Deportation of Germans from Romania after World War II
Encyclopedia
The deportation of Germans from Romania after World War II, conducted on Soviet order
early in 1945, uprooted tens of thousands of Romania's Germans
, many of whom lost their lives. The deportation was part of the Soviet plan for German war reparations in the form of forced labor
, according to the 1944 secret Soviet Order 7161
.
, declared itself "completely surprised" by the order that Romania's Soviet occupiers
issued on January 6, 1945. The order provided for the mobilisation of all the German inhabitants of Romania, with a view toward deporting many of them to the Soviet Union
. The deportation order applied to all men between the ages of 17 and 45 and women between 18 and 30. Only pregnant women, women with children less than a year old and persons unable to work were excluded. On January 13, 1945, when arrests had already begun in Bucharest
and Braşov
, the Rădescu government sent a protest note to the (Soviet) Vice-President of the Allied Control Commission
for Romania, General Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov
. This note explained that the armistice treaty (signed on September 12, 1944) did not envision expulsions and that Romanian industry would suffer following the deportation of so much of its workforce, and especially of a high percentage of its skilled workforce, to be found among its German population. In closing, Rădescu raised humanitarian concerns regarding the fate of women and children left behind. The expulsion has been characterised as being one of the first manifestations of the Cold War
, as it showed the impossibility of joint control between East and West, even before the end of World War II.
Statistics regarding the expulsion of Transylvanian Saxons
indicate that around 75,000 individuals were deported to the Soviet Union — some 15% of Transylvania
's German population (according to 1941 data). 12% of expellees were outside the age limits provided for in the deportation order; a 13-year-old girl was deported, as were people aged 55. 90% of expellees ended up in the Ukrainian SSR
(the areas of Dnipropetrovsk
, Stalino
and Voroshilovgrad
), the rest in the Urals
. (see Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
for more background.)
The expellees were received in 85 camps. A third worked in mines, a quarter in construction, the rest in industry, agriculture or camp administration. Very few were given the jobs they had done in Romania.
The first expellees unsuited for work were returned to Transylvania at the end of 1945. Between 1946 and 1947, about 5,100 Saxons were brought, by special transports for the sick, to Frankfurt an der Oder
, a city then in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.
3,076 of the deportees died while in the USSR, three quarters of them being male. When they were freed, a quarter of deportees were sent to Germany, of whom just a seventh returned to Transylvania.
The highest number of deaths occurred in 1947. Starting in 1948, the situation improved, with a dramatic drop in the number of sick and dead expellees.
In 1948, those able to work also began to be freed from the camps (49% of them), so that in October 1949 the camps were shut down. The last third of the expellees returned to Transylvania. Of those brought to the Soviet occupation zone, around half received permission to return home. The rest moved elsewhere (mostly to West Germany
), but a few remained in East Germany
.
202 expellees were allowed to return home only in 1950-52. According to Soviet documents, 7 expellees chose to remain in the USSR.
Further turmoil came for Romania's ethnic Germans (this time mainly Banat Swabians
) during the Bărăgan deportations
of the 1950s.
, had begun to prepare cattle wagons to transport the deportees. Documents uncovered after 1989 show that the deportations were planned in detail: as early as December 19, 1944, the prime minister's office transmitted orders by telephone to police inspectors for the purpose of registering the work-capable German population, to comply with the Soviet Order 7161
issued 3 days earlier.
All Red Army
groups had orders to bring a certain number of work-capable ethnic Germans to camps, and then to deport them to the Soviet Union. In Romania, this mission was accomplished with the Romanian authorities' assistance, as well as by Red Army units and GRU
agents.
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
early in 1945, uprooted tens of thousands of Romania's Germans
Germans of Romania
The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 760,000 strong in 1930. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:...
, many of whom lost their lives. The deportation was part of the Soviet plan for German war reparations in the form of forced labor
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers...
, according to the 1944 secret Soviet Order 7161
Order 7161
Order 7161 refers to the top secret USSR State Defense Committee Order no 7161ss of December 16, 1944 about mobilisation and internment of able-bodied Germans for works in the USSR...
.
Official position of the Rădescu government
The last non-communist government of Romania, headed by Prime Minister Nicolae RădescuNicolae Radescu
Nicolae Rădescu was a Romanian army officer and political figure. He was the last pre-communist rule Prime Minister of Romania, serving from December 7, 1944 to March 1, 1945....
, declared itself "completely surprised" by the order that Romania's Soviet occupiers
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
issued on January 6, 1945. The order provided for the mobilisation of all the German inhabitants of Romania, with a view toward deporting many of them to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The deportation order applied to all men between the ages of 17 and 45 and women between 18 and 30. Only pregnant women, women with children less than a year old and persons unable to work were excluded. On January 13, 1945, when arrests had already begun in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
, the Rădescu government sent a protest note to the (Soviet) Vice-President of the Allied Control Commission
Allied Commission
Following the termination of hostilities in World War II, the Allied Powers were in control of the defeated Axis countries. Anticipating the defeat of Germany and Japan, they had already set up the European Advisory Commission and a proposed Far Eastern Advisory Commission to make recommendations...
for Romania, General Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov
Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov
Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov was a Russian military leader and social activist. He fought in the First World War, Russian Civil War and Second World War and ended his military career Lieutenant General of the Quartermaster Corps.During the occupation of Romania he represented Rodion Malinovsky,...
