In the morning of our first day in Jassy, Dr. Caufman, the president of the community, took us to the new Jewish cemetery.
“At one time all the area around here belonged to the Jewish community,” Dr. Caufman remarked as we were approaching the cemetery. “In these fields here, almost a hundred years ago, some of the settlers who established Zikhron Yaakov and Rosh Pina received their agricultural training.”
The pre-Herzlian Yishuv Eretz Yisrael movement for the colonization of Palestine, which developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, was very strong in Rumania. Rumanian Jews founded Zikhron Yaakov, originally called Zammarin, and Rosh Pina, two of the earliest modern Jewish agricultural settlements in the Land of Israel.
Through a gate which bore the inscription, “Beth Mo’ed Lekhol Hai” we entered the cemetery and passing through a large chapel we came to the site of the graves. The cemetery was opened in 1881.
As I walked along the paths between the various sections, my attention was drawn to a large tomb which bore the name: Moritz Wachtel. Later I learned that this man had been a well-known banker. He was active in the Zionist movement and contributed greatly to Zionist causes.
We stopped for several minutes at a section which was the last resting place of Jewish soldiers who died in World War I. Then we continued to the mass graves of the victims of the June pogrom of 1941.
The pogrom began on Saturday, June 28. For several days before that—the first week of the German invasion of Russia in which Rumania participated—anti-Jewish incitement had been in full swing. The Jews were accused of having signaled to Russian planes which were bombing the city and there were attacks on Jews and Jewish property.
Saturday morning soldiers searched and looted Jewish homes. Several Jews were killed.
Throughout the following night German and Rumanian soldiers pillaged Jewish homes, wounding and killing inhabitants.
Early in the next morning German and Rumanian patrols, aided by the mob, began rounding up Jews and taking them to the police headquarters. On the way many of these Jews were beaten and killed by soldiers and bystanders.
At eleven o’clock in the morning about 200 of those arrested were given slips on which was written “free” and were released. This misled many Jews who were still free. They emerged from hiding and went voluntarily to the police headquarters in the hope that they would be given such a slip which would make them immune from arrest.
However, more and more Jews were rounded up and taken to the police headquarters, among them such that had been released earlier.
About three o’clock in the afternoon German and Rumanian soldiers opened fire on t he Jews concentrated in the courtyard of the police headquarters and from the roofs, windows and balconies of nearby houses. Thousands were killed.
In the evening 2500 Jews who had survived the massacre in the police headquarters were brought to the railway station and pressed into 35 carriages of a freight train which normally could accommodate only a part of this multitude.
Some time later another 1900 Jews were brought to the station and locked into 18 carriages of another train. Both trains left the city for towns in the area. The first train travelled with its human cargo for several days. The other travelled only eight hours. 2700 of the 4400 Jews perished on the trains.
In Jassy proper the killings continued for some time. Later the streets were cleansed of the blood and the bodies. The victims were buried. Most of them were thrown into mass graves in the new Jewish cemetery.
“Several days before the pogrom, the Jews were forced to dig large pits in the Jewish cemetery. At that time we did not know what they were for,” Dr. Caufman told us.
It has been estimated that 12,000 Jews were killed in that pogrom.
Dr. Caufman himself lost three brothers and two brothers-in-law. How did Dr. Caufman survive? He served for many years as pharmacist in a Jassy hospital. Early in the war he was dismissed from his post because of his Jewishness. He found employment with a local pharmacy. The owner happened to hold a high position in the Rumanian army. During the pogrom he hid Dr. Caufman and other Jews.
Near the mass graves in the cemetery a monument to the victims was erected by the Federation of Jewish communities.
There are also two memorials in the city, one in Synagogue Street opposite the “Great Synagogue,” and another on the grounds of what was formerly the Jewish Hospital.
There used to be displayed in each synagogue in Jassy memorial prayers with lists of members of the synagogue killed in the pogrom. During our visits to the synagogues in the city such lists were still visible. We also saw there lamps dedicated to martyrs of the pogrom donated by members of their families.
After we visited the mass graves we walked to another section where we saw the Ohel of Rabbi Mehachem Nachum Friedmann, the Rebbe of Stefanesti, and the graves of Rabbi Aaron Moshe Taubes and his son Shmuel Shmelka, who were both rabbis in Jassy in the nineteenth century. The three rabbinical personalities mentioned were all originally buried in the old cemetery. Their remains were reinterred in the new cemetery when the old one was destroyed during World War II by order of the anti-semitic municipality.
By Tovia Preschel
Jewish Press
December 8, 1978