King Carol II of Romania

Mihai Ghimpu, Acting President of Moldova

Romanian cavalry moving towards the front in Bessarabia

King Mihai I and General Ion Antonescu, Bessarabia, July 1841

German armor in Rumania, 1940

   This week, seventy years ago, the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was admitted into the U.S.S.R.

The Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was pieced together from parts of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and parts of the former Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

During World War I, the Kingdom of Romania, like the U.S.A., entered the conflict, late, on the side of the Allies.  Consequently, the Treaty of St. Germain, which, with the treaty of Trianon, dismembered the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, awarded Romania the Austrian province of Bukovina. Bukovina had been a part of the Austrian Empire for 150 years. It is located on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains. At the beginning of World War I, it had a population of 800,000 of which 38.88 percent were Ukrainian, 34.38 percent were Romanian, 21.24 percent were German, 12.86 percent were Jews, and 4.55 percent were Polish. However, the concentration of Ukrainians was greater in the northern part.

Bessarabia was a part of the Principality of Moldavia, which, in the Middle Ages was ruled by the Ottoman Turks. Bessarabia was ceded to the Russian Empire following the Turkish defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-12, pursuant to the Treaty of Bucharest. It is bounded by the Dniester River on the north and east and the Prut River on the west. In the south, it is bounded by the Black Sea and the Danube River. Its capital was Chisinau, which today serves as the capital of Moldova and has a population of 600,000.

Upon the conclusion of World War I,  with the break up of the Russian Empire, Bessarabia had declared instant independence, and after three months, united with the Kingdom of Romania. This was never recognized by the Soviet Union, and the return of Bessarabia was addressed in one of the secret provisions of the Nazi-Soviet Pact executed in August 1939. 

On June 26, 1940, at 10:00 P.M. the Soviets delivered an ultimatum to Gheorghe Davidescu the Romanian ambassador, demanding immediate cessation/annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The note emphasized that, “...the military weakness of the U.S.S.R. is a thing of the past, and the international situation requires the rapid solution of the items inherited from the past, in order to fix the bases of a solid peace between the countries....” While the Germans were not surprised by, and had expected, the Soviet demand for Bessarabia, they were surprised by the demand for Northern Bukovina, since it had never been a part of the old Russian Empire, nor a part of the secret protocol of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Soviets explained their demand for Northern Bukovina as, “...reparation for the great loss produced to the Soviet Union and Bessarabia’s population by twenty-two years of Romanian domination of Bessarabia.”

Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia contained 20,000 square miles and 3,750,000 inhabitants, of which half were Romanians.

Having lost its French ally, and with Great Britain already having demonstrated its unwillingness to go to war with the U.S.S.R., over Poland, Romania could only look to the Reich, which, on June 27, advised it to accede to the Soviet demands. The Germans could not afford to lose their main source of oil, from the oilfields in Ploiesti, Romania, nor were they prepared, at that moment, for war with the U.S.S.R. 

The evacuation occurred between June 28 and July 3, 1940. Even though the transfer was supposed to be peaceful, the Armata Româna reported casualties of 42, 876 soldiers and 356 officers dead or missing. These resulted from attacks by the quickly moving Red Army and overly enthusiastic Ukrainian civilians. Since the Soviets had only given the Romanians a few hours to withdraw, there was significant overlap, and quite often, when Soviet soldiers encountered Romanian soldiers, the Soviets opened fire. 

While grabbing, the Soviets also grabbed another small slice of Romanian territory - the Hertza Region. At that time, this area had a population of 25,000, more than 90 percent of whom were Romanian. It became, and remains, a part of the Ukraine.

In 1924, the Soviet government had created the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, on the Dneister River, within the Ukraine. It had a population of 545,500, of which 45.5  percent were Ukrainians, 31.6 percent were Romanians, 9.7 percent were Russians and 7.8 percent were Jews. After the occupation of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza Region, the Soviet government combined the major part of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and part of the former MASSR to form the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. That portion of Bessarabia bordering the Black Sea and the Hertza Region were incorporated into the Ukraine.

From September through November, pursuant to an agreement between Germany and the U.S.S.R., 93,000 Germans from the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic were resettled. Many were resettled into the territory recently “acquired,” by the Reich, from Poland. The parents of the former German President, Horst Köhler (who resigned May 31, 2010), were among those resettled in that area, where the future German president was born.

The anger of Romanians over the loss of this territory, and half of Transylvania to Hungary pursuant to the Second Vienna Award, and the southern part of Dobruja to Bulgaria, pursuant to the Treaty of Craiova, caused King Carol II (a great-grandson of Queen Victoria) to abdicate in favor of his 18-year-old son Mihai. This ultimately resulted in the dictatorship of General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu - the Conducator (Leader) of Romania. King Mihai and Tzar Simeon II of Bulgaria, who ascended the throne at age six, in 1943, are the last surviving World War II monarchs.

