x
In 1940 Romania experienced some major upheavals both internally and externally. Large areas of Greater Romania were annexed by bordering countries. In June 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. Two months later, and following the Vienna agreement between Hitler and Mussolini, Romania was forced to transfer northern Transylvania to Hungary. Romania lost about 30 percent of its territory and population, and the 11 counties that were transferred had a population of 164,00 Jews. After the loss of northern Transylvania, King Carol II was forced to abdicate, and on September 1940, General Ion Antonescu, proclaimed a "National Legionary State", sharing power with the Iron Guard under Horia Sima's leadership.
Between September 1940 and January 1941, the "National Legionary State" promulgated a number of laws against the Jews, in the spirit of Nuremberg racial laws. Among other things, the citizenship of Jews was abolished and mixed marriages were forbidden. Besides, Iron Guard thugs robbed Jewish owned businesses, assaulted, and killed Jewish citizens.
Iron Guard confiscations and corruption threatened to disrupt the Romanian economy, and led to tension with Antonescu and the Romanian army, and on January 21, 1941 the Iron Guard rose against the regime. During a three day civil war, members of the Iron Guard instigated a pogrom in Bucharest, killed 123 Jews, destroyed synagogues, and vandalized the Jewish districts.
After the repression of the Legionary uprising, the Antonescu regime, which considered itself to be the successor of the anti-Semitic nationalism of the Goga government, made it clear that it would continue the anti-Semitic policies of the National Legionary government. Thus, even before he accepted Hitler's arguments about the necessity of the Final Solution, Antonescu outlined the blueprint of his policies concerning the Jews of the Regat and southern Transylvania.
The basic principles of the regime advocated a radical solution to the "Jewish issue" inspired by the doctrine of radical nationalism. The main components of this policy as it was implemented during the following months were: continuing Romanization using state-sanctioned means (legislation, trials, expropriations); the gradual elimination of Jews from the national economy and the integration of anti-Jewish repression in the regime's official plans, designed to lead to such aspects of "national rejuvenation" as the creation of an ethnic Romanian commercial class and an ethnic Romanian controlled economy. Thus, the Antonescu regime directly blamed Jews for the regime's domestic difficulties ensuring the general welfare of the citizens.
The Antonescu regime, was a fascist regime, that dissolved the Parliament, joined the Axis Power, enacted anti-Semitic and racial legislation, and adopted the "Final Solution" in parts of its territory. During the war, the Legionnaires were more extremists and were ready to act on their hatred and kill Jews. Unlike them, Antonescu was also guided by strategic considerations, at least regarding the Jews in the Regat and Southern Transylvania, since he understood their usefulness to Romania.
In June 1941, under the command of the German Wehrmacht, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union, and was awarded the territory between Dniester and Southern Bug by Germany to administer it under the name Transnistria.
During the war, individual Jews' fates in Romania critically depended on the region in which they lived at the beginning of the war. The period following the invasion of Soviet Union was the most difficult for Romanian Jewry. A few days after the invasion, between June 29 and July 6, the Jews of Iaşi were victims of a pogrom in which more than14,000 Jews were killed in massacres, or suffocated in death trains, supervised by the army and the local police with the support of the Nazi troops.
On Antonescu's order 45,000-60,000 Jews in Bessarabia and Bucovina were massacred. The remaining 157,079 Jews were deported to Transnistria: 91,845 from Bucovina, 55,867 from Bessarabia, and 9,367 from Dorohoi. Between 105,000 and 120,000 of the deported Jews died. More than 21,000 Jews from southern Bucovina (the counties of Dorohoi, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Suceava and Rădăuţi), which was still a part of the Regat, were also deported before 1942.
Under Antonescu's rule, all the Jews were subjected to discriminatory regulations, but there were quite a few fluctuations in their status, depending on the war front situation and on the political interests of the regime. Jewish real estate was nationalized on 28 March 1941, except for a few categories. Jewish men aged 18 to 50 had to perform forced labor. In July- August 1941, the yellow badge was imposed by local initiatives in cities like Bacău, Iaşi and Cernăuţi. A similar measure imposed by the national government lasted only five days (between September 3 and September 8,1941) before being annulled on Antonescu's order.
From the very beginning of the war, in Bucharest, community leaders, namely Wilhelm Filderman, leader of the Federal Union of Jewish Communities ( FUCE), with the assistance of Alexandru Şafran, the chief rabbi, succeeded in organizing an institutional network to provide religious services, education, and social support.
In December 1941, FUCE was dissolved and replaced by the Jewish Central, based on the model of the Judenrat. Filderman, the true leader of the community, led fight against resuming deportations and other anti-Jewish measures. In some communities, permission was given to set up schools for children who had been excluded from the general education system, and ways were found to send aid by international Jewish organizations, to Jews who had been deported to Transnistria.
In the summer of 1942, Jews in the Regat confronted the most critical times, as Ion Antonescu's government accepted the Nazi plan to deport all Jews living in Romania to the Belzec extermination camp. However, in October 1942, policies concerning Jews began to change, and in November 1942 it became clear that the Romanian authorities were postponing the enforcement of this plan, and eventually gave it up completely. As Antonescu began to seek peace with the allies, the deportations ended. The change in policy was a result of pressure from the Allied forces, and due to internal opposition mobilized by the underground council led by Filderman that applied pressure on the authorities through various channels, including the Church and envoys of neutral powers.
Approximately 340,000 Romanian Jews survived. Discussions followed regarding the repatriation of Jews deported to Transnistria. On November 15,1943, an official report of the Romanian government indicated that 49,927 Romanian Jews were alive in Transnistria, of which 6,425 were originally from the Regat. In December 1943 partial repatriation began, and in March 1944 the government ordered general repatriation for all Romanian Jews deportees from Transnistria, and in all about 11,000 people, were repatriated from different camps and ghettos in Transnistria.
About 135,000 Jews living under Hungarian rule in northern Transylvania were murdered after deportation to Auschwitz, in May-June of 1944.
The territory of Romania, thanks to the change in attitude of authorities toward Jews, became a refuge for those who succeeded in crossing the border from Hungary.
The Paris Peace treaty at the end of World War II rendered the Vienna Awards void: Northern Transylvania returned to Romania, but Bessarabia, northern Bucovina and southern Dobruja were not recovered. Antonescu and several other officials of the wartime regime were tried after the war. Antonescu was convicted and executed In 1946. However most Romanian perpetrators were never brought to justice.
According to the "Elie Wiesel" final Report of the international Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, released by the Romanian government in 2004, Antonescu's government is responsible for the murder in various forms, including executions by the Romanian Army and Gendarmerie, and deportations to concentration camps, of between 280,000 to 380,000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bucovina and Transnistria.
Jean Ancel, Toldot ha-Shoa : Romanyah, 2 vols. , Jerusalem 2002
Paul Cenovodeanu, Liviu Rotman, and Raphael Vago, eds. Toldot ha-yehudim be- Roamnyah, Vols. 1-4, Tel Aviv, 1996-2003
Wilhelm Filderman, Memoires and Diaries, ed. Jean Ancel, Jerusalem, 2004-2005
Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, Chicago, 2000
Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania Wiesel Report, Bucharest, 2004
