ASOCIATIA FOSTILOR IN TRANSNISTRIA – Former deportees association in Transnistria – Bucharest headquarters. Legitimation certificate no. 2657 of the Jew Wilhelm Rosenbalt (born 1905) who was deported during World War II to Transnistria. Rosenbalt born in 1905 remained in Bucharest after the war. This certificate was issued for him in July 1947 and it identifies him as a “deportee of Transnistria”. Rosenbalt’s passport photo, his signature, and ink stamps of “Association of Former Deportees in Transnistria”.
At the beginning of World War II territories were torn from Romania – Bukovina, Transylvania and Dobruja and annexed to neighboring countries. Tearing off these regions from Romania brought General Ion Antonescu to power. The Romanians vented their anger over the loss of territories on the Jews, and antisemitism spread throughout the country. Jews were deported from villages to nearby towns, Jewish property was confiscated, Jewish students were no longer allowed to attend public schools, factories were confiscated, Jews were removed from professional unions (doctors, lawyers, engineers etc.). Daily, Jews were thrown off trains, beaten and robbed; many were killed, and pogroms broke out in Dorohoy, Iasi, Bucharest and elsewhere. As a result of these events and the fear of what might yet happen, thousands of Jews at that time crossed into Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which had just been annexed by the Soviet Union. All this was just a prelude to the Holocaust later perpetrated by the Romanians: in early June 1941, at the launch of Operation “Barbarossa”, Germany and Romania occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Romanian leaders at the time, Marshal Ion Antonescu, Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu and other cabinet members, gave orders to the Romanian army and gendarmerie “to get rid of Jews and communists”. Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu then said: “I advocate the forced emigration of the entire Jewish element from Bessarabia and Bukovina; they must be deported beyond the border… I am not afraid that history may judge us as barbarians… If necessary, use machine guns…”. In the first days, the local population was given free rein to plunder, loot and kill Jews, with the army and gendarmerie participating. Jews were robbed and beaten, daughters and women raped, many murdered on the spot, and those left alive were deported and wandered toward the Dniester River. They walked for hundreds of kilometers in the summer heat, hungry, sick, exhausted; Romanian soldiers shot those failing to walk, others succumbed to starvation, disease and exhaustion. Some reached Yampol and other temporary camps. After about six weeks in the temporary camps, the deportation continued toward Transnistria. About 150,000 Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina perished in the three months of July-September 1941 in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. As of October 1941, some 195,000 Jews were deported to Transnistria, where about 145,000 perished there, along with another 180,000 local Jews, until the area was liberated in March 1944 by the Red Army.
Wilhelm Rosenbalt was one of the Jews deported to Transnistria who survived the inferno. Immediately after the war, certificates of this type were issued to survivors and granted them special rights recognizing them as victims of the Romanian Holocaust.
[4] pages. Good condition.
