The deportation of Roma from Romania to the territory of the Governorate of Transnistria took place in several phases. A first phase of deportation began on 1 June 1942 and affected Roma who were categorised as ‘țiganii nomazi’ [‘nomadic Gypsies’]. This deportation was not carried out by train but on foot with wagons and horses over several weeks.1Cousin, “Déporter à pas d’hommes”. Trains were not used probably because it was assumed that these Roma were mobile.
The logistics of this first deportation proved to be complex for the police authorities, so it is highly probable that the Ministry of the Interior wanted to avoid these difficulties when it began to plan a second phase of deportation. The Ministry accordingly explored different means of transfer, such as by boat,2ANIC, fond IRJ, dosar 259, f. 146–48, Letter No. 36.140, General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie to the Ministry of Defence, Undersecretariat of State for the Navy, 22 June 1942, published in Achim, Documente privind deportarea ţiganilor în Transnistria, Vol. I, 42 f. before deciding on a transfer by specially chartered trains.
Planning the Deportation
On 22 July 1942, Ion Antonescu (1882–1946) ordered the deportation of Roma who had been registered as ‘settled’ or ‘țiganii nenomazi’ [‘non-nomadic Gypsies’] with ‘criminal records or without livelihoods‘3ANIC, fond IRJ, dosar 258, f. 6–6v, Letter No. 33.911, Ministry of Internal Affairs Cabinet to the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie, 17 May 1942, published in Achim, Documente privind deportarea ţiganilor în Transnistria, Vol. I, 5 f. under the terms of the secret census order of May 1942 and who were also considered unfit for mobilisation in the army. From 25 July, the gendarmerie legions and the police provided lists with details of 12,497 people to the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie. On this basis, the General Inspectorate drew up a plan for the deployment of trains for the deportation. The names were taken from the May census which listed 31,438 people under the category of ‘țiganii nenomazi’.
After the Romanian railway company had checked and corrected the route, it was decided that nine special trains, numbered E.3 to E.11, should be used for the deportation of the Roma. Trains E.1 and E.2 were intended for the deportation of Jews. The routes of nine trains were shared with regional gendarmerie inspectorates. Railway cars carrying the deportees travelled on secondary lines to points where the deportees could be transferred to the main trains. Transfers were timed and rations provided in the expectation that the deportations would be completed within three days, though the brief stops that the trains made on main lines made efficient boarding and railway car attachment challenging.
The General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie set arrest quotas for each region based on the July reports and transport logistics. Regional inspectorates created new lists of names to meet these targets, and selected deportees on the basis of geography, logistics, and available information.
Implementation
The deportations took place from 12 to 22 September 1942. According to the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie, 13,176 Roma were deported. 12,967 people were deported to Transnistria in the nine special trains mentioned above. In addition, 209 people were brought directly to Tiraspol on foot from the counties of Ismail, Tighina and Hotin.
The total number of deportees in this phase was probably slightly higher. A compilation of the individual lists of deportees comprises the names of 13,322 people, but 13,700 people were counted in the camps in December 1942. Besides possible arithmetical errors, the discrepancies can also be explained by the fact that there were undocumented deportations from Transnistrian cities. For example, Roma from Tiraspol were among the deportees in Transnistrian camps and ghettos, although no transport from this city is recorded.
The deportation lists from September did not match those from July; more than half of the deportees had not been included in the July lists. Several factors influenced the selection of individuals for deportation, including the targeting of large families and populations from villages close to boarding stations rather than from more distant settlements.
Spatial analysis reveals that although 600 localities were identified in July 1942, deportations occurred from only 382, just 319 of which matched the original targets. This gap highlights the broad discretion local gendarmerie and police had in carrying out deportations, often aligning actions with their own priorities beyond central government directives.
The departure and boarding points were located in the country’s most important cities and railway hubs. People were moved to these main railway stations from other stations in railway cars attached to regular trains or on foot. All the trains eventually travelled to Tighina, a town on the border with the Transnistrian governorate. A cartographic representation4Cf. Cousin, “Deporting and Persecuting Romanian Roma”. of this deportation makes it possible to record the raids at the various sites where Roma were taken into custody and led to the deportation trains, as well as the underlying administrative logic.
