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The Iasi Pogrom: The First Stage of the Physical Destruction of Romanian Jewry

The evacuation of Jews from Iasi — where 45,000 Jews were living on June 29, 1941 — was part of a plan to eliminate the Jewish presence in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Moldavia (1). “Cleansing the land” meant the immediate liquidation of all Jews in the countryside, the incarceration in ghettos of Jews found in urban centers, and the detention of all persons suspected of being Communist Party activists. It was the Romanian equivalent of the Final Solution. The pogrom against the Jews of Iasi was carried out under express orders from Ion Antonescu that the city be cleansed of all Jews and that any Jew who opened fire on Romanian or German soldiers should be eliminated without mercy. Section Two of the General Headquarters of the Romanian Army and the Special Intelligence Service (SSI) laid the groundwork for the Iasi pogrom and supplied the pretext for punishing the city’s Jewish population, while German army units stationed in the city assisted the Romanian authorities.
On June 27, 1941, Ion Antonescu issued the formal order to evacuate Jews from the city via telephone directly to Col. Constantin Lupu, commander of the Iasi garrison. Lupu was instructed to take steps to “cleanse Iasi of its Jewish population” (2). On the night of June 28/29, as army, police and gendarmerie units were launching the arrests and executions, Antonescu telephoned again to reiterate the evacuation order. Lupu made careful note of his mission:
1. Issue a notice signed by you in your capacity as military commander of the city of Iasi, based on the existing government orders, adding: “In light of the state of war...if anyone opens fire from a building, the house is to be surrounded by soldiers and all its inhabitants arrested, with the exception of children. Following a brief interrogation, the guilty parties are to be executed. A similar punishment is to be implemented against those who hide individuals who have committed the above offenses.”
2. The evacuation of the Jewish population from Iasi is essential, and shall be carried out in full, including women and children. The evacuation shall be implemented pachete pachete [batch by batch], first to Roman and later to Targu-Jiu. For this reason, you are to arrange the matter with the Ministry of Interior and the county prefecture. Suitable preparations must be made (3).
Before these orders were issued, an understanding was reached with the commander of the German army corps (the Wehrmacht) in Iasi about the methods to be employed against the Jews. But Colonel Lupu was unable to control the situation and faithfully carry out Antonescu’s order, and was therefore stripped of his post on July 2, 1941. During his court-martial by the Fourth Army Corps in January 1942, the order he had received from the Marshal and his deputy, Mihai Antonescu, came to light.
The expulsion of the Jews from Moldavia was part of a larger plan, influenced by the belief of Ion and Mihai Antonescu in the German army’s ultimate victory, which would also encompass the physical extermination of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina (4). The first step of this plan, according to Ion Antonescu’s order to General Steflea, then chief of the army general staff, was to “identify all Yids, communist agents, or their sympathizers, by county [in Moldavia]” so that the Ministry of Interior could track them, restrict their freedom of movement, and ultimately dispose of them when and how Ion Antonescu chose (5). The second step was to evacuate Jews from all villages in Moldavia, and to intern some of them in the Targu-Jiu camp in southern Romania (6). The final step was to provide grounds for these actions by transforming Iasi’s Jews into potential collaborators with "the Soviet enemy," thereby justifying retaliatory action against rebels who had not yet rebelled. To achieve this, Antonescu issued a special order, which was relayed by the security police (Sigurantza) to police headquarters in Iasi on June 27, 1941: “Since Sigurantza headquarters has become aware that certain Jews have hidden arms and ammunition, we hereby request that you conduct thorough and meticulous searches in the apartments of the Jewish population….” (7).
On the basis of Antonescu’s order to General Steflea, directives were issued to the Ministry of Interior, which commanded the gendarmerie and police, and the Ministry of Propaganda, headed by Mihai Antonescu. These directives were then translated into an actual plan of operation by military command structures (Military Cabinet and Section Two) and the SSI in coordination with the two ministries. Antonescu’s second order to Colonel Lupu to evacuate all 45,000 of the city’s Jews and his authorization to execute any Jew "who attacked the army," in effect gave the gendarmerie and police carte blanche to torture and murder Jews and to evacuate thousands of them by rail to southern Romania.
