page_title: Fântâna Albă massacre
section_title: Aftermath and larger context
hierarchical_section_title: Fântâna Albă massacre / Aftermath and larger context
caption_attribution_description: English: Minister delegate Dan Stoenescu commemorating the Massacre of Fântâna Albă, Northern Bukovina (Ukraine)
context_page_description: The Fântâna Albă massacre took place on April 1, 1941, in Northern Bukovina when between 44 and 3,000 civilians were killed when their attempt to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania, near the village of Fântâna Albă, now in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine, was met with open fire by the Soviet Border Troops. Although according to the Soviet official report no more than 44 civilians were killed, local witnesses assert a much higher toll, claiming that survivors were tortured, killed, or buried in mass graves. Other survivors were allegedly taken away to be tortured and killed at the hands of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Some sources refer to this massacre as "The Romanian Katyn."
context_section_description: During 1940–1941, between 12,000 and 13,000 Bukovinians (mostly, but not only ethnic Romanians) were deported to Siberia and the Gulag. As a result of immigration, deportations and killings, the Romanian population of Chernivtsi region dropped by more than 75,000 between the Romanian 1930 census and the first Soviet census of 1959. It has been claimed that these persecutions were part of a program of deliberate extermination, planned and executed by the Soviet regime.
  On April 1, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the massacre, a ceremony was held in Fântâna Albă, with the participation of the governor of Chernivtsi Oblast, the abbot of Putna Monastery, and several Romanian officials, including Dan Stoenescu and Viorel Badea. In an interview, Stoenescu stated that "this tragedy of the Romanian people was followed by other retaliations as the one in 1941 when other thousands of Romanians of Bukovina, many of them being the relatives of the victims of Fântâna Albă massacre, were taken away from their houses and deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan."
caption: Minister delegate Dan Stoenescu commemorating the Fântâna Albă massacre in 2016
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 CE", "Image DateTime": "2016:04:04 16:57:39", "Image ExifOffset": "2178", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "524", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "393", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}