Transnistria Governorate

1941 Romanian stamp commemorating the Fall of Odessa and the "Crusade against Bolshevism".

Until 26 July 1941, the Romanian Army had pushed the Soviet Army out of Bessarabia, the territory of Romania occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940. Nazi Germany wanted Romania as an ally in the war against the Soviet Union. However, Romania was complacent about recovering its own territory. To facilitate the persuasion of the then-dictator of Romania, Ion Antonescu, Hitler ordered the German Army to advance into Ukraine from north to south, following a route east of the Southern Bug river, in order to trap Soviet troops between Dniester and the Southern Bug. Antonescu was thus faced with a simple task for his army: conquer from the encircled and retreating Red Army troops a precisely delimited area. Antonescu ordered the Romanian Fourth Army to undertake this task.

During the first week of the advance, in mid-August 1941, Romanian forces took over all of the region, except for a small area around Odessa, without a fight. At the time, the Romanians had 60,000 soldiers to conquer the city from its 34,000 defenders. However, the organization was so poor, and the command was so superficial, that the attack resulted in a military blunder. Exploiting this success, the Soviets stopped the evacuation of the city by sea and instead sent reinforcements, bolstering the strength of the Soviet forces up to 100,000. The Romanians were forced to more than double their own numbers as well. Although occasionally, on some small portions of the front lines, low- and medium-rank Romanian officers showed clear successes, the general organization of the siege was disastrous for the Romanians, and several generals were dismissed afterwards. Eventually, after two months of siege, the Romanian army took control of the city at the price of 92,545 casualties. Only in the Battle of Stalingrad were Romanian casualty figures higher, but then the Romanians would face a numerically and technically superior enemy. Although the Soviets eventually left the city, they were able to block a larger enemy force with a smaller one, and inflict significant casualties on the attackers. This result was especially important, because the Soviet High Command had initially ordered the city abandoned. At the end of the war, Odessa received the title of Hero city.

Once Romanian troops entered Odessa, they established the headquarters of two of their divisions in the local NKVD building. However, the building was mined by the Soviets, who blew it up, killing over 100 members of the Romanian divisional headquarters, including almost 50 officers, paralyzing the activity of the two divisions for two weeks. In reprisal, Ion Antonescu ordered the arrest and massacre of civilians suspected of aiding the Red Army. When it became clear that identifying individuals directly responsible for the incident would be almost impossible, Antonescu ordered the shooting of Jews. The massacre that followed resulted in 19,000 civilians killed, the majority of whom had nothing to do with the military action. A further number of Odessa Jews were deported to ghettos and concentration camps in the northern half of the region.

A partisan movement, with a strength of 300, was active in the Odessa catacombs all throughout the occupation. It managed to organize an excellent communication with the partisan headquarters in Moscow. Antonescu was advised to use poisonous gas to clear the catacombs, but, afraid of the public implications of such an act, decided to abstain from it. Eventually, Romanians were able to inflict a high number of casualties on the partisans with the help of some partisans who switched sides and revealed the movement through the catacombs. Yet, the catacombs were never completely cleared, and the partisans maintained a continuous resistance movement until the return of the Red Army.

Romanian stamps from late 1941 issued for Transnistria

Albeit not annexing the region outright, the Romanian Antonescu government organized the territory in the Guvernământul Transnistriei under Romanian governor, Gheorghe Alexianu.[1]

The Nazi-allied Antonescu government hoped to annex the territory eventually, but developments on the Eastern Front precluded it.[1]

Romanian opposition parties were against Romanian operations beyond Bessarabia and Bukovina.[1] Two preeminent political figures of the day, Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Brătianu declared that "the Romanian people will never consent to the continuation of the struggle beyond our national borders."[2]

The counties and lower level administrative divisions of Romania, Transnistria included.

The territory was divided into 13 counties (sing. Judeţ). Below these were subdivisions named Municipiu, Oraş and Raion.

In December, 1941 Romanian authorities conducted a census in Transnistria and the ethnic structure was as follows:[3]

Population structure in Romania (Transnistria included) according to the 1941 census.

Romanian soldier reading an opera house advert in Odessa, 1942.

