Transnistria is an administrative-political unit in the southwest of modern Ukraine and the left bank of the Dniester River in modern Moldova, which the Germans, based on the Treaty of Bendery of August 30, 1941, gave under temporary Romanian civil administration. Hitler, in a letter to J. Antonescu dated July 27, 1941, proposed that Romania take control of the entire territory up to the Dniester River in exchange for continuing hostilities on the side of Germany.

On August 19, Antonescu created the province of Transnistria by decree No. 1 and approved the "Instructions for the Administration of the Province of Transnistria." On August 30, the highest authorized representatives of both sides - Major General Arthur Gauffe, head of the German military mission in Romania, and Brigadier General Nicolae Teteranu, deputy chief of the Romanian General Staff, signed the Treaty on the security, management and economic exploitation of the territory between the Dniester and the Bug (Transnistria) and the Bug and the Dnieper (Bug-Dnipro region). According to this treaty, the territory between the Southern Bug and the Dniester, which includes parts of the Vinnytsia, Odessa, Mykolaiv regions of Ukraine and the left-bank part of Moldova during World War II, passed under the jurisdiction and administration of Romania. The capital is Tiraspol.

Since October 16, 1941, the capital is Odesa. The governor is Professor Gheorghe Oleksianu. It was subordinated to the "Military-Civil Cabinet for the Administration of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria" under the Council of Ministers of Romania. Transnistria covered an area of ​​about 40,000 km² with 2.2 million inhabitants. The Transnistria region was divided into 13 counties (zudeci) and 65 districts. Unlike Bessarabia and Bukovina, Transnistria was not formally part of Romania. I. Antonescu received only a German mandate for temporary rule and economic exploitation. Germany retained its sovereign right in Transnistria, under which it managed the railways and seaports, and also introduced its German mark (Reichskreditkassenscheine, XDEK) as the only "legal" currency in the occupied Soviet territory.

March 18, 1944 The Germans forced their Romanian allies to sign a protocol on the transfer of the territories between the Dniester and the Bug to General Auleb, the plenipotentiary of the Supreme High Command of the German army. The territory passed into the hands of the German command and was actually under its control until the beginning of April 1944. In March 1944, Soviet troops entered the territory of Transnistria.

Ghettos and concentration camps were created in the occupied territory of the so-called Transnistria, in which more than 300 thousand Jews and 50 thousand Roma (Gypsies) were killed or died of hunger, cold and disease.

Crimes against humanity against the Jewish population within the Romanian occupation zone received their legal qualification at the Nuremberg and Bucharest trials.