The SSI, by order of Antonescu and the General Staff, established a special unit shortly after Antonescu’s meeting with Hitler on June 11, 1941. Operation Echelon No. 1 (Esalonul I Operativ) — also known as the Special Echelon — consisted of some 160 people, including auxiliary personnel, selected from the most talented, reliable, and daring members of the SSI. Their assignment was to “protect the home front from acts of espionage, sabotage, and terror” (8). The Echelon left Bucharest for Moldavia on June 18, accompanied by a Romanian-speaking officer from the Intelligence Service of the German army, Major Hermann Stransky, who served as liaison between the Abwehr and the SSI.
On June 26, antisemitic agitation in the local press suddenly intensified. At the same time, the police were flooded with reports from Romanians claiming that Jews were signalling enemy aircraft, hiding paratrooper agents, holding suspicious gatherings, and the like. The emergence of this psychosis was no accident; it was contrived by the Section Two and the Special Echelon. The scheme behind the pogrom was explained in advance to the 14th Division headquarters and the commanders of the police and gendarmerie (9). On June 26, against a backdrop of threats issued in the local press by General Stavrescu, commander of the 14th Division, Romanian soldiers (many of whom were inebriated) began to break into Jewish flats near their camps on the outskirts of the city (10). Although some who joined in the rioting or looting were former Legionnaires and their followers as well as supporters of Cuza’s antisemitic movement, most were civilians who armed themselves or were given weapons in advance of the anti-Jewish actions.
Other signs of impending violence included the mobilization of young Jews to dig huge ditches in the Jewish cemetery about a week before the pogrom (11) and the marking with crucifixes of “houses inhabited by Christians” (12). The next stage of preparation began on June 27, when authorities officially accused the Jews of responsibility for Soviet bombings. All heads of administration in Iasi convened at the palace of the prefect — ostensibly to reach decisions regarding law and order — to deploy the forces that were to participate in the pogrom. False attacks on soldiers were then organized to rouse the soldiers’ anger and create the impression of a Jewish uprising and the need for strict measures against it. Jewish "guilt" was thus already a fait accompli. At 9:00 p.m. on June 28, an air alert was sounded and several German aircraft flew over the city, one of them signaling with a blue flare. Shots were immediately heard throughout the city, chiefly from the main streets where army units marched their way to the front (13). The numerous shots fired wherever there were soldiers posted in full battle dress created the impression of a great battle, and Romanian military men accompanied by armed civilians began their attack on wealthy Jews residing in the center city where the false shootings had taken place (14).
Pillaging, rape and murder of Jews began in the outskirts of Iasi on the night of June 28/29. Groups of thugs broke into their homes and terrorized them. The survivors were taken to police headquarters (the Chestura). Organizers of the pogrom, such as General Stavrescu, reported that the “Judeo-communists” and Soviet pilots, whose planes had been shot down, had opened fire on the Romanian and German soldiers. In response, Romanian troops and gendarmes “surrounded the buildings from which the shots had been fired, along with entire neighborhoods, and evacuated those arrested — men, women and children — to police headquarters. The guilty were also executed on the spot by the German/Romanian forces that captured them” (15). Romanian officials who were either unaware of the plan or knew only part of it, recounted the start of the pogrom differently. For example, Nicolae Captaru, Prefect of the Iasi county, who had no knowledge of the plan, reported to the Ministry of Interior: “There are those who believe that the shots were the act of organized individuals seeking to cause panic among the army units and civilian population....According to the findings gathered thus far, it has been shown that certain individuals are attempting to place the blame on the Jews of the city with the aim of inciting the Romanian army, the German army, and also the Christian population against the Jews in order to provoke the mass murder of Jews” (16).
Those participating in the manhunt launched on the night of June 28/29 were, first and foremost, the Iasi police, backed by the Bessarabia police and gendarmerie units (17). Other participants were army soldiers, young people armed by SSI agents, and mobs who robbed and killed, knowing they would not have to account for their actions. The implementation of the Iasi pogrom consisted of five basic elements: 1. spreading rumors that Jews had shot at the army; 2. warning the Romanian residents of what was about to take place; 3. fostering popular collaboration with the security forces; 4. marking Christian and Jewish homes; and finally 5. inciting rioters to murder, rape, and rob (18). Similar methods were used in the pogrom plotted and carried out by Romanian units in Dorohoi one year earlier in July 1940.
