Category Archives: Eastern Europe

Saint John of Capistrano … was an extraordinary survivor of an earlier period of Medieval crusading (the likes of which was not seen again in Europe until the siege of Vienna in 1683). John of Capistrano, whose imposing bust still adorns the main facade of Saint Stephen’s Dom in Vienna, certainly looked the part of a Peter the Hermit, the crusading leader of the eleventh century. Small of stature, with an emaciated frame, hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes, and parched skin, he had the countenance and stature of a mystic as he gathered the faithful around him in the city of Györ in Hungary and preached the crusade to the common man in Latin. No one understood his exact words, but the tone of the message was unmistakable as he thundered: “God wills it that we chase the Turks out of Europe and for whosoever follows me, I will obtain plenary indulgence for him and his family.” It was more a matter of heart than rational thinking that induced a ragtag army of some 8,000 inexperienced and poorly equipped peasants, lower burghers, students, and clergymen to follow John on his southeastward march. They had gathered all the crude weapons they could assemble: slings, cudgels, scythes, pitchforks, stakes, and other farm implements. It was, however, their determination and fanaticism that proved more than a match for the holy war proclaimed by the sultan and the tried military talent of the Turks and janissaries. The generals and the diplomats who attended John’s demagogic harangue at Györ — Hunyadi, his son László, János Vitéz, Vlad Dracula, even Pope Calixtus III‘s legate, Juan Cardinal de Carvajal — were not impressed by what they regarded as a “mob.” In the end, though, these leaders found they had underestimated the power of faith to move men.

At a meeting summoned by Hunyadi at Hunedoara on January 13, 1456 [three years after the fall of Constantinople], basic strategies for the impending campaign were laid out and assignments to the military leaders given with little reference to John of Capistrano’s crusaders, who worked essentially as an independent force. Dracula, with an army composed mostly of Romanian mercenaries, was instructed by Hunyadi to stay at Sibiu and watch the Transylvanian passes. In addition, his young protégé was given to understand that he could proceed with the offensive against Vladislav II at whatever time he would deem appropriate, thus to relieve pressure at Belgrade by compelling the Turks to keep a body of troops on the Danube. In essence, Dracula’s mission was part of the overall strategy in protecting the eastern flank of the Belgrade defensive operation. In turn, Dracula’s cousin Stephen of Moldavia, also in Hunyadi’s entourage, was waiting for an opportunity to overthrow the other Turkish vassal, Petru III Aaron. By June 1456, in the words of the historian János Thuróczi “as the grain began to ripen, a vast army, accompanied by 300 siege guns and 27 enormous cannons, followed by the fleet on the Danube, moved northward, capturing on the way a number of Serbian cities that had maintained a precarious autonomy under Turkish rule. Hunyadi sent the customary diplomatic appeals to the west by means of his intermediary János Vitéz; as usual, there was no response.

The greatest achievement of John Hunyadi and John of Capistrano, unlikely allies that they were, was breaking through the ring of Turkish land forces, as well as the chains of Turkish flotillas that blocked access to the city, to effect a juncture with the city’s defenders. On July 21, having finally penetrated the outer defenses and moats, Mehmed gave orders for a final assault. In desperation, the sultan tried to arouse enthusiasm in his troops by joining the melée in person, only to be wounded in the thigh for his pains. Though the Turkish army had penetrated the city, it was unable to capture the fortress on the hill, defended by 16,000 men evenly divided between John of Capistrano’s crusaders and Hunyadi’s professionals. For Mehmed, who lost as many as 24,000 of his best soldiers and whose sailors colored the blue Danube red, it was a disastrous defeat. The relief of Belgrade was described as a “miracle” by Bernhard von Kraiburg, chancellor of the archbishop of Salzburg, in which “8,000 simple people” had defeated a vastly overwhelming Turkish force. In retreating toward Sofia, the ailing sultan was so angry that he wounded a number of his generals with his own sword and later had them executed. When the successful defense of Belgrade was reported to Rome, Eugenius IV called it “the happiest event of my life”; believing that a miracle had truly occurred, the pope made preparations for the beatification of John of Capistrano.

