Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

The Minister of the Interior, General Dumitru Popescu , calls to Dr. W.Filderman for an audience, who he had not met for more than a year sincehe was dismissed from the leadership of the community. The Generalliterally told him this: “Although you are not the legal leader of the Jews, Imust turn to you with my request. You must remember myannouncements which were repeated many times, that I do not agree withwhat is being done against the Jews. But my power is restricted to as far asthe Prut . Therefore, it is not in my power to do anything now. Thedeportation campaigns are in General Vasiliu’s hands, who—itseems—has made an agreement with the Germans. Please, tell the Jews notto hand in requests to me in which they ask me to exempt them fromdeportation or to give them time since I cannot help them in any wayThe audience lasted a long time, and was repeated the following day on theminister’s request. He showed a keen interest in the details of Jewish issuesand expressed his indignation at what was happening to the Jews. He didnot forget to disassociate himself from the persecution of Jews, which wereinitiated and carried out by the government, of which he was a member.He again asked Dr. Filderman to pass the aforementioned request to theJews.However, on exactly the same day the Minister of the Interior had saidthese things (September 22, 1942, on the day of Yom Kippur), while hewas getting rid of the responsibility of past and present, the organs led byhim did the following:1. The Central Police Station of the Capital sent 148 Jews toTransnistna (with their families), who were accused of having avoidedlabor service.2. Policemen and po lice of fi cers, on behalf of the Na tional Cen tre ofRomanianization , re moved the old peo ple from the Elisabet old peo ple’shome, which became the prop erty of the above-men tioned or ga ni za tion.3. The Gendarmes of Mostovoi ( Berezovca county) helped the SSrob and kill 600 Jews, who had been brought there from the Old Kingdomand Transylvania two weeks before under the order of the Ministry of theInterior.207