The Lunca massacre (Romanian: Masacrul de la Lunca) took place on 7 February 1941 in Northern Bukovina, when hundreds[2] of civilians (mostly ethnic Romanians) were killed when Soviet Border troops opened fire on them while they were attempting to forcefully cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania, near the village of Lunca, now Lunka in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine. Although there are no official statistics, it is estimated that about 600 people were killed as a result of the massacre.[2]
In late June 1940, Romania was forced to withdraw from a territory inhabited by 3.76 million people, submitting to an ultimatum by the Soviet Union; see Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The Romanian administration and military were evacuated, while the Red Army and the NKVD quickly occupied the land. Many families were caught by surprise by the rapid sequence of events, and had members on both sides of the new border. Therefore, many tried to cross the border, with or without official permission. According to official Soviet data, in the area patrolled by the 97th Unit of Soviet Border Troops, 471 people had crossed the border illegally from the districts of Hlyboka, Hertsa, Putila, and Storozhynets. The zone assigned to this unit extended from the border to about 7.5km (4.7mi) south of Chernivtsi.[3]
From the more remote areas of Chernivtsi Oblast (the northern portion of the acquired territories that were included in the USSR), such as the districts of Vashkivtsi, Zastavna, Novoselytsia, Sadhora, and Chernivtsi-rural, 628 people crossed the border to find refuge in Romania. This phenomenon cut across all ethnic and social groups in the occupied territories. A Ukrainian scholar estimated the number of refugees to Romania during the first year of Soviet administration at 7,000.[4]
The Soviet authorities' reaction to this phenomenon was twofold. First, border patrol efforts were strengthened. Second, lists were made of families that had one or more members which had fled to Romania, and thus were considered "traitors of the Motherland", therefore subject to labor camp deportation. On 1 January 1941, the lists made by the 97th Unit of the Soviet Border Guards mentioned 1,085 persons. Tables for other localities included names for 1,294 people (on 7 December 1940). At this point, even people who were merely suspected of intending to flee to Romania began to be included.[4]
On 19 November 1940, 40 families (a total of 105 people) from the village of Suceveni, also carrying 20 guns, tried to cross the frontier at Fântâna Albă. At night, a battle ensued with the Soviet border guards, during which 3 people were killed, 2 were wounded and captured by the Soviets, while the rest of the group (including 5 wounded) managed to arrive in Rădăuți, on the other side of the border. However, in short order, the relatives of those 105 people were all arrested and deported to Siberia.[5]
The massacre
In January 1941, over 100 villagers from Mahala, Ostrița, Horecea and other villages successfully crossed the border and arrived in Romania.[5] This gave confidence to other villagers. Consequently, a group of villagers from Mahala, Cotul Ostriței, Buda, Șirăuți, Horecea-Urbana, and Ostrița tried to cross to Romania during the night of 6 February 1941, near the village of Lunca, on the right bank of the river Prut. However, they had been denounced to the authorities and were discovered by the border guards at 06:00. Volleys of machine gun fire from multiple directions resulted in numerous dead (hundreds),[6] including the organizers N. Merticar, N. Nica, and N. Isac. About 57 people managed to reach Romania, but 44 others were arrested and tried as "members of a counter-revolutionary organization".[5][2][7]:55
The exact number of deaths is unknown, but it is estimated that it would be over 600.[2] According to the testimony of Mihai Crăiuț, one of the survivors of the Lunca massacre, approximately 300 young men and boys were buried in 3 mass graves, not far from the Prut River.[7]:56
On 14 April 1941, the Kiev Military District Tribunal sentenced 12 of those people to death, while the other 32 were sentenced to ten years forced labor and five years of loss of civic rights each.[2][7]:55 Petru Grior, director of the Center for Historical and Cultural Research in Chernivtsi, lists the 12 people sentenced to death as Ion Boiciuc, Florea Bujeniță, Ion Cudla, Toader Eremie, Ștefan Guraliuc, Petru Guzma, Grigore Medvidi, Vasile Moraru, Vasile Morărean, Vasile Tihon, Ion Toderean, and Ilie Voronca.[7]:55 All the family members of these "traitors to the Motherland" were also arrested and deported to Siberia.[5][8]
Aftermath and larger context
This was not the only massacre carried out by the Soviet authorities against the Bessarabian and the Bukovinian Romanians. The most famous is the Fântâna Albă massacre, in which thousands of Romanians were killed.[9]
During 1940–1941, between 11,000 and 13,000 Bukovinians (mostly, but not only ethnic Romanians) were deported to Siberia and the Gulag, 1,421 of them dying in the camps.[10] As a result of immigration, deportations, and killings, the Romanian population of the Chernivtsi region dropped by more than 75,000 between the Romanian 1930 census and the first Soviet census of 1959. It has been claimed that these persecutions were part of a program of deliberate extermination, planned and executed by the Soviet regime.[11]
After the snow melted, the Prut flooded the area where the dead at Lunca were buried, so that in the summer of 1941, when Romanian troops reoccupied the area, only one mass grave could be found, in which the bodies of 107 victims were discovered. They were exhumed and buried in the cemetery of the village of Mahala.[12][7]:56
In 2011, the Chamber of Deputies of Romania adopted a law establishing April 1 as the National Day honoring the memory of Romanian victims of massacres at Lunca, Fântâna Albă, and other areas, of deportations, of hunger, and other forms of repression organized by the Soviet regime in Hertsa, northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia.[13] The massacre is commemorated annually both in Romania and in the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine.[14][15][16]
Bukovina is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe. The region is located on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians and the adjoining plains, today divided between Romania and Ukraine.
