Transfer of Jews from Transnistria to Turkey

 

USHMM: "Through Executive Order 9417 on January 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board (WRB), tasked with the 'immediate rescue and relief of the Jews of Europe and other victims of enemy persecution.' An independent government agency under the Executive branch, the WRB operated until President Harry S. Truman closed it with Executive Order 9614 on September 15, 1945. After World War II, the WRB's first director, John Pehle, described the board as 'little and late' in comparison to the enormity of the Holocaust. In the War Refugee Board’s final report, the staff estimated that they saved tens of thousands of lives, and aided hundreds of thousands more."

This archival treasure brings into the light of day the correspondence between the

• International Commitee of the Red Cross, Geneva/Switzerland
• War Refugee Board, Washington/USA
• American Embassy, Ankara/Turkey
• Secretary of State, Washington/USA
• Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, Executive Council of the Joint Distribution Committee, Lisbon/Portugal
• World Jewish Congress, New York/USA

including these two most comprehensive reports:

Travel Report by Charles Kolb, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representative stationed in Romania, on his journey to Transnistria between December 11-21, 1943.

Report of the Situation of the Jews in Transnistria, January - April 1943, by the World Jewish Congress.

Courtesy: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

AGORA • Colecție Internațională de Artă și Literatură • International Collection of Art and Literature

 

Pierre Joris, author of "Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan": "Celan had met the Surrealist poet Ion Caraion back in 1946; a year later Caraion would print Celan’s first published poems in German in the Bucharest Magazine Agora."

Bianca Rosenthal, author of "Pathways to Paul Celan: A History of Critical Responses as a Chorus of Discordant Voices": "In 1981, I participated in the Celan-Kolloquium in Bucharest which was organized by Dr. Uwe Martin the director of the Kulturinstitut der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and the Writers' Union of the Socialist Republic of Romania. My presentation was entitled: 'Quellen zum frühen Paul Celan: Der Alfred Margul-Sperber-Nachlass in Bukarest'. The meeting was a fascinating experience because it reunited a large number of people who had played an important role during Celan's Bucharest years, among them Petre Solomon who was instrumental re the Romanian publication of 'Todesfuge' (tango) as well as Ion Caraion, the editor of 'Agora'. "

Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry During the Holocaust

 

 

Volume V: This volume is entirely consecrated to the fate of the Jews of Besarabia and Bukovina - the extermination by Einsatzgruppe D on one hand and on the other, by the army, police, and other Romanian government elements. For the first time, the secret Romanian orders concerning the exterminations, arrests and creation of ghettos and transit camps and deportation of the survivors to Transnistria - Southern Ukraine, between the Bug and Dniester rivers, chosen by the Romanians as the land of exile - are brought to light. The life of the Jews in Transnistria; the death of tens of thousands of them from hunger, cold, and diseases; the thousands of orphaned children resulting from this situation, as well as the 'miracle' in the land of exile: the self-help organization of the deportees who, with the help of their brethren still in Romania proper succeeded in overcoming, are discussed in these documents. Out of almost 160,000 Jews deported there, almost 50,000 remained alive. In this volume, numerous documents attest to the efforts to effect the return of the deportees - a partially successful struggle, unique in Nazi Europe [Jean Ancel].

Volume XI: This volume is to serve mainly those researchers who do not know Romanian, German and French. Summaries of all the documents are given here in English, some of them extensive and detailed, as well as archival designations. The volume includes a preface by Serge Klarsfeld and a detailed introduction by the editor.

Courtesy: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation

Journey Through Darkness • Durch die Hölle • Itinéraire dans les ténèbres

Wollheim Memorial: Willy Berler was born in Czernowitz in the Bukovina region on April 11, 1918. His father was a merchant, and the family, which also included Willy’s older brother, led an upper-middle-class life. Willy, a member of Zionist youth organizations, made a trip to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1936. Starting in 1937, he attended an agricultural school there, but returned a year later, at his parents’ urging, to study chemistry in Liège, Belgium.

