TWO FACTORS played especially important roles in the fact that half of Romanian Jewry survived the war: the fact that Romania never carried out plans to deport the Jews of Regat, and the fact that a considerable portion of those deported to or native to Transnistria managed to hold out until the German defeat at Stalingrad forced Antonescu and his government to consider minimizing the culpability they might have to bear after the war. In regard to the experience of the Jewish community of Regat, one thing was clear during the Holocaust: not having come into contact with the Soviets in 1940, the Jews were not held accountable for the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and therefore not singled out for prompt punishment at the beginning of the war. This is not to say that they would not have been deported, for some plans discussed at the highest levels of power involved deportation not to Transnistria, but directly to the German extermination camps in Poland. Nazi Germany sought to influence Romania in this direction, but that very pressure may have backfired: even Romanian fascists did not want to be told what to do with “their” Jews.
Secondly, in regard to the Jews languishing in Transnistria, there was enough need for their labor for the administration to allow them to live; their own exertions, those of their coreligionists in Regat, and the aid that eventually reached them from international organizations and the diplomatic community spelled the difference between death and life, at least for those not too old, too young, or too feeble. None of this, however, would have been possible had the war not turned against Germany and its allies.
Despite the pogrom at Iaşi, the deportations from Bessarabia and Bukovina, the repeated massacres in those provinces, and the Transnistria disaster, a large segment of the Jewish population of Romania was still alive in 1942. The Jewish population of Moldavia, Walachia, and Transylvania (the portion not occupied by Hungary) was not subjected to deportation or extermination (except for the pogrom at Iaşi and the deportations from Dorohoi, Suceava, and Rădăuţi). This did not go by unnoticed by Nazi Germany, which continued to pressure Romania and its other allies to solve “the Jewish question” within the framework of the “Final Solution.” Situation reports on the campaign in the east compiled at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) reflected the same thing.1
The bureaucratic details of the Final Solution were drawn up on January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, which took place under the leadership of RSHA head Reinhard Heydrich and brought together fifteen high-level officials representing major German state agencies. At this meeting Martin Luther of the Foreign Office expressed confidence that neither southeastern nor Western Europe would present obstacles.2 Though this prognosis proved largely correct, Romania and Bulgaria constituted partial exceptions. Even before 1942, German-Romanian relations, viewed through the prism of the Jewish question, were far from harmonious. The SS, along with regular German military units, had protested in the summer of 1941 the disorganized manner in which Romanian military units were killing Jews. In the eyes of the SS in particular the Romanian “technique” was inadequate; the Wermacht (armed forces) worried that it would affect the prestige of the German army.
As we have seen, in August 1941, the Germans had resisted Romanian deportations to the other side of the Dniester River, and a similar situation occurred on the Bug River in the spring of 1942. Nevertheless, in August 1941, despite “problems in the field,” German-Romanian collaboration at the government-to-government level appeared to be total. On August 7, Mihai Antonescu wrote to Heinrich Himmler to request that Gustav Richter, Adolf Eichmann’s envoy, be reposted to Bucharest:
During the short period of time that [Richter] worked in Bucharest [he] provided us . . . immense assistance. Dr. Richter studied with great care and a high level of competence the anti-Semitic reforms of Romania and . . . based on a collaboration that lasted several months, provided me with a draft reorganization of the National Center for Romanization. . . . The Jewish question carries with it international solutions and has to be settled in an in-depth and definitive fashion, drawing upon German experience. . . . [Richter’s was] a contribution that I have always been grateful for and that, Excellency, I thank you for as well. I would be extremely happy if Dr. Richter could return to Romania and pursue his fruitful activities.3
But on October 26, 1941, German-Romanian relations with regard to the Jewish question were not as amiable as they were before, as becomes clear from such evidence as Mihai Antonescu’s discussion with top German diplomats Richter, Hermann von Ritgen, and Willi Roedel, who were posted to Bucharest at that time:
Mssrs. von Ritgen, Richter, and Roedel discussed the possibility of German-Romanian collaboration in . . . the Jewish question. We pondered the possibilities of an international solution and the ways in which Germany had resolved the Jewish question. I drew the attention of the special counselors to the fact that the Jewish question in Romania was quite different from that in Germany, both in terms of the numbers of Jews and their economic status. . . . Mr. Richter related to me some of the German interpretations of Romania’s anti-Semitic reforms, stating that it was being said in Germany that we had a tendency to protect wealthy Jews and that only Jewish proletarians would be subjected to harsh treatment. . . . I told Mr. Richter that this was not the first time that I had heard such rubbish and [news about German] interference in the activities of the Romanian government. But, fortunately, [this information] had not come from official or qualified agencies, in which case I would have had to take a stand on those arguments. However, I learned recently that this topic had been discussed between the [German] legation in Bucharest and the SS, . . . and I deemed it my duty to send a written protest to Berlin, demanding that whoever meddled in Romanian internal affairs . . . should be recalled for having transmitted false information and hatching unacceptable intrigues.4
