Migration to Romania, 1944-1946

Dear Mimi,

you write that "No one knows exactly how many of the old-time Jewish
residents of Chernivtsi left in 1945-1946 and how many stayed".
Actually, these numbers are available, mostly from two papers based on
the documents in Soviet archives:

Mordechai Altshuler, The Soviet "Transfer" of Jews to Romania, Jews in
Eastern Europe, 1998. No. 2 (36), p.57 (in English)
and
Mikhail Mitsel, Resettlement of Northern Bukovina Jews to Romania,
Zametki po evreiskoi istorii, 2004, No. 44 (in Russian,
http://berkovich-zametki.com/Nomer44/Mitsel1.htm)

According to the documents, by July of 1944 there were 52,570 Jews in
the Chernovtsy region. In 1944-1946 22,307 left for Romania (7,133
men, 10,072 women, 5,102 children).

Of those who applied for a permission to leave, 42 were denied for
lack of documents confirming Romanian citizenship prior to June 28,
1940, and 1,044 withdrew their applications and were granted Soviet
citizenship. If all the numbers are correct, about 30,000 Jews in
Chernovtsy region did not try to leave.

Copies of the documents are available at
http://berkovich-zametki.com/Nomer44/Mitsel2.htm

Best,
Iosif

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Miriam Taylor <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu> wrote:
> Serah,
>
> No one knows exactly how many of the old-time Jewish residents
> of Chernivtsi left in 1945-1946 and how many stayed,
> but there is no question that the majority left.
> Before WW2, half of the population of Czernowitz was Jewish,
> about 50 000 people.
> After the war, I estimate that this number was reduced to
> about 30 000. Of these, many left illegally in 1944 and 1945.
> 12 000 left in the summer of 1945 and a somewhat smaller number
> in 1946.
> Of the old-time Czernowitzers, I estimate that at the most 10 000
> remained there during the Soviet period. Jews from other areas
> of the Soviet empire moved to Czernowitz.
> The new Czernowitzer Jews had a different cultural background.
>
> Gerhard Schreiber, is right about the lack of freedom and security,
> Jews faced under Soviet rule and the reasons why most
> of the old-time Czernowitzers left the "Communist paradise".
> I imagine that those who stayed had good reasons for doing so.
> What I object to, are your assertions that life under the Soviets
> was not so bad and that the old Czernowitzers lacked resilience.
>
> I am sure, that growing up in Czernowitz during Soviet times,
> you still heard German, we old Czernowitzers very stubbornly
> keep on speaking German. Even though German stopped being
> the official language of Czernowitz 19 years before I was born,
> with old-time Czernowitzers, I still speak German.
> Not only do we speak German, but our frame of reference
> includes both German and Jewish-German poets, authors and publicists.
> It is safe to say that of the Jewish authors of the second half of the 19th
> century
> and the first half of the 20th, most wrote in German; Jakob Wasserman
> Franz Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig, Arnold Zweig, Franz Kafka,
> Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Walter Benjamin, Kurt Tucholski. Else Lasker-Schuler.
>
> Bruce Reisch, our long suffering moderator (to the immoderate),
> has already addressed the reason for the scarcity of materials
> about the soviet period on the EHPES site, no need for me to say more.
>
> Mimi

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Received on 2013-02-04 01:18:33