The Romanian city of Iași hosts the Pogrom museum, which was created to honour the victims of the “Iași Pogrom”, the largest genocide against the Jews that took place on Romanian territory, preceding the deportations to Transnistria and the camps at Auschwitz.

The museum was opened in the former headquarters of the Romanian police and gendarmerie, on June 29, 2021, the 80th anniversary of the killing of over 13,200 Jews in the yard of that building.

“Jews from the aged 18 and up, were summoned, lured into a trap by being told to come and receive a pass for free movement. Romania had entered the war, and they could not move freely without that pass. However, they were met by Romanian and German soldiers who mercilessly machine-gunned them”, explains Pavel Smântână, elder of the Filocalia church of Iași, in a report of the Romanian broadcaster Alfa Omega TV.

He recounts that, a few days later, Marshal Ion Antonescu sent out telegrams containing the message 'The Jews must be exterminated' at the order of the Germans. Some copies of those telegrams are part of the museum collection.

The authorities in Iași "worked hard" to carry this out. Before doing anything, they brought in several Jews to dig the pits. The mass graves in which thousands of those Jews are buried can be visited in a field close to the museum.

[photo_footer]Panels outside the museum explain the tragedy experienced by the Jews in Iași. / Screenshot video  Alfa Omega TV. [/photo_footer] 

Death trains

In addition to those who were executed, over 4,000 Jews were loaded into the so-called “death trains”. Initially, they put 40–50 people in a wagon, but the stationmaster refused to “waste wagons”, so that they packed in up to 100–120 people, standing pressed together in the wagon.

The train first stopped at Podul Iloaiei, the next town after Iași, only 20 kilometres away. The trip took one day, with temperatures exceeding 30°C. Upon arrival, around 800 people were already dead, and the stronger survivors were taken out to move the bodies to the Jewish cemetery, dig graves and bury the deceased.



They were then loaded back onto the trains to continue the journey to the next stop, another 20 kilometres away. After another 24 hours, they reached the town of Târgu Frumos, where around 1,000 more people were dead.

The museum has an hologram of one of the survivors of the “death trains”. “He has past away a little over 3 years ago, but the recordings in which he tells in detail what happened remain. You can hear his voice and see him”, explains Smântână.

[photo_footer]One of the trains that took the Romanian Jews to Auschwitz. / Screenshot video  Alfa Omega TV. [/photo_footer] 

Visitors can also see the victims’ register, with their names and, for some of them, even photographs; as well as the perpetrators’ and the rescuers’ register.

“It is very important to have visitors at the museum because, in this way, many people can know what happened and we can have a dialogue and find out things we still do not know about those lives that were cut short in June 1941”, says museum curator, Nicoleta Dabișa, to Alfa Omega TV.

Christians who helped

Smântână stresses that, in the midst of this tragedy, there were “Christians from various denominations and even a colonel from the Romanian army, who saved Jews in those days”.

“Let us not run from responsibility. To know what our forefathers did, to take responsibility, and not stop there, but to ask forgiveness for what they did. Even if they can no longer do it, we can do it in their name”, he concluded.

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