No wonder the Germans were irritated with Mihai Antonescu after such a sudden change of attitude. On November 19, 1941, during a press conference with German reporters in Bucharest, Ambassador Manfred von Killinger declared:
Problems associated with the war are mounting. . . . We need many things [from Romania], including oil. The significant interests of the Reich require us to make important concessions to Romania and to Marshal Antonescu. The marshal has shown bravery and loyalty in his behavior. . . . We must take into account the special status of the marshal with regard to the Führer. . . . It has been said that [Mihai] Antonescu is playing a double game [i.e., secretly making overtures to the Allies]. I think that that would be foolish. He is too compromised by the policies he enacts on behalf of our side to play a double game. . . . The Führer trusts the marshal, and Mihai Antonescu is the marshal’s trusted aide. He has the right to choose the aides that he deems most reliable. He knows that the ruling strata and the bourgeoisie of Romania are against us. If it were up to me, I would douse the entire Romanian bourgeoisie with gasoline. But it is in our interest to see that the marshal is supported.5
Killinger’s statement illustrates the latent hostility of the German authorities toward the Romanian ruling class. However, the need for Romanian oil, and particularly the special relationship between Hitler and Antonescu, moderated German behavior.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1942, relations between Romania and Germany deteriorated. Cooperation on the Jewish question displayed a seesaw pattern of fluctuations. As Hilberg wrote,
On July 26, 1942, the Eichmann Referat of the RSHA reported that its representative in Bucharest, Hauptsturmführer Richter, had scored a complete breakthrough. “Political and technical preparations for a solution of the Jewish question in Romania,” reported Eichmann, “have been completed by the representative of the Reich Security Main Office to such an extent that the evacuation transports be able to roll in a short time. It is planned to remove the Jews of Romania in a series of transports beginning approximately September 10, 1942, to the district of Lublin, where the employable segment will be allocated for labor utilization, while the remainder will be subjected to special treatment.”
Provision had been made to insure that the Romanian Jews would lose their nationality upon crossing the border. Negotiations with the Reichsbahn with respect to train schedules were already far advanced.6
During his interrogation in Jerusalem Eichmann confirmed that Richter had been in possession of Mihai Antonescu’s written agreement for the deportation of the Jews from Moldavia, Walachia, and southern Transylvania.7 In any case, according to German diplomatic documents, several days earlier Ion Antonescu had given von Killinger a verbal agreement to the same effect.8
According to a census of the Jewish population in the spring of 1942, about 300,000 Jews still lived in Romania. On August 8, 1942, Bukarester Tageblatt, a paper that reflected the viewpoint of the German embassy, published an article entitled “Rumanien wird judenrein” (“Romania Will Be Free of Jews”). On the same day Donauzeitung in Belgrade published an article entitled “Judenaussiedlung in Rumanien” (“Jewish Resettlement in Romania”), and two days later a similar article appeared in Völkisher Beobachter in Berlin.9 The Bukarester Tageblatt article lauded Romania’s “energetic steps” toward a Final Solution in Romania under the guidance of Marshal Antonescu. Also lauded was the “exemplary” activity of Radu Lecca, who “supervised” the Central Office of Romanian Jews as part of his “mission” to purge Romania of its Jews.10 The Tageblatt announced a planned deportation of 25,000 Jews from Moldavia and Walachia during the autumn of 1942 and the deportation of other Romanian Jews, including those from Transylvania, by fall 1943, though without mentioning the destination.11
Censorship prevented Romanian newspapers from making similar announcements.12 But after August 15, 1942, rumors of a deportation from Transylvania and Banat (encompassing Timişoara, Arad, Beiuş, Turda, Sighişoara, and Braşov) toward Hungary grew more frequent.13 Matatias Carp recalled that “Dr. Ligheti and Dr. Tener from Timişoara came to see me and stated that an order had been given to the Sixth Territorial Command to set up train cars [for deportations].”14 By various means the heads of the Jewish communities tried to avert deportation. It would seem that the first to intervene at their request was one Dr. Stroescu, Antonescu’s personal physician and the director of the so-called Palace of the Handicapped, who had received from the Jews of Transylvania and Banat a donation of 100 million lei for his establishment.15 It could be that the visit of Baron Neumann (a very wealthy converted Jew) to Bucharest on or about August 20, 1941, was connected with that donation.16 The outcome remains unclear. In a statement after the war Baron Mocsoni-Styrcea, who had had close ties to the Romanian royal house, stated that Neumann and Max Auschnitt (a wealthy Jewish industrialist) donated in a three-day period to Maria Antonescu’s Patronage Society four billion lei (fifty million Swiss francs).17 In any event, we know that the Germans were informed because one of Richter’s reports mentions Neumann and ties him to the sum of 400 million lei and because the November 11, 1942, issue of Bukarester Tageblatt violently attacked Neumann for stopping the deportations.18
These people were not alone in attempting to halt deportations. Chief Rabbi Alexandru Şafran also intervened before Metropolitan Bălan of Transylvania (whose anti-Semitic views were well known), begging him to intercede with Antonescu.19 The metropolitan met with Şafran in Bucharest, and the former did intercede, most likely supported by Queen Mother Elena.20 The apostolic nuncio Andrea Cassulo interceded with Antonescu too, as did Swiss diplomat René de Weck.21 Whether or not such entreaties had an effect, Antonescu decided to temporarily postpone enactment of the deportation orders.
