The Death Camp in Peciora

According to the Soviet census, about 60 Jews lived in Peciora in 1939.

Peciora has been called the “death camp” by survivors due to the conditions here and the numerous executions carried out by German military units. On July 23rd, 1941, the German army occupied Peciora, and in September 1941 the town came under Romanian administration. Romanian authorities have set up a camp in the former summer residence of the Potocki family, which consists of two residential buildings – each with three floors, a cellar, stables, and other adjacent buildings. All of this had been damaged by fighting in the area. Therefore, the rooms no longer had doors, and the windows were missing. Outside, the camp was surrounded by three rows of barbed wire.

The existing data indicate that between November and December 1941 two large transports of Jews took place, 3,005 Jews being brought here from Tulcin. Subsequently, transports from Moghilev also took place. Thus, in September and November 1942, 3,000 Jews were transferred here, of whom 600 were Ukrainian Jews.

Created for the decongestion of overcrowded ghettos, the Peciora camp received people with limited material possibilities, who could not “buy” the indulgence of the Romanian authorities, or those whose chances of survival were minimal. The latter aspect was obvious for both the authorities and the survivors or relatives of those who died here. In the opinion of General Iliescu, an inspector of gendarmes from Transnistria, they would have died anyway. Therefore, they were sent “to the Peciora camp” which had been “specially created for this purpose”. A survivor of the deportations to Transnistria mentioned in an interview that when his mother could no longer walk, she was sent to Peciora, where she died.

The camp was an extermination one from the beginning, and starvation was one of the means used to achieve this goal. Due to hunger, many of the deportees ended up eating roots, branches, and human excrements. Survivors also mentioned the existence of cases of cannibalism, deportees who ate parts of the bodies of the dead. The typhus epidemic also claimed many lives. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1943, about 3,000 Jews died in this death camp.

In addition to starvation to death, the Jews of Peciora were shot by SS troops. Under the pretext that they were to be sent to work, the Jews were taken out of the camp and murdered. On October 16th, 1942, Hans Rucker, the German commander of a labor camp, asked the Romanian authorities to hand over girls between the ages of 16 and 20 to work as nurses in a German hospital. 150 young Jewish girls were taken from the Peciora camp and taken to the forest between Bar and Vijnița, where they were first raped and then shot. Other executions took place on November 30th, 1942, and November 10th, 1943. At that time, 500 and 600 Jews, respectively, were killed by the Germans. At the same time, another 100 Jews were handed over to the Germans on August 3rd, 1943, most likely being killed. Romanian soldiers were also involved in the assassinations. In documents published after 1945, the case of two Jews who wanted to buy cherries is mentioned. Surprised by the Romanian soldiers guarding the camp, they were shot. All those who tried to escape from the camp, if captured, were beaten to death.

The existing data mention that on April 1st, 1942, there were 3,591 Jews in the Peciora camp, and in March 1943 their number was 1,200, so that in November 1943 there were 535 more Jewish interns here. Those imprisoned here received permission to receive aid only 18 months after the creation of the camp. The Romanian authorities feared that in the absence of help given to them, the diseases that were wreaking havoc among them could spread to Romanian soldiers. A kitchen was set up in the camp, where 1,600 deportees ate daily.

Peciora was occupied in March 1944 by the Red Army troops, when the camp was decommissioned, and the Jewish interns, who were still there, were released.

Radu Ioanid, Holocaustul în România [The Holocaust in Romania], ediția a II-a, București, Editura Hasefer, 2006, pp. 282, 318-319. 

Ovidiu Creangă, Peciora, in Geoffrey P. Megargee (general editor), Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018, pp. 742-743. 

Matatias Carp, The Black Book. The Sufferings of the Jews from Romania 1940-1944. Transnistria, vol. III, Bucharest, "DACIA TRAIANA" NATIONAL PUBLISHING AND GRAPHIC ARTS SOCIETY , 1947, pp. 336-341, passim.

Cosmina Gușu, Interviu cu Silviu Oișovici [Interview with Silviu Oișovici], accessible online at http://www.inshr-ew.ro/silviu-oisovici-interviu/