Zentral Auswanderungs Büreau der Juden Odessa. Kundmachung Nr. 2 (Central Emigration Office of the Jews of Odessa. Announcement No. 2)
Odessa: Zentral Auswanderungs Büreau, 1942. Original document. Loose leaf. Quarto. Original loose leaf with black lettering. Announcement based on ordinance no. 35/942 of the civil government of Transnistria relating to the emigration of Jews in Odessa and surrounding areas.
The text, printed biligually in German and Ukrainian is organized into five statements. The annoucement concerns the liquidation and sale of goods of emigrated or vanished Jews beginning on March 1, 1942 with the whole population, without limitations, given the right to buy these items based on oral agreements. Furthermore, the announcement regulates details and procedures of the sale and, at the end, announces that after the sale, proceeds will by handed to the Jews by the Central Emigration Office.
"The rapid development of Odessa began after the Russian conquest (1789). Its Jewish population also grew quickly, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the most important Jewish literary community after Warsaw. In 1926 there were 153,194 Jews in Odessa (36.4 percent of the total population), and by 1939 their numbers reached 180,000." (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. 3, page 1080).
When Romanians and Germans laid siege to the city on August 5, 1941, many Jews in Odessa managed to leave and eighty to ninety thousand Jews remained in the city. Odessa fell on October 16 and the German Einsatzkommando 11b and the Romanian intelligence service immediately slaughtered over eight thousand residents, mainly Jews, and Odessa was established as the capital of the Transnistria region. On October 22 the Romanian military headquarters were blown up killing sixty-six officers and the military governor. In reprisal the Romanian ruler Ion Antonescu ordered devastating retaliation, including the arrest of one member of each Jewish family. By October 1941 some 40,000 Jews were assembled in the ghetto of the nearby city of Slobodka and their valuables confiscated. Deportations of some 20,000 Jews began in January of 1942. When Odessa was liberated on April 10, 1944, authorities reported that about 99,000 Jews had been killed. Odessa again became an important Jewish center with 102,000 Jews living there according to a 1959 census.
Considering the context of "Kundmachung Nr. 2, the Odessa massacre of October 22-24, 1941, and the murder of Jews living between the rivers Dniester and Bug during the Romanian and German occupation, this succinct notice, including its misspellings and mistakes in the German language, is a chilling mirror image of the attitude shown by the occupying powers towards the Jews. Approximately 30,000 Jews were killed in Odessa, and more than 100,000 in Transnistria.
The text is printed in German on one side, and Ukrainian on the verso. Minor wear and smudging. Protected in modern mylar. Very good+ condition. Item #51752
Price: $2,000.00