nr. 13/2002 - SSI Erasmus – ISHA Bucharest

ERASMUS № 13 / 2002
including those Germans from Romania fighting within SS-divisions. The 15th paragraph proved to be actually a trap for the German minority in particular, as it
stated the engagement of the Romanian government to dissolve all fascist-like
organizations, let them be political or military. 31
It was a legal basis for the turn of the German minority, after the 23rd of
August 1944, in a scapegoat. Hans Otto Roth used to say, that practically an
entire people was stigmatized by the few adepts of Adolf Hitler32 . The spring of
1945 brought new legal regulations, some of them openly incriminating the German
minority. I present the decree concerning the ethnic minorities, the agrarian reform
law, as well as different decrees, which may have implied the Germans.
In January 1945, decrees for the punishment of those guilty of the disaster
of the country were published. They did not make direct references to the German
minority, but to people, whom militated for the alliance with the Reich. Same
month, the program of the communist lead National Democratic Front asserted,
that a democratic policy targeting brotherhood between all the nationalities living
in Romania shall be promoted. It impeached the fascist and chauvinistic elements
to be in power after August 1944, as responsible for the loss of Northern
Transylvania33 . More or less, this was the true goal of the left wing political forces,
as it was obvious, that the Germans were culpable due to ethnic reasons.
The political organizations of the Germans were now weak and
compromised, unlike the Hungarian or the Jewish communities: the endeavors of
Hans Otto Roth or social democrat politicians failed34 .
In February 1945, a law of the ethnic minorities was issued; it was a real
democratic and advanced, at least for the Romanian case, including the grant of
the use of the national language in schools and administration. It was also forbidden
to act against any person of ethnic reasons, meaning, that ethnic origin was not
a condition for accusations motivated by one’s political affiliation35 . All these
reglementations remained was just on paper, as Germans were already deported
in the Soviet Union, and in March the law for the agrarian reform simply destroyed
the economical basis of the German people and constituted a clear act of
discrimination, motivated both by political and ethnical reasons, because of the
direct nomination of the properties belonging to German minoritarians36 .
The European wide migration of the German ethnics already began in 1939,
with the exchanges of populations between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet
union. It was a dramatic process all along the war37 , but it got new faces with the
period of the deportations and expulsions. On the 16th of December 1944, the
Soviet State Comitee for Defence issued, under the signature of Stalin, an order
which for a short time only a few Soviet leading men knew: it was the beginning of
the deportations in the Soviet Union, on purpose to work for the war effort. The
decision provided, that state departments in the areas occupied by the red army
must help the soviet officials to in this problem38 .
The conditions for women and men were all equal: same work, often in
snow, same food, same humiliations. Besides, pregnant women were occasionally
deported, or there are cases of children born in captivity, consequences of relations
with Russian civilians or soldiers, due to hunger39 .
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