The Holocaust in Romania. Have you learned about that in school?

In Romania and the territories occupied by Romania during the Holocaust, 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed or died.

Have you learned about that in school?

During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazi regime also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": the Roma,  the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals (USHMM).

A significant part of the Romanian Jewish community was killed in the Second World War. The Jews in Basarabia, Bucovina and Dorohoi county were subject to systematic deportation and killing. Transnistria, the part of occupied Ukraine under Romanian administration were used as space to exterminate the Jews (The International Commission for the Study of Holocaust in Romania).

Approximately 135,000 Romanian Jews who lived in Northern Transylvania, under Hungarian occupation, also died along with 5000 Romanian Jews who lived in other countries in Europe.

  • Between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews were killed in Basarabia and Bucovina by Germen and Romanian troops in 1941.
  • Between 105,000 and 120,000 Romanian Jews deported died as result of expulsions to Transnistria
  • Between 115,000 and 180,000 local Jews were killed in Transnistria region (especially in Odessa and Golta and Berezovca districts).
  • At least 15,000 Jews were killed in the Iasi Pogrom and as result of other anti-Jews actions
  • Approximately 132,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in May-June 1944, from Northern Transylvania, occupied by Hungary.

A large number of the deported Roma people also died. Out of the 25,000 Roma (half of them children) sent to Transnistria, approximately 11,000 died. Century-old-communities perished. (The International Commission for the Study of Holocaust in Romania. Final Report, Iasi, Polirom, 2004). (Source Holocaust in Romania, The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania).

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