SOURCE: Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times, by Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (Back Bay, 1989), pp. 79-80

Before the year was out, Hunyadi, Capistrano, and many others had died of the plague. (Photo, October 1984: The bottom panel on the painted monastery at Moldoviţa in Suceava County, Romania, depicts a Byzantine victory at Constantinople. It must date from 1453 or earlier.)

Bulgaria illustrates the influence of prudent realpolitik at the highest levels of decision making and the absence of the impact of loss. Additionally, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church protested even the earliest introduction of anti-Jewish legislation….

Prudent realpolitik nevertheless was evident in the Bulgarian governmental decision to propitiate Nazi Germany in the hopes of immediate gain. And these hopes were realized. On February 15, 1940, the German-educated and strongly Germanophile Bogdan Filov was appointed premier by King Boris III, replacing the earlier moderately pro-Western Georgi Kyoseivanov…. Between August and December, the Law for the Defense of the Nation was prepared in the National Assembly and officially promulgated on January 23, 1941. The law defined precisely who was a Jew and proceeded to limit Jewish participation in the professions, property ownership, and even places of residence. During this period, the Germans interceded on behalf of Bulgarians in Vienna on September 7, 1940, at which time the Bulgarians received southern Dobrudja from Romania. In March 1941, Bulgaria … assumed control of Thrace and Macedonia. As Nissan Oren comments: “In the main, the Law for the Protection of the Nation was to pave the way for the fast developing rapprochement with Germany and solidify Bulgaria’s position within the Axis.”

King Boris III, virtually the absolute authority since 1934, actually suggested the Law of the Defense of the Nation, remarking that such legislation had been imposed in Romania, Hungary, “and even France.” … Thus, with Nazi Germany in the political and military ascendancy throughout Europe, Bulgaria, a small, militarily insignificant country, demanded a prudent realpolitik in its foreign policy, lest it be overwhelmed by the much stronger European great power. In that event, the plight of the Jews would be far worse than the mild application of the Law of the Defense of the Nation. The territorial rewards were ample and the safeguards were significant…. Later in the war, in March 1943 after the massive German defeat at Stalingrad, Boris responded positively to the plight of the Jews, effectively preventing their deportation.

How did this state of affairs come about? More precisely, in addition to the diminishing threat of Nazi Germany and a required corresponding change in prudent realpolitik, what were the domestic circumstances that allowed Boris to essentially thwart Hitler’s intention to eradicate Bulgarian Jewry?

The Bulgarian National Assembly is said to have been influential in mustering a protest against the deportations that led to their postponement and ultimate cancellation…. Boris was obviously influenced by this protest from a substantial portion of his own party’s deputies. But even more important, and consistent with the demands of prudent realpolitik, the king “needed as much support as possible. He had to convince the Germans that his decision to stop or delay deportation was the result of a series of strong protests that … could not be ignored.”

At the same time, recent scholarship has shifted to an emphasis on one member of the National Assembly in particular, its vice chairman, Dimitar Peshev. It was he who organized the petition signed by one third of the government’s own party members. When he heard of a roundup of Jews in his own electoral district, the town of Kyustendil, he acted….

Nevertheless, … this is not the whole story…. When Bulgarians in Kyustendil heard of the arrests, they quickly made plans to send forty of their number to the National Assembly in Sofia. After deliberation, they chose only four, all non-Jews, to plead the case of their Jewish townspeople. Although Peshev had already heard of the arrests through other avenues, he was heartened by the concern of his non-Jewish constituents. Thus, in addition to the basic decency of the man and his supporters in the National Assembly, we must consider the milieu that made it possible. Why, in contrast to France and Romania, not to mention Germany, was Bulgaria so free of anti-Semitism that it could yield Peshev’s success?

