The Holocaust saw the genocide of Jews in the Kingdom of Romania and in Romanian-controlled territories of the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1944. While historically part of The Holocaust, these actions were mostly independent from the similar acts committed by Nazi Germany, Romania being the only ally of the Third Reich that carried out a genocidal campaign without the intervention of Heinrich Himmler's SS. Various numbers have been advanced by researchers for the lives lost in the genocide, with most estimates in the range of 250,000 to 380,000. In Romanian-occupied Moldova specifically, between 176,000 and 179,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to Yitzhak Arad. Another approximately 132,000 Jews from the Hungarian-controlled Northern Transylvania were killed during this period by the Nazis with the collaboration of the Hungarian authorities. Romania ranks first among Holocaust perpetrator countries other than Germany, though Romania also had more Jewish Holocaust survivors at the end of World War II than any other Axis country, thus producing what is described as the Antonescu Paradox, where Romanian Conducator Ion Antonescu was extraordinarily brutal, murderous, and genocidal towards the Jews outside of the borders of the Romanian Old Kingdom while being brutal but less murderous and genocidal towards the Jews within the borders of the Romanian Old Kingdom.
Background
In the first decades of the 20th century, antisemitic views increased in number and intensity in publications and writings of prominent Romanian figures such as A.C. Cuza, Nichifor Crainic, Nicolae Iorga, Nicolae Paulescu and Ion Găvănescu. Among the main political organisations that took these ideas and built them into an open attack on the Jewish community in Romania was the Iron Guard. Formerly a small political group under the name "Guard of National Conscience," the movement gained in its ranks in 1920 Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Divisions and disagreements within the group and between members led Corneliu and others to leave and form the Legion of Archangel Michael in 1927, and then in 1930 the Iron Guard was created as an organisation to unite it with other nationalist groups. Despite renaming the organisation several times, in the media and public eyes the image and name of "Legionaries" and "Iron Guard" stuck for the anti-communist, antisemitic, and fascist movement.
Antisemitism was also popularised and promoted by important cultural personalities of the interwar period such as Nae Ionescu, Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Constantin Noica and endorsed by the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Antisemitic legislation
At the end of 1937, the government of Octavian Goga came to power; Romania thus became the second overtly-antisemitic state in Europe. Goga's government issued Decree-law no. 169 of 22 January 1938, which invalidated the citizenship which Jews had obtained at the beginning of World War I, and required all Jews who lived in Romania to present their documentation for review. A total of 225,222 Jews lost their citizenship as a result of the law, and many more found themselves out of their jobs and deprived of political rights. Romania was the second country which enacted antisemitic legislation in Europe, after Nazi Germany, and the only country which did so before the 1938 Anschluss, or German annexation of Austria. and the only country other than Germany itself which "implemented all the steps of the destruction process, from definitions to killings." The antisemitic legislation was not an attempt to placate the Germans, but rather entirely home-grown, preceding German hegemony, and even Nazi Germany itself. The ascendance of Germany enabled Romania to disregard the minorities treaties that were imposed upon the country after the First World War. The legislation in Romania was usually aimed at exploiting Jews rather than humiliating them as in Germany.
As a result of such anti-Semitic laws, hundreds of Jewish families, mostly but not entirely from Bessarabia, applied to the Italian consulate for visas to Italian-occupied Ethiopia.
Pogroms and forced labour
The first acts of violence against Romanian Jews started after the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in mid-1940. Romanian troops used the Jews who lived in these regions as scapegoats for their frustration, accusing some of them of collaborating with the Soviets. Major Vasile Carp, commander of the 86th Mountain Regiment, ordered the execution of several Jews in Ciudei and Zăhănești soon after the enforcement of the Soviet ultimatum. Similar acts took place in Comănești and Coștina. Violence against Jews increased in public places and on transportation. Jewish soldiers were frequently expelled from their units, attacked, and even murdered. Retreating Romanian military personnel clashed with Soviet soldiers near Hertsa in July 1940, and the situation escalated into the Dorohoi pogrom, during which anywhere between 50 and 200 Jews where murdered. Even more casualties resulted after the army opened fire on civilian refugees in the city of Galați, with hundreds of dead, most of them Jews. Overall, several hundred, or even thousands, of Jews were killed in the aftermath of this territory loss.
Bucharest pogrom
In September 1940, the Iron Guard became a part of the National Legionary government, a structure that had Antonescu as the absolute leader, or the Conducător. Almost immediately, acts of antisemitism increased, legitimized by the establishment of a Legionary Police force that was modelled after Nazi paramilitary units and the establishment of militia-type groups such as Corpul Muncitoresc Legionar. In October, the Legion started an organized campaign of expropriation and deportation against Jews from rural areas. Many of the victims moved to the capital in the hope that they would be able to live with their relatives or friends; in cities which were controlled by Legionnaires, such as Câmpulung Moldovenesc, widespread pillaging of properties owned by Jews ensued, frequently accompanied by beatings, humiliations, and threats, such as in the case of Câmpulung Moldovenesc' rabbi, Iosef Rubin, who was tortured and then forced to pull a wagon which his son was forced to drive.
These actions were exported on a large scale to Bucharest from December of the same year. In January 1941, Legionnaires occupied the Bucharest Police headquarters and other public buildings. Almost 2,000 Jews were detained or arrested, and violence erupted in full on 22 January after the minister of the interior ordered the burning of Jewish districts. 125 Jews were killed between 21 and 23 January, with 90 of them stripped naked and shot in the forest near Jilava. Rape, torture, and mutilation were standard practices among the perpetrators. All of the synagogues were attacked and vandalized, and the Grand Spanish Temple, once considered the most beautiful building of its type in the city, was burnt to ruins.
