by Colonel (ret.) Ntefan-Vasile Stanescu
A strong tie binds my soul to the army, especially to cavalry, since I was 11 years old, when I was admitted to the military school "Nicolae Filipescu" at Manastirea Dealu; that tie persists yet though in 1946 I was turned out of that noble profession of arms as a potential opponent to the communist rIgime, which I was.
I was stupefied to see in 1991 the commemoration of 50 years since the pogrom of the Jews of Yassy, for which the entire blame was cast upon the innocent Romanian army! Most probably what was envisaged was the obtention of various amounts of money in compensation, amounts which for all I know may have been handed over during the rule of Mr. Petre Roman.
The pogrom of Yassy was not performed by the Romanian army; it was performed by the German SS troops. But how was the 1991 Rabbi to make a demand for compensations from a prosperous Germany, the greatest economic power in Europe? What took place took place in Romania, so, adding some untruths, and especially having those untruths supported by Romanians (such as Gelu Voican Voiculescu), the Romanian state can pay.
However, it was not the money that revolted me, for we have often paid for damages caused by others, but the attempt to dishonor our army. This lie broadcast in the press, radio and television left in the soul of our youth the bitter taste of the guilt for deeds done by the members of my generation. I cannot stand by and let this injustice pass without proving that we had nothing to do with those dishonoring actions, and bringing before the readers of the Revista Cavaleriei the authenticity of facts and attitudes that I submit hereby for publication. Thus the historical events of those times will be clarified and the stain will be erased from the brow of the Romanian army whose honor has been defamed by untruthful statements.
I submit here upon my word of honor as a cavalry officer the information I received from Dr. Eugen Munteanu (no invention of mine) that the former father-in-law of Dr. Munteanu, namely Colonel Captaru, who at that time was the Prefect of the County of Yassy, had one Romanian officer and two Romanian soldiers court-martialled because they had participated in that event! Found guilty, they were sentenced to lose their rank and were sent to the Disciplinary Battalion of the Army at Sarata. That was the stand taken by the Romanians! As a matter of fact, the following materials will lead to the conclusion that General Ion Antonescu has humane feelings and contributed to the defense of the innocent Jewish citizens of Romania.
by Dr. Epifanie Cozarescu
I must state from the very beginning that I do not intend to deny or minimize the events that took place in Yassy in June-July 1941 reaching as far as the railway station in Roman. Much has been written and will be written about them, so that my modest contribution would lose itself like a drop of water in an ocean of poison. However, I will bring some new facts to bear on what happened at Roman. The readers of these words have the choice of adding them to the scales in which they weigh the truthfulness of the story. Let us proceed to the railway station of Roman.
It was on the fatal day of July 3 1941 when it was announced that a train with Jews deported from Yassy would pass through! For the girls who worked at the Red Cross canteen, as well as for the employees of the station's first aid unit, that event appeared similar to the short stopping at this station of trains with the wounded bound for another destination... In that interval the wounded received in the train cars the medical and humanitarian aid they needed. However, thinking justly, the doctor who was on duty that day at the first aid unit together with the canteen employees understood that this case would be somewhat different. That is why they called on Mrs. Viorica Agarici, who was then president of the local branch of the national Red Cross, to help them. She arrived without delay accompanied by the vice-president, Mrs. Eliza Vargolici, and by the county's Doctor-in-Chief, Dr. Ntefan Pasov. After them arrived the chief of the Public Market Commando, Captain I. Cocaneanu. Mrs. Viorica Agarici began immediately to organize the team she was to work with! Members of the team were: Sofia Lazarescu, head of the canteen, schoolteachers Zoe Iacobeanu, Elena Taune and Matia Curelescu, then two young girls, Mura Hagiaturian and Rodica Lazarescu, and two nuns on loan from the Agapia monastery. In the meanwhile Captain Cocaneanu obtained additional information from the railway's dispatch office, and he returned very downcast from that office. When the canteen personnel emerged on the platform with their trays and baskets of food accompanied by four soldiers carrying buckets of tea, and by Dr. Falcoianu with the medic V. Toma and two voluntary nurses from the Red Cross carrying first aid kits and medicines, Cocaneanu approached Mrs. Agarici and whispered something in her ear. Those who were on the spot say that they never knew that lady to be other than mild and polite, but now she had lost her temper!
