Geography of Genocide: Deportation and Mass Murder in Romanian-Occupied Territories during World War II

Abstract

ABSTRACT While many scholars insist on the role that shootings had in the genocide of Jews of Eastern Europe, the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ continues to be a problematic theoretical model/concept, because it ruptures the link between organized/industrial mass murder, shootings, the usage of Jews for forced labor, and the means of deportation by local actors. In this article, I look at what deportation meant in the territories of the USSR occupied by Romania during World War II, both in administrative and military terms. More specifically, I try to map out the geography of murder and establish if there is a link between deportations from Romania proper into Transnistria and the deportations from inside Transnistria (e.g., Odesa) to other parts of the same region (e.g., Berezovka). As such, I look at the following questions: Why were some Jews from specific places in Romania’s Old Kingdom deported to Transnistria en masse, while other communities were not touched by the same wrath of deportation? Did local military leaders have a say in these decisions? How were deportations within Transnistria different from the ones that took place from Romania proper? Did the historical perceptions of these territories by local actors, perpetrators, and soldiers influence the course of deportations? In which way did massacres inform subsequent deportations? Using both historical examples like the Odesa Massacre and the deportations that followed it, as well as an analysis of ideology, antisemitism, and local actions in the regions of Northern Romania and Transnistria, I look at the way geography informs decisions of deportation and the relationship between ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.