His parents survived the war in Romania, as they managed to bribe Romanian officials and live in hiding. When the German Wehrmacht invaded Belgium in 1940, Willy Berler and two Jewish friends fled to France and went to a refugee camp near Marseille. Lack of money led him to return in October 1940 to Liège, where he earned his living by teaching German to adults. He was arrested by the Gestapo on April 1, 1943, after one of his pupils denounced him, and put in a transit prison [SS Camp Fort Breendonk].

Mecheln-Auschwitz 1942-1944 - The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies from Belgium: Only a few miles away fom the SS Camp Fort Breendonk, the Dossin Barracks were used from 1942 until 1944 as a transit camp for Jews and gypsies from Belgium and the North of France, assembled here to set out on their journey of no return to Auschwitz. Leon Messing, was 15 years old and the youngest deportee from Bukovina on the date of departure of Transport 10 on 15 December 1942. The oldest deportee from Bukovina was Abraham Moses Reder was 76 years old on the date of deportation on Transport 11 of 26 September 1942. Just like my [Edgar Hauster's] uncle Maximilian Hauster, born on 26 November 1909 in Czernowitz, deported with  Transport 19 of 14 January 1943, neither would return in 1945. Only two women and two men out of 104 deportees (INDEX OF NAMES), who had their roots in Bukovina, survived after 8 May 1945: Sara Adler and Theresia Breitner from Czernowitz, Wilhelm Berler from Nepolokoutz and Juda Meier Fleischer from Siret. 96,2% of the people originated from Bukovina deported on in total 28 Transports were wiped out.

There he became friendly with Michel Zechel, a Jewish doctor. They were deported to Auschwitz on April 19. Willy Berler was sent to the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp and placed there in the “lumberyard detachment,” carrying heavy logs with his bare hands. After a week, totally exhausted, he entered the infirmary. After his release, his block elder took pity on him and arranged for his transfer to the Auschwitz I main camp in early July 1943. There he was sent to the prisoner infirmary and, with the help of Michel Zechel, was placed in the block for the very weak who needed to convalesce.

In late January 1944, as a former chemistry student, he was assigned to the SS Hygiene Institute at Rajsko, where he had to work in a plant cultivation lab. During the night of January 18, 1945, along with the other prisoners at Auschwitz, he was forced to go on the death march. Passing through the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, he reached the Buchenwald concentration camp on February 6. There he was freed by the U.S. Army on his birthday, April 11, 1945.

Willy Berler returned to Belgium. In 1946, he and his brother, who had fought in the Red Army, brought their parents from Romania to join them. He worked in industry and married his wife, Ruth, in 1947. In collaboration with the historian Ruth Fivaz-Silvermann, Willy Berler wrote the book Durch die Hölle. Monowitz, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald (published in English as Journey Through Darkness: Monowitz, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald in 2004), most of which is the story of his survival. The rest of the book consists of short, separate texts contributed by Fivaz-Silvermann, providing background information that supplements Berler’s account with annotations and source references.

ÉMANCIPATION - Êtes-vous (aussi) de Czernowitz? • EMANCIPATION - Are you (also) from Czernowitz?

 

 

For his lifetime achievements Charles Rosner (1941 - 2013) was awarded by the French Republic with the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration in France. At the award-giving ceremony in Monaco in 2001 Charles Rosner was not yet aware, that he would later write his memoirs. But his award-receiving speach anticipated this exercise. After the usual courtesy formulas, he came to say the following:

"This hour is my hour... and I dedicate it to Memory. Memory of the Past, to start with my parents. It is of good taste to mention one’s parents on similar occasions. As for me, it is neither tradition nor good taste, which drive me: it is the emotion. An emotion that grips the chest of the only son I was, with what I know of the history of my family, and with the memory of the sacrifices that my parents so naturally carried out, without even thinking of it, so that I could live a different life than the one they had known... My parents, who would have been so proud to be there today, on such an occasion. To my father and mother I say: this medal and this acknowledgement are yours!