The pogrom destroyed 1,274 buildings, and after the army ended it on 23 January, it found 200 trucks loaded with jewels and cash.
Iași pogrom and the Death Trains
Even though Antonescu and the army played a central role in suppressing the Iron Guard, the regime instituted by the marshal continued the same antisemitic policies started by the Legionnaires. The evacuation of the Jews from small towns and villages became a fundamental part of what was known as the "cleansing of the land" - the removal of all "Jewish elements" from Romanian society. In Moldavia, where a large part of the Jews in Romania lived and where many of the Jews from occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina sought refuge, four hundred and forty-one villages and small towns were "cleansed" by July 1941. The destination for the people gathered in the ghettos of the larger cities was set to be southern Romania, mainly Târgu Jiu. Approximately 45,000 Jews, both locals and those from the countryside, lived in Iași in June 1941 when the order came to "cleanse the city".
On the evening of the next day, 28 June 1941, army groups, the local police, gendarmes, German soldiers attached to the Romanian army, and ad-hoc mobs incited by the media and the secret services descended upon the Jewish population of the city which was accused to have pro-Soviet sympathies, had armed itself and was attacking the army, and even had signalled enemy planes where to attack. At 9 pm, shots were heard throughout the city and pillaging, rape, and murder of the Jews started. On 29 June the survivors were taken to the train stations, having to walk through the streets filled with dead bodies. There, they were forced into train cargo wagons. In the heat of the summer, with no water or food, and crammed against each other, most of them died before reaching the destination. A survivor recalled:
During the night some of us went mad and started to yell, bite, and jostle violently; you had to fight them, as they could take your life; in the morning, many of us were dead and the bodies were left inside; they refused to give water even to our crying children, whom we were holding above our heads.
From the train that left for Călărași, only 1,011 people survived the seven-day journey out of about 5,000. From the train that went to Podu Iloaiei, which is 15 km away from the city, 2,000 of the 2,700 people died. In total, the massacre started in Iași had up to 14,850 victims.
Forced labour
As with the pogroms, Antonescu's regime continued the policy of forced labour started during the collaboration with the Iron Guard. The laws adopted in September 1940 that, in broad terms, excluded Jews from public functions and limited their fields of work, was supplemented in November with a communiqué from Antonescu that stipulated that Jews would not be allowed in the army and instead would have to pay a special tax. Those who could not pay the tax were put to labour instead. The measure changed the nature of forced labour from a local antisemitic action to a method of systematic government persecution. Most Jews were ordered to work in their own town or city, but groups were also selected to perform heavy labour tasks such as building railway tracks. Labour camps generally lacked medical facilities and had poor or non-existent hygiene facilities. Survivors of such labour camps reported they were made to work from sunrise to sunset with a half-hour break, six days a week.
A Law-Decree was further released in August 1941, which institutionalized forced labour as a state instrument. Official reports counted 84,042 Jews, aged eighteen to fifty, in the recruitment centres. Cases where those forced to work for the state could not perform the task and could not pay a tax to exempt them from forced labour, or if they somehow failed to show up, were punishable with deportation.
The Holocaust in Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Transnistria
On 22 June 1941, German armies, with significant Romanian support invaded the Soviet Union. German and Romanian units conquered Bessarabia, Odesa, and Sevastopol, then marched east and south across the Russian steppes toward Stalingrad. Romanians welcomed the war because it allowed them to retake lands annexed by the Soviet Union a year prior. Hitler rewarded Romania's loyalty by returning Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and by allowing it to administer the conquered Soviet lands between the Dniester and Bug Rivers, including Odessa and Nikolaev. Anticipating a German victory, and in accordance with the discussions carried on since March 1941 with their Nazi allies, Romanian authorities began to implement the policy of "cleansing of the land" in Bessarabia and Bukovina, which the Romanian deputy Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu, summarized in a speech during a government meeting:
At the risk of not being understood by traditionalists... I am all for the forced migration of the entire Jewish element of Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be dumped across the border... You must be merciless to them... I don't know how many centuries will pass before the Romanian people meet again with such total liberty of action, such opportunity for ethnic cleansing and national revision... This is a time when we are masters of our land. Let us use it. If necessary, shoot your machine guns. I couldn't care less if history will recall us as barbarians... I take formal responsibility and tell you there is no law... So, no formalities, complete freedom.
In parallel with the offensive across the Prut River known as Operation München, as the Iași pogrom unfolded and similar actions took place in Roman, Fălticeni, and Galați, the Romanian army and gendarmerie, with the aid of the German Einsatzgruppe D, began implementing the genocide in frontline areas. The first killings were done in Bukovina, at Siret, Chudei, and the vicinity. The Jews from Siret were forced to march on foot to Dornești, with those too old or who were crippled being killed. In Chudei, 450 Jews were shot on 3 July 1941, and afterwards, with the complicity of local Romanians and Ukrainians, the killing area was expanded to the neighbouring villages. At Hertsa, on 5 July, 1,500 Jews were forcefully removed from their homes and held in the four synagogues and a cellar. Groups were selected the next day and shot, and the Jewish women and girls were separated and raped. The survivors were later deported.