The Jewish Community of Cernǎuţi, Romania [today Chernivtsi, Ukraine]
Jews settled in Cernǎuţi in the 15th century. Between the two world wars, some 45,000 Jews lived in the city, about 40% of the total population. Most made a living in trade and industry, and some were members of the liberal professions.
The city was under Soviet rule between June 1940 and July 1941, but the Romanians took control on 5 July 1941, while perpetrating pogroms against the Jews. The Jews were then conscripted for forced labor, marked and dispossessed of their property. As a preliminary step towards deportation, Cernǎuţi's Jews were incarcerated in a ghetto. The deportations to Transnistria commenced in mid-October, thousands loaded onto trains each day. Children, the elderly and the sick died on the journey, and many others were shot or beaten to death in forests, or succumbed to the harsh conditions in the ghettos and camps of Transnistria. 15,000 Jews remained in the city until the end of the war.
The Dankner Family
Leo and Rosika Dankner lived in Cernǎuţi, in the Bukovina region of Romania and they had two children: Armand (Nini) and Gertrude (Trudi).
Leo owned a large wood factory and also helped Jews intending to immigrate to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) by hiring those who sought manual labor experience. In 1938 Ukrainian nationalists burned down the factory, which was no longer insured due to its Jewish ownership. When Soviet forces entered the city in 1940, Leo was arrested as a capitalist but was released two days later.
In the fall of 1941 when Cernǎuţi fell under Romanian and German rule, a ghetto was established in the city and the Dankners were confined there together with all of Cernǎuţi's Jews. On 28 June 1942 the Dankners were loaded onto a crowded cattle car in the dead of night with no prior warning, and deported to Transnistria on the last transport that left Cernǎuţi. Rosika's younger brother, Dutzu was on the same transport.
The family slept in a stone quarry outside Ladyzhyn on the banks of the River Bug, and then moved to a farm near the village of Kirsanovka. When ordered to leave, the Dankners hid on the farm and then fled to the neighboring town of Dzhurin. They rented an apartment outside the unfenced ghetto established there, where they lived in adverse conditions and suffered from hunger and cold. They survived thanks to money sent to them by relatives, and by selling their jewelry to locals. Rosika and Trudi both documented their wartime tribulations in their diaries.
In Transnistria Armand was conscripted for forced labor paving roads, and while he worked, he would dream about the things he wished he had: boots, a hearty meal, a car. Using a pocketknife, he would carve the objects occupying his mind, and made a model Volkswagen out of two different kinds of wood as a birthday present for his mother.
Dutzu was sent to forced labor near Odessa, and succumbed to tuberculosis in March 1945 at the age of 25. For the rest of her life, Rosika kept locks of his hair as a memento.
The Red Army entered Dzhurin in March 1944, and the Dankner family started making their way back to Cernǎuţi approximately one month later. They came home to discover that their house had been ransacked and emptied during the war. In 1947 they attempted to immigrate to Eretz Israel but were diverted to Cyprus. They were detained in Cyprus for 7 months, and reached Eretz Israel in 1948.
![Membership cards to the "Hayarden" organization (a committee that assisted Holocaust survivors in Romania) issued for Leo Dankner in 1947](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/00007_1.jpg "Membership cards to the "Hayarden" organization (a committee that assisted Holocaust survivors in Romania) issued for Leo Dankner in 1947")