In addition to informing on Jews, directing soldiers to Jewish homes and refuges, and even breaking into homes themselves, some Romanian residents of Iasi also took part in the arrests and humiliation forced upon the convoys of Jews on their way to the Chestura. The perpetrators included neighbors of Jews, known and lesser - known supporters of antisemitic movements, students, poorly paid, low - level officials, railway workers, craftsmen frustrated by Jewish competition, “white-collar” workers, retirees and military veterans. The extent to which they enlisted in the cause of “thinning” Iasi’s Jewish population — as the pogrom was described at a Cabinet meeting in Bucharest (19) — is a topic in and of itself, and worthy of separate study. War criminals among Romanians numbered in the hundreds, and not all of them were located and identified after the war (20).
The idea of the pogrom crystallized in the headquarters of the General Staff and its secret branch, Section Two, and in the SSI. These offices collaborated with the Wehrmacht in Romania and the headquarters of the German 30th Army Corps in Iasi. During the course of the pogrom, Romanian authorities lost control of events, and the city of Iasi became a huge area in which the soldiers of both armies, the gendarmes, and Romanian policemen and civilians — organized and unorganized — hunted down Jews, robbed them, and killed them. This temporary loss of control and the fear of Antonescu’s reaction to it led the various branches of the Romanian regime to fabricate excuses for their ineffectiveness in the final hours of the mayhem, casting the blame on each other and, together, on the Germans (21).
The German soldiers in Iasi acted on the basis of an understanding with the Romanian army (22). They were divided into cells and sent out to arrest Jews, assigned to escort convoys, and stationed at the entrance to the Chestura. They, too, broke into homes — either with Romanian soldiers or alone — and tormented Jews there and during the forced march to Chestura. They shot into crowds of Jews and committed the same acts as their Romanian counterparts. In addition, they photographed the pogrom, even going so far as to stage scenes. It is important to note here that the units of Einsatzgruppe D, although they operated in territories reclaimed by Romania after June 22, 1941, did not operate in Romania itself — and thus did not participate in the Iasi pogrom — nor did any other SS unit (23). Antonescu’s administration did not allow the SS or Gestapo to operate on Romanian territory after the Legionnaires’ revolt. The representatives of Himmler and of the Foreign Department of the Nazi Party were forced to leave Romania in April 1941; they were joined, at Antonescu’s request, by the known Gestapo agents in Romania (24).

Foot notes

1. Telephone Communication from prefect of Iasi, Captaru, to Ministry of Interior in Bucharest, June 29, 1941. Ministry of Interior Archives, file 40010, vol. 89, p. 478; a copy can be found in USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 36.
2. Lupu to Gen. Antonescu, July 25, 1941, Arhivele Statului Bucuresti, fond Presedentia, Consiliului de Ministri, file 247/41, file 10 (Romanian State Archives in Bucharest, Collection of Office of Prime Minister).
3. “Telephone order,” June 28/29, 11:00 p.m. Investigative file in matter of Col. (res.) Constantin Lupu, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233: vol. 28, p. 183; copy in USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 48.
4. Testimony of Col. Traian Borcescu, November 12, 1945. Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 24: p. 122; copy in USHMM, reel 47. Ion Antonescu explicitly referred to this unwritten plan in the directives he sent from the front to Mihai Antonescu on September 5, 1941; see I. Antonescu to M. Antonescu, September 5, 1941, Archvies of Office of Prime Minister, file 167/1941, pp. 64-65.
5. Carp, vol. 1: no. 1, p. 39.
6. Ancel, Documents, vol. 2: no. 136, pp. 414-415.
7. Order to Iasi police headquarters from Sigurantza, June 27, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 40010, vol. 89: p. 283; copy located in: USHMM, 25004M, reel 36.
8. Testimony of Cristescu, July 4, 1947, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 54: p. 226; Carp, Cartea neagra, vol. 2: no. 3, pp. 42-43. It is plausible that Einsatzgruppe D served as a model for this special unit; for more information on the temporary deployment of Einsatzgruppe D on Romanian territory in Bessarabia, see: Jean Ancel, “The Jassy [Iasi] Syndrome (I)”, Romanian Jewish Studies 1:1 (Spring 1987): pp. 36-38.
