Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

to save their lives by es cap ing is very small. In Chernovitz there were hun -dreds, in the area of Kishinev thou sands, and about the same num ber inSouth ern Bessarabia, in the vicinity of Cetatea Alba. The case could nothave been oth er wise if we consider the speed of the Ger man-Ro ma nian at -tack. The of fen sive started near the river Prut on July 3, fol low ing the oc -cu pa tion of the town of Strojineti . Chernovitz , Vijnita , Herta , Noua Sulitaand Edineti were oc cu pied on July 5, Hotin on July 6, Balti on July 9, andKishinev on July 17. A few days later the whole west ern bank of theDniester was un der their con trol.The flood of those es cap ing was caught up in Ger man-Ro ma nian mo tor -ized troops. There are many doc u ments which ver ify this fact. Among oth -ers report No. 1108 of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Poitevin , the mil i taryjudge of the III Ro ma nian army, dated August 10, 1941 con tains the fol -low ing:“I re port that on Au gust 9 of this year near Rascov , a group of about 2,000Jews mov ing in the direction of the Ukraine arrived at the abutment of theVadu Rascu bridge. These peo ple were es cap ing together with the Sovietarmy. The Jews were collected from the district by the Ro ma nian army,and were di rected to wards mil i tary court of fices and their homes. Themarch ing col umn, whose mem bers were in a state of complete mis ery, wasstopped on the east ern bank of the Dniester .and Golta coun ties, and the rest to other coun ties.The fig ures re fer ring to the num ber of de ported Jews do notseem ex act. They are even con tra dicted by cer tain doc u mentspre pared dur ing their de por ta tion. The sum ma rized re port pre -pared by the Cen tral Of fice of the Gen dar merie be tween De cem -ber 15, 1941 and Jan u ary 15, 1942, un der the ti tle “The Jew ishis sue,” con tains the fol low ing ex tract:“So far 118,847 Jews have been taken across the Dniester tobring them, via Iampolon (35,276), Moghilev (55,913), Tiraspol(872), Rabnita (2,457) and Iasca (2,216), to the river Bug.”It must be em pha sized that this “in for ma tion” was gath ered inJan u ary 1942, be fore the de por ta tions of the same year, in whichmore than 12,000 peo ple were dragged away.19