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The German-Romanian Relationship and the Final Solution
Independent Scholar affiliated with Yad Vashem
On January 14, 1941, Adolf Hitler revealed to the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu the plan to invade the USSR, and on June 12, 1941 his "Guidelines for the Treatment of the Eastern Jews." Well before the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, Antonescu launched Romania’s Final Solution in response to Hitler’s cue. What we know of the Antonescu-Hitler connection argues against the functionalist interpretation of the Final Solution. Though subsequently forgotten, the Antonescu-Hitler understandings were invoked at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, when the new communist government sought to blame Germany and exonerate Romania of responsibility in the death of the Jews deported to Transnistria in 1941/42.
1. Lya Benjamin, ed., Problema evreiasc
în stenogramele Consiliului de Mini
tri (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1996), p. 17. Antonescu was appointed Minister of Propaganda on May 26, 1941. 2. Cited in Christopher Browning, Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (New York; London: Holmes & Meier, 1991), p. 5.
3. Transcript of Cabinet meeting of June 25, 1942, Interior Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 9, p. 30 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [USHMM] Archives, RG-25004M, reel 32).
4. Ibid., p. 32. Mihai Antonescu reminded General von Rottkirchen on August 28, 1942, that the plan to attack the Soviet Union had been disclosed by Goering to Ion Antonescu and himself in January 1941, at which time "we had been told categorically that the Romanian army should not take part in war operations.... Only Marshal Antonescu and I had knowledge of the day when Romania and Germany were to declare war on Russia." Jean Ancel, ed., Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986), vol. IX, doc. 162, p. 423.
5. Transcript of Cabinet meeting of August 5, 1941 (excerpt). Interior Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 9, p. 21 (USHMM Archives, RG-25004M, reel 32).
6. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher (Munich; Zurich: Piper, 1992), vol. 4, 1940–1942, p. 1524.
8. At the height of the battle of Stalingrad, after Iron Guard leader Horia Sima had fled from Germany to Italy and there were fears in Bucharest of a Nazi-Legionnaire plot, Antonescu recalled the affair in a letter of December 9, 1942, to Marshal Erich von Manstein. J.C. Drgan, ed., Antonescu Marealul României i rsboaiele de reîntregire (Venice: Nagard, 1988), vol. III, no. 132, p. 323.
9. Letter from Himmler’s office to Ribbentrop, April 2, 1941, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 (hereafter DGFP) (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), vol. XII, doc. 258, pp. 443–44.
10. Cable from Mihai Antonescu to Romanian Legation in Ankara, March 14, 1944, Romanian Foreign Ministry Archives, Ankara file, T1, p. 108. Karl Hoffmann was an emissary of the RSHA; he later served as an attaché for police affairs in Bulgaria. SS-Brigadeführer Karl Pflaumer was interior minister of the state of Baden beginning in May 1937; later he served as police commander and head of administration in Alsace. From March 1941 to March 1942 he was advisor for administrative affairs in Romania, and specifically on organizing the administration in the "occupied territories" of Bessarabia and Bukovina. Richter (b. 1912) was a member of the Nazi Party from May 1933, serving with the Security Service (SD) from March 1934. In 1935 he was appointed official in charge (Referat) of Jewish and Freemason Affairs for the entire southwestern region of Germany, and he filled other positions in the security police. He arrived in Romania from Dijon, France, where he had served as a representative of the SD. On April 1, 1941, he began serving as an advisor on Jewish affairs and Aryanization at the German Legation in Bucharest. Nothing is known about Eitzen. See Personenverzeichnis (Biographical sketches) in: United Restitution Organization (URO), [Dokumentensamlung] (Frankfurt: URO, 1959), vol. 3, pp. 11–12; Raul Hilberg, La destruction des Juifs d’Europe (Paris: Fayard, 1988), p. 644.
12. Rosenberg’s statement of March 28, 1941, on the removal of the Jews from Europe. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1947), bd. XXI, p. 255 (document PS-2889).
13. The Ambassador in Romania to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, August 16, 1941, DGFP, Series D (1937–1945), vol. XIII, "The War Years, June 23–December 11, 1941," doc. 207, pp. 318–19.
15. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, bd. XXV, p. 302 (doc. PS-212).