The train now entered the station - a long train with cattle cars, from which one could hear desperate voices begging for water and for help! Then, regardless of what had been whispered in her ear (the order of the German military command of Yassy that nobody approach that train), Mrs. Agarici stepped forward resolutely beckoning the canteen girls to follow her. She had to cover the distance as far as the fourth rail, where the train with deportees was stationed because the way was not clear for it to proceed. The military German and Romanian trains racing to the front had priority then. So that the train had to be stopped a while, exactly as long as it needed to enter the railway station of Roman. But Hitler's guard, descending from the passenger car next to the engine, encircled the train immediately to prevent anyone from approaching it! When they saw the group of white-clad people approaching their train resolutely, they came to meet them positioning their machine-guns and shouting: Zurgck! Verboten! (Go back! It is forbidden!) It was a first warning! Fearlessly, Mrs. Agarici shouted back in the same voice: "Verfluchte Gewinde! Auf die Seite!" (Damned creatures, step aside!). Captain Cocaneanu, knowing what hose fanatic SS troops could do, came hurriedly asking the team to return to the platform, for at the second warning those troops will shoot aiming in full. There was a moment of panic. The girls and the soldiers with the buckets turned back! Only Mrs. Viorica Agarici rushed in front of the engine, clinging to it with her hands and shouting as loudly as she could: "If the cars will not be opened so she could give aid to the detainees, she would stay there and let the train pass over her body!"
In the mean time the Germans were minding their own business, waiting for the moment when they could order the train to proceed, risking to run over that furious Romanian woman...
Then Captain Cocaneanu telephoned the Prefect (General Ntefan Ionescu was then county prefect) asking for his help and advice, to save the President of the Red Cross whose life was at risk! Unfortunately the Romanian administration had no jurisdiction over that transport.However they contacted the Office of Internal Affairs and the central office of the Romanian Red Cross in Bucharest, to no avail also. As General Ionescu, the Prefect, insisted, the Bucharest offices contacted the Supreme Command of the Romanian Army, which was then in the train "The Fatherland" somewhere on a railway near the front. General Ion Antonescu was on that train. It was only after he talked with the general who commanded the 11th German army that was headquartered at Yassy (where he together with Sturmbahnfghrer H. Ohlendorf ordered that thousands of Jews be liquidated and deported), that the situation changed instantly! The order came from Yassy through the telephone that the deportees be allowed to receive aid! In the mean time, for about two hours, Mrs. Agarici stood before the engine, in the scorching sun, without retreating an inch. Only after that did she go to the cars, together with her team that had fled originally. When the gate was opened to the first car, she saw a vision of hell: living and dead bodies were lying on top of one another in tattered clothing in a pool or urine and feces! It was too much! So as not to alarm the townspeople (among whom 7,000 were Jewish), who hearing something had begun to converge to the railway station, it was decided to push the train back to Sabaoani. There all cars were opened, the living received first aid, and the dead, having had their death verified by Captain Dr. Radu Popovici, the surgeon of the Military Hospital who came with his medics, were interred in a grave dug then and there behind the railway station. Of the living, the ill were seen by Dr. Falcoianu, and some of them were admitted to the Military Hospital for the treatment they needed.
In the meantime, Dr. Pasov, working together with the President of the Jewish Community, Dr. Reznic Meer, organized a staggered transportation of all able-bodied deportees to the public bath (formerly Jewish bath) where they were cleaned, given new clothes, given to drink and fed at the expense of the community. All that naturally under strict surveillance to avoid desertions. Through the efforts of the 4th Sanitary Company, all railway cars were in their turn cleaned, disinfected and lined with fresh straw on which was laid fresh linen. Returning, the deportees were pleased with the amenities created. The next day, on July 4, 1941, that train that had been the "train of death" until then, started moving with open windows. In the greater junctions, the gates of the cars were opened on the platforms and Red Cross teams checked and assisted the deportees. True, now and then one could hear some miscreants cursing, which however did not influence in any way the protective attitude of the official persons. Having reached the town of Calarasi on the Danube in good conditions, 776 persons were taken into the camp, exactly as many as had left the Roman railway station, proving that no one died in transit afterwards. As is known, in 1944 they were all freed.
1. In the 1950s, after the war, the 53 victims were disinterred at Sabaoani - 53 and not 370 as has been erroneously stated! - and to them were added the 360 dead who had been interred at Mircesti before, and they were brought to the Jewish cemetery in Roman where they were buried in two large adjacent graves over which were placed two cement blocks 3 meters wide and 10 meters long. It results that, if in the 20 km. between Mircesti and Roman 53 more people died, without the "miracle" of Roman, only dead bodies would have been delivered in Calarasi.
It was without a doubt owing to Mrs. Viorica Agarici that they were saved! But not only owing to her, for without the cooperation of all persons mentioned above, she could not have achieved it. We list them again: Captain I. Cocaneanu, General Ntefan Ionescu, Vice-Presidentof the Red Cross of Roman Eliza Vargolici, the three doctors, Veronica Falcoianu, Ntefan Pasov, Captain Dr. Radu Popovici, with their assistants, and last but not least the fact that the leader of the state agreed with their initiative, which weighed heavily in the scales. There should be no need to stress the compassion shown by the Christian population, and the efforts made by the other half of the inhabitants of Roman who were Jewish, who all contributed to alleviate the sufferings of so many innocent people.
