From Silence to Justification?: Moldovan Historians on the Holocaust of Bessarabian and Transnistrian Jews

Abstract

The Holocaust was one of the major experiences of the populations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, of those European countries that were either part of the Axis or occupied by Nazi Germany. This was certainly the case for the inhabitants of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Transnistria. These regions remained under Romanian administration from June/July 1941 to spring/summer 1944. The Soviets had seized Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania in June 1940 under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. These territories were then reoccupied (“liberated”) by the Romanian and German armies after the German attack against the Soviet Union in June 1941. From 1941 to 1944 they were Romanian provinces ruled by separate highly centralized administrations. Transnistria (meaning literally “territory across the Dniester” in Romanian), which lies between the Dniester and Bug rivers, though never formally incorporated into Romania, was ruled by the Romanians during this period under the agreement with Hitler. Romanian authorities deported practically all Jews from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Transnistria, accusing them of both treason and collaboration with the Soviets in 1940–1941 during the Soviet occupation and hostility towards the Romanian state in general. Some Roma, together with other “hostile elements” from other Romanian provinces, were also deported to Transnistria.