The Soviet Union had given the German Reich another ally, which, like Finland, was eager to recover lost territory. On November 23, 1940, the Kingdom of Romania joined the Axis Powers by executing the Tripartite Pact.  The Conducator was informed, on June 6, 1941, that the German Reich and its Slovakian ally would invade the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. 

On July 2, 1941, the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies, under the command of, respectively, Lt. Generals Petre Dumitrescu and Nicolae Ciuperca, totaling 325,685 soldiers joined in Operation München, against the Soviet Union, to recover the lost territories. Two hundred planes of the Aeronautica Regala Româna were also committed.  These areas were reintegrated into the Romanian kingdom on July 25, 1941.

Upon the recovery of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza Region, the Romanians were ecstatic and most wanted to stop there. However, the Conducator realized that, unless the Axis won the war, and destroyed Soviet power, the Kingdom could never be secure. So the Germans, and the Romanian leadership, cooked up a claim to “Transnistria.” This area was bordered by the Bug and Dniester Rivers and the Black Sea and included the cities of Tiraspol and the Soviet Black Sea port of Odessa. At most, 8.4 percent of the 2,326,224 Transnistrians were Romanian, with the vast majority being Ukrainian. This provided an excuse for the Romanian armies to proceed further east. In addition,  the Conducator was attempting to curry favor with the Führer in the hopes that the Führer would facilitate the restoration of that part of Transylvania taken from Romania, and given to Hungary, in the Second Vienna Award.

After a siege lasting more than two months, Odessa became the largest European city to fall to a non-German Axis force, when it was captured by the Armata Româna, at a cost of 93,000 casualties. As a result Odessa was named one of the four original Hero Cities of the Soviet Union.

A year later, it was the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies which were guarding the flanks of the German Sixth Army as it was grinding away at Stalingrad. In November of 1942, the Red Army launched massive attacks against the overstretched Romanians, destroying both armies and surrounding Sixth Army and two Romanian divisions. A few thousand Romanian soldiers marched into Soviet captivity with Sixth Army’s surrender, but none survived the ordeal.

In August 1944, with the Red Army inside Romanian borders, King Mihai had  the Conducator arrested, concluded an armistice with his country’s enemies and declared war on its allies. The same thing had occurred a year earlier, in Italy, when King Victor Emmanuel III had the Duce arrested, concluded an armistice with the Allies and declared war on the German Reich. In this case, the Romanians were more than happy to go to war with their hated neighbors, the Hungarians, especially with the hope of recovering the rest of Transylvania. In that, they were successful, but of course, their new ally, the Soviet Union, retook Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, and the Hertza Region and reconstituted the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, which is now the Republic of Moldova. 

The cost to the Romanian kingdom was 306,000 of its soldiers killed fighting against the Red Army, 64,000 killed fighting with the Red Army, loss of its monarchy, and 50 years of the communist “utopia.” Another 75,000 Romanians died during the Soviet “liberation” and occupation. In addition, under the Antonescu regime, as many as 420,000 Jews and 36,000 Gypsies were murdered. 

Most of the murders of the Jews occurred in the “Transnistria” area, where the Romanians established their camps. In a report issued in 2004, the Romanian government acknowledged its country’s complicity in the Holocaust. The report concluded that,

“Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself. The murders committed in Iasi, Odessa, Bogdanovka, Domanovka, and Peciora, for example, were among the most hideous murders committed against Jews anywhere during the Holocaust. Romania committed genocide against the Jews. The survival of Jews in some parts of the country does not alter this reality.”

Today, Romania has a population of 21,700,000 and Moldova 3,380,000 of which 80 percent are Romanian.

May 9, 2010 saw the Victory Day Parade marking the 65th Anniversary of the victory over Germany, in Red Square in Moscow. The leaders of all of the former Soviet Republics were invited. After accepting the Russian Federation’s invitation to attend the parade in Red Square, Moldovan Acting President Mihai Ghimpu retracted his acceptance, in a show of support for Romania, which was not invited. The alleged reason that it was not invited was because it fought with Germany against the Soviet Union, although German Chancellor Angela Merkel and representatives of other, former, Axis countries, Slovakia and Croatia, attended. In addition King Mihai I and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi were invited but were unable to attend. Upon retracting his acceptance, Acting President Ghimpu opined that Russia should pay Moldova for the “Soviet Occupation.”

Acting President Ghimpu, on June 24, 2010, declared June 28, 1940 as “Soviet Occupation Day.” When Moldova was a part of the U.S.S.R., June 28 had been celebrated as “Liberation Day.”  Also, on June 28, a Monument to the Victims of the Soviet Occupation was unveiled in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau. Recently, the Acting President’s decree was overturned by Moldova’s Constitutional Court. It said he had no right to mix politics and history.

On June 30, 2010, the Moldovan government authorized the creation of the Museum of Victims of Communism, which was opened on July 6.

 

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.