As a matter of fact that was the spirit in that town, where an injurious word like "you Yids!" was rarely heard. There is no truth to the allegations that have been made that the water barrels at the railway station had been polluted with petroleum, so that the Jews could not drink any water, or that the Jews were thrown water in their eyes to exacerbate their thirst... They are all shameless lies!
2. Now, something about Mrs. Viorica Agarici, the heroine of those days. After 1949 she was deprived of all her possessions (her land at Calugareni, the county of Roman, her house in the street Alexandru cel Bun, and the rest) and was thrown destitute into the street, with no means of subsistence. Her only good luck was that a few families of Roman came to her rescue and assisted her. The family of Dr. Mart let her live in a little room in their house, and among the Jews Dr. Josef Abraham and the photographer Jack Reinstein made a monthly collection for her of loose change, which she refused to accept except for services rendered: she tutored schoolchildren (among whom Radu Cozarescu). The families of the children she tutored were also inviting her to dinner of course. Thus she was practically reduced to beggary. She also walked about with a market basket on her arm into which people would throw something now and then. She would have left Roman if she could but there was nowhere for her to go: her husband had died of a general gangrene starting from his appendix in the Roman hospital (and not at Yassy, as some have written), and her three sons, George, Vasilica and Costache, were political prisoners! It was only in 1967 when George was set free that she moved in with him in Bucharest. After that the Federation of Jewish Communities remembered the merits of Mrs. Viorica Agarici and allowed her a small life-time pension. Now the heroine of Roman is sleeping her last sleep in a cemetery in Bucharest, and there is a tree planted in her memory on the "lane of the just" near Richowod in Israel.
There is no fitter end to my writing than repeating the wise advice of His Eminence the Chief Rabbi Mozes Rozen who wrote in 1981: "... blessed be all those who defended the dignity of the Romanian people". And further on: "And all must be remembered now, in these moments when we remember what happened then." He speaks about the Yassy pogrom. That is what we attempt to do here.
Additional Clarifications with Historical Notes
I read the description of events given by Dr. Epifanie Cozarescu under the title The Truth about the Train of Death . Those imbued with Romanian feeling can be proud of the fearless action of that "great Romanian lady" Viorica Agarici, President of the Roman branch of the Red Cross who managed to stop "the train of death" with the Jews transported to extermination camps by the SS. troops, risking her life and disregarding the gun that one ofthose who guarded the train so that nobody could approach it, was pointing at her chest.
Discussing this matter with Dr. Neculai Horga who is now in his nineties and lives in Roman at Bloc 13 A on Strada Tineretului, I found out an important fact. He told me that on that day, July 3, 1941, he was in the company of Dr. Moga before the Roman Hospital when a line of cars stopped there and of one car that had the royal flag stepped out Her Majesty the Queen Mother Elena. She had come to cheer up the wounded in the interior war hospital.
As the two doctors were being introduced to the Queen Mrs. Viorica Agarici arrived in a state of great agitation, and, rushing towards Her Majesty, she reported that a German train full of Jews was approaching the station and that dreadful cries are heard coming from its cars, but the train guards do not allow anybody to give medical assistance and food to those locked up inside. She added that she had left her team of voluntary Red Cross nurses there on the railway line and hearing that Her Majesty had come to Roman had come to beg Her Majesty to intervene in favor of those locked up in the cars.
Her Majesty the Queen Mother ordered that a cavalry colonel (here Dr. Horga is in error, for it was a major and royal aide) drive immediately to the railway station together with Mrs. Viorica Agarici and return as soon as possible with news.
That officer returned from the railway station within minutes confirming the tragic condition of the Jews locked up in the cars.
Then Her Majesty asked General Ntefan Ionescu, who was the Prefect of Roman County, to contact the Supreme Command of the Army and through it to speak with General Ion Antonescu who was then the leader of the Romanian state.
When communication was established with the train "The Fatherland" which was at the front Her Majesty asked the General to intercede with the German Command to allow that the Red Cross assist those locked up in the cars, and General Ion Antonescu did that.
Until the order of Sturmbahnfghrer H. Ohlendorf arrived from Yassy, Mrs. Viorica Agarici stood before the train's engine preventing its departure.
After that the train was pushed to the junction Sabaoani, the dead were taken out, the cars were cleaned and the unfortunate detainees were fed.
I am writing these lines because I want to emphasize that three great Romanian souls were involved in that intervention: Her Majesty the Queen Mother Elena, Mrs. Viorica Agarici, and General Ion Antonescu. The mild but resolute woman who was the President of the local Roman branch of the Red Cross could not have achieved anything if the Royal House and general Antonescu had been indifferent and totally subjected to the inhuman action of the German SS troops on Romanian land.
Post-scriptum: I found after this article was printed that a tree has been planted in honor of Queen Mother Elena on the "lane of the just" in Israel (Vasile Stanescu).
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