"Choosing the Soviet Union over Romania: The 1940 Jewish Exodus as Protest and Survival": Contribution by Svetlana Suveica

Book chapter by Svetlana Suveica (IOS): Choosing the Soviet Union over Romania: The 1940 Jewish Exodus as Protest and Survival. In: Nationalism From Below in the East European and Soviet Borderlands, Popular Responses to Nation-Building, 1900–1940, Petru Negură, Andrei Cușco, Svetlana Suveica (eds.), London: Bloomsbury Academic 2025, p. 273–294.

The book chapter explores the largely overlooked exodus of Romanian Jews to the USSR in the summer of 1940, prompted by the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina following the 1939 Stalin-Hitler Pact. It examines migration to the USSR as both a means of survival amid escalating violence and a form of protest against Romania’s interwar antisemitic policies. Drawing on survivors' testimonies and archival sources, the study reconstructs the experiences of émigrés—including intellectuals, workers, soldiers, and public servants—who fled persecution, sought safety, or pursued better opportunities. It highlights the bureaucratic hurdles they faced on both sides of the Dniester River, the violence they endured, and their later deportation as a distinct group to Transnistria after Romania regained control and occupied the territory in Summer 1941. Many perished, while others survived through further evacuation into the USSR before the full extent of the Holocaust.

Svetlana Suveica: Choosing the Soviet Union over Romania: The 1940 Jewish Exodus as Protest and Survival. In: Nationalism From Below in the East European and Soviet Borderlands, Popular Responses to Nation-Building, 1900–1940, Petru Negură, Andrei Cușco, Svetlana Suveica (eds.), London: Bloomsbury Academic 2025, p. 273–294.