Meanwhile, German-Romanian negotiations regarding the dispatch of Romanian Jews to Nazi camps continued:
On August 17, 1942, Luther informed Ernst von Weizsäcker [secretary of state at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs], Ernst Woermann [the ministry’s undersecretary for political affairs], and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop that Mihai Antonescu and Marshal Antonescu had given their consent to the deportation . . . and had agreed that transports would begin . . . from the districts of Arad, Timişoara, and Turda. . . . Lecca wished to come to Berlin to discuss the details with the Foreign Office and the RSHA. A few days later Luther wrote to the legation in Bucharest that Lecca was definitely coming to the German capital.
Lecca visited Berlin sometime during the week of August 20–27. It seems that in Abteilung Deutschland [the Germany section of the RSHA] his visit was regarded as a mere formality. The two Antonescus had, after all, already voiced their agreement, and Lecca was not considered an important Romanian personage. In Berlin Lecca therefore received the brush-off treatment. That was a mistake. When he returned to Romania on or about August 27, the German diplomats were already aware that things had gone wrong.22
But, as Hilberg has pointed out, the Romanians were no longer enthusiastic.23 This was compounded by the German-Romanian differences over economic and ethnic problems emerging from meetings on Transnistria between Mihai Antonescu and General Rotkirchen on August 28, 1942, and between Mihai Antonescu and G. Steltzer, the German legation counselor, in September 1942.24 During the same period leading economic circles in Germany fretted over the high volume of trade between Romania and the neutral countries, which lowered Germany’s ability to export.25
On September 11, Lecca submitted to Mihai Antonescu a plan for the “evacuation” of Jews from Banat and Transylvania,26 with the exception of those “who had demonstrated . . . that they fit into the spirit of the Romanian nation and those useful to the economy and trade.”27 Lecca “respectfully suggested” that certain other Jews be exempted from deportation: Jews married to Christians; Jews who had converted before August 9, 1940; foreign-born Jews with valid passports; Jews who were older than sixty-five; Jews who had received certain decorations; invalids, orphans, and widows of soldiers who had died during World War I; and some officials of the Central Office. “During the evacuation,” Lecca proposed, “special efforts should be made to keep children under sixteen with their parents.”28 This plan also envisioned that “a group of three thousand Jews among those slated for deportation to Poland might be allowed to emigrate to Palestine in exchange for two million lei.”29 These exceptions made Lecca’s plan slightly more lenient than that for the deportations from Bessarabia and Bukovina the previous year, when (aside from twenty thousand Jews in Cernăuţi) there had been no permission to emigrate.
Richter’s plan resembled the Romanian version, but there were differences: the German plan called for the deportation of all Romanian Jews; the age up to which children might stay with their parents was set at fourteen; and some categories were still exempted (“for now”). But of course the German plan did not mention any emigration to Palestine. The plan did, however, provide details about transports to Poland, their security, and transfer to the Germans at the border post of Sniatin. The Central Jewish Office would be made to finance the deportations.30
On September 13, 1942, the Jewish New Year, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull may have issued a message of solidarity to the European Jews over the radio.31 According to a subsequent memorandum from Richter to von Killinger, the Swiss legation in Bucharest had forwarded a message from Hull (U.S. interests were represented by the Swiss legation) that condemned the deportations and threatened the Romanian government with reprisals against Romanians in the United States. All of this was apparently discussed at the September 18 meeting of the Council of Ministers, where Mihai Antonescu decided not to submit to these pressures.32
Nevertheless, Hull’s alleged message definitely had an impact in Romania. On September 15, the vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper Porunca Vremii published a commentary calling for the elimination of derogatory adjectives when referring to Jews and expressing admiration for their tenacity. On September 20, Nicolae Mareş, a former minister of agriculture, refused an invitation to participate in the government again, declaring this no time “to get in trouble with the Jews.” On September 21 and 22, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ion (“Jack”) Popescu met with Wilhelm Filderman, the de facto leader of the Romanian Jewish community, and told him that he regretted the actions taken against the Jews of Romania and that he had had nothing to do with them, the decisions having come from General Vasiliu.33
However, in spite of all this, the general feeling in the Romanian bureaucracy was that deportation of the Jews from Walachia and Moldavia would begin soon. On September 23, the General Administration of the Romanian Railroads (CFR, or Căile Ferate Romane) informed Radu Lecca that it had been invited to take part in a conference to be held in Berlin on September 26 and 27 concerning the transport by train of Jews from Romania to Poland. Lecca’s response, drafted on the following day, stated that, pursuant to an order from Ion Antonescu, the deportation plan must be drawn up in detail by the Ministry of the Interior (i.e., not by the CFR) and must reflect the guidelines set up by Mihai Antonescu.34 On the day of the conference, therefore, the CFR cabled Berlin that it could not attend, asking for a postponement.35 The conference took place anyway, without the Romanians and with the participants discussing “the transfer of 280,000 Romanian Jews to Belzec.”36 On September 27, the CFR complained to Lecca that it had indeed already written to the Interior Ministry and that the ministry had responded that it had no information and that the CFR should talk to Lecca himself about this matter.37
On October 10, the Office of the President of the Council of Ministers ordered the Ministry of the Interior to begin deporting all Jews from Transylvania and Banat, slating forty thousand people for transfer over the next few days. However, it was probably on the next day that Ion Antonescu canceled the order, citing concerns about the weather and indicating that the operation would have to be postponed until spring. Antonescu’s decision came on the heels of a report by General Vasiliu, who offered the same reasoning. Vasiliu’s report may have been influenced by the repeated interventions of Filderman and Dr. Stefan Antal, one of the leaders of the Jewish community of Banat.38 According to the then chief rabbi of Romania, Rabbi Şafran, the pivotal reason for the delay may have been the interventions of Metropolitan Bălan and Nuncio Cassulo discussed earlier (allegedly supported by the Swiss and Swedish ambassadors); representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross may have helped too.39 Much later, on January 24, 1944, the Council of Ministers linked the decision to cancel the deportations to Cassulo.40 Perhaps it was actually the intervention of all these parties that influenced Antonescu’s decision.
