The Holocaust in Odessa was the mass murder of the Jewish population of Odessa, Odessa region, and Bessarabia and Bukovina in the fall of 1941 and winter of 1942 under the leadership of the military of the Third Reich, the dictator of the Kingdom of Romania Ion Antonescu, the vice-president of the council of the Kingdom of Romania, the governor of Transnistria Gheorghe Alexeanu, and General Nicolae Macici. Before the start of the German-Soviet war, according to the 1939 census, Odessa had a significant Jewish community, numbering 200,961 people (33.26% of the population). By the time the city was taken by Romanian troops, up to 80,000 Jews remained in it, to which, after the occupation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, refugees in the amount of over 50,000 people were added.
The Odesa region was occupied from July 22 to August 29, 1941.
On October 16, 1941 after a two-month defense, Odessa was abandoned by the Red Army and occupied by Romanian and German troops in the evening. The first shootings of civilians began immediately after the capture of the city, by the Einsatzgruppen command and soldiers from the Romanian operational echelon.
On October 17 the beginning of the "registration of the male population" from 16 to 50 years old was announced. Jews were arrested. All were sent to the prison building on Velikofontanska Road, where on October 18, 1941, by order of the commander of the 10th Infantry Division, General Konstantin Trestioreanu, a temporary ghetto camp was created for Jews from Odessa.
From 12:00 on October 19, parties of Jews who had been detained during registration or the first roundups on the streets of the city began to arrive in the area of the artillery depots on Lustdorfska Road. Columns of hostages were driven to Lustdorfska Road. They were all locked in nine empty powder magazines and shot over several days, starting on October 19. Some of the warehouses were doused with gasoline on October 23 and the prisoners in them were burned alive. About 22 thousand died.
On October 22, 1941, a radio-controlled mine exploded in the NKVD building on Engels Street (now Marazlievska Street), which housed the Romanian military commandant's office and the headquarters of the Romanian 10th Infantry Division. It had been laid there by Red Army sappers before the city was surrendered by Soviet troops. As a result of the powerful explosion, the building partially collapsed. About 120 people died under the rubble, including 16 officers, among whom was the Romanian commandant of the city, General Ion Glogozeanu. Responsibility for the explosion was attributed to Jews and communists. In response to the explosion of the Romanian army commandant's office, the German Einsatzgruppe arrived in Odessa.
On October 23, 1941, actions were carried out to destroy hostages, many of whom were Jews. The occupiers broke into the apartments of Odessans and shot or hanged all the residents they found without exception. Roundups were carried out on the streets and markets of the city, in the suburbs; people who did not yet know anything about the terrorist attack were shot right on the spot of the roundups near the walls of houses or fences. At 10th St. Velikiy Fontan No. 58, on the territory of the State Bank sanatorium, about 100 men were detained and shot. About 19,000 Jews were shot in a fenced-off area in the port square, and their bodies were doused with gasoline and burned.
On October 24, 1941, about 5,000 Jews were gathered at the Dalnik outpost, where there were four barracks. Men were herded into the first three, and women and children into the fourth. Machine gun holes were drilled in the walls of one of the barracks, and the floor was previously doused with gasoline. People in two of the barracks were shot with machine guns on the same day, and the barracks were set on fire. The next day, those detained in the last two barracks were shot, and one of the barracks was blown up with dynamite on October 25 to intimidate the population. The order was carried out by the commander of the 10th Machine Gun Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Nicolae Deleanu.
On October 24-25, 1941, 3,000 Jews were shot by Sonderkommando 1b.
Thousands of Jews who, on October 23, by order of the Romanian authorities, came to Dalnik for "registration" were sent on foot to the village of Bogdanivka on the Southern Bug, losing a part of them killed and dead along the way, on November 10.
By mid-December, about 55,000 Jews had been gathered in Bogdanivka. From December 20, 1941 to January 15, 1942, they were all shot by the SS Einsatzgruppe, Romanian soldiers, local police, and German colonists.
November 15, 1941 - the last mass shooting took place in the city - about 1,000 people were killed in the area of the Shooting Range.
November - December 1941 In Odessa, orders are issued against the remaining Jewish population - on the mandatory reporting to prison of all men from 18 to 50 years old; on the mandatory registration of jewelry; on the wearing of a distinctive sign of a six-pointed yellow star.
On January 10, 1942, a ghetto was organized in the poor district of Slobidka. The evictees were in incredibly crowded conditions, there was not enough housing for everyone, people were left in the open air in winter, which led to mass deaths from hypothermia. They were gathered in the ghetto only to be deported from there further, to rural concentration camps.
From January 12 to June 23, 1942 Jews were deported to the Berezivka district of the Odessa region. They were transported in unheated trains, many died on the way. Parties were formed in Berezivka, which set off on foot to Syritske, Domanivka, Bogdanivka, Holta and other concentration camps. Many people who did not reach there died of hunger and cold on the way. The guard, consisting of Romanian soldiers and German colonists, organized mass shootings of Jews along the way.
According to the plans of the Hitlerite coalition, an administrative-territorial unit, the Transnistria Governorate, was to be established in the Odessa region under the control of the Romanian authorities. The Kingdom of Romania, being an ally of the Third Reich, developed and implemented its own plan for the liquidation of Jews. As new territories were captured and Romanian authorities were established in them, the latter decided that it was in the territory of Transnistria, as the most distant from the center, that operations would be carried out to destroy all Jews who ended up in the territories controlled by Romania. Prisoners from Transnistria itself, as well as from Bukovina and Bessarabia, began to be driven into the established concentration camps. At the beginning of the mass extermination, the Jewish population of the region was concentrated by the Romanians in Odessa or in concentration camps set up in the countryside.
In 1941-1944, over 120,000 Jews were exterminated in the Odessa region: women, children, and the elderly.
Crimes against humanity against the Jewish population in Odessa received their legal qualification at the Nuremberg and Bucharest trials.
