[Cz-L] Rescue Operation of Czernowitz Jews - A Joint Venture

Czernowitzers...

The article, which I'm going to release today, has the potential to modify our common conception of history, concerning the deportations of Czernowitz Jews to Transnistria in October, 1941, and the subsequent rescue operation, usually affiliated with the then Mayor of Czernowitz, Traian Popovici.

As a matter of fact, several renowned historians of the Romanian Holocaust,  such as PD Dr. habil. Mariana Hausleitner, Prof. Dr. Armin Heinen, and Dr. Vladimir Solonari, have suggested that the traditional view of Traian Popovici's scope of influence on the Romanian Government under Ion Antonescu needs a reevaluation and that the success of the rescue operation for up to 20,000 Jews from Czernowitz was multi-layered. But it is thanks to Dr. Hartwig Cremers, the former and long-time chancellor of the Saarland University, that we now have a new perception of the events in Czernowitz in the fall of 1941. Dr. Hartwig Cremers has released an article, headlined:

Consul General Dr. Dr. Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn
A Contribution to the History of the Jews from Czernowitz 1940-1943

edited by the prestigious "Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik" (HJS), Volume 23, number 1-2, autumn 2011.  Dr. Cremers granted the license for the online publication to me. The article is now online for our German readers (and available as a pdf-file) at:

http://hauster.blogspot.com/2011/12/dr-dr-fritz-gebhard-schellhorn.html
http://czernowitz.blogspot.com/2011/12/dr-dr-fritz-gebhard-schellhorn.html
http://ehpes.com/blog1/2011/12/22/dr-dr-fritz-gebhard-schellhorn/

An English version is in preparation, to be released February/March 2012. I would like to make it clear, that the various authors of the HJS, including Dr. Hartwig Cremers, are declining any nationalism, revisionism and political extremism of all shades.

For ten years, between 1934 - 1940 and 1941 - 1944, Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn acted as a German Consul, later Consul General in Czernowitz, and it was Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn, who - according to Dr. Hartwig Cremer's research - turned the balance in favor of the Czernowitz Jews, most probably as a quid pro quo for his contribution in the rescue of about 14,000 Romanians during the occupation of Northern Bukovina by the Soviets in the year 1940. In addition, there are references to suggest that Schellhorn also impeded the killings attributed to the Einsatzkommando 10b of Einsatzgruppe D in Czernowitz, and that he opposed the deportation of Jews to Transnistria in June 1942. On September 2, 1944, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets, spending the following eleven years in captivity. Coming back from Russia in 1955, Schellhorn was disappointed to learn, that his decisive role in the rescue operation was withheld by his supposed friend, Traian Popovici; however Schellhorn never denied Popovici's important function for the implementation of the operation.

Dr. Vladimir Solonari from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, notes in his article "THE TREATMENT OF THE JEWS OF BUKOVINA BY THE SOVIET AND ROMANIAN ADMINISTRATIONS IN 1940-1944" (HOLOCAUST AND MODERNITY, No. 2 (8) 2010, p. 170) as follows:

"Without detracting from the noble memory of Traian Popovici - a great humanist and Romanian patriot, a man of remarkable modesty and honesty, whom Yad Vashem granted, in 1989, the honorable title 'Righteous among the Nations,' and after whom a street in Bucharest was named in 2002 - it appears that this traditional view needs reconsideration. It is almost certain that the real impetus for Antonescu’s change of position came from the German consul in the city, Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn. At an October 15 meeting with Bukovina Governor General Calotescu, Schellhorn protested the decision to deport all of the city’s Jews on the grounds that they were absolutely indispensable to the 'economic reconstruction of the province,' particularly in such vital local industries as lumber, and that indiscriminate deportation could impede the German war effort."

At first glance it is perhaps hard to realize, that a high-ranking German diplomatic officer rescued our ancestors - mine as well - from deportation and presumably from death, but as long as we are approaching the historical truth, I'm ready to accept this and be thankful to Dr. Hartwig Cremers, who brought this thrilling story to us.

Edgar Hauster
Lent - The Netherlands

http://hauster.blogspot.com/
                                               
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Received on 2011-12-22 12:19:06