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The Rebel Mayor Dr The Rebel Mayor Dr. Traian Popovici was a lawyer and the Mayor of the town of Cernauti (Czernowitz or Chernovtsy) from July 1941 to December 1941 who rescued around 20,000 Jews from Cernauti from deportation to ghettos and death camps. It’s a remarkable story in horrific times. The reason I have chosen to write my essay about Dr. Traian Popovici is because the Holocaust is not a topic that is hugely talked about in Romania. I was born there and I’m interested in the history and the values of the Romanians at that time. I also decided to write this essay on Dr. Traian Popovici because I had only found out about him after watching a news channel from Romania and they had briefly mentioned his story. It inspired me to find out more about this character and the time that he lived in. His rescue story has similarities to The Mary Elmes story in that they are stories of survival in the darkest and most inhospitable and tragic period to live in Europe in the 20th century. After the First World War Romania had acquired many new territories through several treaties such as the Treaty of Trianon and the size of the nation had doubled with these new territories. This left Romania with many minorities and one of these was 757,000 Jews in its newly acquired territories with the largest populations present in Bessarabia and Transylvania. This left Romania and many Romanians with a fear of this large Jewish minority leading to strong Antisemitism throughout the nation but also racism towards any of the other minorities. Antisemitic thought however was prevalent in Romania all the way from the 16th century just like much of Europe at that time. Romania was a country where there was also a strong anti-communist sentiment due to poor relations with the USSR, as the Communist Party promised equality among the minorities many Jews became members of the organization this only served to make them more disliked by society and for them to suffer further discrimination. Antisemitism was promoted through propaganda throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s by the Far-Right group the Iron Guard. At this time Romania was a monarchy and was under the rule of King Carol the 2nd, King Carol was viewed as a philo-Semite but due to the rise of the Iron Guard and Germany’s meteoric rise to a world power, King Carol felt compelled to adopt racial discrimination as the norm. The first Anti-Jewish laws were passed in 1937 by the Romanian government. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina to the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Romania would then join the Axis powers and later invade the USSR alongside Germany and its allies in 1941. In 1940 the Romanian government then under the Ion Gigurtu cabinet had adopted laws similar to the Nuremburg laws in Germany and these banned Christian- Jewish marriages and also defining Jews via racial criteria, such as a person was considered a Jew if they had a Jewish grandparent. In 1941 the far-right group the Iron Guard came to power and 13,000 Jews were killed by the Romanian Army and Iron Guard during the Iasi Pogrom in 1941 at the orders of then fascist dictator General Ion Antonescu. Antonescu brought Romania into the war alongside Germany because Hitler promised him that after the USSR was defeated that Romania would regain its lost land. During Operation Barbarossa, Romania annexed a new piece of territory known as Transnistria. This newly acquired piece of land was the area that the Romanian government chose to deport many of its Jews and set up camps and ghettos there. The significance of the role of Dr. Traian Popovici who was born in 1892 in Rusii Manastioareii (currently known as Udesti) in what was then the Duchy of Bukovina, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is a compelling story. He was the son of a Romanian Orthodox Priest, attended a high school in Suceava another city in the Duchy of Bukovina and studied law in Cernauti (Czernowitz or Chernovtsy), where he earned a doctorate in law and even practiced as a lawyer. In 1940 when the USSR had annexed Bukovina, Dr. Traian Popovici had moved to Bucharest to continue his career as a prominent lawyer. When he first arrived in Bucharest, he like many other Romanians at that time had supported Ion Antonescu and his regime as it was seen as a solution to the poor reign of then King Carol the 2nd , but Popovici was against Ion Antonescu’s regime when it passed its policy of segregation. When Romania regained Cernauti in July of 1941, Popovici was given the role of mayor of the town. When he assumed office, some Anti-Jewish laws had already been passed and he tried to change their situation for the better in any way that he could. According to testimonies, many Jews that had been prosecuted had turned to him for help with their situation. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/popovici.html On October 10, 1941 the governor of Bukovina had passed a decree on the orders of Ion Antonescu to build a ghetto and the deportation of the city’s Jewish population. Popovici had stated that he was against the ghetto and deportations, but his protests fell on deaf ears. Deportations had started within a few days and Jews from Cernauti were deported to Transnistria to the newly build camps and ghettos. By mid-November 1941 28,000 Jews from the city were deported to the province of Transnistria. The awful conditions and inhumane forced labour present in the camps and ghettos were the cause of death for approximately half of those that were deported to the province of Transnistria. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/popovici.html Popovici described the deportations vividly "Out there a great column of people was going into exile: old men leaning on children, women with babies in their arms, cripples dragging their mangled bodies, all bags in hand; the healthy ones pushing barrows or carts or carrying on their backs coffers hastily packed and tied. Popovici goes on to describe the mass migration that the Jews of Cernauti experienced on their way to Transnistria. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/popovici/tarian-popovici- letter.html In memoirs that Popovici had written he says that he had contemplated resigning from the role of mayor, but he remained in the role as he was determined to still help the Jewish population of Cernauti in their time of need and saw his role in society as one that he could help rescue Jews from their terrible fate. With this he disregarded the danger that was threatening his life and he continued to vigorously protest against the decisions of the governor and General Antonescu against the Jewish population. As a way to help save the Jews from Cernauti he had told General Antonescu and the governor of Bucovina that the city’s Jewish population was vital to the economic stability of the city and that they would need to remain in Cernauti otherwise the city's economy would collapse and its residents would go into poverty. This time he had succeeded, and he was given four days to put together a list of 20,000 Jews with professional skills who were not to be deported to Transnistria and would be able to remain in Cernauti. The Jewish people who were given these exemptions were not deported and they were allowed to return to their homes in Cernauti. Popovici however had not stopped at this assigned quota and whenever he could he gave these exemptions to anybody regardless of whether they had any professional skills. This brought the numbers of Jews that were saved well above the 20,000 mark. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/popovici.html https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/traian-popovici-and-the-jews-of-czernowitz However not all was to be good for Popovici and the Jewish people of Cernauti as his kindness towards the Jewish population did not go unnoticed and it certainly was not appreciated by the government. The fact that he had abused the mandate given to him by the Governor of Bucovina as a way to save Jews in Cernauti would cost him his job as mayor of the town and so he was charged with granting permits to ‘unnecessary’ Jews and was quickly sent back to Bucharest. In June of 1942 there would be another deportation of 5,000 Jews to Transnistria, here most of them perished again due to inhumane living conditions present in the camps and ghettos and long hours of slave labour that they had to endure. However, the remaining Jews in the city would survive the war and continue their life in Cernauti. However, Bukovina would again be annexed by the USSR and Romania would go on to become a Soviet satellite state alongside other countries in Eastern and Central Europe. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/traian-popovici-and-the-jews-of-czernowitz https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/popovici.html Immediately after the war came to an end and the menace of fascism was defeated and Europe split in half, Popovici was not done yet and he wrote a book that he named Confession of Conscience. In this book Popovici described the events of the Holocaust especially in Romania as a Romanian tragedy. He states that this tragedy will have deep moral implications on the consciousness of the Romanian people and the Romanian state and that its effects would still be felt long after it actually occurred.
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