9. Affidavit of Col. Captaru, May 1946, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 36: p. 46; copy in USHMM, RG 25004M reel 43.
10. Excerpt of Iasi pogrom trial, June 26, 1946, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 1: section 2, p. 11; copy in USHMM, RG 25004M reel 47.
11. Testimony of Natan Goldstein, n.d. [August 1945], Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 31: part 1, p. 62; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 41; Testimony of Gheorghe Leahu, October 29, 1945, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 26; copy in: USHMM, reel 48.
12. Carp, Cartea neagra, vol. 2: no. 44, p. 110.
13. Carp, Cartea neagra, vol. 2: no. 43, p. 108.
14. Ancel, Documents, vol. 6: no. 9, p. 35.
15. Report on pogrom, June 30, 1941, by Stavrescu to Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 40010, vol. 89: pp. 475-476; copy located in: Cartea neagra, vol. 2: no. 39, p. 93.
16. Report of Captaru to Interior Minister, June 29, 1941, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 40010, vol. 89: p. 482.
17. 360 policemen gathered in Iasi to be deployed in Chisinau and in other Bessarabian cities after the liberation of the province. Most of them had served in Bessarabia before 1940.
18. Ancel, “Jassy Syndrome,” pp. 43-46.
19. Protocol from November 13, 1941, Cabinet meeting, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 40010, vol. 78: p. 13; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 35.
20. List of 286 civilian participants in Iasi pogrom, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 40: pp. 115-127; copy located in: USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 43. The does not include army personnel, gendarmes, and ordinary police, nor does it identify all the criminals.
21. See USHMM, RG 25004M, file 108233.
22. Affidavit of Capt. Ioan Mihail, January 25, 1942, in Lupu file, Ministry of Interior Archives, file 108233, vol. 29: p. 221; copy in USHMM, reel 48. Mihail served as interpreter during conversation with General von Salmuth.
23. This conclusion is based on an examination of the reports of the Einsatzgruppe. See Ancel, Documents, vol. 5, and Helmut Krausnick and Hans Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges, die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-1942 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1981), pp. 195-200. See also: Ancel, “Jassy Syndrome.”
24. Letter from Himmler’s office to Ribbentrop, April 2, 1941, DGFP, vol. 7: no. 258, pp. 443-444.

The Iasi Death Trains

On June 29, 1941, Mihai Antonescu ordered the deportation of all Jews from Iasi, including women and children (1). The surviving Jews were taken to the railway station and were beaten, robbed, and humiliated along the way (2). Moreover, the Iasi sidewalks were piled with dead bodies, and the deportees had to walk over some of them along the street leading to the station (3). Once they were at the station, the deportees were forced to lie face down on the platform and in the square in front of the station. Romanian travelers stepped on them as Romanian and German soldiers yelled that anyone raising his or her head would be shot (4). Finally, Jews were forced into freight train cars under a volley of blows, bayonet cuts, clubbings and insults. Many railway workers joined the pandemonium, hitting the deportees with their hammers.
The intention of extermination was clear from the very beginning. As it was later established in the Iasi trials, the train cars in which Jews were forced had been used for the transport of carbide and therefore emitted a stifling odor. In addition, although no car could accommodate more than forty people, between 120 and 150 Jews — many of them wounded — were forcibly crammed inside. After the doors were safely locked behind them, all windows and cracks were sealed (5). “Because of the summer heat and the lack of air, people would first go mad and then perish,” according to a survivor (6). The deportation train would ride on the same route several times.
The second train to leave Iasi for Podu Iloaiei was even more crowded (about 2,000 Jews were crammed into twenty cars). The last car contained the bodies of eighty Jews who had been shot, stabbed, or beaten (7). In the summer heat, those crammed inside had to wait for two hours until departure. “During the night,” one survivor recounted, “some of us went mad and started to yell, bite and jostle violently; you had to fight them, as they could take your life; in the morning, many of us were dead and the bodies were left inside; they refused to give water even to our crying children, whom we were holding above our heads” (8). When the doors of the train were opened, the surviving few heard the guards calling on them to throw out the dead (because of the stench, they dared not come too close. As it happened on a holiday, peasants from neighboring villages were brought to see “the communists who shot at the Romanian army,” and some of the peasants yelled, “Kill them! What’s the point of giving them a free ride?” (9).
