Transnistria Governorate

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Territories under Romanian administration from 1941 to 1944

The government of Transnistria ( Romanian Guvernământul Transnistriei ) was in the time of World War II from 1941 to 1944, the management unit is one of Romania occupied territory between the rivers Dniester and Bug , the earlier the Soviet Union had heard. With an area of ​​approximately 350 × 120 km, it covered an area of ​​around 42,000 km² and was sparsely populated with 2 million people. Among them were mainly Ukrainians , as well as Russians (in the cities), Romanians (around 10%, mostly along the Dniester, where they formed a majority in many places), Armenians, Bulgarians, Gagauz and around 331,000 Jews . Most of the Black Sea Germans (around 130,000 by 1941) had been forcibly relocated to Central Asia and Siberia before the Romanian and German troops marched in in the summer of 1941. The largest city was Odessa , which had around 350,000 inhabitants around 1900, of which 50% were Russians and 32% were Jews. The former Transnistria is today largely in the southwest of the Ukraine and to a much lesser extent on the international law of Moldova belonging to the separatist region of Transnistria .

Administrative division into 13 districts (map not north)
Romanian postage stamps from late 1941 dedicated to Transnistria

prehistory

Until the Peace of Jassy in 1792, the south of the region between the Dnestr and the Southern Bug and between Ochakov and Balta belonged to the Ottoman Empire of the Turks; its southern part was known as the Jedisan .

Until the second partition of Poland in 1793, Podolia , the region north of the Jedisan, belonged to the Kingdom of Poland . After 1793 the area belonged to the Russian Empire and after the First World War to the Soviet Union .

After the loss of Bessarabia to Romania, the Communists who ruled Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine created the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924 on the east bank of the Dniester , the main towns of which were Balta and Tiraspol.

Conquest and Occupation

On June 22, 1941, the German attack on the Soviet Union by Operation Barbarossa began . In the southern area of Bukovina and Bessarabia , the attack did not begin until July 2, 1941. The German 11th Army (100,000 men) and the Romanian 3rd and 4th Army (200,000 men) were involved. On July 27, the troops reached the Dniester and advanced into the area of ​​Transnistria, the conquest of which was completed as far as the Bug in August 1941. The battle for Odessa lasted until October 1941.

Administrative division

In August 1941, in the agreement of Tighina between Romania and the German Reich, the area of ​​Transnistria was attached to Romania. After the Romanian administration established on August 19, 1941 by order of Ion Antonescu , the previously 64 existing Soviet Rajons were taken over and grouped into the following 13 districts ( Județ ), the Rajons were subordinate to these:

  • Ananiev district
    • City of Ananiev
    • Ananiev district
    • Cernova district
    • Petroverovca ​​district
    • Sfânta Troițca district
    • Siraievo district
    • Valea Hoțului district
  • Balta district
    • City of Balta
    • Berşad city
    • Balta district
    • Berşad Raion
    • Cicelnic district
    • Obadovca district
    • Olgopoly Raion
    • Pesceana district
    • Savrani district
  • Berezovca district
    • City of Berezovca
    • Berezovca district
    • Landau district
    • Mostovoi district
    • Veselinovo district
  • Dubăsari County
    • City of Dubăsari
    • City of Grigoriopol
    • Ciorna district
    • Dubasari district
    • Grigoriopol district
    • Ocna district
    • Zaharievca district
  • Golta district
    • City of Golta
    • Crivoe-Oziero district
    • Domaniovca district
    • Golta district
    • Liubașovca district
    • Vradievca district
  • District of Jugastru
    • City of Iampol
    • Cernovăț district
    • Crijopol district
    • Iampol district
    • Tomaspol district
  • Moghilău County (also Movilău)
    • City of Moghilău
    • City of Șmerinca
    • Balchi district
    • Copaigorod district
    • Crasnoe district
    • Iarişev district
    • Sargorod Raion
    • Merinca district
    • Stanislavcic district
  • Oceacov County
    • City of Oceacov
    • Crasna district
    • Oceacov district
    • Varvarovca ​​district
  • Odessa district
    • Odessa city district
    • Antono-Codincevo district
    • Blagujevo district
    • Ianovca district
    • Odessa Raion
  • Ovidiopol district
    • City of Ovidiopol
    • Balaevca district
    • Franzfeld district
    • Ovidiopoly district
    • Vigoda district
  • Râbnița district
    • City of Bârzula
    • City of Râbnița
    • Bârzula district
    • Camenca district
    • Codama district
    • Piesceanca district
    • Rabnița district
  • Tiraspol County
    • City of Tiraspol
    • Grosulova district
    • Razdelnaia district
    • Selz district
    • Slobozia district
    • Tebricovo district
    • Tiraspol district
  • Tulcin County
    • City of Tulcin
    • Braslav district
    • Spicov district
    • Trostine districtț
    • Tulcin district

