The Jews in Dorohoi during the Holocaust

An important commercial centre, Dorohoi has been an attraction for Jews since the 15th century. However, the oldest documentary evidence about the presence of Jews here dates from the 17th century, a time period for which several tombstones were discovered. In the following period, some of the Jews who came to Moldova settled in Dorohoi, at that time an urban center in commercial relations with Poland. Their number increased in the following centuries, reaching from 1,133 in 1831 to 3,031 in 1859, which represented half of the city’s population, and 6,903 in 1899, respectively, a number that corresponded to 54% of the city’s inhabitants. For the interwar period, the data records a decrease in the Jewish population, being mentioned, in 1930, 5,820 Jews, i.e. a percentage of 36.6% of the Dorohoi inhabitants. The effervescent religious life led to the opening of a synagogue as early as 1824. Towards the end of the 19th century, the first Zionist organizations appeared in the city, and organizations were opened to help poor or elderly Jews, such as a home for the elderly or a community canteen (1894). The occupations of the Jews were mainly in the field of trade. The number of synagogues in the interwar period was 21.

Like other cities in Moldova, in the context of the peasant uprising of 1907, the Jews of Dorohoi were victims of violent actions, and several attacks were recorded against the local community.

During World War II, violent anti-Jewish actions emerged as early as 1940, quickly turning into a pogrom. The aggressors came from the Romanian military, which was retreating after the Soviet ultimatum. The inability to defend the territory and the need to find “scapegoats” for the non-combat attitude of June 1940 led them to take revenge against their own Jewish comrades and an unarmed civilian population. At the same time, rumours of Jewish attacks on retreating units became pervasive.

It all started with an event in Herța, during which the artillery captain Boroș was shot. The Jewish soldier Iancu Solomon sat down “on his own initiative, in front of the captain, to protect him”. Both died in the attack. Their dead bodies were brought to Dorohoi to be buried, and Iancu was to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. The religious service was an opportunity to inflict violence on Jews, and the presence of a company of Jewish soldiers gained in the eyes of the Romanian military the indisputable proof of a Jewish conspiracy: “The 8th Artillery Regiment from the locality sent to the Jewish cemetery a company of Jewish soldiers, together with the platoon leader T. R. Emil Bercovici (student), to give the honours. Under the pretext that the Jews who came to the funeral had gathered at the cemetery to plot, several officers and soldiers of the 3rd Border Guard Regiment, who were just leaving the city […] entered the cemetery, they captured the company of Jewish soldiers just as they were finishing their mission and were leaving, ordered them to undress, placed them on the cemetery fence, and fired. Only three escaped. […] The platoon leader T. R., Bercovici, after being shot, was annexed to a machine gun, and witnesses were called to show that the Jew fired at the Romanian army”.

After the execution of the Jewish soldiers, the Romanian soldiers aimed their shots at the Jewish civilians in the cemetery who, at the sound of gunfire, hid among the graves. A manhunt began, in which some of the Jews who took refuge in the cemetery and those who were in the city were killed. All these summary executions were accompanied by other violence, robberies, and even rapes. 53 Jews were killed in Dorohoi on that bloody day.

Violence against Jews continued in the following years. On June 22nd, 1941, community leaders and about 200 people suspected of communist sympathies were arrested; all being interned in the camps in Târgu Jiu and Craiova. Those left in the city were required to wear the “yellow star”. As a result of the internment orders of Jewish men aged between 16 and 60 from rural localities, located between Prut and Nistru, in the camps from Târgu Jiu and Craiova, women, the elderly and children from Săveni, Darabani, Mihăileni, and Rădăuți were brought to the city. The Jews displaced in Dorohoi were accommodated in various places in the city, such as synagogues, schools, hospitals, and old people’s homes, all belonging to the Jewish community. At the same time, traffic restrictions were imposed on them, as they could leave their homes for only one hour, between 8 and 9 in the morning.

A few months later, in November 1941, the deportation of Dorohoi Jews began, with 9,367 Jews sent to Transnistria. Deportations also took place in June 1942. Prior to deportation, Dorohoi Jews were subjected to body searches, being deprived of property, and forced to exchange their money for RKKS, the Transnistrian currency, which was worthless. Their transport was done in cattle wagons, overcrowded, without food and water. To quench their thirst, they were told to drink their own urine. The itinerary was long and exhausting. Originally from Dorohoi, Meier Moscovici sent a postcard to friends in Bucharest depicting the living conditions in the Șargorod ghetto, Transnistria: “We live in the greatest misery, we are left naked and we have to put our head-on, we lost on the way all the things. (…) The prices are v.[ery] high, a bread, costs 30 rubles, that is 1200 lei. (…) so we ask the relatives who are able to give us help so that we do not starve to death, in Romanian money. (…) ”. In that place, several thousand Jews died of typhus, being thrown into a mass grave.

Of the 9,862 Jews sent to Transnistria, 3,800 died there. The repatriation of Dorohoi Jews began in late December 1943.

 

Marius Mircu, Pogromurile din Bucovina și Dorohoi [The pogroms in Bukovina and Dorohoi], București, Editura Glob, 1945,  pp. 113-120.

Comisia Internațională pentru Studierea Holocaustului în România [International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania], Raport Final [Final Report], Iași, Polirom, 2004, pp. 83-85.

Ovidiu Creangă, Dorohoi, în Geoffrey P. Megargee (general editor), Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018, pp. 673-673.

Carol Iancu, Dorohoi, accesibil la adresa https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dorohoi 

Ana Bărbulescu, Dorohoi, accessible online at http://www.inshr-ew.ro/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Dorohoi.pdf 

Cosmina Gușu, Simon Meer: interview [Simon Meer: Interview], accessible online at https://www.inshr-ew.ro/simon-meer-interviu/ 

Scrisori din Transnistria - scrisoarea lui Meier Moscovici [Letters from Transnistria - Meier Moscovici's letter], accessible online at http://www.inshr-ew.ro/scrisori-din-transnistria/