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Lists of Romanian Jews from Bucovina and Bessarabia
Deported to Transnistria

By Professor John M. Hoenig

Background
Database
Acknowledgements
Searching the Database

Background

Of the more than 160,000 Romanian Jews deported to Transnistria, there are approximately 2,400 people whose names appear in a volume compiled by the Senior Archivist and Historian at Yad Vashem, Dr. Jean Ancel (1940-2008). Dr. Ancel compiled a 12-volume work entitled Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry During the Holocaust. Volume V deals with the fate of Jews from Bucovina and Bessarabia (see: http://czernowitzbook.blogspot.de/2017/02/documents-concerning-fate-of-romanian.html.

Edgar Hauster made the documents in Volume V available over the internet and linked them to English descriptions of the individual files. The original documents are mostly in Romanian, but German and French also occur. Many of the documents do not provide any names of individual Jews but a few contain lists of people.

Source Documents

The lists of documents in Volume V, as described by Hauster, are described below; the description of file 245 was augmented with additional information by the transcriber of the lists for JewishGen. See http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/17020501Ancel.pdf for a description of all files in Volume 5. The names from these lists are searchable in the JewishGen Holocaust Database.

File*
Date Description and Direct Source Document Link
132 22 January 1942 Ministry of the Interior to the Jewish Center announcing that the Deputy Minister of the Interior, General Vasiliu, agrees that five delegates from the Center travel to the Mogilev and Balta districts to organize the welfare activities necessary for the deported Jews. (5 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel132.pdf)
182 17 March 1943 Minutes of the meeting of the commission established by the Ministry of the Interior for the selection of Jews interned in the camp of Vapniarka, including lists of those Jews whom the commission was ready to liberate. (37 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel182.pdf)
195 15 June 1943 Ministry of Finance consents that the objects made of precious metals taken from the Jews evacuated from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Odessa, which could not be sold at auction, be delivered to the National Mint to be melted down. (2 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel195.pdf)
201 27 July 1943 Note of S. Saraga on the seven Jews of German nationality, and thirteen others arrested by the Bucharest Prefecture, awaiting deportation to Transnistria. (7 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel201.pdf)
204 28 August 1943 Army High Command: list of 275 Jews deported to Transnistria for having infringed on forced labor laws. (275 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel204.pdf)
208 1 September 1943 Camp Service of the Ministry of the Interior: list of the 118 Jews who requested to be repatriated to the Soviet Union and were deported to Transnistria: includes recommendations for their eventual return. (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel208.pdf
209A September 1943 Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie at Balta: list of 1,204 Jews -- women, children and inapt men -- originating from Dorohoi, Darabani and Herta, deported to the Mogilev district. (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel209A.pdf)

Transcriber’s note: At the beginning of the list, the typist used ditto marks (") to indicate "same as in the entry on the line above". Apparently, the typist abandoned this practice and used blank space to indicate the entry was as above. Still later in the list, the columns for town (of origin) and current location were eliminated, likely indicating that all remaining entries pertained to people from Darabani currently located in Tropova (in Moghilev County). Thus, if the user searches the database and finds a record without an entry for town and current location, the user should consult the original document and decide if the blank entry signifies anything.
211 1 September 1943 General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie to the Ministry of the Interior, on the preparation of a list of Jews deported to Transnistria due to their request for repatriation to the USSR; statistical study of Jews deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina; number of survivors in Transnistria; list of all Jews in the camp of Vapniarka. Addenda: 1) List of 598 Jews deported to Transnistria, having requested repatriation to the USSR in 1940; 2) List of the 18 Jews out of the previous List who were alive as of September 1, 1943; 3) Statistical study by districts of the Jews in the ghettos and camps of Transnistria: 50,741 still alive as of September 1, 1943. (598 + 16 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel211.pdf)
245 January 1944 Lists of orphans in the camps and ghettos of Balta (p. 7-9), Bershad (p. 2-3), Olgopol (p. 1), Obodovka (p. 3–4), Torkanovka (p. 4-5), Tibulovca-Noua (p. 5-6), Tibulovca-Veche (p. 6-7), Shargorod (p. 9-15). YVA, 0-11/43. (160 names) (http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/Ancel245.pdf)

Transcriber’s note: These lists are all handwritten and some are particularly difficult to read. Therefore, some of the lists have not been indexed for JewishGen.

Transcriber’s note: Page 1 has a list with 13 names from Cicelnik Jud. (county of) Balta. This is now Chechel‘nyk, Ukraine.

* Note: file refers to the filename given by Hauster to the document that contains the indicated contents; in some cases, Hauster’s file contains several documents, e.g., file 245 described above contains Ancel’s documents 245 through 253.

Additional Transcriber’s Observations and Comments

An additional 16 names of Jews in Romania appear in the documents. These names have been included in the database despite the fact that there is no indication the 16 people were deported.

