ROMANIA - THE ODESSA MASSACRE

Victor Manta, PWO

Odessa or Odesa is the third most populous city of Ukraine, located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. Odessa is sometimes called the "pearl of the Black Sea, the "South Capital" (under the Russian Empire and USSR), and "Southern Palmyra."

Odessa was attacked by Romanian and German troops in August 1941. The Soviet defense of Odessa lasted 73 days from 5 August to 16 October 1941.

Figure 1. USSR. 1944. Defenders of Odessa. Sc. 914

As a member of the Axis, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, by committing more troops to the Eastern Front than all the other allies of Germany combined. Romanian forces played a large role during the fighting in Ukraine, Bessarabia, Stalingrad, and elsewhere. Romanian troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of up to 260,000 Jews on Romanian-controlled territories.

Figure 2. URSS, 1961. Defense of Odessa. Sc. 2514

1941 Odessa massacre

The "Odessa massacre" is the name given to the mass murder of Jewish and Romani population of Odessa and surrounding towns in Transnistria during the autumn of 1941 and winter of 1942 while under Romanian control.

Figure 3. Romania. King Michael and Marshal Ion Antonescu. Sc. B216

Depending on the accepted terms of reference and scope, the Odessa massacre refers either to the events of October 22 - 24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000 Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation.

Figure 4. Romania. 1941. Occupation of Odessa, USSR. Overprints. Sc. B175 - B178.

Before the massacre

Before the war, Odessa had a large Jewish population of approximately 180,000, or 30% of the city's total population. By the time the Romanians had taken the city, between 80,000 and 90,000 Jews were abandoned by the Soviet authorities, the rest having fled. As the massacres occurred, Jews from surrounding villages would be concentrated in Odessa and Romanian concentration camps set up in the surrounding areas.

Figure 5. Romania 1941. Occupation of Odesa, USSR. Overprint. Sc. B178A

The Germans and Romanians captured Odessa following a two-month siege on October 16. A delayed bomb placed by Soviet sappers detonated on the 22nd in the Romanian army headquarters, killing 67 people, most of them Romanian and German officers.

Massacres of October 22 - 24

Blaming the Jews and communists for the bomb, Romanian troops began reprisals that same evening. By noon of the following day, October 23, 5,000 civilians had been seized and shot, most of them Jews. On the morning of October 23, over 19,000 Jews were assembled in nine gunpowder warehouses at the port, and summarily shot, after which the warehouses were set on fire. Some of the prisoners were burned alive.

Figure 6. Romania. 1943. Artillery Centenary. Odessa. Sc. B228

That afternoon, over 20,000 were led out of the city in a long column. In Dalnik they were tied together in groups of 40 - 50 people, thrown into an anti-tank ditch and shot. Concerned that the killing would take too long, the Romanians moved the rest of the Jews into four large warehouses in which they made holes for machine guns. The doors were closed and the soldiers fired into the buildings. Then they set fire to three of the buildings, (which were filled mainly with women and children), at 17:00 hours on the following day, October 24. Those who tried to escape through windows or holes in the roofs were shot or met with hand grenades. On October 25, the fourth building, which was filled with men, was shelled.

Around 35,000 - 40,000 of the Jews that remained were moved into the ghetto in the suburb of Slobodka where most of the buildings were destroyed, and left outdoors for ten days, between October 25 and November 3, and many Jews died of exposure.

Further massacres of the Jews of Odessa

On October 28, a new massacre was started when 4,000 – 5,000 Jews were herded into stables and shot. By the end of December, an additional 50,000 Jews from the concentration camp at Bogdanovka had been killed. A further 10,000 Jews were taken on a death march to three concentration camps. Those who survived the journey were murdered two months later, along with tens of thousands of other Jews who had been brought to these camps from northern Transnistria and Bessarabia.

Figure 7. Odessa Holocaust Memorial

On December 28, 1941, the Romanian commander of headquarters executed the orders received from Marshal Ion Antonescu and deported the Jews from Odessa. In January 1942, the extermination ended with the killing of those who remained in Slobodka. From January 12 - 23, the last 19,582 Jews were transported in cattle wagons to Berezovka from where they were transported to the concentration camps in Golta. Within eighteen months almost all of them were dead.

Figure 8. Odessa Holocaust Memorial Top

The stamps presented on this page

The stamps are often used for propaganda purposes but what they say is not difficult to decipher by those who know the history of the involved countries.

•  Figure 1. USSR. 1944. Defenders of Odessa. Sc. 914

•  Figure 2. URSS, 1961. Defense of Odessa. Sc. 2514

In the foreground appear sailors of the Black Sea fleet who were thrown into battle in despair, replacing the missing infantry troops, much better equipped and trained for ground actions. Please compare on Sc. 2514 the equipment of marines with that of the appearing alongside artillery troops.

•  Figure 3. Romania. King Michael and Marshal Ion Antonescu. Sc. B216

1943, Sept. 6, third anniversary of the government of King Michael and Marshal Ion Antonescu.

Romania was then led by the Prime Minister Ion Antonescu, who assumed also the offices of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister. Although King Michael was formally the Supreme Head of the Army, and entitled to appoint the Prime Minister, he was forced to remain only a figurehead until August 1944 . After the war, I. Antonescu was convicted of war crimes and executed. Following the 2003 Wiesel Commission report, his involvement in the Holocaust was officially reasserted and condemned.

Between the King and Antonescu appears the equestrian statue of Prince Michael the Brave who in the Middle Ages reunited briefly the territories of Romanian speaking populations. It hints to the fight of the Romanian army for the reconquer of Bessarabia and Bukovina, occupied by the USRR following the Soviet ultimatum, sent to the Romanian Government on June 26, 1940. The Soviet administration was marked by a series of campaigns of persecution, including arrests, deportations to labor camps, and executions.

•  Figure 4. Romania 1941. Occupation of Odessa, USSR. Overprints. Sc. B175 - B178.

These are overprints of the set Sc. B170 – B174. All stamps are labeled “RAZBOIUL SFANT CONTRA BOLSEVISMULUI” which means “The Holly War against Bolshevism”. By “Bolshevism” the Romanian propaganda designed the Soviet communists and their alleged allies, the Jews. Thus, this propaganda was as well anti-Communist as anti-Semitic.

•  Figure 5. Romania 1941. Occupation of Odesa, USSR. Overprint. Sc. B178A

The overprinted version of the Souvenir Sheet Sc. B174. It is labeled “22 IUNIE 1941” (June 22, 1941, the beginning of the Romanian war against USSR) and “FRATIA DE ARME”, meaning “Brotherhood in Arms” (of Romanian and German troops).

•  Figure 6. Romania. 1943. Artillery Centenary. Odessa. Sc. B228

A stamp that is part of a set of eight, Sc. B224 - B231. Other related stamps are dedicated to the siege of Stalingrad (Sc. B226) and Sevastopol (Sc. B230). Like for Odessa, these conquest fights cannot be justified by the reconquering of lost territories because they never belonged to Romania.

Source: Wikipedia

Notes

- This page was inspired by the author's visit in 2016 of the Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, Israel.

- This article was published in the Vol. LXVIII No. 3 of the US magazine The Israel Philatelist, pages 6 - 9. Please see below the scan of the page 6.