Bukovina Jews

The Jews in Bukovina have been an integral part of their community. Under Austria-Hungary, there was tolerance of Jews and inter-ethnic cooperation.

Life under Austria and Romania

Bukovina was conquered by the Austrian Archduchy in 1774. It developed into one of the most diverse provinces in the Archduchy and later in the Austrian Empire; it was also the province with one of the highest Jewish populations.

The first Austrian census reported a population of 526 Jewish families. As immigration from Galicia, Moldova, and Ukraine grew, the Austrian authorities began to deport the newcomers. Some laws against Jews were revoked in the 1810s. There was a gradual elimination of discrimination of Jews after the 1848 revolution, leading up to all laws against them being removed in 1867. Many of the Jews in Bukovina, along with Germans, immigrated to North America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Despite this, Austria's census reported over 12% Jewish population in Bukovina. When Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918, Romania took control of Bukovina. In the early 1920s, state posts began to require native Romanian language skills. This law served to legitimize further anti-Semitic legislation. In the late 1930s under Romania, their citizenship was revoked in order with Germany's anti-Semitic policies. Like Germany's Jews, they were additionally sent to forced-labor camps.

Soviet occupation and Axis period

The Soviet Union occupied the northern part of Bukovina on 3 July 1940. Some communist and pro-Soviet Jews attacked ethnic Romanians and the retreating Romanian soldiers. As Romanian troops retreated from the area, they carried out a pogrom against the local Jews in Dorohoi. The Romanian authorities saw the pogrom as a revenge for the crimes committed by the communists in the territories annexed by the Soviets. Many were deported to Siberia from that region following the takeover, including a disproportionate amount of Jews. The number of Bukovinian Jews who were deported to Soviet Asia in June 1941 was 5,000, together with 10,000 from Bessarabia; about half of them died in there. At least 4,000 of the Bukovinian Jews deported to Siberia were from Chernivtsi. A year later, the Axis invaded the Soviet Union and Northern Bukovina was reoccupied in June–July 1941. At least 5,000 to 10,000 Bukovinian Jews, as well as 45,000-50,000 Bessarabian Jews, at least 50,000-60,000 Jews from the ex-Romanian areas overall, escaped into the Soviet interior from the Axis invasion. This reoccupation had a disastrous effect on the Jewish population, as the invading Nazi and Romanian soldiers immediately began to massacre Jews. Thousands of Bukovinian Jews (perhaps as many as 15,000) were killed by Romanian and German soldiers, by Einsatzgruppe D (a German SS mobile killing unit specialized in killing Jews and Communists in the territories of the former Soviet Union), as well as ethnic Ukrainian (a majority of the population) and Romanian northern Bukovinian civilians, before the deportations to Transnistria. The survivors were forced into ghettos, awaiting their transfer to work camps in Transnistria. About 57,000 Jews from Bukovina in its historical boundaries had arrived there by November 1941. The number of Jewish deportees to Transnistria sent there who reached the latter province included 110,033 people, including 55,867 from Bessarabia, 43,798 from Bukovina, 10,368 from Dorohoi; out of these, 50,741 still survived by September 1, 1943. A further 4,000 Chernivtsi Jews were deported to Transnistria in June 1942. About 17,000 of the Jews were allowed to stay in Chernivtsi after that. According to the Romanian gendarmerie, on September 1, 1943, 50,741 Jewish deportees survived in Transnistria, including 36,761 from Bukovina, including Dorohoi County, and 13,980 from Bessarabia. According to the statistics from the office of the Romanian prime minister of November 15, 1943, by province of origin from Romania and of county of residence in Transnistria, in the latter area there were 49,927 Jewish deportees who had survived, including 31,141 from Bukovina (without Dorohoi County), 11,683 from Bessarabia, 6,425 from Dorohoi County, and 678 from the rest of Romania. In October 1943, the administrative regulation forcing Jews to wear the Star of David was revoked, and Jews were allowed to move freely around the capital city of Bukovina. By the time Bukovina was retaken by Soviet forces in February 1944, some sources are suggesting that less than half of the entire Jewish population in the region had survived. According to the Shoah Resource Center of Yad Vashem, about half of the Jews of Bukovina died. Most of the survivors went to Romania after the war, where the more liberal policies allowed emigration to Israel.

There were significant differences in the survival rates in Transnistria depending on the place of origin in Bukovina. About 60% of the deportees to Transnistria from the city of Chernivtsi died there. In southern Bukovina, the area that was not annexed by the Soviet Union (but excluding Dorohoi County), there were 18,140 Jews according to the April 6, 1941 general population census; on May 20, 1942, on the day of the census of the Jews, after the deportations to Transnistria, there were 179 Jews. According to a Romanian government report of November 20, 1943, more than 12,000 of them had survived; in addition to those, there were some southern Bukovinian orphans, who were treated as a part of a different category. Thus, more than two-thirds of the southern Bukovinian Jewish deportees seem to have survived. In 1941-1944, Dorohoi County, historically a part of the Old Kingdom of Romania, was officially/administratively a part of Bukovina. Almost all the Jews who lived in the town of Hertsa (1,204) and in the rest of the Hertsa area (14), which were under Soviet rule in 1940-1941 and in 1944-1991, on September 1, 1941, were deported to Transnistria by the Romanian authorities, where most of them died; only 450 were alive in December 1943, when the repatriation of the Jews to Dorohoi County by the Romanian authorities started, while about 800 Jews died. The Romanian army and authorities killed 100 Jews on July 5, 1941, before the deportation to Transnistria. For the entire Dorohoi County ("Judet"), a large majority of which remained in Romania, 6,425 Jews survived the deportations to Transnistria, while 5,131 died between September 6, 1940, and August 23, 1944, during the Antonescu dictatorship, overwhelmingly due to the deportations of 1941 and 1942. There is a list of about 3,000 Jews deported from Dorohoi. At the end of 1943, 6,053 Jews deported trom Dorohoi County were returned by the Romanian authorities to the county.Jean Ancel, "Dorohoi", in Israel Gutman (editor in Chief), ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), vol. 1, p. 401.

An organization of Jews from Bukovina, known as ''Landsmannschaft'', was founded in Tel Aviv in 1944 by Manfred Reifer. Bukovinian Jews living in the United States helped to create the Museum of Bukovinian Jewry in 2008.

Traian Popovici and the Jews of Cernăuți

In 1941, the new governor announced his decision that all the Jews of Cernăuți must be deported to Transnistria. After talks with the governor, the latter agreed that Traian Popovici, the new mayor of Cernăuți under Romanian administration, would be allowed to nominate 200 Jews which were to be exempted. Unsatisfied with the modest concession, Popovici tried reaching Antonescu himself, this time arguing that Jews were of capital importance to Cernăuți's economy and requested a postponement until replacements could be found. As a result, he was allowed to expand the list, which covered 20,000 Jews in its final version.

Traian Popovici is honored by Israel's Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, an honour given to non-Jews who behaved with heroism in trying to save Jews from the genocide of the Holocaust.

See also

*Galician Jews
* Emigration of Jews from Romania
*History of the Jews in Bessarabia
* Diana Dumitru, Moldovan researcher of the Holocaust in Bukovina

References

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Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina
History of Bukovina
History of Chernivtsi Oblast