‘Please leave me my son if you are taking my husband’… Son and husband were both taken and killed.”-- Cecilia Steirman, a Yassi survivor

The killing of Romanian Jews began in June of 1940 following the retreat of the Romanian Army from territories adjacent to the Soviet Union. The military, the civil administration, and the infamous Iron Guard enthusiastically consented to the extermination policy, as a result of conditions in Romania that had thrived for centuries. Close to 450 Jews were killed in the June 1940 massacres in the towns of Galati and Dorohoi.

The city of Yassi (Iasi) had been entrenched in antisemitism for a century. Yassi embodied Romanian anti-Semitism as Vienna exemplified Nazi doctrine[1]. Official and popular propaganda in Yassi combined to depict a struggle against World Jewry, painting Romanian Jews as enemies, aliens, Bolshevik agents and parasites of the Romanian nation.

On the eve of World War II, 50,000 of Yassi’s 100,000 inhabitants were Jews. At sundown on June 28, 1941, the Yassi sky was set ablaze by a rocket, a signal of the upcoming slaughter. The following day, “The Sunday that Was,” Duminica Aceia, became known as the bloodiest day in the history of Romanian Jewry. The Yassi Jews were forcibly assembled at police headquarters and randomly fired upon.

The army, the Gendarmes and the Iron Guard thugs fired mercilessly on an amorphous mass of people, who had been beaten, shot and smothered by corpses. Their shrieks and wails had had little effect on those who had ordered and committed the crime and on those who had looked on impassively.

By the number of its victims, by the bestiality of the means used to torture and kill, by the vast scope of pillaging and destruction, by the participation of the agents of public authorities […] the Yassi massacre marked the crowning of an accursed, injurious effort which violated the Romanian conscience for a period of three quarters of a century.[2]

Thus, the most tragic chapter in world history began. Within twenty-four hours, a proud, creative and culturally rich Jewish community was destroyed. Of the 50,000 Jews that lived in Yassi, an estimated 10,000-12,000 were murdered. An additional 2,400-2,600 Yassi Jews were crammed into thirty and thirty-nine cattle cars. The cars were set to transport freight and had no windows. With bayonets and rifle butts, the captors pushed between 80– 200 Jews into each car. Many of the people began their journey already gravely wounded. The guards nailed slots over the small ventilation shutters. Breathing became increasingly difficult as the hours passed. The military authorities proudly decorated the cars with signs: Communist Jews, killers of Romanian and German soldiers.

The trains left Yassi on Monday, June 30, under the guard of a police detachment. They arrived at Tîrgu-Frumos after seventeen hours. The guard had forbidden anyone to open the doors to air out the cars and refused to provide anything to drink. Many of the passengers went mad and died. As the trains stopped at designated stations, the cars baked in the sun, serving as ovens for their human cargo.

The “death train” captives traveled five hundred kilometers in six and a half days of squalid conditions and unbearable heat. Most of the time there was no water. The train yielded ten corpses at Marasesti, 650 at Tîrgu-Frumos, 327 at Miresti, 300 at Sardani, 53 at Roman, 40 at Inotesti and 25 at Cãlãrasi. A second train had also left on June 30 that contained 1, 902 Jews in eighteen cattle cars. Upon arrival at Podu Iloaie, 1,194 had died and were buried at a local cemetery. The 708 survivors were locked up in a synagogue.

The total number of victims in the Yassi pogrom and its aftermath was never determined. Some sources estimate that the figure was close to 13,466, including 180 children and 40 women. Zakor! Remember! Itgadal V’Itkadash!