Geography of Genocide: Deportation and Mass Murder in Romanian-Occupied Territories during World War II

ABSTRACT

While many scholars insist on the role that shootings had in the genocide of Jews of Eastern Europe, the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ continues to be a problematic theoretical model/concept, because it ruptures the link between organized/industrial mass murder, shootings, the usage of Jews for forced labor, and the means of deportation by local actors. In this article, I look at what deportation meant in the territories of the USSR occupied by Romania during World War II, both in administrative and military terms. More specifically, I try to map out the geography of murder and establish if there is a link between deportations from Romania proper into Transnistria and the deportations from inside Transnistria (e.g., Odesa) to other parts of the same region (e.g., Berezovka). As such, I look at the following questions: Why were some Jews from specific places in Romania’s Old Kingdom deported to Transnistria en masse, while other communities were not touched by the same wrath of deportation? Did local military leaders have a say in these decisions? How were deportations within Transnistria different from the ones that took place from Romania proper? Did the historical perceptions of these territories by local actors, perpetrators, and soldiers influence the course of deportations? In which way did massacres inform subsequent deportations? Using both historical examples like the Odesa Massacre and the deportations that followed it, as well as an analysis of ideology, antisemitism, and local actions in the regions of Northern Romania and Transnistria, I look at the way geography informs decisions of deportation and the relationship between ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.

KEYWORDS:

• deportation
• Transnistria
• Romanian army
• Odessa Massacre
• geography
• ethnic cleansing
• Holocaust
• ‘Holocaust by bullets’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The spelling of army ranks is usually consistent with how they were used in the sources, including capitalization and wording.

² Witness statement by Luta T. Ion, USHMM RG-25.004M, Reel 27, folder 39181, vol. 10, f. 117–18. The witness declares that these events happened two days after the explosion of the Romanian command center in Odessa. It is possible that he conflates the events of all barracks being set on fire on those days, as executions and similar operations took place on the 24^th, the 25^th, and the 26^th of October, on multiple occasions. See the Secret police report on the Odessa executions, burnings, and explosion in Dalnic, USHMM RG-25.004, Reel 27, folder 39181, vol. 10, f. 55–61. Also, see the earlier trial prosecution reports on these events, taken by public prosecutors dealing with the special law 312/1945, USHMM RG 25.004, reel 14, folder 4094, f. 39–40.

³ Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 2000), p. 111. See also Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004).

⁴ Vladimir Solonari, Purificarea națiunii: Dislocări forțate de populație și epurări etnice în România lui Ion Antonescu, 1940-1944 (Iaşi: Polirom 2015), p. 191.

⁵ Diana Dumitru, Vecini in vremuri de restriște: Stat, antisemitism și Holocaust în Basarabia și Transnistria, translated by Miruna Andriescu (Iaşi: Polirom 2019), 17–20.

⁶ Vladimir Solonari, The Hungarian Historical Review 5/4 (2016), pp. 924–28 http://www.jstor.org/stable/44390831, accessed May, 2022.

⁷ Grant T. Harward makes a concise analysis of soldiers’ motivation during the Romanian invasion of the Soviet Union and establishes the responsibility of actions directly on the Romanian state and society, which fused nationalism, anti-Jewish propaganda, antisemitism, and religion to construct an ethnically-based form of hatred toward Jews which ultimately led to war crimes during the Holocaust. See Grant T. Harward,Romania’s Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust (NY: Cornell University Press 2021), Introduction.

⁸ Vladimir Solonari, ‘On the Persistence of Moral Judgement: Local Perpetrators in Transnistria as seen by Survivors and their Christian Neighbors’, in Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttman, ed., Microhistories of the Holocaust (New York: Berghahn 2017), pp. 198–216. Solonari also has a work on collaboration in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina see Vladimir Solonari, ‘Patterns of Violence: The Local Population and the Mass Murder of Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, July–August 1941’, in Michael David Fox et al., ed., The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2014), pp. 51–82.

⁹ Solonari, Purificarea națiunii, pp. 191–4.

¹⁰ Henry Eaton, The Origins and Onset of the Romanian Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press 2013), p. 14.

¹¹ Solonari, Purificarea națiunii, pp. 1–14.

¹² Simon Geissbühler, Iulie însângerat: România și Holocaustul din vara lui 1941 (Bucharest: Curtea Veche Publishing 2016), pp. 17–48.

¹³ USHMM, RG 25.004M, Reel 26, Folder 39181, vol. 4, f. 136–134.

¹⁴ See USHMM, RG 25.004M, Reel 27, Folder 39181, vol. 10, f. 93v.

¹⁵ Harward, Romania’s Holy War, p. 127.

¹⁶ See Report on trials of perpetrators in Odessa and their relationship with the local Jewish community, USHMM, RG 25.004M, Reel 27, folder 39181, vol. 10. See also Ottmar Trașcă, ‘Ocuparea orașului Odessa de către Armata Română și măsurile adoptate față de populația evreiască, Octombrie 1941-Martie 1942’, Anuarul Institutului de Istorie G. Barițiu din Cluj-Napoca, XLVII (2008), pp. 377–425.