Beyond the German-Romanian disagreements, there were definite signs of serious dissent between Lecca on the one hand and those like Popescu and Vasiliu in the Ministry of the Interior on the other. This does not mean that the bureaucracy was riven by factions supporting and opposing deportation of the Jews to the German extermination camps but only that the personal rivalries among the above-mentioned functionaries slowed down action on the planned deportations. Lecca, an opportunist who navigated between masters in Bucharest and Berlin while also pursuing his own interests, gave a strange version of the ultimate failure of the deportation: in jail after the war Lecca claimed that he had helped persuade Himmler to abandon the plan. According to Lecca, Mihai Antonescu had already given his verbal consent for the deportation but then regretted it and asked Lecca to help find a way out; Lecca went with Richter to Berlin, where they met with Himmler at an SS villa in Wannsee (after talking to RSHA officials Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Friedrich Suhr) and convinced him of the unacceptable disorganization of wartime economic life in southern Transylvania and Banat that would ensue from the deportation, thus winning him over to a six-month postponement.41 Although Lecca’s version is not completely improbable, there are some strange elements in his testimony. Lecca stated that he took his trip in the winter of 1943–1944, but as we have seen, it actually occurred in August 1942. His behavior during the trip did not resemble that of an opponent to the deportation plan. Furthermore, there is no known documentation of any meeting between him and Himmler.
The Germans were unhappy with the Romanians’ lack of enthusiasm. But on October 22, 1942, Mihai Antonescu charged that “it was Germany that had been inconsistent: on the one hand the Germans had insisted on a ‘resettlement’ from Old Romania [Regat], while on the other hand they had opposed the deportations across the Bug.”42 Mihai Antonescu and Richter again discussed the topic on November 11. Antonescu’s changed stance on the Jewish question was clear. He described in a diplomatic report what he told the Nazi official:
I prefer to strike at the economic activity of the rich, rather than carry out massacres and engage in hostile acts against the poor. . . . The Hungarians are watching, photographing, and producing propaganda abroad against us about our so-called barbarism against the Jews. The abuses are not the work of the government, and I have already intervened three times to ensure that the Jews are treated in an orderly fashion. Some peripheral agencies have made mistakes and carried out abuses that must come to an end. In this regard I have ordered that clothes be sent to the Jews in Transnistria. . . . With regard to the treatment of the Jews I am not backing down, but I am not escalating either. I intend to adopt measures that will strengthen the good situation of the Romanian people, rather than undertake savage steps to fight against physical persons through useless barbaric acts. . . . I used this opportunity to talk to Mr. Richter about the problem of the Jews who have suffered severe circumstances . . . along the Bug.43
Sixteen months now separated Mihai Antonescu from his anti-Semitic statements and the orders of summer 1941. In his response Richter boasted about the system of “physical preservation” of the Jews deported to Poland and minimized the crimes of German units on the Bug. According to him, the murder of thousands was merely a security measure by those “defending the rear front.”44
Now others started coming to the defense of the Jews: aside from the interventions already mentioned, several Romanian politicians spoke out, among them the leader of the National Peasant party, Nicolae Lupu, who had petitioned Antonescu the previous year and who was the politician who fought hardest on behalf of the Jews. Another National Peasant party leader, Iuliu Maniu, and the leader of the Liberal party, Constantin I. C. Brătianu, also sent memoranda to Antonescu seeking an end to the deportations. Both of these men, just like Ion Mihalache, another National Peasant leader, felt that the deportations had been carried out to please the Germans against “the humanitarian traditions” of the Romanian people.45 Intellectuals protested too. According to an SSI report dated September 18, 1942, some of them sent King Michael a letter of protest. On October 7, another SSI note reported several intellectuals petitioning to free the Jewish poet Magnus Sperber: the poets Ion Pilat and Vasile Voiculescu, the critic Eugen Lovinescu, and the novelist Oskar Walter Cisek.46
As Aureliu Weiss, one of Maniu’s assistants, wrote:
The opposition of Marshal [Antonescu] to German demands [to deport the Jews of Regat] to which he had [earlier] consented . . . is explained less as an act of will and reflection than as one of proud independence and autocratic character. He did not like receiving orders; he liked giving them. He especially did not like . . . orders from abroad. Deep inside, he was offended, irritated, by German demands regarding “his” Jews. They had grown like weeds in the great garden of Romania. To uproot them from Romanian soil required local measures. . . . But why were the Germans meddling with the question of the Jews of Romania, which remained an internal matter?47
