Memory of the Victims of the 1940-1942 Deportations from Northern Transylvania
Memory of the Victims of the 1940-1942 Deportations from Northern Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: Already during the Hungarian military administration of the fall of 1940, by coarse methods,in many settlements, the Northern Transylvanian Jews were forced to leave for Romania, and where this was not possible, due to the resistance of the Jewish communities, they were gathered and thrown into Soviet territory. The first forced deportations affected the Bistriţa Năsăud, Sătmar, Maramureş, and Szekler counties, but later, in 1941 and 1942, they covered practically the entire territory of Northern Transylvania. Under various pretexts, some were deported because they were too poor, and others because they lived in a better condition and their workshops, businesses, flats, and chattels were cast by local Hungarians or “paratroopers” who arrived from Hungary. The vast majority of the deportees became victims of the ghettos and mass murders in Galicia and Podolia, survived by very few of them. Based on press and archival materials from Hungary, Romania, and the West, I would like to summarize what happened, to present the nature and the extent of these actions, the memory of these deportations, as well as to describe the post-war fate of some war crime perpetrators.

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