One answer, of course, is the absence of territorial loss and its accompanying refugee influx. Without the large numbers of refugees of like ethnoreligious identity, sympathy can actually be extended to others of a different identity, who, through no fault of their own, are subject to deportation and probably death.

In the end, Bulgaria’s 45,000 Jews were not deported and survived the war, although Bulgaria had earlier deported 11,393 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia to Poland, where almost all perished. The demand for the earlier deportation was agreed to on 2 February 1943, before the news of the crushing German defeat at Stalingrad had been widely disseminated.

SOURCE: The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, by Manus I. Midlarsky (Cambridge U. Press, 2005), pp. 326-330

Iaşi [= Jassy, rhymes with Josh] was the location of the first large-scale massacre of the Romanian Holocaust. In addition to its anti-Semitic traditions of over a century, because of its proximity to the Soviet fronter, “it became the focus of many of the anti-Semitic measures that accompanied plans to join Germany’s invasion of the USSR.” The terms “Jew” and “Communist” were virtually interchangeable, as in the order by Ion Antonescu, the Romanian head of state, to compile lists of “all Jews, Communist agents, or sympathizers in each region.” Worse was Order No. 4147, issued at about the same time, which demanded the expulsion of all Jews between the ages of eighteen and sixty from northeastern Moldavia (the Iaşi region) in expectation of fighting there. The presence of large numbers of Jews in the region was anathema to both the German and Romanian officials. Fully half of Iaşi’s population of 100,000 was Jewish. In cooperation with the German Gestapo and the SD (the intelligence arm of the SS), the Romanian Secretariat of the Secret Intelligence Service (SSI) prepared the expulsions. At the same time, former Iron Guardists (also called legionaries because of the virtually equivalent organizational name of Legion of the Archangel St. Michael) were informed of the impending expulsions and likelihood of a pogrom.

A raid against Iaşi by the Soviet air force provided the spark for the pogrom. Damage was minor but rumors spread that the entire Jewish population of Iaşi was in league with the Red Army. Further rumors of Iaşi natives flying Soviet aircraft fanned the flames still further. On June 20th, four days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the pogrom began in earnest. It lasted over a week, until June 29. Although it is difficult to gain accurate estimates of the number of Jews killed, the minimum is probably around 900, with a more forthright testimony from a witness estimating the number of dead at 3,000–4,000.

But worse was yet to come. Several thousand Jews had been interned in police stations and special camps as “dangers” to Romanian security. At the end of June, these Jews were loaded onto death trains to be transported out of the region. The cars were decorated with signs stating that inside were “Communist Jews” or “killers of German and Romanian soldiers.” Several destinations were chosen and ultimately few survived the densely packed, poorly ventilated cars. No food or water was allowed. Jews, who frantically jumped from train cars to drink at a river crossing were shot or forcibly drowned. Those who survived were forced to hand over their valuables in a pattern of voracious looting that would be characteristic of the entire Holocaust, and of other genocides as well. Of 2,530 Jews who were transported in the first train, some 1,400 died. Of 1,902 Jews who boarded the second train, 1,194 died.

Iaşi was only the first of many massacres of Jews that were to take place in nearby Bessarabia and Bukovina, territories that had been transferred to Soviet control in 1940, but were now under German and Romanian authority. Mihai Antonescu, a relative of Ion Antonescu and deputy premier, supported the forced “migration” of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. The attitude of “blame” for the loss of these territories in 1940 was to characterize much of Romanian Jewish policy. Frequent massacres occurred immediately after the German invasion. During July alone, Raul Hilberg estimates that more than 10,000 Jews were murdered by the Romanian and German military, as well as the native Ukrainian peasantry. These massacres were to be followed by mass deportations to work camps in Ukraine and ultimately death camps in Poland. At first, the Germans resisted the massive relocation of Jews from northern Bessarabia into German military-controlled districts. The number of Jews in each of these attempted transports was in the tens of thousands. The Germans conjured up the specter of more than half a million Jews to be added to the many indigenous Ukrainian Jews now being murdered by Einsatzgruppe D with only 600 men. Consequently, the German legation informed Mihai Antonescu that the Jews were to be eliminated in “a slow and systematic manner.”

