Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

The rel a tively fa vor able sit u a tion at the front—the Ger man-Hun gar ianforces were stand ing in front of Voroniezh , the Ger man-Ro ma nian troopswere ap proach ing Sta lin grad as well as Krasnodar and Majkop —in ducedthe Ge stapo to start its ac tions planned a long time ago, whose aim was thecom plete ex ter mi na tion of Ro ma nian Jews. These ac tions had al readybeen started earlier in ter ri to ries oc cu pied by the Ger mans.In the official jour nal of the Ger man Em bassy of Bucharest, the BukaresterTageblatt , an ar ti cle ap pears with the ti tle “ Rumanien wird judenrein ”(Ro ma nia will be cleared of Jews), which gives a full ac count of the plan tode port the entire Ro ma nian Jew ish population. The action will be startedin the au tumn, and must be ac com plished by the fol low ing au tumn.A sim i lar article—which seems to have been writ ten by the same per -son—ap pears in the same day in the Donauzeitung , the of fi cial news pa perof the Ge stapo in the Balkans, pub lished in Belgrade. Two days later theVolkisher Beobachter pub lishes the news, too. It is of sig nif i cance that theRomanian press re mains silent on the issue. /..../Some days later (Au gust 13) Radu Lecca , Com mis sioner of Jew ish Issues,is called to Berlin to par tic i pate in the con fer ence of the SD(Sicherheitsdienst ) with Gustaw Rich ter, Head of the Jew ish De part mentof the Ro ma nian Ge stapo.The content and decisions of the meeting are unknown but can bededucted, since a month later (on September 26-28) German Railwaysheld another meeting in Berlin.In the ab sence of the del e ga tion of Ro ma nian Rail ways (al though in vited,they ex cused them selves by re quest ing the post pone ment of the meet ing) adecision was made to col lect the entire Ro ma nian Jew ish pop u la tion inAdjud county, from where ev ery sec ond day a trans por ta tion of 2,000 peo -ple was to be started to the death-camp of Belzen in Po land.August 15, 1942For some weeks, the Jewish population feel even more threatened thanusual. The news of further groups of Jewish deportees from Chernovitz ,204