Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

(c) Stealing aid sent to de port ees: The au thor i ties—act ing on the or ders ofIon Antonescu —for a long time for bade the send ing of individual or col -lective aid, which could have eased the plight of deportees. In spite of thedan ger, on many oc ca sions peo ple at tempted to send food, cloth ing,money or other items in se cret. How ever, not even one hun dredth of thepar cels reached the ad dress ees; ei ther because of the ill-will of the “be nev o -lent” peo ple who un der took to trans port them and later stole them, or dueto es pe cially alert guards, who con fis cated all parcels dis cov ered. /.../4. Pay-offs and ProfiteeringThe ex tor tion of pay-offs and “gra tu ity” payments was a widely usedmeans of ac quir ing Jewish wealth. Peo ple, however loose their con tactwith of fices or or ga ni za tions deal ing with Jews or Jewish prop erty was,found themselves in a po si tion to make the best use of their sit u a tion forper sonal gain. Jews had to pay smaller or larger sums, amount ing as awhole to bil lions of lei, in or der to ob tain various ser vices. How ever, inmost cases they had to pay to pre vent, mit i gate or avoid suf fer ing. Moneywas taken from Jews by min is ters, se nior sec re tar ies, of fi cers of higher andlower ranks, court judges and mem bers of the ad min is tra tion, both se niorand ju nior. The amounts paid were ap pall ingly high. The sum asked forexemption from work for a cou ple of days could reach as high as 50,000 lei.Some times 200,000 lei was asked for permission to travel from one townto another; if some one wanted to move away because of their fear of bombat tacks, the amount of money required for per mis sion was oc ca sion ally setat one mil lion lei. For a book let, cer ti fy ing the hold ers’ exemption fromoblig a tory work, in most cases 500,000 lei was paid; the price for bringinghome fam i lies deported to Transnistria was some times as high as 5 mil lionlei.Later in Transnistria rubles were ex changed for Ger man marks(Reichskassenschein ); I mark for 60 rubles. In this way, if a Jewhad had 1 mil lion lei in sav ings on July 1, 1940, he re ceived25,000 rubles for it, and in July 1941 he was paid 25,000 lei for it,and for this amount he re ceived 600 rubles in Oc to ber 1941, andlater for the same amount he re ceived 10 RKKS marks, whichwas equal to the price of a loaf of bread.35