Thus Antonescu’s pride, the fact that Hitler respected him and was willing to make certain concessions to him, the hesitating nature of the Romanian bureaucracy, internal and external interventions, and the unfavorable turn of the war were all factors that contributed to the cancellation of plans to deport the Jews from Moldavia and Walachia, and thus to the saving of nearly 300,000 lives. The path to moderation was soon confirmed by other developments, and now, as Carp observed, “the interministerial committee created as an organ of execution for deporting all the Jews from Romania began to involve itself in the repatriation of Jewish deportees.”48
The selective repatriation of the Jews deported to Transnistria began only at the end of 1943. But individuals in the highest ranks of the Romanian bureaucracy had begun expressing signs of goodwill toward a few Jewish deportees as early as spring 1942. On May 22, the governors of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria received a secret note from the Office of the President of the Council of Ministers specifying categories of Jews who could be released from the ghettos (but would have to remain in Transnistria), conditional only upon the consent of the concerned administrators and the ministers of the interior and justice. This list included:
• war invalids, their parents, and their children;
• war widows and orphans;
• parents of those killed in battle;
• those who fought in Romania’s wars and were wounded or decorated for acts of bravery;
• former military personnel previously on active duty in the Romanian army;
• retired civil servants who had contributed actively to the state;
• Jews married to Christian women or men;
• Jews baptized before 1920;
• senior citizens older than seventy who could not take care of themselves and who had relatives in Romania; and
• special cases of meritorious men not included in any of the above categories, to be submitted for gubernatorial consideration.49
In May and June 1942, seven Jews from the camps of Moghilev and Djurin received permission to return to Bucharest, Vatra Dornei, and Rădăuţi;50 forty-eight were allowed to leave various ghettos of Transnistria.51 It remains unclear whether such Jews were allowed to return to Walachia or Moldavia, however. And these selective reprieves were followed several days later by the deportation of thousands of Jews from Cernăuţi and Dorohoi to Transnistria, despite pleas to Antonescu from Lupu and Antonescu’s personal architect, Herman Clejan.52
The idea of a temporary repatriation from Transnistria of Walachian and Moldavian Jews appeared in a memorandum of Nandor Ghingold, president of the Central Jewish Office, that was sent to Ion Antonescu on November 19, 1942,53 suggesting that Romanian Jews be officially authorized to emigrate and that permission be granted to Jews from Transnistria to pass through Romania en route to another country in exchange for payment of taxes, to be funded in part by foreign Jewish organizations. At a meeting attended by various leaders of the Central Office and Wilhelm Filderman on November 22, Lecca seemed to approve of such a plan. On December 29, Lecca answered a request of the Ministries of Justice and Defense and of the Supreme General Staff for the deportation to Transnistria of eleven Jews who had avoided forced labor: “I consider that the Jews should be interned in labor camps in Romania rather than in Transnistria, because the Jews are going to be evacuated from that province.”54
Discussions based on the idea that certain categories of Jews should be repatriated then started. These discussions especially affected the case of some five thousand orphaned children who had been living in Transnistria. On January 2, 1943, Filderman asked Ion and Mihai Antonescu to permit repatriation of these orphans, as well as that of widows, invalids, and war heroes. Filderman also asked that deportees from Dorohoi be repatriated, along with those who had applied in 1940 to go to the USSR.55 On January 6 and 9, 1943, in the house of a certain Dr. A. Tester (according to Carp, a Gestapo agent) in Bucharest, Filderman and Lecca held a series of meetings. The main topic was permission for the orphans to emigrate to Palestine (by way of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey). Tester, a friend of Ambassador von Killinger, promised support if large “Jewish contributions” could be extorted.56 Since the Jewish community proved unable to finance the orphans’ emigration, however, Filderman next appealed to the British and American governments by way of Switzerland’s Jewish community. An attorney, Constantin Bursan, was thus sent to Istanbul to get the approval of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (headquartered in Jerusalem).57 We shall return to the fate of these children.
