During the Ion Antonescu regime, in the context of Romani genocide, more than 25,000 Romani people from the Kingdom of Romania were deported to concentration camps in the Transnistria Governorate. The regime deemed Romani people "a burden and a danger to public order". In the camps the imprisoned people were used as slave labour, and witnesses described the conditions as abysmal, with many dying from exposure and starvation. [1]
One year after the starting of The Holocaust in Romania, Ion Antonescu ordered surveys to assess the Romani population in Romania. The results estimated 208,700 people of Romani ethnicity, out of whom the ones without fixed residence and those deemed "dangerous" - for example those who had previous criminal convictions or even those who were jobless - fell under the criteria for deportation. More than 30,000 people met the criteria. [2] According to researcher Shannon Woodcock the vague labelling of "nomadic" and "non-nomadic dangerous Țigani" by the authorities created confusion in the ranks of Romanian police, some of whom miss-identified travelling Kaldarari, Fierari (iron smiths) and other Romani subgroups as nomadic, even though they were only itinerant in summer in order to sell their goods. Most gendarmerie branches refused to declare any "nomadic or dangerous" Romani in their jurisdiction, prompting the central authorities to call them and insist on providing numbers. Other gendarmeries used the opportunity to abuse the Romani communities, for example the case of Râmnicu Sărat's chief of gendarmes who deported Romani women who were not legally married with their partner. [3]
Starting from September 1942, 3 months after the deportation of Jews to Transnistria, more than 13,000 sedentary Romani people were transported by train to the same region, while the remaining - almost equal number - of travellers had to use their own wagons. According to contemporary documents the authorities' original plan was for them to be sent away by water: from the Danube to the Black Sea and up to Odesa Harbor. [4]
The main destinations in the Governorate of Transnistria were Golta, Oceacov, and Berezovca counties. [5] Once they reached their destination the deportees were deprived of food, clothing, and shelter. [6] In those conditions and lacking medical facilities many died in the following winter, mainly of typhus. Estimates are that between 12,000 and 20,000 deportees died in the Romani concentration camps. [7]
Ion Antonescu was a Romanian military officer and marshal who presided over two successive wartime dictatorships as Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II. Having been responsible for facilitating the Holocaust in Romania, he was tried for war crimes and executed in 1946.
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.
The Kingdom of Romania, under the rule of King Carol II, was initially a neutral country in World War II. However, Fascist political forces, especially the Iron Guard, rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies. As the military fortunes of Romania's two main guarantors of territorial integrity—France and Britain—crumbled in the Fall of France, the government of Romania turned to Germany in hopes of a similar guarantee, unaware that Germany, in the supplementary protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, had already granted its blessing to Soviet claims on Romanian territory.
The Odessa massacre was the mass murder of the Jewish population of Odessa and surrounding towns in the Transnistria Governorate during the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 while it was under Romanian control. It was one of the worst massacres in Ukrainian territory.
The Ursari or Richinara are the traditionally nomadic occupational group of animal trainers among the Romani people.
The Transnistria Governorate was a Romanian-administered territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug, conquered by the Axis Powers from the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. A Romanian civilian administration governed the territory from 19 August 1941 to 29 January 1944. A brief military administration followed, during which the Romanians withdrew from the region by late March 1944. German control became official on 1 April 1944.
Roma, traditionally Țigani, constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621,573 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 percent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Roma. For example, in 2007 the Council of Europe estimated that approximately 1.85 million Roma lived in Romania, based on an average between the lowest estimate and the highest estimate available at the time. This figure is equivalent to 8.32% of the population.
The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were a target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society from the late-19th century debate over the "Jewish Question" and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out in the lands of Romania as part of the Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.
The history of the Jews in Moldova reaches back to the 1st century BC, when Roman Jews lived in the cities of the province of Lower Moesia. Bessarabian Jews have been living in the area for some time. Between the 4th-7th centuries AD, Moldova was part of an important trading route between Asia and Europe, and bordered the Khazar Khaganate, where Judaism was the state religion. Prior to the Second World War, violent antisemitic movements across the Bessarabian region badly affected the region's Jewish population. In the 1930s and '40s, under the Romanian governments of Octavian Goga and Ion Antonescu, government-directed pogroms and mass deportations led to the concentration and extermination of Jewish citizens followed, leading to the extermination of between 45,000-60,000 Jews across Bessarabia. The total number of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews who perished in territories under Romanian administration is between 280,000 and 380,000.