First, it can be established that particularly intensive raids took place in the areas around the loading stations, with correspondingly high numbers of arrests. Second, the regional responsibilities of the administrative units and the territoriality of the regional inspections appear to have been strictly adhered to, even if this resulted in less rational procedures. For example, people had to walk long distances to reach the loading station that corresponded to the capital of the regional inspection, even if there was a closer station in a different jurisdiction.
The division between police and gendarmerie also seems to have had a major influence on the organisation, as some places were served by different trains depending on which police authority was carrying out the deportation. Finally, three loading stations stand out for their numerical importance: Craiova, Piteşti and Bucharest. Most of the deportees loaded in Piteşti and Bucharest were residents of these cities, while the deportation victims in Craiova came in equal numbers from this city and the rural areas of the county.
Journeys Lasting Days
The gendarmerie officers’ reports provide only indirect descriptions of the transport conditions.5USHMM, fonds RG-25-050M, Reel 009, p. 729, Report from Iași Gendarmerie Legion, 15 September 1942. The authorities allocated 362 railway cars to maintain a maximum capacity standard of 40 individuals per car. This guideline was adhered to during departures from Bucharest and generally for deportees leaving major stations along primary routes. Conversely, those arriving via secondary lines were occasionally over capacity. For example, eight cars arriving from Turnu Măgurele to join train E.4 at Piteşti carried a total of 570 individuals, averaging 71 persons each.
In all cases, these were cattle cars without sanitary facilities, sleeping places or blankets. Each train also had a passenger carriage reserved for the guards. The authorities planned food rations according to the anticipated numbers of travel days and deportees. In some cases, as in Pitești, the police authorities also asked the deportees to bring provisions with them6Ibid., p. 740–42, Report of Arges Gendarmerie Legion, after 12 September 1942. (in this case for five days), but this is an exception.
Logistical difficulties meant that many deportation trains travelled longer than planned, which meant additional stress for the Roma deportees. Several trains experienced considerable delays, sometimes lasting several days. For example, the deportees on special train E.3, which was loaded in Bucharest during the day on 12 September, departed with three portions of bread per person, for 1,922 people. It arrived 24 hours late on the planned route on the night of 14/15 September without having received any further food, when there were actually 2,188 people on the train. The special train E.7 arrived five days late. The authorities provided food for the deportees on this train in the cities of Chișinău and Mereni by sending delegates selected from among the deportees to buy food and flour in the cities. A railway car carrying 58 people from Teleorman County was mistakenly routed to Bucharest before being sent back to Ploești, causing the E.9 special train to reach its destination three days late.
There is evidence of deaths among the Roma during the days-long journey. However, it is difficult to determine their number, as the sources only mention deaths in passing, if at all.
Arrival
The nine special trains arrived in Tighina between 14 and 20 September 1942. All trains stopped at Tighina to change the bogies to adapt them to the gauge of the Soviet railway network. At Tighina, the respective train commanders handed over the deportees and the corresponding deportation lists to the Tiraspol Gendarmerie Legion. The deportees were searched for Romanian cash (lei), which was confiscated along with valuable items in favour of the Romanian state. The wait of several days at the Tighina train station seems to have left its mark on memory and several testimonies of survivors refer to it.
After their adaptation, the special trains were then organised into two convoys, the first grouping trains E.3, E.4 and E.6 and the second trains E.7 and E.11. The trains E.5, E.9 and E.10 continued their solo journeys. The rest of the journey is the same for all trains which departed via Tighina to Grigorești in the Oceacov county [Ukrainian: Очаків], located on the right bank of the southern Bug opposite the city of Mykolaiv (then Nikolayev in German-occupied Ukraine). The first convoy left Tighina on 15 September and arrived in Grigorești on 17 September, while the last train, train E.10, arrived on 20 September in Tighina, left there on 22 September to arrive in Grigorești on 25 September.
In Grigorești, the deportees were distributed between the Alexandrodar barracks, and the camps of Balșoi Caranica [Ukrainian: Велика Корениха] and Covalvevca [Ukrainian: Ковалівка] in the Oceacov county.