On January 19, 1943, Order No. 55347 and No. 21955 of the Ministry of the Interior established a committee to sort out the Jews deported to Transnistria’s Vapniarka camp (the only one then functioning) and repatriate those who had been sent for “unjustifiable” reasons;58 those Jews sent there as Communists were excepted.59 At the same time officials began preparing to repatriate other categories of deportees: those who had petitioned to move to the Soviet Union in 1940, those whose names were found in the Soviet legation of Bucharest, and those deported by the army for avoiding forced labor.60
On March 16, the Vapniarka committee identified 554 inmates, 427 of whom were approved for release because “most of the files [on them] . . . contained only extremely summary data, without material proof, and vaguely articulated suspicions.”61 Release did not mean repatriation, however, since the committee recommended that the Jews should remain in various ghettos in Transnistria.62 On March 30, 1943, another sorting committee recommended that “218 inmates return to Romania; 29 inmates be released from the camp but remain in Transnistria; 116 remain in the camp [indefinitely]; and 11 inmates remain in the camp pending further review.”63
Even though General Vasiliu proposed to repatriate 218 Jews from Vapniarka (among them decorated veterans),64 the Transnistria Gendarmerie Inspectorate ordered on April 17 that those released must settle in Transnistria.65 On May 1, Governor Alexianu ordered 427 Jews sent to Olgopol (100), Savrani (127), Triháti (200); they were transported under guard, and their new existence was often even harder than that at Vapniarka.66
The hesitation of various law enforcement agencies to enact such orders was confirmed on April 22, 1943, when Ion Antonescu proclaimed that Jews released from the camps “should no longer be allowed to return to Romania but, rather, are required to settle where they will in Transnistria.”67 Petitions by families for repatriation of relatives were refused by the Office of the President of the Council of Ministers.68 However, Mihai Antonescu set a significant precedent when he attached the following resolution to one such petition on July 10: “In my opinion, the right thing to do is to repatriate him [the prisoner in question], since he is the son of a war invalid.”69
Meanwhile, Tester and Filderman’s talks about repatriating the orphans continued, focusing on how much to pay in taxes per child.70 During a meeting with Filderman on April 7, Mihai Antonescu declared that the Romanian government would support the emigration of the Transnistrian orphans. He confirmed this in a statement to Chapuissat, vice president of the International Red Cross, on May 19.71 Similarly, during another meeting of Filderman’s, this one on August 4 with Vasiliu, the general reacted “cordially” to all of Filderman’s requests, signing papers right there and giving orders by telephone. Filderman complained about the harsh food situation in the ghetto of Moghilev and about the situation of the Jews, mostly women and children, deported from Dorohoi, Dărăbani, and Herţa, asserting that minors who had run away from forced labor had been executed.72 The small bureaucratic steps the Ministry of the Interior took to repatriate certain categories of deportees stretched into the summer of 1943.
On August 11, the Ministry of the Interior asked for situation reports relating to the Jews deported to Transnistria from the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie, from the Odessa Gendarme Inspectorate, and from the Supreme General Staff of the Romanian army. The ministry was especially concerned about the 578 Jews deported in September 1942 for having requested repatriation to the USSR in 1940, but the search proved futile because all of them had been slaughtered upon arrival in Transnistria (the Odessa gendarmerie told the ministry it was “unable to find” them).73 But also on August 11, Vasiliu refused to release from Transnistria the Jews of Arad, rhetorically asking his subordinates if they had been working improperly in 1941, when they approved the deportation of “innocent Jews,” and in 1943, when they recommended their return74—Vasiliu spoke as if he himself was unaware that the Arad police had only been following orders from Bucharest over the years. On August 24, Vasiliu told Minister of Justice Ioan C. Marinescu that the categories of Jews eligible for repatriation included those born in Moldavia and Walachia, those who had requested repatriation to the USSR, and those deported for violation of the forced labor regime. Repatriation was not for deportees suspected of being Communists.75
On September 7, the Central Jewish Office drew up a request for repatriation of the following categories of Jews, which Ghingold conveyed to Lecca:
• orphans, widows, invalids, and medal recipients of the 1916–1918 war;
• Jews born in Dorohoi (deported as “collaborators” even though they had not been under the Soviet occupation, as had the Jews of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia);
• Jews born in Moldavia and Walachia present in regions under deportation orders and unfairly swept up in them;
• retired or former civil servants;
• Jews deported in September 1942 (for “banned” political activity or for violating the forced labor laws); and
• orphaned children.76
In a report to Mihai Antonescu on September 23, Lecca further asked for the repatriation of the Jews born in Walachia and Moldavia and of those deported in September 1942. Subsequently, Mihai Antonescu approved the repatriation of orphans, widows, invalids, medal recipients, and retired or former state employees. Mihai Antonescu also demanded statistics pertaining to the Jews who had been deported in the fall of 1942 and decided that the Transnistria orphans should be brought to an orphanage in Odessa, from which they would emigrate with help from the Red Cross.77 On September 16, the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie presented numerical data to the Ministry of the Interior on the Jews deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina, as well as the names of those evacuated from Moldavia and Walachia for having allegedly requested repatriation to the USSR or for other political reasons.78