Chernivtsi Oblast, also referred to as Chernivechchyna (Чернівеччина), is an oblast (province) in western Ukraine, consisting of the northern parts of the historical regions of Bukovina and Bessarabia. It has an international border with Romania and Moldova. The region spans 8,100 square kilometres (3,100 sq mi). The oblast is the smallest in Ukraine both by area and population. It has a population of 890,457, and its administrative center is the city of Chernivtsi.
Chernivtsi is a city in southwestern Ukraine on the upper course of the Prut River. Formerly the capital of the historic region of Bukovina, which is now divided between Romania and Ukraine, Chernivtsi serves as the administrative center for the Chernivtsi Raion, the Chernivtsi urban hromada, and the oblast itself. In 2022, the Chernivtsi population, by estimate, is 264,298, and the latest census in 2001 was 240,600.
Vasile Luca was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian and Soviet communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) from 1945 and until his imprisonment in the 1950s. Noted for his activities in the Ukrainian SSR in 1940–1941, he sided with Ana Pauker during World War II, and returned to Romania to serve as the minister of finance and one of the most recognizable leaders of the Communist regime. Luca's downfall, coming at the end of a conflict with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, signaled that of Pauker.
The Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina took place between late 1940 and 1951 and were part of Joseph Stalin's policy of political repression of the potential opposition to the Soviet power. The deported were typically moved to so-called "special settlements" (спецпоселения).
The unification of Moldova and Romania is a popular concept in the two countries that began during the Revolutions of 1989. The Romanian Revolution in 1989 and the independence of Moldova in 1991 further contributed to the development of a movement for the unification of the two Romanian-speaking countries. The question of reunification is recurrent in the public sphere of the two countries, often as a speculation, both as a goal and a danger. Though historically Romanian support for unification was high, a March 2022 survey following the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicated that only 11% of Romania's population supports an immediate union, while over 42% think it is not the right moment.
The Treznea massacre occurred in the village of Treznea, Sălaj in north-western Transylvania on 9 September 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vienna Award, when Romania ceded Northern Transylvania to Hungary. The massacre was perpretated by Hungarian Army troops with aid from some locals; 93 ethnic Romanians and Jews were killed.
The Fântâna Albă massacre took place on 1 April 1941 in Northern Bukovina when up to 3,000 civilians were killed when their attempt to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania, near the village of Fântâna Albă, now Staryi Vovchynets in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine, was met with open fire by the Soviet Border Troops. Although according to Soviet official reports no more than 44 civilians were killed, local witnesses assert a much higher toll, stating that survivors were tortured, killed, or buried in mass graves. Other survivors were taken away to be tortured and killed at the hands of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Some sources refer to this massacre as "the Romanian Katyn".
Ion I. Nistor was a Romanian historian and politician. He was a titular member of the Romanian Academy from 1915 and a professor at the universities of Cernăuți and Bucharest, while also serving as Minister of State for Bukovina, Minister of Public Works, Minister of Labor, and Minister of Religious Affairs and the Arts with a number of governments from 1918 to 1940.
The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina took place from 28 June to 3 July 1940, as a result of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Romania on 26 June 1940, that threatened the use of force. Those regions, with a total area of 50,762 km2 (19,599 sq mi) and a population of 3,776,309 inhabitants, were incorporated into the Soviet Union. On October 26, 1940, six Romanian islands on the Chilia branch of the Danube, with an area of 23.75 km2 (9.17 sq mi), were also occupied by the Soviet Army.
Lunka is a village in Chernivtsi Raion, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine. It belongs to Hertsa urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.
Vasile Soare is a Romanian diplomat. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Romania to Azerbaijan since October 28, 2021.
The Tatarka common graves were mass graves discovered in April–August 1943, during World War II, by Axis-allied Romanian troops occupying Transnistria, on a lot of 1,000 m2 (11,000 sq ft) in Tatarka, now Prylymanske, in Odesa Raion, near Odesa. Some 42 separate common graves of several dozen bodies each were identified, containing between 3,500 and 5,000 bodies, of which 516 were exhumed, studied, and buried in a cemetery before the region became a front line. The commission set up by the Romanian authorities to investigate these graves reported that among the dead were persons arrested in the Moldavian ASSR in 1938–1940 and in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940–1941.
Leon Șușman was a member of the fascist paramilitary organization the Iron Guard who, following the Soviet occupation of Romania and establishment of the Romanian People's Republic, became the leader of an anti-communist paramilitary group in the Apuseni Mountains.
Sărmașu massacre refers to the torture and massacre of 165 people, primarily Jews, committed by Hungarian paramilitaries in Sărmașu, Cluj-Turda County.
Staryi Vovchynets is a village in Chernivtsi Raion, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine. It belongs to Kamianka rural hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The Staryi Vovchynets village council is the body of the local authority that administers the villages of Stary Vovchynets and Bila Krynytsia.
Nicolae Macici was a Romanian lieutenant general during World War II, when he commanded the Romanian First Army, first on the side of the Axis (1941–1944) and then on the side of the Allies (1944–1945). Convicted in 1945 by the Bucharest People's Tribunal as a war criminal for his role in the Odessa massacre, he died at Aiud Prison five years later.
Zorile Bucovinei is a Romanian-language newspaper published in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. It is one of the oldest Romanian publications in Chernivtsi Oblast.
Alexandrina Cernov is a Ukrainian academic, literary historian and philologist of Romanian ethnicity. An honorary member of the Romanian Academy, she has been lecturer at the Chernivtsi University. Cernov is a relevant figure of the Romanian minority of Ukraine and an advocate for their minority rights. She has apported significant contributions to Romanian cultural life in Ukraine and has published studies regarding the Romanians in Ukraine as well as handbooks for use in their schools.
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