Memory of the Past, also, with my 'friends for fifty years': you, whom I met in sixth grade at the Lyceum and who became my brothers and my family in France for so many years. Memory of the Past, as well, with all those I admired and who taught me so much. You were the spiritual parents of a part of myself, for some during my childhood, for others when already an adult, in both my private and professional lives. Today, I want to thank you, even if you cannot hear me.And Memory of the Present, to start with my wife Marie-France. When we met, I had already struck out any positive development for my private life. It’s thanks to you, and even more so, that we have been able to build a family and a home of which we can be proud. And it’s together that we struggled and made the most of it; it’s together that we traveled; it’s together that we conquered new horizons each time. And it’s together that we confronted the happiness and misfortunes of life. To you, my partner, I say: This medal is yours! And you gave me a new family, to start with 'Belle-Maman': as I often say, I wish to every man to understand as well with his mother-in-law as I enjoy understanding with mine! This new and enlarged family that 'Beau-Papa' envelops into a Provencal sunshine, and of which the new generation symbolizes so well the children of the 'Good Book'! To you, Marie-France, I again say: this medal is yours! Memory of the Present also, with all my friends and colleagues at work. In a few months, it will be thirty years that we reciprocally accept and appreciate each other. Sometimes, this was a difficult exercise for me, but always an exciting one, an exercise having its tense and satisfactory moments, as well as its times of common efforts. Together, we represent our Great Firm in the world. And, if I sometimes have a feeling that I gave a lot, I know that the reverse is also true. […]

To all of you, friends and colleagues from the past and the present, I say: Thank you! And finally, Memory for the Future, for my children. May this ceremony, and the recognition it represents for me, the son of immigrants and an immigrant myself, remain in your memory. To you, my three children, I say: always give the best of yourself, live consciously, and this medal will be yours!"

Courtesy: David Rosner 

Beschreibung der Bukowina • Déscription de la Bukovina • Description of Bukovina

 

"Description of Bukovina following its previous and existing consistency together with the non-binding proposal on how its state constitution up to now may be improved both politically and economically" from the year 1775 was the first account available on the situation the Austrians encountered after their incorporation into the Empire of the area they called Bukovina.

From H. F. van Drunen's thesis "A Sanguine Bunch" we learn as follows: "The author [Baron Gabriel Splény of Miháldy], a high-ranking military official of Magyar noble descent, born in Kassa153 (now Košice, Slovakia) in 1734, was assigned to Bukovina from 1 September 1774 until 6 September 1778. Previously, he had earned an outstanding reputation in the Austrian army, was promoted major in 1759 and major general in 1773. In that same year, Splény accompanied Emperor Joseph II on a trip to Galicia and his knowledge impressed the Emperor to such extent that he was assigned to supervise the occupation and administrative organisation of northern Moldavia, the later Bukovina. [...] The structure of Splény’s report is traditional: the first part is dedicated to the description of the geographical, economical and social circumstances. In this context this is the most relevant part, especially the third chapter which deals with the population. [...] Although they indicated a predominantly Romanian character of the area (Romanians 11,000 families, Ruthenians 1,261, Jews 526, Gypsies 294 and Armenians 58), other sources claim that the majority was indeed Romanian speaking, but that the census simply qualified every Orthodox as Romanian. The debatable results of Splény’s census in comparison to those of Splény’s successor Enzenberg’s efforts are at times attributed to Splény’s alleged lack of knowledge of the region and its inhabitants. More likely, the puzzling results of Splény’s census are the product of a lack of criteria, definitions and terminology. [...] The merit of Splény’s writing in the light of this study lies in the fact that it is the first written account on the state of affairs at the very beginning of Austrian rule over the territory.

Courtesy:  Internet Archive • Bielefeld University