The pogrom in Iasi from June 28-29, 1941 was one of the darkest acts of violence that existed in modern Romania.
Ion Antonescu came to power in Romania in 1940, and our country was officially declared an ally of the Axis Powers under the pretext of recovering its territories under Allies. The Iron Guard, in power from September 1940 until the beginning of 1941, oppressed the Jewish population by using existing anti-Semitic legislation.
Acts of repulsion and violence against the Jewish population in Romania did not appear overnight, during the Second World War, but existed since the interwar period, implemented according to the xenophobic ideology of the Legionary Movement. The entire Europe of the Axis Powers, led by hitler's Germany, shared these pogroms and genocides against not only the Jewish population, but also Armenians, Greeks, Roma, and many other minorities.
Immediately after Romania's official entry into the war, in June 1941, in Iași, the efforts to liquidate the Jews by various anti-Semitic methods began. In 1941 the population of mosaic culture in the city of Iasi was about 45,000 inhabitants. In May of the following year, only 32,000 Jews were identified in the census. In the days before the Pogrom, there were various acts of violence by killing several people of Mosaic origin in the city, but also outside it, for example in Sculeni, where Romanian soldiers killed about 400 Jews whom they buried together after what the victims dug their own pits.
On the morning of June 29, the hardest day of the Pogrom, about 5,000 Jews were killed throughout the city by police, the German army, gendarmes and even city dwellers. The rest of the Jews who were arrested and survived beatings or bullets (about 8,000 people) were evacuated to what would go down in history as the "Death Trains." There were two such trains, one with the direction to Călărași, via Roman, with about 5000 Jews, of which only 1011 survived, and a second was with the direction of Podu Iloaei with about 2500 Jews of which only 700 survived. The trains ran at low speed, through extraordinary heat, for days, and the people were without water, food, or enough air. No one was allowed to approach these trains in the stations, otherwise they risked being shot. However, Viorica Agarici, the president of the Red Cross in Roman, organized a humanitarian action to assist people with water and food.
Today, 80 years after the genocide against the Jewish population in Iasi, there are only about 350 people of Mosaic origin in the city. Many of the 35,000 survivors in Iasi after World War II took refuge in the newly established state of Israel. We commemorate these deeds primarily for the victims, their families, and for Jews around the world, but also to learn from mistakes and not risk ever repeating them.
The City Hall of Iași, together with Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, the Romanian Athenaeum, the National Opera of Iași and the Jewish Community of Romania commemorate these days the events of 1941 through various manifestations. On June 29, from 08.30 in the morning, the "March of Life" will take place from Păcurari Street to the Jewish Cemetery, and on the same day will take place the inauguration of the History Museum of the Pogrom from Iași to the House of Museums from Vasile Alecsandri Street.
