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

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.