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| Vapniarka | |
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| Concentration camp |
The Vapniarka concentration camp was a Romanian-administered concentration camp established in occupied Transnistria Governorate in Vapniarka, Ukraine during the Second World War.
Soon after Romania, under the leadership of Ion Antonescu, joined the war on the Axis side and took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union, its administration extended over the Dniester and areas up to then forming part of the Ukrainian SSR (see Romania during World War II ). By that time, the 700 local Jewish inhabitants had fled or had been killed by the Nazi German or Romanian troops. In October 1941, the Romanians established a detention camp in Vapniarka. One thousand Jews were brought to the site that month, mostly from the city of Odessa. Some 200 died in a typhus epidemic; the others were taken out of the camp in two batches, guarded by soldiers of the Romanian Gendarmerie, and shot to death.
In 1942, 150 Jews from Bukovina were brought to Vapniarka. On September 16 of that year, 1,046 Romanian Jews were also brought to the camp. About half had been banished from their homes on suspicion of being communists, but 554 had been included without any specific charges being brought against them. This was the last transport to arrive at the camp; its status was changed to that of a concentration camp for political prisoners, under the direct control of the Romanian Minister of the Interior, Dumitru I. Popescu. In practice, Vapniarka was a concentration camp for Jewish prisoners, since no other political suspects were held there—the only other inmates were several Ukrainian convicts. Of the 1,179 Jews in the camp, 107 were women, who were housed in two huts surrounded by a triple-apron barbed-wire fence.
Among the Jewish prisoners were 130 members of the Romanian Communist Party, 200 Social Democrats, as well as Trotskyists and Zionists. [1] Most of the prisoners, however, had been arrested on purely arbitrary grounds. The inmates established a camp committee to help them survive despite starvation, disease, hard labor, and physical and mental torture. Apart from the official committee, the camp also had an underground leadership, and, together, the two bodies persuaded the prisoners to observe discipline voluntarily.
The father of Costin Murgescu, Ion, had "strong pro-Nazi sympathies" [2] and by September 1942 he was the camp commandant in Vapniarka. He introduced severe restrictions on the supply of water. By keeping the camp meticulously clean, the prisoners were able to overcome the typhus epidemic, [3] but they suffered from the poor quality of the food, which included Lathyrus sativus , a species of pea that was normally used to feed livestock, and barley bread that had a 20% straw content. A team of doctors among the inmates, led by Dr. Arthur Kessler of Cernăuţi, reached the conclusion that the disease presented all the symptoms of lathyrism, [4] [3] [5] a spastic paralysis caused by the oxalyldiaminopropionic acid present in the pea fodder.
Within a few weeks, the first symptoms of the disease appeared, affecting the bone marrow of prisoners and causing paralysis. By January 1943, hundreds of prisoners were suffering from lathyrism. The inmates declared a hunger strike and demanded medical assistance. As a result, the authorities allowed the Jewish Aid Committee in Bucharest to supply them with medicine, and the prisoners' relatives were allowed to send them parcels. It was only at the end of January that the prisoners were no longer fed with the animal fodder that had caused the disease, but 117 Jews were paralyzed for life.
In March 1943, it was found that 427 Jews had been imprisoned for no reason whatsoever. They were moved to various ghettos in Transnistria, but were sent back to Romania and released only in December 1943–January 1944. In October 1943, when the Soviet Red Army was approaching the region, it was decided to liquidate the camp. 80 Jews were sent to ghettos in Transnistria. 54 Communists were taken to a prison in Rîbnița, Transnistria, where they were killed in their cells by SS men on March 19, 1944. [6] A third group, which included most of the prisoners (565 persons), was moved to Romania in March 1944 and imprisoned in the camp for political prisoners in Târgu Jiu, until after the fall of the Antonescu government in August.
Many of the former prisoners in Vapniarka were appointed to senior posts in Communist Romania, among them Simion Bughici (who became Foreign Minister).
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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.
Mihai Antonescu was a Romanian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister during World War II, executed in 1946 as a war criminal.
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Neurolathyrism, is a neurological disease of humans, caused by eating certain legumes of the genus Lathyrus. This disease is mainly associated with the consumption of Lathyrus sativus and to a lesser degree with Lathyrus cicera, Lathyrus ochrus and Lathyrus clymenum containing the toxin ODAP.
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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.
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Vapniarka, also known as Vapniarca, Vapnyarka, Wapnjarka or Wapniarka, is a rural settlement in Tulchyn Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine, known since 1870 as a railroad station. Its name from the Ukrainian language translates as a lime (gypsum) settlement. As of January 2022 Vapniarka's population was approximately 7,165.
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Maria Antonescu, also known as Maria General Antonescu, Maria Mareșal Antonescu, or Rica 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.
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.
Museum of the Holocaust – victims of fascism, Odesa – the first Museum in Ukraine, which is based on the events of the genocide of the Jewish population in Transnistria Governorate.
Pechora was a concentration camp operated by Romania during World War II in the village of Pechora, now in Ukraine. The concentration camp was established on the gated grounds of what had once been a private estate of the Polish noble Potocki family on the banks of the Southern Bug river, which had been converted into a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients after the Russian revolution.
Lathyrism is a condition caused by eating certain legumes of the genus Lathyrus. There are three types of lathyrism: neurolathyrism, osteolathyrism, and angiolathyrism, all of which are incurable, differing in their symptoms and in the body tissues affected.
Gheorghe Alexianu was a Romanian lawyer, high school teacher and associate professor who served as governor of Transnistria between 1941 and 1944. In 1946, he was accused and convicted of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity; he was sentenced to death by the Bucharest People's Tribunal, and was executed on June 1, 1946, by shooting.
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