Concluziile Comisiei de anchetă pentru "Cercetarea neregulilor săvârşite cu ocazia evacuării evreilor din Cernăuţi" (1941)
The conclusions of the investigations Commission for "Research of the irregularities made for the evacuation of the Jews from Cernăuţi" (1941)

Summary/Abstract: The events in Czernowitz during 1941-1942 are a constituent part of the phenomenon of "ethnic cleansing" developed by the Romanian state immediately after the reconquest of the territories ceded to the USSR in the summer of 1940. The Jewish population of the city was enclosed in a ghetto as a preliminary measure to their deportation to Transnistria. The deportations were halted three days later because the Romanian authorities had realized that the majority of professionals and technicians in Czernowitz were Jews. These actions were possible due to the Mayor of Czernowitz, Dr. Traian Popovici, who managed to persuade the Romanian military governor and the head of state, Ion Antonescu to spare 20,000 Jews from deportation, claiming that they were vital to the economic stability of the town. The mayor attempted to stop deportations, issuing more than 3,000 certificates of exemption from deportation, but the officials of the municipality, the police, and the gendarmerie extorted enormous sums of money in return for these exemptions. Many Jews were deported even after they paid the ransom. The report captures the details of the establishment of Czernowitz ghetto, planning and organization of the deportations, but also how mayor Traian Popovici and other members of the sorting commission prepared the tables with Jewish experts in Czernowitz, saving from deportation sometimes even whole families.

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