If you think you may have found a relative in a list, it is suggested you download the original document. Go to http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/17020501Ancel.pdf, find the document of interest, and click to download. Study it to see if there are additional fields of information that were not indexed. Also, study it for context. For example, what is the date of the document? What kind of list is it? One of the lists is of people deported for disobeying the forced labor law. Others are lists of people in Transnistria being considered for repatriation to Romania. In this way, you might get some glimpses into what happened to your relative.

There are several handwritten lists in Ancel 245 that are difficult to read. Only some of these lists have been entered into the database. Researchers may wish to examine the original documents to determine if there is information about family members.

Database

This database consists of 2,420 Romanians from Bucovina and Bessarabia that were deported to Transnistria.

The fields for this database are as follows:

  • PDF page number
  • File number
  • Surname (See Note A below)
  • Given name (See Note A below)
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Profession (See Note B below)
  • Family status (See Note C below)
  • Town
  • Current location
  • Status (See Note D below)
  • Father’s Name
  • Mother’s Name
  • Orphan of (See Note E below)
  • Location where parents died (See Note E below)
  • Comments

Note A (Names)

Names are written in a variety of languages, e.g., you can find Meir and Meer and Meier. All accents in the names were eliminated in this compiled database except for certain letters in Hungarian names where the alphabetization of the name depends on the presence or absence of an accent (for example, Honig and Hönig are separate names because o is a different letter than ö). Mostly, the information given in the lists is name, town, sometimes age and sometimes profession. Only in some lists is the head of family versus member of family specified. In a few lists, the names of orphans’ parents, the names and addresses of orphans’ relatives, whether the person has been vaccinated, and additional information is provided. Thus, for many of the names you may not be able to identify previously unknown relatives with certainty because of lack of detail, but you may get some information about what happened to your known relatives and some hints about who else may have been in the family.

Occasionally two given names are separated by "zis" or "zisa". In Romanian, zis and zisa mean "said". Hence, Samuel zis Shmuel would be Samuel known as (said to be) Shmuel. (Another translation of zis is "nickname".)

Note B (Profession)

In some cases, profession is given in Romanian. A list of professions and their English equivalents is given in the table below.

Romanian English
advocatalawyer (female)
avocatlawyer
avocatalawyer (female)
casnicahousewife
ceasornicarwatchmaer, clockmaker
chelnerwaiter
chimist pharmacist
cismar shoemaker
comerc. (abbreviation for comerciant)trader, merchant
comercianttrader, merchant
cont. (abbreviation for contabil) accountant or bookkeeper
contabil accountant or bookkeeper
contabilaaccountant or bookkeeper (female)
croitortailor
croitoreasaseamstress
dentistdentist
dentista dentist (female)
elev liceuhigh school student
eleva student
frizerbarber
funct. (abbreviation for functionar)civil servant
funct. comerc. (abbreviation for functionar comercial)   commercial worker (in a business)
funct. part. (abbreviation for functionar particular) office worker (private business, not government)
funct office (i.e., person worked in an office)
industrias manufacturer
ing. (abbreviation for inginer) engineer
inginerengineer
lingereasaseamstress
mecanicmechanic
profes.teacher
sofeurdriver, chauffeur
vopsitorpainter

Note C (Family status)

This is the role of the person in the family. The field called family status has two possible entries: head of household (cap familie) or member of family (membru, or membra for a female). The original document is not consistent in using the feminine form for females - often the generic membru was used for males and females alike.

Note D (Status)

In most cases, the entry is "missing" but in a few cases it is "alive in Berezovca" (in Transnistria) or "alive in Vladislavca" (in Transnistria).

Note E (Orphan of)

Ancel file 245 contains this field in the list. Possible entries are mother, father, double. An entry of "orphan of mother" means the mother is deceased, "orphan of double" means both parents are deceased. The next column in this list was chopped off on the right when the document was scanned so that the entries are not complete. However, it is clear that the column gives the place(s) of death of the parent(s). In some cases, one can see "Sarg" or "Sargo" which presumably means Sargorod, the town where the people in the list were held. In another list in Ancel 245 there is a field that is titled "showing if both (parents) are dead". In all cases, this field contains "dead". I entered "both parents are dead".

Acknowledgments

As described in the "Background" section of this Introduction, the material for this database comes from Dr. Jean Ancel’s 12-volume work entitled Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry During the  Holocaust. Edgar Hauster made Ancel’s work available and without his efforts this addition to the JewishGen Holocaust database would not have happened. The database was created by John M. Hoenig, a Professor of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary.

We’d also like to thank Mike Kalt, HTML Volunteer, for placing this description online, and to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects and Coordinator of the Holocaust Database, for his continued devotion and dedication to JewishGen’s important work.

Nolan Altman
Coordinator-Holocaust Database
November, 2021


Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database, the JewishGen Romania Database, and the JewishGen Unified Database.


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