. This note explained that the armistice treaty (signed on September 12, 1944) did not envision expulsions and that Romanian industry would suffer following the deportation of so much of its workforce, and especially of a high percentage of its skilled workforce, to be found among its German population. In closing, Rădescu raised humanitarian concerns regarding the fate of women and children left behind. The expulsion has been characterised as being one of the first manifestations of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, as it showed the impossibility of joint control between East and West, even before the end of World War II.
Statistics
Transylvanian Saxons
The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of German ethnicity who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards.The colonization of Transylvania by Germans was begun by King Géza II of Hungary . For decades, the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the...
indicate that around 75,000 individuals were deported to the Soviet Union — some 15% of Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
's German population (according to 1941 data). 12% of expellees were outside the age limits provided for in the deportation order; a 13-year-old girl was deported, as were people aged 55. 90% of expellees ended up in the Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
(the areas of Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
, Stalino
Donetsk
Donetsk , is a large city in eastern Ukraine on the Kalmius river. Administratively, it is a center of Donetsk Oblast, while historically, it is the unofficial capital and largest city of the economic and cultural Donets Basin region...
and Voroshilovgrad
Luhansk
Luhansk also known as Lugansk is a city in southeastern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Luhansk Oblast . The city itself is also designated as its own separate municipality within the oblast...
), the rest in the Urals
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
. (see Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers...
for more background.)
The expellees were received in 85 camps. A third worked in mines, a quarter in construction, the rest in industry, agriculture or camp administration. Very few were given the jobs they had done in Romania.
The first expellees unsuited for work were returned to Transylvania at the end of 1945. Between 1946 and 1947, about 5,100 Saxons were brought, by special transports for the sick, to Frankfurt an der Oder
Frankfurt (Oder)
Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located on the Oder River, on the German-Polish border directly opposite the town of Słubice which was a part of Frankfurt until 1945. At the end of the 1980s it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants...
, a city then in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.
3,076 of the deportees died while in the USSR, three quarters of them being male. When they were freed, a quarter of deportees were sent to Germany, of whom just a seventh returned to Transylvania.
The highest number of deaths occurred in 1947. Starting in 1948, the situation improved, with a dramatic drop in the number of sick and dead expellees.
In 1948, those able to work also began to be freed from the camps (49% of them), so that in October 1949 the camps were shut down. The last third of the expellees returned to Transylvania. Of those brought to the Soviet occupation zone, around half received permission to return home. The rest moved elsewhere (mostly to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
), but a few remained in East Germany
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
.
202 expellees were allowed to return home only in 1950-52. According to Soviet documents, 7 expellees chose to remain in the USSR.
Further turmoil came for Romania's ethnic Germans (this time mainly Banat Swabians
Banat Swabians
The Banat Swabians are an ethnic German population in Southeast Europe, part of the Danube Swabians. They emigrated in the 18th century to what was then the Austrian Banat province, which had been left sparsely populated by the wars with Turkey. This once strong and important ethnic Banat Swabian...
) during the Bărăgan deportations
Baragan deportations
The Bărăgan deportations were a large-scale action of penal transportation, undertaken during the 1950s by the Romanian Communist regime. Their aim was to forcibly relocate individuals who lived within approximately 25 km of the Yugoslav border to the Bărăgan Plain.-Reasons:After relations...
of the 1950s.
1995 revelations
An article in the newspaper Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien, published on January 13, 1995, revealed that the Romanian government was not in fact "completely surprised" by the deportation order. In fact, even before receiving the order, the government had ordered that lists of men and women capable of performing hard labour be drawn up. Weeks in advance, the state railway, Căile Ferate RomâneCaile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...
, had begun to prepare cattle wagons to transport the deportees. Documents uncovered after 1989 show that the deportations were planned in detail: as early as December 19, 1944, the prime minister's office transmitted orders by telephone to police inspectors for the purpose of registering the work-capable German population, to comply with the Soviet Order 7161
Order 7161
Order 7161 refers to the top secret USSR State Defense Committee Order no 7161ss of December 16, 1944 about mobilisation and internment of able-bodied Germans for works in the USSR...
issued 3 days earlier.
All Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
groups had orders to bring a certain number of work-capable ethnic Germans to camps, and then to deport them to the Soviet Union. In Romania, this mission was accomplished with the Romanian authorities' assistance, as well as by Red Army units and GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
agents.
In fiction
- Virgil GheorghiuConstantin Virgil GheorghiuConstantin Virgil Gheorghiu was a Romanian writer, best known for his 1949 novel, The 25th Hour.-Life:...
's novel The 25th Hour deals with the expulsion, as does the eponymous film. - Herta Müller (Nobel Prize 2009) Everything I Possess I Carry With MeEverything I Possess I Carry With MeEverything I Possess I Carry With Me is a novel by German Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller, published in 2009 by Carl Hanser Verlag....
.
See also
- Flight and expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia during and after World War II
- Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War IIFlight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War IIThe flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II...