On September 23, Vasiliu received Filderman again, boasting that mail service between the Jews in Romania and those in Transnistria was improving. Filderman was not satisfied and reiterated emphatically that the Jews of Dorohoi had to be repatriated, reminding Vasiliu that he had promised to support their cause.79 On the same day Lecca suggested to the prime minister that Jews from Moldavia and Walachia be repatriated, those who had been deported in September 1942 selectively. Lecca proposed to concentrate the orphaned children so that they might benefit more quickly from aid by the Central Office,80 and on October 3, Vasiliu expressed willingness to allow back all the Jews who had evaded forced labor, a crime once punishable by deportation with the perpetrator’s entire family.81
On October 12, Filderman urged the government to go much further, demanding no less than repatriation of all Jews deported to Transnistria.82 In his memorandum Filderman estimated that two-thirds of the deportees were dead and that others were on the verge of dying. Anticipating that many of the Jews would soon be brought back to Bessarabia and Bukovina to work for the war effort, Vasiliu recommended repatriation for the vast majority on November 10.83 But the following categories of Jews were denied repatriation:
• those deported from the camp of Tîrgu Jiu (407);
• Jews active in the Communist movement and free at the time of deportation (554);
• Jews accused of communism and deported from Romanian penitentiaries (85); and
• Polish Jews who entered Bukovina clandestinely and were subsequently evacuated (unknown number).84
This response confirmed that as of September 1, only 50,741 of the 110,033 Jews (in actual fact, at least 123,000, possibly as many as 140,000) deported to Transnistria remained alive.85 On the same day Ghingold and Filderman were called in to Ion Antonescu’s office, where in the presence of General Vasiliu and Colonel Davidescu, they were told that Antonescu had decided to repatriate all deportees from Transnistria.86 The Council of Order, the new state organ dealing with repatriation, shortly confirmed the decision. On November 13, Vasiliu told Filderman, “We have decided to repatriate all the Jews from Transnistria: those from Dorohoi to Dorohoi; those from Bukovina to the localities whence they had left; and those from Bessarabia and all orphans to Romania.”87 The Council of Order refused to repatriate only Polish Jews, Communists, and those deported on special orders.88
The plan was to begin with those who had made the mistake of being in Bessarabia or Bukovina at the time of the deportation, government retirees, invalids, war widows and orphans, Jews needed as professionals in particular regions, and all orphans less than twelve years old. The plan also included the repatriation of all the Jews of Dorohoi.89
General Vasiliu, Governor Dragalina of Bukovina, and Marshal Antonescu had a long discussion about the issue of repatriation on November 17. Their only decision, however, was that repatriation should not be hurried. While voicing his fear of new German massacres, Antonescu authorized only the return of Jews from Dorohoi and the gathering of most Jews of Transnistria at Vijniţa.90 In spite of his own order of November 16 requiring the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie to repatriate all categories of Jews listed in his November 12 memorandum,91 Vasiliu admitted to Filderman on November 30 that “we have not yet taken any definitive measures concerning the repatriation of the deportees. For now [Antonescu] proposes to repatriate [only] about 220 from the camp of Vapniarka and about 6,000 from the district of Dorohoi.”92 According to Vasiliu, moreover, “the Vijniţa solution” was infeasible because there were only 220 dwellings there, many without doors or windows, which could shelter only 1,800, and that only after repairs.93 However, two weeks earlier General Tobescu had outlined to Filderman a repatriation plan based on Vasiliu’s report of November 12. The orphan category had been expanded to include all children under eighteen. Specific crossing points had also been established: Moghilev (for 45,000 people from the districts of Moghilev, Tulcin, and Jugastru), Rezina-Orhei (for about 18,000 people from Răbniţa, Balta, and Golta Districts), and Tiraspol-Tighina (for 5,000 from Ananiev, Berezovka, Duboşari, Oceakov, and Tiraspol).94 Despite the fact that these plans had been radically trimmed back, the same crossing points were also mentioned in Lecca’s November 20 report to Ion Antonescu. At this time Lecca estimated that 54,000 Romanian Jews deported from Bessarabia, Bukovina, Moldavia, and Walachia were still alive, as were another 20,000 native to the area:
• Jews from Dorohoi (approx. 5,600);
• Jews from Moldavia, Walachia, Transylvania, and Banat visiting Bessarabia or Bukovina during (or who had recently settled there before) the deportations (approx. 2,000);
• Jews from Moldavia, Walachia, Transylvania, and Banat deported in 1942 for suspicion of banned political activities (approx. 1,000);
• Jews from Northern Bukovina deported after the Soviets had been driven out (approx. 1,000);
• Jews from Southern Bukovina who had never been under Soviet occupation, but who were nevertheless evacuated with those from Northern Bukovina (approx. 12,000);
• deportees from Bessarabia (approx. 7,000 to 8,000); and
• orphaned and single-parent children (approx. 5,000).95
On December 8, 1943, the repatriation of the Dorohoi Jews (6,430 survivors), the 218 who had been interned at Vapniarka, and the 16 survivors of the group of 586 deported in fall 1942 for having requested immigration to the USSR was ordered.96 From December 20 to 25, 6,107 Jews, mostly from Dorohoi, were transferred to Moldavia from Transnistria; 72 of them crossed the Dniester at Tiraspol-Tighina.97 Among the repatriates 163 came from the Vapniarka camp, where successive review committees had ruled them innocent of any crime.98 Also in December 5,263 crossed the Dniester at Atachi-Soroca.99 Before reaching the crossing points, however, the deportees had to endure the last blows and surrender the last bribes.100 Once at the river they were again deloused, struck with a horsewhip on their naked bodies (especially the women), and only then fed and loaded onto train cars.101 According to a report of the Aid Committee of the Central Office of Romanian Jews, when the former deportees arrived at Dorohoi on December 26, 1943, two-thirds were “quite literally naked or dressed in rags,”102 including the 130 orphaned children who were “almost completely naked and not fed.”103 After the former inmates of Vapniarka were sorted one more time, a new lot of 192 was repatriated on January 11, 1944.104