16. Transcript of conversation between Ribbentrop and Mihai Antonescu (excerpts), September 23, 1942. Dokumentensammlung (Frankfurt: United Restitution Organization, 1960), vol. IV, doc. 13, p. 578. Possibly the agreements were verbal, possibly they were destroyed later; they had to have been reached no later than June 21
17. Ancel, Documents, vol. V, doc. 2, p. 2. See also Ancel, "The Romanian Way of Solving the ‘Jewish Problem’ in Bessarabia and Bukovina, June–July 1941," Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), pp. 207–208.
18. Cable from Col. Rioanu to Gen. Antonescu, July 18, 1941. Arhivele Statului (National Archives), fond Preedentia Consiliului de Minitri, Cabinet Antonescu, file 89/1941, p. 16.
19. Series of exchanges by telephone between pretor of the Third Army and chief pretor of the Romanian army, concerning the deportation of 25,000 Jews to Ukraine and the return of 13,000 of them to Romanian territory at Ataki and Soroka, August 6–17, 1941. M. Carp, Cartea Neagr, "Transnistria," vol. III (Bucharest: Dacia Traiana, 1947), docs. 43, 44, 46, 56, 58, pp. 96–99, 105–106.
"The reports of Einsatzgruppe D assumed that in excess of 27,000 Jews were driven from Bessarabia and Bukovina across the bridges of Mogilev-Podolsk into German-occupied territory." Andrej Angrick, "The Escalation of German-Rumanian Anti-Jewish Policy after the Attack on the Soviet Union," Yad Vashem Studies XXVI (1996), p. 218. Recent findings in Romanian archives confirm that the number of the Jews driven by the Romanian army across the Dniester was more than 30,000. See SSI Report re: the 30,000 Jews from the Hotin District in Bessarabia and Bukovina, August, 18,1941, Arhivele Statului, fond Preedentia Consiliului de Minitri, Cabinet Antonescu, file 76/1941, p. 86 (USHMM Archives, RG-25002M, reel 17).
20. "Total number of Jews liquidated in the operation in Kamenetsk-Podolsk [driven by the Romanians] around 20,000," Angrick, p. 228. On August 19 the SSI reported that 30,000 Jews were interned in a camp and that "none returned west of the Dniester," Cabinet Antonescu, above note 19, p. 19. On August 27, the Romanian General Police Headquarters reported that the German Army returned 12,600 Jews to Bessarabia in two convoys and that they were interned in the Vertujeni camp, ibid., p. 91.
21. Transcript of Cabinet session of July 8, 1941, in Benjamin, Problema evreiasc, doc. 99, p. 265–66.
23. Transcript of Cabinet session of September 2, 1941, ibid., doc. 104, p. 283. German sources also believed that Pflaumer’s influence on the policies of the Romanian administration in Bessarabia and Bukovina was decisive. M. Broszat, Das dritte Reich und die Rumänische judenpolitik (Munich: Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, 1957), p. 150.
24. Report of Governor Alexianu to Ion Antonescu, September 12, 1941. Oblast’ Archives of Odessa, Ukraine, file 2242-1-677, pp. 18–19b.
25. Tighina Agreement, concluded by General Artur Hauffe and Gen. Nicolae Ttranu August 30, 1941. Office of United States Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington: GPO, 1946–1948, hereafter Nuremberg Documents), PS-3319. Romanian version in Ancel, Documents, IX, no. 83, pp. 188–91; German version in ibid., V, no. 62, pp. 59–63.
26. E. Barbul, Le III Homme de l’Axe (Paris: Editions de la Couronne, 1950), pp. 133–34.
27. Transcript of the Cabinet meeting of December 16, 1941, Interior Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 24, p. 17b (USHMM Archives, RG-25004M, reel 33).
28. Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 1941–1942: The Romanian Mass Murder Campaigns (Tel-Aviv: The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 198–201.
29. Ancel, Transnistria, chapter 3, "The Kingdom of Death," pp. 87–161.
30. Gendarmerie commander in Transnistria to the Administration, September 11, 1942, Foreign Ministry Archives, vol. 20 (marked "Jewish Problem"), pp.166, 263 (USHMM Archives, RG-25006M, reel 11).
