On the Issue of Ethnic Cleansing in the Years of World War II

Author

Rendiuk Teofil

a Doctor of History, senior research fellow at the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department

On the Issue of Ethnic Cleansing in the Years of World War II

Abstract

For the first time, the article covers information about the secret plan of the Romanian military pro-fascist dictator I. Antonescu for forcibly evicting 991 265 ethnic Ukrainians and Russians / Lipovans from Romania during World War Two. The blueprint for the then-fascist theory of the nation’spurity was the basis for the development and planned implementation of such a plan, as well as the desire of the Romanian leadership to get rid of the Slavic ethnic element as a likely factor in influencing the situation in Romania in context of the anti-Soviet war. According to the Memorandum on Ethnic Cleansing of the Romanian Territories from the Slavic population via its forcible resettlement to the east, ethnic Ukrainians were to be expelled from Romania not only from the territories of Bessarabia and Bukovyna, annexed in 1918, but also from the Danube delta, Maramoroshchyna, and the Banat. Only the military defeat of the Third Reich near Kursk in the summer of 1943 and the compelled rapid retirement of its allies, including Romania, to the west made it impossible to implement these intentions for ethnic cleansing of the Romanian territory from the indigenous Ukrainian ethnic group.

Keywords

Romania, pro-fascist marshal I. Antonescu, World War II, ethnic Ukrainians, secret plan, forced eviction, ethnic cleansing, occupied territories, Bukovyna, Bessarabia, Danube delta, Maramoroshchyna, Banat, Transnistria, Memorandum on Ethnic Cleansing, historic Romanian territories, indigenous Ukrainian ethnic group, aggressive plans concerning Ukrainian lands.

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