Murder of the Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia begins

Following the invasion of the USSR in June 1941, Germany and Romania occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Romanian leaders Marshal Ion Antonescu and Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu and other government members gave the Romanian army and gendarmerie secret orders to murder all the Jews in Bukovina and Bessarabia under the code name “Cleansing of the Ground” (Curatirea Terenului). On the eve of the war, a special killing unit was created from the Security Services, commanded by the deputy Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu, and called the Esalon Special (Special Echelon). Together with the German army and Einsatzgruppe D, they massacred about 150,000 to 160,000 Jews in Bukovina and Bessarabia during July and August 1941. In a government meeting on 8 July, Mihai Antonescu said: “Be merciless. Saccharine and foggy humanitarianism has no place here… I am all for the forced migration of the entire Jewish element of Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be dumped across the border… If necessary shoot your machine guns… I couldn´t care less if history will recall us as barbarians… I take formal responsibility and tell you there is no law.” The Jews who had survived the massacres were deported in the direction of the Dniester River. They were forced to march hundreds of kilometers in the summer heat, hungry, sick and exhausted. Anyone falling behind was shot by the Romanian escorts. After some six weeks in temporary camps, the deportation continued towards Transnistria. The establishment of ghettos and camps in the Transnistria region began in August 1941, and the remaining Jews were incarcerated there. Some 195,000 Jews were deported to these camps, of whom approximately 145,000 perished. Additionally, some 180,000 Ukrainian Jews who had lived in this region previously were murdered by the Romanians.