THIS TEXT relies primarily on previously unpublished Romanian documents located in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., in a collection that exceeds 800,000 pages. The documents cited herein come from the archives of the Mareles Stat Major (MSM, or the Supreme General Staff of the Romanian army), the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (RMFA), the Romanian State Archives (RSA), the Central Archives of the Republic of Moldavia, and the local archives of the Republic of Ukraine (Cernăuţi, Odessa, Nicolaev, and Vinnytsya).
The files from the MSM (RG 25.003M) derive from the office responsible for Jewish hard labor (the Tenth Office) and surveillance of the Jews (Second Section); they also include reports on anti-Jewish operations by major military units and reports on Jews and Gypsies by the military gendarmerie. Military documents provide a complete picture of the Romanian system of forced labor camps for Jews.
The archives of the SRI (RG 004M) contain the trials of the Romanian war criminals. In addition to the indictments, testimonies, and court decisions therein, the SRI files contain many original documents used as evidence in the trials.
Most of the documents in the RMFA’s files (RG 25.006M) belong to diplomatic records that reflect German-Romanian relations and the fate of Romanian Jews living abroad. This collection also contains part of the reports from the Civilian-Military Cabinet of the Administration of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria (CBBT) and, most important, the statistics on the deportations from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria.
The RSA files (RG 002M and RG 25.005M) yield reports from central and local administrative units concerning the persecution of Jews, the files of Ion Antonescu’s military office, anti-Jewish administrative decisions from 1940 to 1944, and surveillance reports of the Romanian secret police.
The Central Archives of the Republic of Moldavia (RG 54.001M) contain the orders and reports on the formation of ghettos and transit camps in Bessarabia and on deportations from Bessarabia and Bukovina.
The local archives of the Republic of Ukraine from Cernăuţi (RG 31006M) include the files on the history of the Cernăuţi ghetto and documents on the deportation of the Jews from Bukovina in 1941 and 1942. Those from Odessa (RG 31004M) and Nicolaev (RG 31008M) contain administrative reports on the situation of the Jews and Gypsies in Transnistria.
Also used were documents from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; records from the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; and published sources, among them the most important being Matatias Carp’s Cartea neagră and Jean Ancel’s edited collection Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry During the Holocaust.