Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

last chance. That night only 3 car riages were un loaded, and about 200 peo -ple trans ferred from them. They were continually beaten and tor tured byGer man and Ro ma nian sol diers and policemen (es pe cially by Ion Botez , apolice officer, who surpassed oth ers in this activity). The prisoners weretaken to the syn a gogue, where they begged for wa ter in vain. Those whotried to give them water—the Leader of the Jewish Religious Com mu nityin cluded—were beaten ter ri bly in the presence of the Dep uty Mayor,Dumitni Atudorei, who was busy loot ing at the time. That morn ing theywere taken back to the station, and packed into carriages yet again. Thosefew who at tempted to find wa ter to drink were shot dead.Mean while, the county head, Col o nel Captaru , and the Min is try of the In -te rior—in the form of Gen eral Ion Popescu , its State Sec re tary—bowed tothe demands of Cap tain Marinescu Danubiu , and halted the unloading ofthe car riages, and di rected the train to wards Calarasi-Ialomita .The Office of the Gendarmerie in Iasi sent out 30 Gen darmes to TarguFrumos un der the command of Sub-Lieu ten ant Aurel Triandaf andnon-com mis sioned of fi cer Anastase Bratu to act as guards for the newmarch ing sec tion. On Tues day, July 1 at approx. 07.00 hrs they re lievedSub-Lieu ten ant Dan Chitescu , who, with 100 sol diers from the railwaybat tal ion, had guarded the Jews, preventing the able-bodied from es cap -ing, and the dy ing from get ting a drop of wa ter. On a few oc ca sions, how -ever, their alert ness was over come: the evacuees man aged to get a fewbuck ets of wa ter from the en gine car riage; they had to pay 10,000 lei foreach bucket.Only in the morn ing were the dead bodies re moved from the carriages byGypsies tempted by the chance of loot ing them. This activity con tin ued al -most all day on Tues day, July 1. Oc ca sionally, however, they stopped for awhile when ever an order came through on the tele phone from ColonelMavrichi , the rep re sen ta tive of General Head quar ters. He had just or deredthe im me di ate de par ture of the train, when a miracle, which saved the livesof sev eral peo ple, oc curred. A train was derailed at the Cuza Voda sta tion,ren der ing the track unuseable for sev eral hours. Mean while, almost all ofthe dead bodies could be taken out of the car riages. If not for this accident,the train would have departed with a large num ber of dead bodies, and thiswould undoubtedly have re sulted in a higher num ber of deaths, and the in -creased suffering of the sur vi vors.105