Дирекція лісів 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 includes one inventory systematized according to the structural-chronological principle. Documents housed in the fond include correspondence of the Directorate of Forestry with prefectures and forestries on the forced transport of Jews to logging areas and their use there as a labor force (1942); on sending Jews to work at the Shargorod and Kryzhopol’ forestries (1942); and on the appointment of a Jewish specialist to the Directorate of Forestry (1942). There is also information on the condition of Jews in the Rybnitsa ghetto and the number of houses located therein; on the deplorable state of Jews at the Kryzhopol’ forestry and on their return to the Mogilev ghetto (1942); correspondence of the Directorate of Forestry with ghettos on firewood provision, particularly on the apportionment of firewood for the Mogilev-Podol’skii and Rybnitsa ghettos (1942); a request submitted to the Governorate of Transnistria by a government ghetto-inspection commission that firewood be apportioned to all ghettos of Transnistria (1943); documents confirming firewood delivery (1944); etc. The documents are in Romanian and Russian.