Holocaust in Romania - Corvinus Library - Hungarian History

immediately, the seriously in jured Wolf Herscu falls un con scious, butSchachter , who was not hit, man ages to es cape and hide in the corn field.June 27, 1941A few kilo metres from the above scene, in Sculeni , there is a terrible mas sa -cre; it is the prelude to the tragedy planned for Iasi. The con quer ors foundthem selves fac ing the heroic re sis tance of the Red Army. Slyly and us ing anelement of sur prise, they man aged to build a small, abutment 5 kilo metresdeep, on the eastern side of the Prut . Two bat tal ions of the Ger man 305thReg i ment com manded by Col o nel Buck were encamped there, as was an -other bat tal ion (com manded by Ma jor Garaiac ) of the 6th Mountain RifleReg i ment (un der the command of Col o nel Ermil Maties ). The of fi cers ofthis cursed bat tal ion (which speck led the road from Sculeni to Odessa withdead bod ies) turned to German Headquarters and re quested to be di rectedto this district so as to be able to take revenge on the Jews who had sup pos -edly humiliated them when they withdrew in 1940.Hardly had the three battalions set tled down in So viet ter ri tory, than an at -tack by Soviet infantrymen, supported by tanks, drove back the two Ger -man bat tal ions. Only the Ro ma nian bat tal ion held its po si tion, and withinits ranks the commander squadron of the 6th Rifle Regiment headed bytwo of fi cers in con tact with Ger man Cen tral Command, Captain Ion Stihiand Sub-Lieu ten ant Eugen Mihailescu . These two cir cu late false in for ma -tion that the Ro ma nian fail ure as well as the German withdrawal occurredbe cause they had been at tacked by the Jews of Sculeni . The Commander ofthe Military Sec tor, the Ger man Colonel Buck, de ploys new Ger man bat -tal ions, and re-occupies previously controlled trenches. He then or ders theevac u a tion of the civil pop u la tion from Targu Sculeni.Chris tian cit i zens were di rected to the villages of Carlig and Copou , thepoor Jews, however, who had been driven to Stanca Rosnoveanu , foundthem selves under the con trol of the two beasts—Cap tain Stihi andSub-Lieu ten ant Mihailescu . Both of them were na tives of the area (the the -ology stu dent Mihailescu was the son of the town-clerk of Sculeni ), bothwere mem bers of the Iron Guard, and both were greedy and brim mingwith ha tred. They forced 40 men to dig four holes long and wide, and be -fore killing ev ery Jew in Sculeni with their own hands, they threw all the93