In the death train that left Iasi for Calarasi, southern Romania, which carried perhaps as many as 5,000 Jews, only 1,011 reached their destination alive after seven days (10). (The Romanian police counted 1,258 bodies, yet hundreds of dead were thrown out of the train on the way at Mirceasti, Roman, Sabaoani, and Inotesti.) (11). The death train to Podu Iloaiei (15 kilometers from Iasi) had up to 2,700 Jews upon departure, of which only 700 disembarked alive. In the official account, Romanian authorities reported that 1,900 Jews boarded the train and “only” 1,194 died (12). In total, up to 14,850 Jews were killed during the Iasi pogrom. The Romanian SSI acknowledged that 13,266 Jews died (13), whereas the figure advanced by the Jewish Community after carrying out its own census was 14,850 (14). In August 1942, the army labor recruiting service in Iasi reported that it could not find 13,868 Jews (15).

Foot notes

1. Major Plasnila to Military Court, 13 September 1941, Ministerul Afacerilor Interne, Arhiva Operativa, file 108.233, p. 344.
2. Diary of Hirsch Zielle submitted to the people’s Court, 1944, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, vol. 37: p. 25/USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 3.
3. Testimony of Jean Haimovici, 1945, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, vol. 37: p. 49/USHMM, RG 25004M reel 48.
4. Testimony of Manase Iscovici, September 7, 1944, ibid., vol. 42: p. 403/USHMM, ibid., reel 43.
5. Bucharest Tribunal Indictment, June 26, 1948, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, vol. 1, 59/USHMM, RG25004M, reel 47.
6. Testimony of Iancu Florea Ramniceanu, June 18, 1948, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, vol. 1: p. 699/USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 47.
7. Cartea neagra, vol. 2: p. 33.
8. Testimony of David Bandel, 1944, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, vol. 45: pp. 338-339/USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 47.
9. Testimony of Israel Schleier, 1945, ibid., vol. 24: p. 85.
10. Inventory, July 7, 1941, Arhiva Ministerului de Interne, file 108233, vol. 37: p. 281.
11. Telephone Report no. 6125, July 1, 1941, ibid., file 40010, vol. 89 (page no. illegible); Report of Triandaf, July 1, 1941, ibid., vol. 30: p. 217 (copy in USHMM, RG 25004M, reel 49).
12. Carp, Cartea neagra, vol. 2: no. 64, p. 141.
13. Report of SSI Iasi, July 23, 1943, Consiliul Securitatii Statului, Fond documentar, file 3041, p. 327; Cristian Trancota, Eugen Cristescu, asul serviciilor secrete romanesti. Memorii (Bucharest: Roza vanturilor, 1997), p. 119.
14. Ancel, Documents, vol. 6: no. 4, p. 49.
15. Report of Georgescu to Romanian government, November 8, 1941, Arhiva Statului, Presedintia Consiliului de Ministri, Colectia Cabinet, file 86/1941, p. 251.

Interview with Mr. Stefan Fripis

Interview with Mr. Stefan Fripis, 86, who lives in the proximity of the Jewish cemetery of Tîrgu Frumos. He eye-witnessed the transportation, in trucks, of the corpses from the death trains to the cemetery. Because of his age he is sometimes incoherent, and has a tendency to divagate.
(The interview was taken by Laurentiu Ursu on July 3, 2006)
Can you tell me which were the Jewish streets in Tîrgu Frumos?
Cuza Voda was the most important (the main street), [also] the Armenian Street; few of them used to live in the outskirts. Most of them lived on the main streets.
I would like to ask you about the Jews of this town whom you knew, with whom you grew up. Do you remember the trains in 1941?
I attended the same primary school with many of them.
Do you remember the names of your former schoolmates?
Schoolmates? Weissman, Schosner – they became lawyers. Braunstein used to have a store, a perfume shop. After ‘41, following the outbreak of the war, they left. And never returned...
