The Holocaust in Romania

Before the Holocaust, over 700,000 Jewish people lived in Romania, approximately 4% of the country’s population. Antisemitism was state policy even before the Romanian government formally aligned with Nazi Germany in 1940. The Romanian regime under Ion Antonescu initiated pogroms in cities like Bucharest and Iasi, discriminatory laws, and forced labour. These policies were extended to the regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina after the Romanian regime regained control of these areas from the Soviet Union in 1941. The Romanian government massacred thousands of Jews in these regions, sometimes with the support of German SS and police units. Survivors were forced into ghettos where they were forced to perform hard labour.

Beginning in 1941, over 150,000 Jews were deported from northern Romania and Bessarabia to Transnistria, a Romanian-administered region between the Dniester and Bug rivers. Deported Jews were marched across long distances, often with the complicity or indifference of local populations. The region was turned into a vast deportation zone, with ghettos and camps characterised by deliberately brutal conditions, including starvation, disease, exposure and forced labour. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews were murdered in Romanian-controlled areas during the Holocaust.

Pre-War Jewish Life

Joseph and his older brother Jacob grew up in Suceava, Romania, in a culturally rich and secular Jewish household. He recalls a peaceful childhood filled with music—he started playing the violin at age eight—and sports, especially ping pong, in which he competed at the provincial level. Although his father attended synagogue services on Shabbat, Joseph concludes that they were not especially religious. Antisemitism was not a major part of Josef’s early experience, and his education and social life were filled with optimism and personal freedom until the beginning of government-backed antisemitic policies in the late 1930s.

Timeline of Key Events in Joseph’s Life