Головна регістратура Губернаторства Трансністрії, м Одеса

By agreement with Germany (signed 30 August 1941 in Bendery), Romania received a mandate to implement temporary “administrative and economic operation” of the Governorate of Transnistria (Rus. Zadnestrov’e) – an artificially created administrative-territorial formation including German-Romanian occupied parts of the Vinnitsa, Odessa, and Nikolaev regions of Ukraine and the left-bank districts of Moldavia between the Southern Bug and the Dniester – upon which an administrative structure was introduced, headed by a civilian governor. This individual administered the Governorate of Transnistria through the heads of its thirteen constituent counties (județe), and via a number of sectoral directorates, including Finance, Industry, Commerce, Labor (whose function encompassed the labor conscription of the population, especially Jews, in the occupied territory), Forestry, Health, etc. This administrative structure also included the Main Registry, which housed the archive of the Governorate of Transnistria, the primary purpose of which was to register all incoming and outgoing correspondence. The administrative center of the Governorate of Transnistria from August through October 1941 was the city of Tiraspol’; upon the Red Army’s forced departure from the city of Odessa, the administrative center was transferred there. March 1944 saw the de facto liquidation of the Governorate of Transnistria, when detachments of the Red Army completely liberated the territory between the Dniester and the Southern Bug from German and Romanian forces. The fond consists of four inventories systematized according to the structural-chronological principle. Documents (op. 1, 3-4) include correspondence of Governorate directorates with administrative institutions and military and police departments of Romania and Transnistria on the deportation of the Jewish population of Odessa, Bessarabia, and Bukovina into ghettos, the location and movements of Jews in the territory of Transnistria and their labor conscription fulfillment, on food ration deliveries, etc. (1942-43); lists of Jews (including a breakdown by sex and profession) in the ghettos of Tiraspol’ and Birzula and of Balta, Golta, and Dubossar counties; information on the use of these persons in forced labor, on the typhus epidemic in the ghetto in the village of Nestervarka and the condition of Jews imprisoned in the camp at Vapniarka; data on aid provided to ghetto-interned Jews by the Central Office of the Jews of Romania (Bucharest) and the Jewish committees of the cities of Chernovtsy and Mogilev-Podol’skii (1942-43); petitions by Jews to be allowed to move from one city to another, and to be freed from camps and ghettos, submitted in particular by persons having been baptized or having American citizenship; etc. The documents are in Romanian.