31. Franz Rademacher of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin to the Ministry of Eastern Occupied Territories and to Eichmann, May 12, 1942, Nuremberg Documents, NG-4817.
32. Ancel, Transnistria, pp. 427–28.
33. Interrogation of Radu Lecca at Securitate in Bucharest, July 8, 1953. Interior Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 123, p. 82 (copy in the USHMM Archives, RG-25004, reel 36).
34. First report by Richter to Ambassador Killinger, May 21, 1941. Ancel, Documents, II, no. 129, pp. 401–403.
35. Transcript of Cabinet meeting of September 6, 1941. See n. 20 above, p. 303.
36. Killinger to Foreign Ministry in Berlin, September 1, 1941, Nuremberg Documents, NG-3989 (copy in Ancel, Documents, III, no. 51a, p. 102.
37. Foreign Ministry advisor Helmuth Wohlthat to Reichsbankoberinspektor Hoppe, August 12, 1941. Nuremberg Documents, NG-3106 (copy in Ancel, Documents, V, no. 54, p. 53.)
38. Goebbels, Tagebücher, pp. 1659–60.
39. Luther to Killinger, August 27, 1941. Nuremberg Documents, NG-4962.
40. Mihai Antonescu to Himmler, August 7, 1941, Ancel, Documents, IX,no. 81, p. 185.
41. Richter’s notes on meeting with Mihai Antonescu, January 23, 1942, in Ancel, Documents, III, no. 311, pp. 494–95.
42. G. Richter, "Jüdische Fata Morgana," Bukarester Tageblatt, April 26, 1942; copy in Ancel, Documents, III, no. 360, p. 588.
43. Cable from Killinger to Foreign Ministry in Berlin, August 8, 1942, on Richter’s success in having the Zionist movement suppressed and its property transferred to the Judenrat; Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 53, p. 98. In principle the Romanian government did not oppose the emigration of the Jews, and only subsequent to its consent in July 1942 to the Nazi plan to deport them to Be
ec did it go along with Richter’s urgings to ban Zionist activity; it reversed itself again after suspension of the deportation plan that fall, and once more permitted both Zionism and emigration. The reader should bear in mind that the government’s willingness to allow Jews to leave did not mean that they did: that would have depended on the British mandatory authority in Palestine. On December 12, 1941, the ill-fated Struma left Romania with 769 passengers, all but one of whom perished after Turkey refused to allow it to dock and a Soviet submarine sank it as a suspected enemy vessel. Another ship left on November 19, 1942, but then no other until January 24, 1944.
44. Müller to Luther, July 26, 1942, Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 41, p. 78.
45. Interrogation of Adolf Eichmann at Israeli Police headquarters, Yad Vashem Archives, pp. 1768–73.
46. Rintelen to Luther, August 19, 1942, Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 65, p. 120.
47. "Rumänien wird Judenrein," Bukarester Tageblatt, August 8, 1942, Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 49, pp. 93–94.
48. "Richter Plan" (Aussiedlung der Juden aus Rumänien), Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 96, pp. 190–96. For the background to the plan’s formulation and its termination, see Ancel, "Plans for Deportation of the Romanian Jews and Their Discontinuation in Light of Documentary Evidence, July–October 1941," Yad Vashem Studies XVI (1984), pp. 381–420.
49. See chapter 36, "The Rejection of the Nazi Final Solution," in Jean Ancel, Toldot ha-Shoah: Romanyah, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), pp. 1241–92.
50. J. Ancel, "German-Romanian Relations during the Second World War," in The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 57–76; J. Ancel, "The Impact of the Course of the War on Romanian Jewish Policy," The Shoah and the War, eds. Asher Cohen, Yehoyakim Cohavi, and Yoav Gelber (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 177–210. Beec would not have been able to handle the large numbers of Romanian Jews until the addition of six new gas chambers in June and July 1942; Treblinka’s capacities were being stretched to the limits by the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
51. After the Stalingrad debacle both the Antonescu regime and opposition circles hoped that a landing by the Western Allies might preclude a Soviet occupation.
52. "Judenknechte," Bukarester Tageblatt, October 11, 1942. Richter blamed Romanians who became "servants" of the Jews by thwarting the plan to deport the latter "east"; copy in Ancel, Documents, IV, no. 151, pp. 297–98).
