The announcement that 80,000 Jews will be deported from Rumania “to eastern territory” within the next three months and that the expulsion of the remaining Jewish population will follow not later than next spring, is made in Bucharest German newspapers reaching here today.
“Within one year’s time there will not be a single Jew in Rumania,” the German press predicts. “There are still 270,000 Jews left in Rumania after the deportation of 185,000 Jews to Transnistria,” one of the Bucharest Nazi papers declares.
Before their deportation, the Jews will be shifted from the rural districts into larger cities to facilitate the expulsions in an “organized” manner, the German newspapers report. They estimate that today there are approximately 98,000 Jews in Bucharest, 34,000 in Jassy, 13,000 in Galatz, 13,000 in Bakara and 11,000 in Temeschburg. More than 100,000 Jews are scattered throughout smaller towns and villages, according to their calculations.
In addition to banishment, the Rumanian authorities are now completing plans for the confiscation by the state of all Jewish property, the Bucharest Nazi press states. It is announced that 82 large Jewish buildings in Bucharest, including Jewish community buildings, have already passed into government hands, while 300 Jewish buildings will be confiscated by the Rumanian authorities this month in the city of Jassy.
At the same time the Nazi press in Bucharest reports that all Jews in Rumania between 18 and 50 are now engaged in forced labor. An exception is made for 17,000 Jews who are permitted to continue their normal work “because it is useful to the economic interests of the country.”
The Berlin radio today reported that 1,500 Jews in Bacau, Moldavia, were sentenced by the Rumanian authorities to various terms of imprisonment and fines for not having complied with the order of the Ministry of Defense to donate clothes, shoes and linen for the Rumanian Army.
The Bucharest police has ordered all foreigners and Jews who “have taken up illegal residence in the city” since September 1, 1940 to take their families home within 30 days or face deportation to Transnistria, it was reported here today. Those who come from the rural districts must go to the capital of their home province.
Other reports reaching here from Rumania indicate that the German and Rumanian military authorities in Transnistria are using many of the 185,000 Jews for fortification work on the Soviet front lines, many of the Jews there being compelled to work under actual fire.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
