Cleansing the Terrain in Bessarabia: In Towns, Transit Camps and Ghettos, Deportations
Cleansing the Terrain in Bessarabia: In Towns, Transit Camps and Ghettos, Deportations

Summary/Abstract: While there has been vigorous debate between “intentionalists” and “functionalists” regarding events elsewhere in Europe, there is no doubt regarding the intentionality of the Romanian State in favor of a complete ethnic cleansing of Jews from Bessarabia. One result of this consistency of intent was that the progressive stages of the “cleansing” process – from killing immediately on encounter, to the concentration of Jews in camps and ghettos, to deportation - all produced massive degradation and death. Every stage of the process is well documented, as one might expect in regard to a high priority project of a military dictatorship. Tens of thousands of Bessarabian Jews were murdered. Tens of thousands more were deported to Transnistria. Only a tiny remnant survived. No other Romanian province suffered anything proportionally comparable to the losses inflicted on the Jews of Bessarabia under Romanian rule during the Holocaust.

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