Correction to what Cornel wrote about the course of events which led to
about 20 000 Czernowitz Jews being spared deportation to Transnistria.
Traian Popovici, the Romanian lawyer, resident of Cernauti/Czernowitz,
who was nominated in 1941 by the Romanian government to be
the mayor of the city, objected to the planned deportation of the
Jews of Cz.
He wrote a letter to Antonescu, to allow him to prevent the deportation
of 15 000 Jewish inhabitants of the city.He also petitioned the queen
mother.
Antonescu allowed Popovici to let 1500 Jews remain in the city.
But by the middle of December 1941 Popovici handed out 15 600 permits
and abolished the Ghetto.
At that time there still remained in Czernowitz a large number of Jews
who did not have permits to stay in the city.
These people by various means petitioned Popovici to issue them too,
permits to remain in the city and in response, he issued approximately
another 4000 permits.
The permits were issued to people who were truly necessary
to the economy of the city and members of their family, to people who's
businesses had been taken over by Romanians, who could not run
these businesses without the know-how of their Jewish owners
and members of their family and to Jewish people who had connections
among the Romanian ruling class.
These actions of Popovici caused the Romanian government to remove him
from the office of mayor and to declare all his authorizations invalid.
Any Jews who wanted to remain in the city had to obtain a permit
from Calotescu, governor of the province.
At the same time the deportations to Transnistria resumed on June 7,
1942
and in July of 1942.
According to Radu Ioanid in his book "The Holocaust in Romania",
governor Calotescu claimed that 28,341 Jewish people were deported
from Cernauti in October 1941 and another 4,094 in the summer of 1942,
for a total of 32,435 people.
It is generally estimated that close to 20,000 Jewish people were
able to remain
in the city throughout the war, most because they had permits and some
because they had managed to hide during the various deportations.
Mimi
On Jul 31, 2015, at 4:08 PM, cornel fleming wrote:
> Hi Lloyd! Yes ,Czernowitz was special.And I suggest if possible go
> and see
> the place. There is a beautifully decorated shul built in
> 1926...untouched!
> The Mayor of the town at the time was Traian Popovici, A Romanian
> non-Jew.
> When ordered to deport all to Transnistria he told the government
> that he
> could not run his town without the Jewish engineers,doctors
> etc...and was
> allowed to issue 20000 "Popovici Permits" which helped people to stay.
> Also,Czernowitz was Romania not Ukraine....so shootings at
> first..but not
> the wholesale slaughter that went on under the Germans. So...many
> of us
> survived...including me! Cornel
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Received on 2015-08-01 14:11:57