The Holocaust in Romania is very much a part
of the history of the territorial changes that the Romanian state has underwent
during the Second World War.
For our purposes,
I would like to point out to the following changes.
One was that in September 1940,
the northern part of Transylvania was transferred from Romania to Hungarian rule,
the northern part of Transylvania.
Thus,
the fate of the Jews in Northern Transylvania in 1944
became part of the Holocaust in Hungary.
So from the purpose of being,
if we look at them as Romanian citizens of inhabitants of Romania,
there were inhabitants and citizens of Romania in between the two world wars.
On the other hand,
their faith from 1940 to 1944,
it was under Hungarian rule and the Holocaust in Hungary.
The two other major changes were in the late summer of 1940
when Bukovina,
Northern Bukovina, actually in Bessarabia, were taken over by the Soviets for ultimatum,
and between the summer of 1940 and June 1941,
those two territories were part of the Soviet Union.
On the 22nd of June, 1941,
Romania invaded the Soviet Union, along with Nazi Germany, or in fact,
Romania, together with Nazi Germany
or Nazi Germany together with Romania invaded the Soviet Union.
And the Romanians were so-called liberating those territories
that a year before were taken by the Soviets.
One of their claims was, of course,
that the Jews in that period of one year
in Bukovina and Besarabia
cooperated with the Soviet authorities and helped the Soviets.
Thus, a part of the Holocaust in Romania
was so-called "justified" by the Antonescu regime's propaganda
that, in fact, they're repaying the Romanians what they have done during those years.
One year, in fact,
of 1940 and 1941.
Furthermore,
in late June 1941,
immediately after the invasion of the Soviet Union,
the major pogrom in Iași
and there was another wave of pogroms in Dorohoi and other places,
illustrated that this so-called motive
of Jewish help to the Soviets
was, of course, a lie.
Jews, in fact, did not help the Soviet army in any way.
It is true,
it could be true that some Jews were glad
when in 1940, the Soviet Union took over from the anti-Semitic
Romanian regime, those territories.
But the major progroms, the deportations,
the mass killing of the Jews,
when the Romanian army advanced into the Soviet Union
in late June or early July 1941,
shows that in,
and then, of course,
the deportations to Transnistria
that in total, between 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian Jews
were killed,
especially, but not only on those territories in the northern part of Romania.
On the other parts of Romania,
on the southern part, atrocities were less.
And the fate of the Jews, for example, in Bucharest,
which had almost a hundred thousand population,
of a hundred thousand,
was different than in the northern parts.
So we can see that the territorial changes
had a major impact on the history of the Holocaust in Romania.
One of the major findings was made by an Israeli historian, Jean Ancel,
who emphasized and in fact discovered
that there were ready plans, operational plans,
plans by the Antonescu regime to hand over the remaining Jews of Romania,
and I mean remaining Jews after the atrocities in north Transnistria
of hunting them over to the Final Solution to the Nazis.
And according to one of his writings of the late Jean Ancel
in a two-volume major book on the history of the Holocaust,
published by Yad Vashem,
he writes that now we know that the plans were already ready.
They were not carried out by Antonescu's regime and Antonescu
because of the opportunistic feelings that the war will end
with Germany's defeat.
Furthermore,
he claimed in a very interesting passage that in fact, the Jews,
the fate of the Jews in Romania depended very much even on the personal mood
on a certain day by of Antonescu.
And in contrast, a more tranquil picture
of Jews living under grave conditions,
but not under the danger of extermination in Bucharest,
a community of almost a hundred thousand people
Ancel's thesis, which is accepted today,
that, in fact, there were already plans for the deportation of the Jews,
and the fate of the Jews depended very much,
whether in a certain day how the leader of Romania,
fascist Romania, the dictator, Ion Antonescu,
feels on that day,
or what are his,
what is his mood on that day.
So, in fact, all Jews,
all the Jews of Romania were in imminent danger.
And luckily,
this plan on the southern parts of Romania was not carried out.