Odessa Massacre
Coordinates: 46°27′58″N 30°43′59″E / 46.466°N 30.733°E
The Odessa massacre is the name given to the mass murder of Jewish and Romani population of Odessa and surrounding towns in Transnistria during the autumn of 1941 and winter of 1942 while under Romanian control.
Depending on the accepted terms of reference and scope, the Odessa massacre refers either to the events of October 22–24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000 Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation. In the same days, Germans and Romanians killed about 15,000 Romani people.
Odessa had a large Jewish population of approximately 180,000, or 30% of the city's total population, before the war. By the time the Romanians had taken the city, between 80,000 and 90,000 Jews remained, the rest having fled or had been evacuated by the Soviets. As the massacres occurred, Jews from surrounding villages would be concentrated in Odessa and Romanian concentration camps set up in the surrounding areas.
The Germans and Romanians captured Odessa following a two-month siege on October 16. A delayed bomb placed by the Soviets detonated on the 22nd in the Romanian headquarters, killing 67 people including General Ioan Glogojeanu, the Romanian commander, 16 other Romanian officers and four German naval officers.
Blaming the Jews and communists for the bomb, Romanian troops began reprisals that same evening. By noon of the following day, October 23, 5,000 civilians had been seized and shot, most of them Jews. On the morning of October 23, over 19,000 Jews were assembled in nine gunpowder warehouses at the port, and summarily shot, after which the warehouses were set on fire. Some of the prisoners were burned alive.
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