June 27, 1941: A pogrom is carried out in Iaşi, Romania.
When war broke out in Europe, Romania was - officially - neutral, until anger over lost territory in 1940 set the stage for a coup that led the rise of a dictatorship under Ion Antonescu. In November of 1940, Romania joined the Axis Powers. Only weeks after consolidating power, Antonescu declared himself “haunted” by the large number of Jews living in Moldavia; following in the footsteps of Nazi Germany, he launched an antisemitic campaign that began with new laws - akin to the Nuremberg Laws - that banned mixed marriages and took away property rights.
Several days after Operation Barbarossa began, Romanian officials in Iaşi accused the Jews living in that area of sabotage and aiding the Soviet enemy. Antonescu himself issued the order to “cleanse” the area of its remaining Jews, and many of the non-Jewish locals ofIaşi responded to the call with zeal, forming mobs and aiding Romanian soldiers and police in their efforts to round up and arrest Jews. At least 4,000 died in the initial pogrom, and thousands more were arrested and forced into trains. The exact death toll is disputed, but the Romanian government later reported their count of just over 13,000 identified victims.
In 1946, fifty-seven people were tried for war crimes in connection with the Iaşi pogrom; of these, twenty-three received life sentences.
Other Links:
A report on the Holocaust in Romania, presented to the Romanian President in 2004.