Jews were now interned in transit camps throughout Bessarabia. In October, deportations to Ukraine began. During the first months of the war, it is estimated that at least 65,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were killed in mass murders, in the transit camps and during deportation. If we add the number of Jews deported who died in southwestern Ukraine (called Transnistria by the Romanians), the number reaches approximately 130,000. If we add to this the number of native Ukrainian Jews in Odessa and elsewhere killed by the Romanian and German authorities, the number reaches approximately 250,000 murdered under Romanian jurisdiction. According to Raul Hilberg, “no country, besides Germany, was involved in massacres of Jews on such a scale.”

SOURCE: The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, by Manus I. Midlarsky (Cambridge U. Press, 2005), pp. 205-207

A contrast between the outcomes in Hungary and Romania is puzzling. Despite the barbarity of the Romanian authorities, approximately half of Romania’s Jews survived, a larger percentage than in Hungary. Out of 756,000 Jews in Romania in 1930, 375,000 survived the war, the vast majority of them in Regat Romania [the old kingdom of Moldavia and Wallachia, not the parts of Greater Romania acquired after World War I]. Why? There are essentially two reasons for this outcome, both consistent with the theoretical framework put forward here emphasizing losses at the outset. First, as Radu Ioanid put it,

In regard to the experience of the Jewish community of Regat, one thing was clear during the Holocaust: not having come into contact with the Soviets in 1940, the Jews were not held accountable for the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and therefore not singled out for prompt punishment at the beginning of the war.

Thus, Jews in the Regat were not murdered in the same extent as those in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, because they were not held responsible for the Romanian territorial losses and consequent refugee migrations.

Second, despite Romanian refusals to initiate these deportations, the Germans might still have intervened directly in Romania to effect deportations under different geopolitical circumstances. And here we find one of the crucial distinctions between Romanian and Hungarian behavior. Whereas the Romanians could refuse the German requests for deportation for their own reasons, having to do principally with the fear of Allied reprisals after the increasingly likely German defeat, the Hungarians could not. In contrast to Romania, Hungary lay directly in the path of the Soviet westbound march. In the Nazi view, as we saw earlier, the large concentrations of Jews in Hungary constituted a potentially collaborating fifth column that could ease the Soviet advance to the Reich heartland. Hence, direct German intervention was required.

Although geopolitically important principally due to the Ploesti oil fields, Romania did not lie directly in the path of the main Soviet advance and was not required for a strategic defense of the eastern reaches of the Reich. At this stage in the war, after Allied bombing of the oil fields and the absence of a perceived direct strategic threat Germany of Romania’s remaining Jews, an intervention was not required for strategic defense. It is ironic that a country with a far more virulent and barbaric anti-Semitic tradition could save a larger percentage of its Jews than one with an earlier history of strong Hungarian-Jewish collaboration. Yet here we see the importance of geopolitical imperatives, an important component of realpolitik (as identified in the three models [brute-force imprudent, prudent, and cynical] of realpolitik in chapter 5)….

Finally, the pattern of Hungarian-Jewish deportations suggests a transition even within imprudent brute-force realpolitik. Whereas the choice of genocidal behavior clearly was imprudent at the start of Operation Barbarossa in mid-1941, three years later, even to German opponents of Nazism, it could now appear to be prudent. By this time, the Germans could reason, many Hungarian Jews would have heard of the genocide elsewhere in Europe and would have become determined opponents of the Nazi regime. Aid to the oncoming Soviets would have been forthcoming. Having created this body of potential fifth columnists by their own unbridled brutality, the Germans were forced to live with the consequences. Deportation and death of this Jewish population then could easily have been seen by the Germans to be absolutely required in order to protect the German state and its population from Soviet revenge.

SOURCE: The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, by Manus I. Midlarsky (Cambridge U. Press, 2005), pp. 258-259