This is a book summary for Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940-1944 by Dallas Michelbacher.
As in much of Europe during the 1930’s, anti-Semitism had become a powerful force in Romanian politics in the years leading up to WW2. Romanian leaders openly called for the expulsion of Jews from everyday life and expressed a desire to remove Jews from the country entirely. One of the major anti-Semitic policies in those years was the conscription of Jews into forced labor brigades. This policy was driven by 2 major purposes:
- Ideological: Jews were considered by the Romanian leadership (during these years Romania was led by dictator Ion Antonescu) to be an ‘unreliable’ element. In particular, they were accused of supporting communism. Therefore they were to be removed from military service and restricted in their role in everyday Romanian life.
- Economic: Since Jews had been banned from military service, and increasingly discriminated against even in regular employment -> the forced labor program was in place to ensure the Jews were still making a contribution to the Romanian economy and war effort through their labor.
Jews in Romania were required to register with their local military recruitment centers, where they would be assigned to work brigades and called up for work during a work term that might start around May and finish near the end of the year around December. Work would typically consist of some of the following:
- Road construction
- Railroad construction
- Timber production
- Quarrying
- Agricultural Work
- Engineering projects (airfields, shooting ranges, fortifications, canals)
From the beginning, the forced labor program was constrained by the needs of the rest of the Romanian economy, where many Jews played important roles as skilled workers in their day-to-day jobs and weren’t easily replaced in those roles. Therefore a system of “exemptions” was maintained whereby some Jews would be eligible for exemption, however such exemptions were usually accompanied by confiscatory taxes. In theory the exemptions were meant only to apply to Jews who were irreplaceable in their current roles. However in practice this process gave significant opportunity for corruption, as the administrators of this program could (and did – to a large extent) extract bribes from Jews who attempted to obtain these exemptions.
For those Jews unable to afford such exemptions, they were duly entered into the forced labor brigades. Approximately 75,000 Jews participated in this forced labor regime over the course of the years in question. According to the author, testimonies and memoirs reflect diverse experiences -> although almost all described the work as exhausting and often dangerous, their recollections about their treatment by Romanian officer and soldiers varied. The attitude of the soldiers and officers responsible for a given brigade could either dramatically worsen, or in some cases help to mitigate the basic cruelty and hardship of the program.
The author includes a variety of first-hand accounts from Jews who were caught up in the program, and the details of its administration. Below is an example of the work program for May to July 1943 for Jews in work Battalion 3, which was responsible for building a highway between Cornesti and Chisnau:
- 4:30am : Wake Up
- 4:30am – 4:50am : Bathe and dress
- 4:50am – 5:15am : Clean quarters and prepare tea
- 5:15am – 5:30am : Tea
- 5:30am – 6:00am : March to work site
- 6:00am – 12:00pm : Work
- 12:00pm – 12:30pm : Lunch
- 12:30pm – 2:00pm : Break
- 2:00pm – 7:00pm : Work
- 7:00pm – 7:30pm : March back to quarters
- 7:30pm – 8:30pm : Dinner and evening roll call
- 8:30pm – 9:00pm : Clean clothes, inspection of quarters
- 9:00pm : Lights Out
Although regimes were strict, one did not get the impression that the purpose of the camps were to work their laborers to death. And although desertion could be punishable by death for much of the period in question, the author reports that there was not much evidence of such executions being carried out in any large scale. Punishments seemed to consist of corporal punishments (such as 25 lashes), denial of food (such as denying dinner to the entire work brigade if one member failed to meet his quota), or deportation of the worker and his close family to Transnistria (where conditions were awful – and such a deportation could in fact be a de-facto death sentence).
The forced labor program as a whole was characterized by poor co-ordination and organization. Workers often had a lack of adequate food, shelter, clothing (particularly warm winter clothing), bathing facilities or equipment needed for the work that was to be performed. The result was low morale, high desertions, and an overall low output and productivity. Several rounds of reforms were attempted by the Romanian Military (which generally oversaw the forced labor program), however such reforms had limited success.
Romanian Forced Work in the context of the Holocaust
Romania participated extensively in the genocide of Jews, particularly those outside of the “Old Kingdom” which is a certain geographic area in Romania. This included pogroms, such as the Iasi pogrom where more than 13,000 Jews were estimated murdered, and shipping Jews to far off regions on inadequately provisioned ‘death trains’ where thousands died. They made use of ghettoes and poorly supplied camps such as those in Transnistria where they forcibly deported Jews and largely left them there to die.
According to the Wiesel Commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered or died in various forms on Romanian soil, in the war zones of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and in the occupied Soviet territories under Romania’s control (Transnistria Governate).
Keeping the above context in mind, it was notable that Romanian leader Ion Antonescu ultimately refused to participate in the Nazi “Final Solution”. Shortly after the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Nazi government began pressuring Romania to participate in their proposed “solution”. The Nazi’s did receive a letter from the foreign minister of Romania in July 1942 confirming the intent of Romania to commence with the deportation of Jews according to the German plan. As a result of this confirmation, Adolf Eichmann (one of the primary organizers of the Holocaust) had a conference with the German railway in September 1942 whereby they planned one transport of 2,000 Jews in fifty freight cars to depart Romania every forty-eight hours, to be sent primarily to the extermination facilities at Belzec. Almost the entire Jewish population of Romania, including the forced laborers, and the nearly 280,000 Jews from the Romanian Old Kingdom, were intended to be deported (and murdered at Belzec) in this manner.
Despite the initial agreement to co-operate that had been expressed in July, in October 1942 foreign minister Mihai Antonescu announced that the deportations to Transnistria and cooperation with the German deportation plans were “postponed” indefinitely. The author speculates that by this point in 1942, Ion Antonescu had lost faith in an eventual Axis victory in the war. This came with a realization by Romanian leadership that Romania may ultimately be held to account for its treatment of the Jews. Because Romania still held nominal independence from Germany, they had sufficient political independence to make such a decision. From this point forward, Antonescu adopted a more conciliatory stance towards the Jewish community. The preferred Jewish policy from this point forward was for emigration of Jews to Palestine. However given strict limits on immigration to Palestine enforced by the British authorities, the potential scope of such emigrations at that time was still limited.
Further Reading
- Wolf Gruner: Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims
- Ulrich Herbert: Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Labor in Germany