On June 22, 1941, when Romania entered World War II on the side of the Axis, Tobescu was recalled to active duty. His responsibilities were focused on the execution - as one of the principal executors - of Antonescu's racial purity policies: deportation to Transnistria of 25 000 of Romanian Romani people (11 000 deaths, most of them children), massacres (1941 Odessa massacre), concentration camps for members of the Romanian Jewish community, etc. For example, in October 1941, the Romanian authorities established a detention camp in Vapniarka. One thousand Jews were brought to the site that month, mostly from the city of Odessa. Some two hundred died in a typhus epidemic; the others were taken out of the camp in two batches, guarded by soldiers of the Romanian Gendarmerie, and shot to death.