Were they evacuated from the area before the war?
Not from here. I know about those who were brought in wagons from Iassy in ‘41. They stopped the trains at the railway station in Tîrgu Frumos, and transported them to the Jewish cemetery, uphill. They passed by here, on this street. The Jews were carried in trucks, just as they had died in the wagons, suffocated. After a while, upon realizing that this was not good, that people could no longer bear such a sight, they took the Jews by train to the ramp. There was a railway here (he indicates with his hand), at the ramp. They brought them closer to the cemetery, to ease their transportation.
How did people react on the first day, at the sight of the trucks loaded with dead Jews passing by from the Railway Station to the cemetery?
That is exactly why they brought the trains to the ramp, because it was quite awkward. As they passed by on the street, people could see them [the Jews] being thrown into the trucks...
Was there a smell?
There was, of course...
Who organized the transport? Were there armed people, soldiers, legionnaires, who were they?
No. It was the police. There was a junior detective, a certain Botez, who sat on the truck’s cabin with a machine gun in his hands... They were afraid of a possible reaction from the people in the houses. They feared an attack [by the Jews living on the main street].
Those who helped unload the corpses from the train and bury them were Jews, or Gypsies?
[Even] the Germans who were here, at the forge [together with Mr. Fripis, who was an ironsmith] were taken, because they had horses, and carts.
At the time of the pogrom were there German soldiers in Tîrgu Frumos?
Yes, sure there were. And since they were here, as we were working together, they told me in German to go myself. I am not going anywhere, no sir. I did not go. But people did. [It seems that the “Gypsies” agreed to unload the trucks, motivated by the “in-kind payment”, i.e. in exchange for the dead Jews’ belongings. This information was offered by Dan Fripis, the old man’s son]. After being taken there [at the cemetery], the Jews were thrown away like logs. They dug a mass grave, and put them in... In a few days, on this heat... Then they set them on fire. There was no other way, because of the heat, the corpses...
And the second transport? It was taken from here, from the barrier, from the ramp [silence].
***
What can you tell me about the Jews of Tîrgu?
There was a forge once, which belonged to Moise Pincu. Moise Stîngaciu was an ironsmith as well; he had a forge on the Armenian Street. Seinfeld, Ghidali were shoemakers... There were many tailors, too: David, Donu (?), Gutfleisch (who came from from Iassy), Sinlovici... They were many. I know the most important ones, most famous. Beef butchers were Jewish. Pork butchers were Romanian. When beef was cut, the Jews would take the kosher part. The front part was theirs. They would not eat the rear. That was the way of life. Poultry was also cut but the Hacham.
Some of the Romanians learnt the art of pottery from the Jews, from Sufrim, from Schoim. It was from them that Vasilovschi, a renowned potter of the region, got his craft. Trade was also dominated by the Jews. They were trading abroad, on a large scale. They were cereals dealers. Avram Winter traded with Germany. I have known his son in law ever since we were children, 70-80 years ago... Winter owned a truck, a Ford. He had a Hungarian driver from Ardeal, Rudolf and several spring carriages; he would ride on them, buying eggs from various villages, which he would then pack and send to Germany.
When was that?
That was in the ‘30s, until ‘41, when the war broke out.
Was their community bigger than the other communities in Tîrgu, than the Lipovans’ for instance?
There were more Jews [than others]. There were no Lipovans. Now they are numerous. There were mostly Jews here, 450-500 de families.
Did they have a Synagogue?
They had three. Five! There was the Craftsmen’s Synagogue, the Tradesmen’s Synagogue... The richer Jews had their Synagogue in the Bazaar area.
Are any of these constructions still up?
No. They were demolished during the war, destroyed [the frontline crossed the town]. Some of them were in the same building.
Can you tell me something about the old Jewish cemetery, which was in use before this one?
It was on this side of the Railway Station, where the rails are. In 1887 [actually 1880], when the Iassy-Pascani railway was built, they moved the cemetery. Then the Jews revolted, came out with their axes. But the railway was still built. Then, the Rabbi of Pascani, when traveling from Iassy to Pascani, would get off the train here and continue his trip by car, so as not to cross the cemetery.