Erhard Roy Wiehn
The Romanian Shoáh
Despite the prevalence of an aggressive form of fascism in Romania, the Romanian Shoáh would have taken a different course without the German allies. However, not much has been published in German literature about this until now.
A substantial number of Jews, approximately 800,000 (around 4% of the total population) were living in Romania before World War II. During the Shoáh, approximately 385,000 of them (around 48%) were killed or murdered directly or indirectly in just three years. An event which was particularly cruel, referred to as “Black Sunday”, took place in Iasi (pronounced “Yash”, in northeast Romania) on the 29th of June 1941. Many Jews were shot by Romanian soldiers, and approximately 2,650 people died of suffocation or thirst in railway freight cars. Altogether, approximately 10,000 inhabitants of the town were murdered. Cruel deportations to Transnistria and within Transnistria took place. Transnistria, nowadays south- western Ukraine, was a region between the Bug river, the Dniestr river and the Black Sea where a total of approximately 200,000 people lost their lives.
In October 1941, the notorious Vapniarka Camp was erected on the outskirts of Vapniarka, nowadays a Ukrainian town in the Vinnitsa district, which was then Romanian Transnistria. The first 1000 Jewish inmates came from Odessa, and included Jews who had previously escaped from Bessarabia. On the 16th of September 1941, 1,046 Romanian Jews were taken to the camp. Approximately half of them had been exiled from their homeland because they were suspected communists. Instead of the Transnistrian-Romanian police, the Bucharest interior ministry was now responsible for them. Approximately 200 social democrats, 130 communists and 107 women were among the internees, whose final total number came to 1,179 people. The internees founded a camp committee, which would play a decisive role in their survival.
This particular concentration camp earned its sad reputation because of a type of forage pea (Lathyrus sativus) which is normally fed to horses: “Within a few weeks, the first symptoms of spastic paraparesis occurred, a disease which attacks the bone marrow, paralyses the muscles of the lower limbs and eventually impairs the kidney function. Hundreds of Vapniarka internees were suffering from the disease by January 1943. The prisoners started a hunger strike and demanded medical aid. … It took until the end of January 1943 for the feeding of this disease-causing animal fodder [to inmates] to be stopped …”. Many remained paralysed for the rest of their lives.
As it turned out later, 427 people had been interned without any reason. The camp was closed in October 1943, and 54 communists were subsequently taken to Rybnitza jail, where most of them were murdered. Matei Gall has published a moving autobiographical account of this in our Shoáh & Judaica Edition (Constance, 1999), entitled ‘Darkness’.
In the following account, Geza Kornis describes his suffering from the time of his arrest and torture until he arrived at the Vapniarka Concentration Camp. He also describes life in the camp, the tragedy of paralysis, the hunger strike, his subsequent life in the Olgopol Ghetto, some exemplary human beings and his liberation from a Romanian labour camp, thereby confirming and supplementing Matei Gall’s account and other witness accounts. The following is an extract from his comprehensive autobiographical record, written between 2002 and 2003.
The Romanian Shoáh
Despite the prevalence of an aggressive form of fascism in Romania, the Romanian Shoáh would have taken a different course without the German allies. However, not much has been published in German literature about this until now.
A substantial number of Jews, approximately 800,000 (around 4% of the total population) were living in Romania before World War II. During the Shoáh, approximately 385,000 of them (around 48%) were killed or murdered directly or indirectly in just three years. An event which was particularly cruel, referred to as “Black Sunday”, took place in Iasi (pronounced “Yash”, in northeast Romania) on the 29th of June 1941. Many Jews were shot by Romanian soldiers, and approximately 2,650 people died of suffocation or thirst in railway freight cars. Altogether, approximately 10,000 inhabitants of the town were murdered. Cruel deportations to Transnistria and within Transnistria took place. Transnistria, nowadays south- western Ukraine, was a region between the Bug river, the Dniestr river and the Black Sea where a total of approximately 200,000 people lost their lives.
In October 1941, the notorious Vapniarka Camp was erected on the outskirts of Vapniarka, nowadays a Ukrainian town in the Vinnitsa district, which was then Romanian Transnistria. The first 1000 Jewish inmates came from Odessa, and included Jews who had previously escaped from Bessarabia. On the 16th of September 1941, 1,046 Romanian Jews were taken to the camp. Approximately half of them had been exiled from their homeland because they were suspected communists. Instead of the Transnistrian-Romanian police, the Bucharest interior ministry was now responsible for them. Approximately 200 social democrats, 130 communists and 107 women were among the internees, whose final total number came to 1,179 people. The internees founded a camp committee, which would play a decisive role in their survival.
This particular concentration camp earned its sad reputation because of a type of forage pea (Lathyrus sativus) which is normally fed to horses: “Within a few weeks, the first symptoms of spastic paraparesis occurred, a disease which attacks the bone marrow, paralyses the muscles of the lower limbs and eventually impairs the kidney function. Hundreds of Vapniarka internees were suffering from the disease by January 1943. The prisoners started a hunger strike and demanded medical aid. … It took until the end of January 1943 for the feeding of this disease-causing animal fodder [to inmates] to be stopped …”. Many remained paralysed for the rest of their lives.
As it turned out later, 427 people had been interned without any reason. The camp was closed in October 1943, and 54 communists were subsequently taken to Rybnitza jail, where most of them were murdered. Matei Gall has published a moving autobiographical account of this in our Shoáh & Judaica Edition (Constance, 1999), entitled ‘Darkness’.
In the following account, Geza Kornis describes his suffering from the time of his arrest and torture until he arrived at the Vapniarka Concentration Camp. He also describes life in the camp, the tragedy of paralysis, the hunger strike, his subsequent life in the Olgopol Ghetto, some exemplary human beings and his liberation from a Romanian labour camp, thereby confirming and supplementing Matei Gall’s account and other witness accounts. The following is an extract from his comprehensive autobiographical record, written between 2002 and 2003.
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