Letters

Letters EN

The Documents: Witnesses to a Catastrophe

This collection comprises 192 letters and 21 official translations by the Romanian Gendarmerie, which were seized during the proceedings against the courier Albert Twers. Written in late November and early December 1941, they represent a rare corpus of immediate ego-documents. Composed on any available material, their physical nature alone reflects the extreme scarcity of the time. The letters are addressed to friends, relatives, or influential acquaintances back home, containing desperate pleas for money, food, and essential household items, as well as requests for political intervention reaching as far as the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu.

The Individuals: A Cross-Section of the Persecuted

Behind these lines are people from diverse social backgrounds whose lives were violently uprooted by racial policies. The spectrum of writers ranges from highly educated lawyers and experienced physicians to desperate mothers with no formal education trying to ensure the survival of their children. While some writers still attempted to secure protection through their choice of words and contacts, the stark existential distress and fading hope are clearly evident in others. Each letter represents an individual fate that, in its entirety, portrays the collective trauma of an entire population group.

Deportation and Arrival: The Path into the Void

The accounts document the brutal transition from the summer of 1941—when people were forcibly displaced from their homes with almost no belongings—to the murderous onset of winter in Transnistria. The deportations followed a cruel pattern: what initially appeared somewhat administratively organized collapsed into total chaos during the marches through the villages. People were robbed, mistreated, and systematically weakened; countless perished along the way. Upon arrival in Transnistria, the suffering continued: there were no prepared accommodations or barracks. The deportees were frequently driven from place to place, eventually forced to seek refuge in houses that had often stood empty since the First World War, offering no household goods or heating. Amidst planned currency reforms from rubles to lei, which devalued the last remains of their savings, these people fought against hunger, cold, and omnipresent fear.