Romania's role as sanctuary for Jews, Help for Jews from Hungary/Transylvania

Tens of thousands of Jews from Hungary and Transylvania temporarily occupied by Horthy were helped OFFICIALLY (blank passports provided by the Romanian embassy in Budapest, etc.) and UNOFFICIALLY by Romanian political and religious authorities, as well as by civilians, to cross into what was left of Romania before and during WW2.
A very interesting testimony is provided by the Transylvanian RAOUL SERBAN, who mentions Jewish sources and numbers of Jews finding sanctuary in Romania (2/3 from Transylvania and 1/3 from Hungary). They were helped to cross the artificial border in areas such as Cluj, Turda, etc. Among the Romanian authorities involved in this operation, one name is shining : col. FLORIAN MEDREA, head of Romanian Siguranta (Secret Police) in Alba and Cluj county, who is supposed to have been killed by Gestapo in the Apuseni Mts. area).
The articole mentions lots of sources on the sufferings of the Jewish communities and daring operations to save them, including books written directly in Hungarian.

See this link:
http://www.geocities.com/rsorban/despre_nr_refugiatilor.htm


Col. FLORIAN MEDREA, a former AH officer, was appointed by the CONSILIUL DIRIGENT (Iuliu Maniu), as a captain, with security measures in Alba county during the huge meeting of Romanian delegates at Alba Iulia (1 December 1918) and by early February 1919 was military adviser to Dr. Ioan Suciu, setting up the HORIA VOLUNTEER CORPS (Regiment Beius) that in cooperation with the Romanian Royal 2nd Hunters Division actioned in Apuseni Mts.

I kindly ask the forumites to provide more info on this threads:
1. FLORIAN MEDREA's active role in helping Jews to cross into Romanian Kingdom.
2. Other Romanian personalities doing similar things to help Jews from Hungary and Transylvania.
3. People with access to Wehrmacht archive are kindly requested to provide info on career and picture of WILHELM MULLER, a German N.C.O. residing in Zventendorf, Austria, with Romanian ancerstors, who helped Jews in Transylvania and was executed by the firing squad (he was a lorry driver at the Gestapo HQ in Cluj and carried lots of Jews in secret accross the border). More details in RAOUL SERBAN's testimony on above site. Everyone must honour his memory.

Thank you

This post has been edited by mateias on January 22, 2008 09:12 am

Before August 23, 1944, the German authorities grew more and more concerned and upset because of the Romanian help for the Jewish refugees leaving Hungarian occupied Transylvania. The German official protests did not work, and also they decided that they cannot afford to lose Romania as ally. The Romanian Army was still a partner willing to fight on the frontline, and additional German troops to replace it, and also to occupy Romania as hostile occupied territory, were not available.
So the Germans adapted. I am aware of one way they adapted to the situation (their solutions could be more than one). One well known route of evacuation of Jewish refugees was from Constanta harbor. The German submarines waited in the open sea, in the international waters, and at least in one certain situation, they sunk a vessel with Jews, heading for Palestine.

There was also a passenger aerial line, belonging to a neutral country, with a stop in Bucharest, and next stop in Turkey. Some arrangements for evacuation of Jews and Anti-Fascists were done this way. I am not aware of German attempts to shot down these passenger planes, as they were neutral. Very few information about this is in "In Cadenta Mars / Pana Cand Lumea Tandari Va Fi", 2 books in one volume, by a German author. (Sorry, I don't have the time to translate the title, which is from the Romanian version.) In the book is mentioned that in order to escape, the Jews had to travel on the ground to Bucharest, in order to take the airplanes there.

This post has been edited by Florin on January 27, 2008 05:08 am

In cadenta, mars, pana ce totul tandari va fi (cum am trait epoca nazista 1933 - 1945)

Bernt Engelmann

Cartea Romaneasca Publishing House, Bucharest, 1990

Translated by Gabriel Gafita (the former ambassador to Portugal)



See the link to this site, on the book translated in English (original in German published in 1982-1983)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...n=&pagewanted=2



IN HITLER'S GERMANY: Daily Life in the Third Reich. By Bernt Engelmann. Translated from the German by

Krishna Winston. 335 pages. Pantheon. $21.95.

BERNT ENGELMANN was a schoolboy of 12 when the Nazis came to power in his native Germany. He had been born into a family with strong democratic traditions; he and his mother were planning to move to England in the fall of 1939 (his father had already gone on ahead), but they had waited until it was too late. Instead, he spent the greater part of World War II as a radio operator in the Luftwaffe. In 1944 he was arrested, convicted of ''abetting Jews,'' and sent first to a concentration camp at Flossenburg and then, in March 1945, to Dachau; after he had been liberated, he started out on a successful career as an author and journalist.

''In Hitler's Germany,'' a condensed version of two volumes that came out in Germany in 1982 and 1983


NOTE: Not read the book and I suppose the Romanian episode is based on his experience in the Luftwaffe.

This post has been edited by mateias on January 27, 2008 10:02 am

Source : The War Diary, German Naval Staff, Operations Division. (KTB der SKL) (british-american translation)

26 jan.1944
Marinegruppenkommando Süd reported that the Bulgarian auxiliary sailing vessel MARITZA was stopped on 24 Jan. off Cape Kaliakra by a R-boot and brought to Constanta … that she was not authorized to be in the operational area.
According to an intelligence report, she was taking Jews from Romania to Turkey. On the forenoon of 25 Jan. the Rumanian Fleet Commander notified Marinegruppenkommando Süd that the MARITZA and another ship were expected in Constanta and that orders from Marshal Antonescu to the Rumanian Naval Forces stated that assistance was to be given in evacuating the Jews.
Marinegruppenkommando Süd therefore ordered to Deutsches Marinekommando Konstanza to release the vessel and crew, but at the same time advise the Rumanian Naval Forces and the Bulgarian Naval Command that a ship in the operational area without authority and not notified must inevitably and quite justifiably be seized and might well have been destroyed. This will certainly be the line of action for the future. The conduct of naval operations in the Black Sea rests entirely and solely to the Admiral, Black Sea and the danger to our own vessels and those of our allies makes any different procedure in the declared operational area impossible. Marinegruppenkommando Süd requested a decision on the opportuneness of the moment for the evacuation of Jews from Rumania to Turkey. They are of the opinion that such a movement is not without risks from the political and military standpoint.
(Ge)Naval Staff has submitted this matter to the (Ge)Foreign Office.

4 aug 1944
3 Turkish motor sailing vessels from Rumania with Jewish emigrants on board left Constanta for the Bosphorus escorted by 2 Rumanian submarine chasers.

This post has been edited by Petre on September 06, 2016 08:59 am