53. See chapter 8, "Romanian Statistics on the Scope of the Genocide," in Ancel, Transnistria, pp. 509–32.
54. See Martin Broszat, "Hitler und die Genesis der ‘Endlösung,’" Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 739–75; Hans Mommsen, "Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ im Dritten Reich," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 381–420.
55. Christopher Browning recently concluded that "Absent a ‘smoking pistol,’ historians must extrapolate and speculate"; Initiating the Final Solution. The Fateful Months of September—October 1941 (occasional paper) (Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), 2003, p. 4.
56. Ancel, "The Romanian Way," pp. 227–29.
57. Jean Ancel, "Antonescu and the Jews", Yad Vashem Studies XXIII (1993), p. 233.
59. Special instructions for Operation Barbarossa issued by the OKW on May 19, 1941, with enclosed "Directives for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia." Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Tribunal (Nuremberg-Document NOKW-1962) vol. X (Washington: GPO, 1951), pp. 990–94. Regarding the orders given to the Army, von Hassell noted in his diary on June 16, 1941: "Those orders concern brutal and uncontrolled measures the troops are to take against bolshevists when Russia is invaded.... Thus the Army must assume the onus of the murders and burnings which until now have been confined to the SS." The Von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), p. 199.
60. Jean Ancel, Hakdamah leretsah: Peraot Yasi, 29 beyuni 1941 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003), pp. 382–83.
61. Ancel, "The Romanian Way," pp. 228–31. For example on July 29 Einsatzkommando 10A reported that at Bl
i "the Romanian police worked under the guidance of the Kommandos," engaging in brutal anti-Jewish actions and murders in the town and the surroundings."
62. Nuremberg Documents, NO-2651; copy in Ancel, Documents, V, no. 17, p. 26.
63. I have adopted partially the conclusions of Christopher Browning in his recent study published by the USHMM (see Browning, "Initiating") as a basis for my own conclusions, p. 2.
64. Interrogation of Popoiu Constantin, commander of the Orhei Gendarmerie Legion included in the warrant for arrest, Bucharest Tribunal, 1950, Ancel, Documents, VI, no. 43, p. 477.
65. "The Realization of the Unthinkable," in Hans Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 233, 236, 250.
67. Browning, Essays on the Emergence, p. 6.
68. Andreas Hillgruber "War in the East and the Extermination of the Jews," in Michael R. Marrus, ed., The Nazi Holocaust (London; Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989), vol. 3, The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder, part 1, p. 85.
69. Protocol of Hitler’s talk with Antonescu on June 12, 1941, DGFP, vol. 13, no. 167, p. 267.
70. Drgan, Antonescu, vol. II, no. 13, p. 197.
71. Ion Antonescu to Brtianu, October 29, 1942, in Drgan, vol. II, no. 23, p. 27.
72. Eberhard Jäckel, "Hitler and the Holocaust," in The Nazi Holocaust, p. 69.
73. Situation des Juifs en Romanie (1940–1944) Yad Vashem Archives, Romanian Collection, 0-11/35, pp. 18–19; and Ancel, Documents, vol. VIII, no. 424, pp. 496–97.
74. Excerpts from the protocol of a Cabinet meeting addressing, inter alia, typhus in Transnistria and the deportation of Jews of Odessa, Interior Ministry Archives, file 40010, vol. 78, pp. 358–61 (USHMM Archives, RG-25004M, reel 35).
75. Most of the documents on Romanian-German talks and plans regarding the Jews disappeared even before the collapse of the Antonescu regime; some were hidden by the new authorities. Items discussed by Antonescu and Hitler were not recorded by Schmidt. Eberhard Jäckel investigated my early assertions that Hitler had disclosed to Antonescu his plan regarding the "Eastern" Jews, and came to the conclusion that I was correct. In a letter of June 13, 1987, he wrote: "It is your merit to have discovered this important and extraordinary fact." But he was "surprised" that Schmidt did not record anything on this in the stenogram. Jäckel concluded that Ritter did ask Hitler about the discussion before sending his answer to Wehrmacht General Headquarters in response to Antonescu’s complaint to Ambassador Killinger. Jäckel also specified that the meeting took place at the Führer’s headquarters in Munich.