Russia at war 1941-1945

representing the Church, and Governor Alexeanu, representing the temporal power. The final result was that the Metropolitan Vissarion, who had entered Odessa like a Tsar, left for the railway station in a droshki, with one suitcase.

There was little or no Herrenvolk stuff about the Rumanians, and for that matter, not much love lost between Rumanians and the Germans, except perhaps at the very top

level. Conquerors and conquered found common ground in business and in the black

market. But neither Ukrainians, Russians nor Rumanians could, after all, take

Transniestria very seriously. For one year (up to Stalingrad) it seemed possible that the Rumanians had come to stay: but not after that. Many "free-enterprise" enthusiasts among the Odessites must then have gone much more cautiously about their co-operation with the new masters. These were, moreover, becoming visibly dejected since the rout of the Rumanian troops on the Don, and were increasingly frightened of the Germans throwing them out of Transniestria altogether. It was known that even Antonescu was now

resenting Hitler's growing demands for more and more Rumanian cannon fodder.

What had the Siguranza done in Odessa? The Russians said that they were as bad as the Gestapo: that they had not only shot 40,000 Jews in a place called Strelbishche Field, but had also, especially during the early part of the occupation, shot about 10,000 others, many of them communists or suspected communists, or hostages taken after the shooting of Rumanian officers in the streets, cases of bomb-throwing, etc.

[There were over 150,000 Jews in Odessa in 1941, but about two-thirds had been

evacuated by sea with most of the army and many of the other civilians. When, in June 1944 I went to Botošani, in the part of Rumania occupied by the Russians, I found there a large Jewish population which had not been exterminated by the Rumanians, despite German demands. There was some disagreement in the Rumanian Government on this

issue (see Reitlinger. The Final Solution. London 1953, p. 404.)]

The only redeeming feature of the Siguranza, according to the Russians, was that they were extremely corrupt, and many Jews who could afford it could buy "Aryan" papers, or, at any rate, be allowed to escape to the countryside. There is evidence to show that the Rumanians, while themselves ready to kill Jews, resisted German "interference" in Odessa.

There is some doubt, too, about the real importance of the Soviet "underground"

operating from the inextricable labyrinth of the Odessa catacombs, with their dozens of miles of subterranean passages, some of them as much as 100 feet underground. Many

romantic stories (notably by V. Katayev) were written towards the end of the war about the "only urban partisans in the world", and about some of their communist chiefs, such as S. F. Lazarev, I. G. Ilyukhin and L. F. Borgel, who functioned throughout the

Rumanian occupation and spread perpetual terror among the invaders.

[V. Katayev, Katakomby (The Catacombs), (Moscow, 1945).]

It seems that, in reality, the Soviet underground in Odessa used the catacombs (which had many secret entrances inside houses) only in cases of great emergency and that, although some food and arms dumps were hidden there, very few people (if any) actually lived in the catacombs for any length of time. Some Jews were said to have lived there right

through the occupation, but the extreme damp of the catacombs makes this highly

doubtful.

What is certain, however, is that after the end of 1943 (but not before), and particularly during the last (German) month of the occupation the catacombs became much more

important. Thanks to the Soviet underground organisations, they became a refuge for

young people in danger of deportation, and for a number of Alsatian, Polish, and

especially Slovak deserters from the German Army. Some of the partisan chiefs I saw in Odessa soon after the liberation (and pretty thuggish bendyuzhnik types they were), claimed that there was a well-armed army of 10,000 men in the catacombs (who bought

most of their arms in the black market from Rumanian or German soldiers) complete with a "catacomb hospital" with "twelve surgeons and 200 nurses", and not only a "catacomb bakery" but even a "catacomb sausage factory"; but this is not certain by any means, and must be taken with serious reservations. Except during the last weeks of the occupation, when Odessa was under the Germans, the usual incentives (such as the danger of

deportation) for a big partisan movement were simply not there; and even later a great number of people who went into the catacombs were passive rather than active partisans.

All I saw in the catacombs were several machine-gun nests covering the essential