The Romanian administration of Transnistria attempted to stabilize the situation in the region during the occupation. To this end, it opened all churches, previously closed down by the Soviets. During 1942–1943, 2,200 primary schools were organized in the region, including 1,677 Ukrainian, 311 Romanian, 150 Russian, 70 German, and 6 Bulgarian. 117 middle and high schools were opened, including 65 middle schools, 29 technical high schools, and 23 academic high schools. Theaters were opened in Odessa and Tiraspol, as well as several museums, libraries, and cinemas throughout the region. On 7 December 1941, the University of Odessa was reopened with 6 faculties - medicine, polytechnical, law, sciences, languages and agricultural engineering.[6]

On 14 August 1941, Hitler wrote to Antonescu, asking the latter to take over the administration between the Dniester and the Dnieper. Antonescu replied three days later, stating that he could only assume responsibility for the area between the Dniester and the Bug, due to lacking "the means and trained staff". The Romanian leader was however willing to supply security troops for the area between the Bug and the Dnieper. The German-Romanian agreement for the creation of Transnistria was signed on 19 August, at Tiraspol. It is known as the Tiraspol Agreement. This treaty was consolidated by a convention signed at Tighina on 30 August (the Tighina Agreement), which however did not clearly define the northern borders of Transnistria. Antonescu claimed the northern towns of Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Zhmerynka and Tulchyn, a request to which Hitler acceded. The final borders were recognized on 4 September, in a German order establishing a boundary between Transnistria and the rear of Army Group South.[7] The resulting territory amounted to 42,000 square kilometres (16,000 sq mi). It was divided into 13 counties, each ruled by a high-ranking officer with the role of prefect. A county was further divided into raions, each raion being ruled by a praetor, who had much broader powers than the prefect. The entire region, forming a single Governorate, was led by one Governor, Gheorghe Alexianu.[8]

SET 7K

Transnistria had budgetary autonomy and as such made use of its own aircraft, separate from the rest of the Royal Romanian Air Force. The following aircraft comprised the Transnistrian air section:[9]

Model	Origin	Number
Fw 58	Germany	1
SET 7K	Romania	3
RWD 13	Poland	5
Ju 52	Germany	2

Map of the Holocaust in Ukraine and Romania. Massacres marked with red skulls.

Many Jews were deported to Transnistria from Bessarabia and Bukovina.[10][11] During the period 1941–1944, 200,000 Romani people and Jews became victims[12] of the Romanian occupation of Transnistria.[13] Not being Romanian territory, Transnistria was used as a killing field for the extermination of Jews. Survivors say that in comparison with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, where deportations were carefully planned, the Romanian government did not prepare to house thousands of people in Transnistria, where the deportees stayed. The people were instead placed in crude barracks without running water, electricity or latrines. Those who could not walk were simply left to die.[14] In total, around 150 ghettos and camps functioned in Transnistria.[15]

In Odessa, between 80,000 and 90,000 of the city's roughly 180,000 Jews remained at the time the Germans and Romanians captured the city on October 16, 1941. Six days later, a bomb exploded in the Romanian military headquarters in Odessa, prompting a massacre of Jews; many were burned alive. In October and November 1941 alone, Romanian troops in Odessa killed about 30,000 Jews.[16] Transnistria was the site of two concentration camps and several de facto ghettos (which the Romanian wartime government referred to as "colonies").[17] In addition, most of the remaining Jews in Bessarabia (84,000 of 105,000) and northern Bukovina (36,000 of 60,000) were herded into these as well.[18] A striking paradox is the fact that most of Romanian Jews (375,000) under Antonescu regime survived WW2.[19] The Holocaust Encyclopedia (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) writes that "Among the most notorious of these ghettos… was Bogdanovka, on the west bank of the Bug River… In December 1941, Romanian troops, together with Ukrainian auxiliaries, massacred almost all the Jews in Bogdanovka; shootings continued for more than a week." Similar events occurred at the Domanevka and Akhmetchetkha camps, and (quoting the same source) "typhus-devastated Jews were crowded into the 'colony' in Mohyliv-Podilskyi." Other camps, also with very high death rates, were at Pechora and Vapniarka, the latter reserved for Jewish political prisoners deported from Romania proper.[17] Many Jews died of exposure, starvation, or disease during the deportations to Transnistria or after arrival. Others were murdered by Romanian or German units, either in Transnistria or after being driven across the Bug River into the German-occupied Ukraine. Most of the Jews who were sent to the camps in Transnistria never returned. Those who survived, around 70,000, returned to Romania in 1945 to find that they had lost their houses.[14]

Even for the general population, food in Transnistria was very scarce, through lack of Romanian planning.[14] According to one survivor's account, people would gather outside a slaughterhouse and wait for scraps of meat, skin and bones to be thrown out of the slaughterhouse after the cleaning each morning. He remembers that they were fighting for the bones "just like dogs would" and that people were starving to death.[14] Among the survivors were Liviu Librescu[20] and Norman Manea.