Deportation and extermination of the Jews and Roma

After the occupation of Transnistria by Romania and the German Reich in August 1941, Jews were deported to the area . They came mainly from Bessarabia and Bukovina and had been expelled on the orders of Ion Antonescu . The deportations began on September 15, 1941 and lasted until autumn 1942. Most of the Jews who had survived the massacres in Bessarabia and Bukovina were herded here on death marches and interned. The number of deportees was probably around 150,000, although, according to German sources, 185,000 people were deported. On October 13, 1942, the Romanians broke off the deportations. Those affected were assigned to around 100 places where they were ghettoized in their own living quarters or camps and made to work. Some camps were called death camps , the most famous being Bogdanowka . There were other camps near the village of Vazdovka ( Lyubashivka district ), in Domaniwka and in Pervomajsk (Golta).

Around 185,000 Jews and Roma perished in Transnistria when the deportees were left to their fate. Especially in the hard winter of 1941/42, tens of thousands died of hunger, illness and exhaustion. In the following years, with Antonescu's consent, Jewish organizations were able to provide aid to the deportees. Nevertheless, around 90,000 Romanian Jews of the 145,000 to 150,000 deportees did not survive the camps.

In the winter of 1941/42 the Romanian gendarmerie deported tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa. They drove them into the settlement area of ​​the Black Sea Germans in the direction of the Bug and partly left them to their own devices without guarding. Typhus spread massively among the deportees . About 130,000 ethnic Germans lived in 228 villages in the settlement area of ​​the Black Sea Germans , which were excluded from the Romanian administration. They were subordinate to the Sonderkommando R (Russia) based in Landau , which belonged to the SS organization Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle . From July 1941 Horst Hoffmeyer was the director . In some raids by ethnic German settlers on the deportation trains, valuables were stolen from the weakened people at gunpoint. On the orders of the Sonderkommando R , the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz killed around 3,000 helpless Jewish people along the way.

The train of deportees came to a halt on the Bug River. After the Sonderkommando R had consulted with the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), it was decided to kill them, among other things because they feared an outbreak of epidemics. The Einsatzgruppen refused because Transnistria was under Romanian sovereignty. In the village of Berezovka , members of the self-protection group and the VoMi shot and burned the deportees for several weeks. Residents of the German villages were witnesses and also provided horse-drawn vehicles to transport the victims. The bodies were also removed using lime kilns . The victims' valuables were distributed in German villages. The exact number of killings is not known, some say it was 52,000. A note from the Foreign Office shows that around 28,000 Jews were brought to German villages and liquidated in the winter of 1941/42.

Resettlement of the Transnistrian Germans

When the Red Army advanced on the area in 1944, the resettlement of around 130,000 Transnistrian Germans began. The preparations were made in silence under the direction of SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Müller . Plans were prepared in which the routes, departure times, refreshment points, river crossings, reception areas, etc. were precisely defined. Since the trek could only go on with vehicles customary in the country, wagons, harnesses and horses had to be procured. A village, divided into groups of 10 loads each, formed a trek. About 20 treks were grouped together to form a march column, which formed an area command.
On March 14, 1944, the order to march out was given for the first German village, and on March 28, the last ethnic Germans had left their homeland.

