Iași pogrom

Iași pogrom was an antisemitic pogrom that happened in Romania under the rule of the pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu between 28 and 30 June 1941. The pogrom, which killed 13,266 Jews, was part of the Holocaust in Romania. 



Background

In 1940, Ion Antonescu became the Prime Minister of Romania as an Iron Guard member and began the Holocaust in Romania alongside Adolf Hitler.

 Iron Guard 

The Iron Guard (Romanian: Garda de Fier) was a pro-Nazi militant group founded by Romanian ultranationalist Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. 





Massacre

Aided by Romanian civilians, including recently released Iron Guard members, German and Romanian troops killed 13,266 Jews across Iași between 28 and 30 June 1944. Many Romanian soldiers reportedly believed that all the Jews were communists or Freemasons who deserved their fate. 

A former professor, a priest, and a railroad worker sacrificed when they were shot by Romanian soldiers for trying to save Jews under attack. When shooting the former professor, a Romanian soldier reportedly yelled,

4,300 Jews were deported elsewhere by train; 2,600 of them died on the way.

Aftermath

Odessa massacre

The Holocaust in Romania intensified after the Iași pogrom. Four months later, Romanian troops, also under Ion Antonescu's order, killed as many as 100,000 Jews in Romanian-occupied Odessa, causing Odessa to lose 98.7% of her pre-war Jews. International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Final Report. President of the commission: Elie Wiesel. Edited by Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihail E. Ionescu. Iași: Polirom, 2004.
 Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Second edition. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
 Kruglov, Aleksander, and Kiril Feferman. “Bloody Snow: The Mass Slaughter of Odessa Jews in Berezovka Uezd in the First Half of 1941.” Yad Vashem Studies 47, no. 2 (2019): 15.
 Solonari, Vladimir. A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
 Zipperstein, Steven J. The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794–1881. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985. 

Between 1941 and Ion Antonescu's overthrow in the 23 August coup in 1944 led by King Michael I, as many as 400,000 Romanian Jews were killed, amounting to 52.8% of pre-war Romanian Jews.*

War crimes trials

57 persons were convicted of war crimes for their role in the Iași pogrom. Most were sentenced to life in jail, while some were acquitted in 1997 under the democratic Romanian government.Roni Stauber, Routledge, 2010, Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust, p. 260. Ion Antonescu was executed.

Related pages

 Lviv pogroms
 Odessa massacre
 Jedwabne pogrom
 Szczuczyn pogrom
 Rhineland massacres

Footnotes

References

Category:Pogroms
Category:Massacres
Category:The Holocaust
Category:Antisemitism in Europe