Despite this beginning, on January 27, 1944, Ion Antonescu called off further repatriation, arguing that one million Romanians in Transnistria, Bessarabia, and Bukovina should enjoy priority. “Welcoming Jews,” he said, “would provoke a lot of resentment.”105 On February 6, Antonescu resuscitated his old policy of refusal to repatriate the Jews.106 The following day Vasiliu limited the repatriation of orphans to those under fifteen. Despite Filderman’s repeated requests to the Ministry of the Interior, children who had lost only one parent were not repatriated. On March 6, 1,846 orphaned children were repatriated, 1,400 crossing the Dniester at Moghilev-Atachi, another 446 at Tiraspol-Tighina. Both groups reunited in Iaşi, whence they were apportioned to Jewish communities in Moldavia and Walachia.107
On March 14, Antonescu reversed his decision to deny a general repatriation.108 Interestingly, on that same day Mihai Antonescu sent a long telegram to Alexandru Cretzianu, the Romanian minister in Ankara, the best contact for talking to the Americans. While asserting that he had always supported emigration, Mihai Antonescu stressed that the Romanian government “stands against any physical solution or measure that implies severe individual constraints” and that “the Romanian people are tolerant and do not approve of crime as a political method.”109 In early March 1944, Ira Hirschmann, President Roosevelt’s special representative and a member of the War Refugee Board, urged Cretzianu to persuade the Romanian government to return the Jewish deportees from Transnistria and permit Jewish orphans to emigrate to Palestine. Noting that the Romanian leaders might soon be killed by the Russians, Hirschmann underscored that his government should not have to reward Romanian leaders to get them to stop killing their own citizens; but he did promise Cretzianu and three members of his family U.S. passports if he could obtain a positive answer from Bucharest.110 Cretzianu brought such an answer from Ion and Mihai Antonescu, and soon five ships were carrying about three thousand Jewish orphans to Palestine. According to Carp,
Following Ion Antonescu’s decision on March 14, 1944, to allow the return of all Jews from Transnistria, two repatriation committees belonging to the Centrala Evreilor [Central Office] left for Moghilev and Tiraspol. The first committee reached Atachi but could not organize any repatriation because of the Soviet offensive. The second committee, which went through Tiraspol, managed to reach Balta and brought back to the south of the province 2,518 deportees. . . . Most of them were allowed to go to their homes, but 563 of the former inmates at Vapniarka [suspected of communism] who transited through the Grosolovo ghetto were led under escort to Tîrgu Jiu [a camp in Walachia from which they would be liberated only in late August 1944].111
Officials repatriated 10,744 Romanian Jews from Transnistria at this time, including 1,846 orphaned children, approximately one-fifth of those surviving as of fall 1943. Amid the chaos following the German-Romanian retreat and the advance of the Red Army, some deportees managed to reach Romania on their own. According to the memorandum submitted by the Romanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, 22,300 deportees from Transnistria returned to Romania in the fall of 1944;112 however, we know that the memorandum contained serious statistical errors. It asserted, for example, that in Romania, with few exceptions, compulsory labor had occurred under “tolerable conditions”; that only 1,528 Jews had died in Transnistria, to whom were added 3,750 from the remainder of the country (except northern Transylvania);113 and that “it was never the intention of the Romanian government to give up protecting Romanian Jews living abroad.”114
At that conference Gheorghe Tătăreşcu, the head of the Romanian delegation and also now the vice president of the Council of Ministers and the minister of foreign affairs, reminded—threatened, actually—Chief Rabbi Şafran, who could have contradicted the official version, that he remained a Romanian citizen and that they would meet again in Romania.115 Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, the Communist minister of justice who organized the trial of Romanian war criminals, as well as a sophisticated intellectual who felt more affinity toward London and Washington than Moscow, admitted about the restitution of Jewish real estate confiscated by the Antonescu administration, “a period of four years has produced situations that cannot simply go away; for instance, with respect to Jewish tenants I admit that I am still unable to render justice.”116
Doubts about when, whether, and how to deport the Jews of Regat delayed action on the question until late in the war. Complex considerations were entailed in this delay, though ideally for the Romanian fascists the entirety of Romanian Jewry should have been eliminated and though serious discussions of plans did take place. By the time the regime might have settled accounts with the Jews of Walachia, Moldavia, and the rest of Regat the growing probability of an Allied victory in the war stayed the hand of Antonescu’s government. Similarly, multiple and complex considerations motivated the Romanian authorities in Transnistria to hold back from systematic and total mass murder. While numerous outright massacres punctuated the story of their sway over that land, they nonetheless kept a considerable portion of the Jews alive. When changing military circumstances forced a reconsideration of the previous anti-Semitic policies, the government (both in Transnistria and Bucharest) began to back down from its earlier posture. Nonetheless, this didn’t happen all at one time but, rather, as a result of a series of dubious and contradictory half measures that brought hope to the Jewish population there only gradually. In neither place—Regat nor Transnistria—was the shape of things to come foreordained: it took the courage, resourcefulness, and ingenuity of the Jewish leadership, the Red Cross, the War Refugee Board, and of course the refugees themselves. A particularly crucial role in both stories was played by the most important wartime leader of Romanian Jewry, Wilhelm Filderman, though many others, such as Ira Hirschmann and René de Weck played crucial roles.