¹⁷ Charles King, Odessa:Geniu și moarte într-un oraș al visurilor (Chișinău: Cartier 2011), p. 170.

¹⁸ King, Odessa, p. 175.

¹⁹ Harward, Romania’s Holy War, p. 104.

²⁰ Ibid., pp. 104–105.

²¹ USHMM, RG-25.004M, reel 35, folder 40077, f. 56–57.

²² USHMM, RG-25.004M, reel 35, folder 40077, 56–58.

²³ See Solonari, Purificarea națiunii, Introduction.

²⁴ See Dallas Michelbacher, Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2020).

²⁵ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 19, 10–40, and reel 20, 221–320.

²⁶ See the Macici trial accusation act, USHMM 25.004M, Reel 19, folder 40011, vol. 1, f. 4–39.

²⁷ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 19, folder 4011, vol. 1, f. 10b

²⁸ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 19, folder 4011, vol. 1, f. 4–39

²⁹ See Correspondence on Odessa between Nicolae Macici and Ion Antonescu, as well as the former’s application of orders. USHMM, RG-25.003M, reel 12, folder 870.

³⁰ Nicolae Macici personal statement letter to the People’s Tribunal, USHMM, RG-25.004M, Reel 20, folder 40011, f. 199.

³¹ USHMM, RG-25.004M, Reel 20, folder 40011, f. 199.

³² See literature such as Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin, Justice Behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), and Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020).

³³ See Declaration of Lieutenant Vasile Emilian, USHMM, RG-25.004M, Reel 27, Folder 39181, vol. 10, f. 120 and personal statement of Stefan Parvul, USHMM RG-25.004M, Folder 39181, vol.10, f. 119.

³⁴ See Nicolae Tătăranu’s handwritten statement, USHMM, RG-25.004M, Reel 20, file 40001, vol 6, f. 163.

³⁵ USHMM, RG-25.004M, Reel 20, file 40001 f. 160-162, 165-170.

³⁶ See the 2003 Ovidiu Anca interview done by Harry Kuller < https://youtu.be/UO8sBTo_Vmo>, accessed in September, 2021. Also, see Andrei Muraru, Procesele criminalilor de război din Transnistria [Transnistrian War Crimes Trials] (Ph.D. Thesis: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, 2011), 96-97. See Marina Sorokina, ‘People and Procedures: Toward a History of the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in the USSR’ in Michael David Fox et al., ed., The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), pp. 118–41, and Ștefan Ionescu, ‘Myths, Narratives, and Patterns of Rumors: The Construction of ‘Jewish Subversion’ and Retributive Violence in 1940-41 Romania’, Culture & Psychology (15/3) (2009), pp. 327–336.

³⁷ In an interview stored in the USHMM database, retired colonel Ovidiu Anca describes the main scenes of the Odessa Massacre of 1941. He defends the Romanian Army by claiming that its members were not in any way prejudiced toward Jews, as he personally knew Jewish members of the army who were not forced to wear the Jewish Star of David. He also claimed that the army helped Jews and was not antisemitic since they took measures against the Iron Guard. He ends up blaming all antisemitic actions on the Iron Guard, portraying a black-and-white version of the military and the fascist movement that had been founded by Codreanu. Anca more or less describes Constantin Trestioreanu, whom he knew personally, as having had the same role as him. See this interview at USHMM RG-50.642.0001, Oral history interview with Ovidiu Anca, The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities, Washington DC.

³⁸ Handwritten Statement of Ovidiu Anca in the Macici trials, testifying for Trestioreanu’s defense, USHMM RG-25.004M, Reel 20, file 40001, vol 6, f. 161–62.

³⁹ Macici’s Declaration, USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 20, file 40011, vol. 6, p. 205.

⁴⁰ Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994)

⁴¹ Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Penguin Books 2001).

⁴² See Harward, Romania’s Holy War, Introduction.

⁴³ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 20, file 40011, vol. 6, f. 203. See also, Murar u, p.100.

⁴⁴ USHMM, RG 25.003M, reel 12, file 870.

⁴⁵ See Muraru, pp. 85–6.

⁴⁶ Geissbühler, Iulie însângerat, pp. 116–120.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 117.

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 117–119.

⁴⁹ See USHMM, 25.004M, Folder 39181, vol. 10.

⁵⁰ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 20, folder 40011, vol. 6, f. 82–3.

⁵¹ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 83, f. 217.

⁵² USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 83, f. 218–19.

⁵³ USHMM, RG 25.004M, reel 83, f. 228.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany [Saul Kagan Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Emanuel-Marius Grec

Emanuel Marius Grec is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Heidelberg and Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies at the Claims Conference from September 2021 to August 2023. His research interests include the Holocaust in Romania, nationalism, genocide, as well as the history of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. He has participated in more than 30 international conferences and workshops, also winning multiple awards and Fellowships. Some of his publications include ‘Transition on Trial’ in Holocaust: Studii și cercetări and The Odessa Massacre and Its Perpetrators, which won the Ratiu Forum prize in 2021. https://ratiuforum.com/the-teaching-of-romanian-history/