Transnistria Governorate Jewish Ghetto exit permit

Position of Antonescu government

Tiraspol in 1941

Antonescu, in a government meeting showed intentions to deport all Jews behind the Ural Mountains if it would be possible: "I have about 10,000 Jews left in Bessarabia, who in a few days will be taken across the Dniester, and if circumstances will allow, they will be taken beyond the Urals".[21]

By early 1944, the Romanian economy was in tatters because of the expenses of the war, and destructive Allied air bombing throughout Romania, including the capital, Bucharest. In addition, most of the products sent to Germany were provided without monetary compensation. As a result of these "uncompensated exports", inflation in Romania skyrocketed, causing widespread discontent among the Romanian population, even among groups and individuals who had once enthusiastically supported the Germans and the war.

Transnistria was relatively spared by these air bombings, but soon the Red Army destroyed all the Romanian presence in the region. During the Uman–Botoşani Offensive the Soviet troops crossed the higher Bug river on March 11 and in twenty days more the Transnistria Governorate "disappeared". By the end of March 1944 there were no more Axis troops east of the Dniester river, save for the encircled capital Odessa. Meanwhile, the replacement of Governor Alexianu happened on February 1, 1944, by the military governor, Lt General Potopeanu (formerly Romanian Economy Minister). The name Transnistria dropped out of use, and the authorities were increasingly referred to as Military Government between Dniester and Bug.

On March 28, the Red Army took Nikolaev and the next day crossed the lower Bug river in force. On April 5, Razdelnaia fell, and therewith the Odessa-Tiraspol highway was cut. On the 19th, after a brief but bitter fight, the Red Army re-entered Odessa. On the April 12, Tiraspol was occupied, and four days later all Transnistria was again in Soviet hands. During the final days, the Germans concentrated on destruction in Odessa, since evacuation was impossible. Port installations, some industrial facilities, and transportation junctions were blown up (even the electric power plant, various mills, stores of bread, sugar, and other foods were destroyed). Of Odessa's population, scarcely 200,000 remained; many had hidden in the vicinity while some had sought safety in the countryside. And some had left westward with the Romanians and Germans: only those most compromised had left; the bulk of the residents had stayed in the region. People feared Soviet repressions, but "there was no other way out", according to German sources.[22] It is worth noting however, that there was still a very small piece of Transnistrian territory still left under Romanian rule as late as August 1944, according to an OKH map depicting the situation on the Romanian front as of 20 August. This area comprised a Westwards salient created by the Dniester river, centered around Coșnița (today part of the Dubăsari District of the Republic of Moldova).[23]

• Administrative divisions of the Kingdom of Romania (1941–44)
• Demographic history of Transnistria
• Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
• Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive
• History of Transnistria
• History of Romania
• Romania in World War II
• Siege of Odessa (1941)
• Naval operations in Romanian-occupied Soviet waters
• Tatarka common graves

• Rumania in World War II, 1939-1945, World History at KMLA. Accessed 11 November 2007.
• (in Russian) I. Altman Глава 3 Гетто и Лагеря на Территории СССР at the Wayback Machine (archived October 21, 2004) ("Chapter 3: Ghettoes and Camps on the territory of the USSR") in "Холокост и Еврейское Сопротивление на Оккупированной Территории СССР" ("Holocaust and Jewish Resistance in the Occupied Territory of the USSR"). TOC at the Wayback Machine (archived October 11, 2004). Originally on history.pedclub.ru/shoa; page is encoded in Win-1251.
• Romania, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed online 19 December 2006
• Alexander Dallin - Odessa, 1941-1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory Under Foreign Rule
• Map
• Igor Niculcea, Rumynskii okkupatsionnyi rezhim v Transnistrii [Romanian occupation of Transnistria], in Записки Iсторичного Факультету, Odessa, Ukraine, 1997, p. 182-187.
• Igor Casu, Istoriografia şi chestiunea Holocaustului: cazul Republicii Moldova [Historiography and the question of Holocaust: The case of Republic of Moldova] (in Romanian) in Contrafort, Chisinau, 11–12, 2006 and 1, 2007 (www.contrafort.md)
• Diana Dumitru, The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust: Historiography and Politics in Moldova, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2008 22(1):49-73.
• Vladimir Solonaru, "Patterns of Violence: Local Population and the Mass Murder of Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, July–August 1941," in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8 (4: 2007), 749–787.
• Vladimir Solonaru,"'Model Province': Explaining the Holocaust of Bessarabian and Bukovinian Jewry," Nationalities Papers, Vol. 34, No. 4, September 2006, pp. 471–500.
• Interview with Chava Wolf, a survivor of the camps in Transnistria, in Yad Vashem website.