EPHRAIM OPHIR: WAS THE TRANSNISTRIA RESCUE PLAN ACHIEVABLE?

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WAS THE TRANSNISTRIA RESCUE PLAN ACHIEVABLE?*
EPHRAIM OPHIR

Kibbutz Shoval Israel

Historians have examined various aspects of the fall 1942 proposal to allow some 70,000 Jews trapped and dying in Transnistria to emigrate from Romania. However, the central players and arena in this scheme, in Romania itself, have been largely ignored in the historiography. There were apparently several parallel negotiations, involving Romanian Jewish leaders, Romanian government officials, such as Radu Lecca, pnvate entrepreneurs who were also German or Romanian intelligence agents, and others. The initiative for the negotiations apparently came from the Romanians, in October 1942, with the Germans opposing it once they became aware of it two months later. By the time this rescue scheme became public knowledge, in February 1943, it had already been abandoned.

*I would like to thank David Silberklang for translating this article from the original Hebrew.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1993 7(3):333-371; doi:10.1093/hgs/7.3.333
© 1993 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Jewish Politics and Rescue: The Founding of the Council for German Jewry
David Silberklang

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Following the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws in Germany in September 1935, Jewish leaders in Britain sought a far-reaching and unprecedented solution to the plight of German Jewry. Zionists and non-Zionists there bridged their ideological differences to formulate a plan, in dose consultation with German Jewish leaders, for the emigration of most of German Jewry in four years. The collaboration of American Jewry and of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, essential for the plan's success, was solicited. Months of negotiations resulted in the creation of the Council for German Jewry, with the task of coordinating implementation of a modified version of the British plan.