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Transnistria, during World War II, was an occupied region of USSR that included present-day Transnistria and some territories further east (region of Odessa), briefly under control of Romania during the maximum eastward expansion of the Axis Powers 1941-1944.
In World War II, when Romania, aided by Nazi Germany, for the first time in history took control of Transnistria, there was never any attempt to formally annex the occupied territory beyond the Dniester (Romanian: Nistru) River: it was generally considered merely a temporary buffer zone between Greater Romania and the Soviet front line. Transnistria had never been considered part of Bessarabia. Two preeminent political figures of the day, Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Brătianu declared that "the Romanian people will never consent to the continuation of the struggle beyond our national borders."
Even at the height of Romanian nationalism, the Dniester/Nistru was considered the eastern boundary of the Romanian lands. The national poet Mihai Eminescu, in his famous poem Doina, spoke of a Romania stretching only "from the Nistru to the Tisa" and not farther east.
Romanian occupation of Transnistria 1941-1944
Romanian occupiers of Transnistria were worse than Nazi Germany in their treatment of Jews. Many Jews were deported in Transnistria from Bessarabia and Bukovina. In the total time period, 200,000 Roma people and Jews were victims of Romanian occupation of Transnistria 1941-1944 .
Not being Romanian territory, Transnistria was used as a killing field for the extermination of Jews. In comparison with the holocaust of Nazi Germany, survivors say that the Romanian treatment in Transnistria was much worse. Unlike the carefully planned deportations in Germany, the Romanian government did not prepare to house thousands of people in Transnistria, where the deportees stayed. The Romanians instead placed people in crude barracks without running water, electricity or latrines. Those who could not walk were simply left to die.
Food in Transnistria was very scarce, through lack of Romanian planning. According to one survivor's account, people would gather outside a slaughterhouse and wait for scraps of meat, skin and bones to be thrown out of the slaughterhouse after the cleaning each morning. He remembers that they were fighting for the bones "just like dogs would" and that people were starving to death.
In two months alone, October - November 1941, Romanian troops in Odessa killed about 30,000 Jews.
Overall, 200,000 victims died. Most of those who were sent to Transnistria never returned. Only one-third of the initial deportees survived. Those who survived, and returned to Romania in 1945, discovered that they had lost their houses.
References
- Rumania in World War II, 1939-1945, World History at KMLA. Accessed 8 Jan 2006.