Romania: the pogrom of Iași, one of the worst massacres of Jews of the Second World War

Published on: 03/25/2022 – 13:24 During the Second World War, it was in Eastern Europe, in Romania, in the city of Iași, that one of the most terrible massacres of the conflict took place . Arrested, martyred, shot, for the sole reason that they were Jews, they are a tenth of the population of the city to have perished in this pogrom. Return to Iași where the far right and Holocaust denial are progressing spectacularly. A report by Nadia Blétry and Thierry Trelluyer. Six million Jews exterminated across Europe. This is the terrible toll of the Holocaust. Many massacres occurred in Eastern Europe: in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary… and Romania. It is estimated that up to 380,000 Jews were killed there, most of them by the police, under the orders of the dictator Ion Antonescu, but also sometimes with the help of the local population, as during the pogrom of Iași, one of the the most violent episodes of these massacres. Summer 1941. Romania, an ally of the Third Reich, has just sent its army to neighboring Moldavia, occupied by Soviet troops. In retaliation, the city of Iași, very close to the border, is bombarded. The fascist and anti-Semitic movements are powerful there and the Jewish population of the city is immediately targeted, accused of espionage by the Soviets. The police and the army launch the attack, joined by residents. Many Jews are shot in the streets or at the city police station. Others are crammed into death trains in appalling conditions. Many will die there of hunger, thirst or asphyxiation. More than 13,000 people were thus massacred in a few days, i.e. a tenth of the population of Iași. >> To read also: 80 years after the terrifying pogrom of Iași, Romania is confronting its anti-Semitic past But apart from historians, these facts are largely ignored today by the Romanian population. A law on teaching the Holocaust in schools has just been passed, but it has not yet been applied. At the same time, the extreme right is gaining ground in the country and some do not hide their nostalgia for a “Greater Romania”, that of the interwar period… Drone cameraman: Octavian Coman.