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Odessa massacre survivor urges Romanian apology

The only known survivor of the October 1941 Odessa massacres of Jews, conducted by the Romanian army on the orders of pro-Nazi marshal Ion Antonescu, called on Bucharest Tuesday to ask for forgiveness for the crimes.

21 October 2011 - Last updated 11:33AM
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Photo: Mihail Zaslavski lost his mother, three sisters, a brother and an aunt in the massacre.

"I would like for the country's leaders to ask for forgiveness in the name of the Romanian people, not for me, but for all that happened", Mihail Zaslavski said during a press conference in Bucharest.   

"I would like to feel that they are sorry", the 85-year-old said, that "what happened is known and that a conclusion is drawn".   
 
Zaslavski insisted that he did not hate the Romanian people whose language he understands and whose music he loves.   
 
In October 1941, Jews in the occupied Ukrainian port which was under Romanian administration at the time, were crammed into warehouses that were 
later set ablaze. The Romanian army opened fire on those who tried to escape.   
 
Zaslavski lost his mother, three sisters, a brother and an aunt in the massacre. Aged 15 at the time, he managed to save himself by running in a corn field   
 
Romania denied its involvement in the Holocaust until a report by an international commission of historians led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, whose conclusions were admitted by Bucharest.   
 
In 2006, Romanian President Traian Basescu laid the foundation stone for a Holocaust memorial in Bucharest and called on Romanians to "assume" their country's past.   
 
According to the international report, the Romanian army, with the support of gendarmes and riot police, killed some 25,000 Jews and deported 35,000 others in the Odessa region between October 18, 1941 and mid-March 1942.   
 
About 270,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and 20,000 Roma died in the Bucharest-administered territories during the wartime Antonescu regime.   
 
Zaslavski said massacres should not only be remembered in terms of numbers, which sometimes turn into statistics.   
 
"It is not the numbers that count, but the tragedy of these people who were shot to death, burned alive or who lost their families. The tragedy is enormous", he said.   
 
Zaslavski was invited by a filmmaker and a German think tank, the Friedrich Ebert foundation in Romania, who want to launch a "public debate on the country's fascist past".
 
Source: EJP
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Holocaust Romania Ukraine Odessa