strongest Jewish intellectual centers was established; Haim Nachman Bialik, Achad Haam, Mendala Mocher Sfurim, S. M. Dubnov, M. Usiskin and the outstanding groups of thinkers and writers centered on Hasiloach and Haolam came from here. Decades of bitter Jewish suffering are also connected with this same region. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Czarist oligarchy used pogroms and anti-Semitic persecution as a pillar against democratic ideas and movements, which were on their way towards successful achievement. From 1881 onwards, the western, and particularly the southwestern part of Russia was a continually stirred cauldron of barbaric anti-Semitic hatred. In Podolia (from part of which the damned Transnistria was formed sixty years later) the pogrom in Odessa was organized, and was followed a year later (April 10, 1882) by the great pogrom in Balta, during which thousands of Jewish households were vandalized and hundreds of Jews were beaten, tortured or murdered. In 1900 a new pogrom took place in Odessa and some years later (1905) in the same town, there was one of the bloodiest massacres of Jews. And, finally, it was in this region that the Jews also had to suffer the 1917 Petliura pogroms (Odessa, Balta, Krivoje-Ozero, etc.). 4 The dawning of the new age proved to be bright and hopeful after this period. For almost a quarter of a century, the Jews between the Bug and the Dniester lived as human beings among human beings. The Jews on this side of the Dniester lived in a more depressing atmosphere, a superficial and relative tranquility, constantly interrupted by the bloody and violent manifestations of hatred through mobs encouraged by the highest powers of Romania. The criminal war instigated by Adolf Hitler and Ion Antonescu revived and infinitely multiplied the pains of the past. This territory was invaded, named Transnistria, and destined to be the graveyard of local and Romanian Jews. Most of their appalling plans were carried out. Today, the soil of Transnistria covers the entire Jewish population of Odessa, found there by Ion Antonescu’s army in October 1941, as well as a substantial proportion of Jews from villages and shtetls in the province. The bones of two thirds of the Jews deported from Romania in 1941 and 1942 can be found at the same place, following the murder of half of the Jews before September 1, 1941 living in the provinces affected by deportation (Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dorohoi County). It took until the spring of 1944 for this horrible outcome—about 350,000 people died through murder, massacres, execution campaigns, methods of barbaric persecution, torture, looting and misery, disease and hunger. The methods of murder varied extremely, and the selection included almost everything invented by the human mind from ancient times until Hitler’s day. Starting from June 1940, and lasting until March 1944, the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dorohoi County, and later the Jews of Transnistria, perished as a result of being shot to death, poisoned, hanged, drowned, slaughtered, burned, and starved to death as well as from infectious diseases, the withholding of treatment, the total weakening of the body, and torture resulting in either the death or suicide. It must be emphasized that gas chambers and upgraded crematoriums were not used, and neither were there “scientific” experiments, i.e. vivisection, infection with viruses, the study of the resistance of the human body to extreme temperatures, etc. But it should be mentioned, however, that Romania is a recently civilized country, and lags behind when compared with the European center of German culture. Although signs of German Nazi methods, i.e. the cynicism and fraudulence of planning, the secrecy of preparation, and the brutality of the execution, can be observed, all the initiatives aimed at the deportation and extermination of Jews were the work of Romanian fascism. It is also true that some of these unfortunate people were victims of German barbarism. It must be emphasized, that there were some differences in methods, and boundaries in time that 5 Romanian authorities of higher and lower rank did not step over, or at most only sporadically so. However, the suffering of the approximately 450,000 people, of whom 350,000 died, was not the result of German demands or pressure. The massacres in July and August 1941 in Bessarabia and Bukovina, which had the most victims, were organized by the conquering armies. Among them was the XI German army of General von Schobert. However, his authority extended only to the border of Balti County. At the other parts of the front, from Ceremus to the Danube, it was only the soldiers and officers of the Romanian army who were active.