The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County and the Holocaust Remembrance Association have worked to create a temporary exhibition that will draw attention to the largely forgotten history of the Holocaust in Transnistria. Although poorly known outside of academic circles, this 16,000 square mile region in western Ukraine between the Dniester and Bug Rivers, was home to 300,000 Jews before the war, the largest number in and around the important port city of Odessa.
In June of 1941, the Nazi’s gave the area to its ally Romania, which soon decided to use the region of Transnistria as the destination for Jews deported from the Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the northern Moldavia regions of Romania. Altogether, Romania deported approximately 150,000 Jews to Transnistria, who joined the estimated 185,000 Ukrainian Jews who had failed to escape before the Nazi invasion.
By the end of 1943, almost all of the 185,000 Ukrainian Jews had been murdered by Romanian and German soldiers. In addition, nearly 100,000 of the 150,000 Jews deported from Romania to Transnistria had been murdered or had died from exposure, starvation, or disease. The 250,000 to 280,000 Jews who were killed within the relatively small confines of Transnistria represent almost the same number as those killed in the more well-known death camp of Sobibor, and yet few people know the name of the area or the camp of Bogdanovka where 48,000 Jews were killed in only a few short weeks. This exhibition explores the history of this area and explains why it is so poorly known.
Join us for our official launch. You’ll also have the rare opportunity to meet Transnistria survivors at this event.