The Bărăgan deportations were a large-scale action of penal transportation, undertaken during the 1950s by the Romanian Communist regime. Their aim was to forcibly relocate individuals who lived within approximately 25 km of the Yugoslav border to the Bărăgan Plain. The deportees were allowed to return after 1956.
The Holocaust in Romania was the development of the Holocaust in the Kingdom of Romania. Between 380,000 and 400,000 Jews died in Romanian-controlled areas, including Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria. Romania ranks first among Holocaust perpetrator countries other than Nazi Germany.
Radu D. Lecca was a Romanian spy, journalist, civil servant and convicted war criminal. A World War I veteran who served a prison term for espionage in France during the early 1930s, he was a noted supporter of antisemitic concepts and, after 1933, an agent of influence for Nazi Germany. While becoming a double agent for Romania's Special Intelligence Service (SSI), Lecca was involved in fascist politics, gained in importance during World War II and the successive dictatorships, and eventually grew close to Conducător Ion Antonescu.
Maria Antonescu was a Romanian socialite and philanthropist and the wife of World War II authoritarian prime minister and Conducător Ion Antonescu. A long-time resident of France, she was twice married before her wedding to Antonescu, and became especially known for her leadership of charitable organization grouped in the Social Works Patronage Council organization, having Veturia Goga for her main collaborator. The Council profited significantly from antisemitic policies targeting Romanian Jews, and especially from the deportation of Bessarabian Jews into Transnistria, taking over several hundred million lei resulting from arbitrary confiscations and extortion.
Inochentism is a millennialist and Charismatic Christian sect, split from mainstream Eastern Orthodoxy in the early 20th century. The church was first set up in the Russian Empire, and was later active in both the Soviet Union and Romania. Its founder was Romanian monk Ioan Levizor, known by his monastic name, Inochenție.
Guttman Shmuel Landau was a leader of the Bessarabian Jewish community, active in the Moldavian Democratic Republic and Romania. His social work was tied to the city of Chișinău, where he was also a civil servant and merchant. A member of the Moldavian Republic's legislature in 1918, he returned to prominence during World War II, designated by the antisemitic regime of Ion Antonescu as President of the Chișinău Judenrat, effectively answering for the Chișinău Ghetto. He was unable to prevent his constituents' deportation and indiscriminate killing in Transnistria Governorate, but was spared their fate until May 20, 1942. He committed suicide the following day; his wife attempted the same, but was rescued and survived the war.
The Tighina Agreement was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Romania about administration, economy and security issues of the Transnistria Governorate that entered into force on 30 August 1941. It was signed during World War II, while the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union was taking place. The Tiraspol Agreement through which Romania received the region had entered in force shortly before, on 19 August.
The Tiraspol Agreement was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Romania signed on 19 August 1941 in the city of Tiraspol regarding the Romanian administration of the region of Transnistria, which became the Transnistria Governorate. It fell under the rule of Gheorghe Alexianu, under immediate subordination of Ion Antonescu, the Conducător (leader) of Romania. It was signed during World War II, while the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union was taking place. The Tighina Agreement in which specific issues of the region were discussed entered in force shortly after, on 30 August. The agreement allowed full Romanian control over the territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers, with the exception of the city of Odesa. The latter was ceded to Romania with some privileges for Germany in the Tighina Agreement.
Margarete Kraus was a Roma woman who was persecuted during the Porajmos, imprisoned at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. Her experience was recorded in later life by the photographer Reimar Gilsenbach.
The Bessarabia Governorate was an administrative unit of Romania during World War II.
Ioana Tinculeasa Rudăreasa was a Wallachian Romani woman who fought for the abolition of Slavery in Romania from 1843 to 1856. Born into slavery, Rudăreasa spent over a decade fighting for liberation from slavery through the Wallachian court. Her case illustrates the resistance of the Romanian boyars in preventing abolition and how Roma in the Romanian territories used all legal means available to obtain their freedom.
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