Recapture by the Red Army

When the Soviet troops approached Transnistria in the summer of 1944 and German troops defeated Romania, the deportees were allowed to return. Many of the survivors returned to Romania in 1945 and 1946.

In relation to the number of victims, Transnistria in connection with the extermination of the Jews ( Shoa ) is hardly a concept in Western Europe today. This is partly due to the fact that Transnistria cannot be found on any map today, nor is it a place like e.g. B. Auschwitz or Treblinka , but was used as a regional name exclusively by Germans and Romanians between 1941 and 1944. The names of the individual camps such as Bogdanowka, Akhmetschetka , Domanewka and Pechora are also hardly known.

literature

  • Herwig Baum: Variants of Terror. A comparison between the German and Romanian occupation administrations in the Soviet Union 1941–1944. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-85-5 (also: Munich, University, dissertation, 2010).
  • Wolfgang Benz , Brigitte Mihok (ed.): Holocaust on the periphery. Jewish policy and the murder of Jews in Romania and Transnistria 1940-1944 , Metropol, Berlin 2009
  • Svetlana Burmistr: Transnistria. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 390-416.
  • Svetlana Burmistr: Bershad - a ghetto in Transnistria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Yearbook for anti-Semitism research. 18 (2009), pp. 267-293.
  • Matatias Carp: Holocaust in Romania. Facts and Documents on the Annihilation of Romania's Jews, 1940-1944. Atelierele Grafice, Bucharest 1946 (new edition), edited by Andrew L. Simon. Simon Publications, Safety Harbor FL 2000, ISBN 0-9665734-7-1 , (PDF; 779 kB) , (English).
  • Ruth Glasberg-Gold: No time for tears. My survival of the Romanian Shoah. Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-902494-40-5 .
  • Benjamin Grilj (Ed.): "Black Milk". Letters withheld from Transnistria death camps. Studienverlag, Innsbruck et al. 2013, ISBN 978-3-7065-5197-7 .
  • Marianne Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, Juliane Wetzel (eds.): Romania and the Holocaust. On the mass crimes in Transnistria 1941–1944 (= National Socialist Occupation Policy in Europe 1939–1945. Volume 10). Metropol, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-932482-43-3 .
  • Edgar Hilsenrath : Night. Novel. Kindler, Munich 1964 (unabridged edition. (= Dtv 13547). Edited and provided with an afterword by Helmut Braun. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-13547-4 ).
  • Siegfried Jägendorf : The miracle of Moghilev. The rescue of ten thousand Jews from the Romanian Holocaust. With a foreword by Elie Wiesel , edited and commented by Aron Hirt-Manheimer. Translated from English by Ulrike Döpfer. Transit Buchverlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-88747-241-2 .
  • Zvi Harry Likwornik: As a seven-year-old in the Holocaust: after the ghettos of Chernivtsi and Bérschad in Transnistria, a new life in Israel 1934–1948-2012. Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86628-426-5 .
  • Ephraim Ophir: What the Transnistria Rescue Plan Achievable? In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Volume 6, No. 1, 1991, ISSN  8756-6583 , pp. 1-16.
  • Dina Porat : The Transnistria Affair and the Rescue Policy of the Zionist Leadership in Palestine, 1942–1943. In: Studies in Zionism. Volume 6, No. 1, 1985, ISSN  0334-1771 , pp. 27-52.
  • Horst Scherrer: The camp and suppression systems in Romania. 1941-1944. Handbook on the camp, prison and deportee mail in Romania during the Second World War with an illustration of the historical conditions. Self-published, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-00-016915-6 .
  • Ekkehard Völkl: Transnistria and Odessa (1941–1944) (= series of publications by the Eastern European Institute Regensburg-Passau. Volume 14). Lassleben, Regensburg (ie: Kallmünz) 1996, ISBN 3-7847-3164-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Ancel : The History of the Holocaust in Romania. (The Comprehensive History of the Holocaust) University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2011, pp. 338, 341f.
  2. ^ Marburger Zeitung: The Trek of the Three Hundred and Fifty Thousands, July 24, 1944, p. 2.