Romanian Partisans?

Greetings.
I have read accounts according to which there was no partisan activity in Romania. However, German sources claim the Danube Delta area to have been unsafe due to bandits, and a Communist-era Romanian source vaunts the contribution given by popular militias to the initial fighting against the Germans. Even taking into account that the latter source will be inflating its claims, I wonder if there isn't something to this issue.
Thank you in advance for any reply.

I do not know of any romanian anti-german partisans. Incidentalcrossing of the Danube by yugoslav partisans is possible .
However, a substantial partizan anti-communist movment was active after the war. ( some groups resisted until 1965!!!)[/b]

We did not have any organised anti-German prtisans groups. Some communist cells in Bucharest tempted an oposition, but it was mainly by manifests (illegal propaganda prints) and other means of influencing the public oppinion (with little success).

The Danube Delta still is full of bandits. The place is a vast wild area (now a national park), with little population. There are (and were) 2 main ethnic groups of Slavs in the Delta: "lipovenii" (Russians) and "haholii" (Ukrainians), the last ones famos for looting, heavy drinking and antisocial behavor. As the land is very hard to survey and controll (almost no roads and a maze of cannals and thick woods), during the War those bad elements were free to extend their illegal activitys in the area. BUT they were NOT fighting against fascism, they were only making a proffit of the situation. They were attacking as small bandit gangs, sometimes looting unguarded transports in the area.

QUOTE

However, a substantial partizan anti-communist movment was active after the war. ( some groups resisted until 1965!!!)[/

It was not quit so substantial, more symbolic. The last one to be captured (in the sixties) was Vasile Motoc (I think) in Bucovina. But he was alone alone. Most of the groups were captured in fifties. See the book "Brazii se frang dar nu se indoiesc" by Gavrila Ogonaru, who was hidden up 1974 after the group in the Fagarasi muntains was captured.

the number of member in this groups varied from a few to 30-40 in some groups. Most of them were commanded by ex-Royal Army officers.
They were not very effective, however, due to poor ( or non-existent) coordination among the groups.
I the Banat Mountains there were many groups active, two of them beeing led by Spiru Blanaru and maj. Domasneanu.

Mr. "Curioso", talking about the anti-comunist gurilla groups reminded me about a widely spread confusion. Due to the well known disinformation in the comunist era (and the many "rearranged" history books before '89) a very unfortunate mistaken identity was promoted.

The true anti-comunist guerilla groups were few and isolated, as "mg 42" said. Those were mainly patriots with noble ideals but little opportunitys and they were hunted down like criminals, thaugh in some cases they weren't even armed.

BUT after WW2 there were also some gangs of true criminals, like ex-German soldiers trapped behind in Romania or Natzi fannatics that formed armed groups in isolated mountain regions. Their goals were far from fighting against comunism (that was only a justification) and more about keeping alive the Nazist ideas and practices. Such groups terrorized for a while the peasants in the naighboring mountain villages and were responsable for many crimes.

Comunist police had every reason to hunt down those crazy fannatics, but the sad part is that the comunist propaganda tried to implement the false idea that ALL the ressistance groups are the same. Fortunatelly they had limited success (with this propaganda) and eventually the truth had surfaced in the last years.

In www.jurnalul.ro in "Editie de colectie" it is some dedicated articles and interviews with/about anti-comunist partisans. One of the movements was located in Dobrogea, but from what i remember was in Constanta county, not in Delta. In Delta in all history was hiden haiduks and thiefs. It was more easy to escape here...

Iama

You should not trust the Communist-era Romanian sources of information when the subject is the civil resistance against the German occupation, or against the Antonescu regime, between late 1940 - August 1944. Excepting few printed pamphlets and few minor industrial sabotages, none of them able to interrupt the industrial activity even locally, there was no resistance of the Romanian population against the regime. The Communists tried to minimize the essential role of the Romanian Army and the Romanian Royal Air Force at 23 August 1944, and invented an alternative Universe where the Romanian Communist Party is doing a lot of wonderful and heroic things. Nice movies, nice try, but sadly wrong...

If there were "bandits" in the Danube Delta, they may infiltrated from Bessarabia after June 22nd, 1941. For some whole weeks, the southern part of Bessarabia remained under Soviet control, after June 22nd, 1941.

There were hundreds of partisans in the Romanian Banat, where there are some wonderful wild mountains, with beautiful forests, water falls and rapids. However, these guys were Serbs, and they crossed Danube secretly, during night, to escape the severe hunts organized by the Germans in the Yugoslavian Banat.

This post has been edited by Florin on January 21, 2005 02:34 am

And why is that action "sadly" wrong? Sadly for whom? for the almost non existant Comunist Party? I would agree with this formula: Nice movies, nice try, but patheticaly wrong....

Cheers

This post has been edited by rcristi on January 21, 2005 03:44 am