Date Marks Start of Romanian Deportations of Jews to Transnistria, Oct. 1941
October 9th is the National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust in Romania. This date was chosen as the day that marks the beginning of Romanian deportations of Jews to Transnistria in 1941.
In 1930, more than 750,000 Jews lived in Romania, constituting the third-largest Jewish community in Europe. Spread across the various regions of what was then Romania, the Jews accounted for almost 5% of the total population.
According to historians, after Nazi Germany, Romania ranks first among countries that implemented the Holocaust against Europe’s Jewish population.
Romania’s Roma population also suffered under the Romanian regime, with an estimated 25,000 Romani people later being deported to Transnistria, where almost 50% perished.
Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel wrote “While there were no gas chambers in Transnistria, everything else was there: not one community was spared; all were decimated. Two hundred and fifty thousand Jews perished there in thousands and thousands of ways. There was the terror, the threats, the nocturnal death marches, the sealed wagons, the starvation, the plagues, the humiliations, the public executions, the fires: The orders came from on high, from Marshall Antonescu himself, almost all, were executed with more or less enthusiasm. Romanians, Nazis and Ukrainians outdid one another in cruelty. Thousands were murdered in the streets of Odessa alone.”
October 9th marks the beginning of those deportations, another devastating tragedy within a multitude of tragedies during the Holocaust.
The grim fate of the Jews of Romania and later that of the Roma of Romania – must always be remembered.
