Deportare rromi Tântareni

Name of the Village: Commune of Țânțăreni

Region, Country: Gorj County, Oltenia Region (Romania)

Date of Deportation: September 1942

Excerpt from the Testimony:
“[…] Roma were dying of hunger and typhus; some were so starved that they ate corpses. They buried the dead about 100 meters from the stables. It was the Roma who buried the corpses. Elderly people died from illness, while children died of starvation.

They received a few rations of potatoes and small pieces of bread, but it wasn’t enough to feed everyone. Civilians brought them food. After it rained, parents would gather water from puddles to drink. The interviewee’s sister, Constanța, who was two years older, died.

They were moved to a village 5 kilometers away and once again housed in a stable. When they arrived, they found some trenches dug in the ground, with wooden roofs on top. Everyone slept together [in these dugouts], on straw—several families, about 20–30 people each. Every morning when they woke up, they would find 2–3 dead bodies […]”

Romanian Archives (if available):
Unfortunately, no archival documents have been identified regarding the interviewee’s family.

Historical Note on the Roma:
In the early 1900s, the commune of Țânțăreni was part of Dolj County and had a population of 1,056 (MDG 1902, V: 681). According to the 1930 general census, the commune had 1,656 inhabitants, including 260 Roma (RGP 1930, vol. 2: 168–169). Most of these Roma were sedentary and spoke the Romani language; many practiced traditional occupations such as brickmaking.

Historical Note on the Deportation:
The local gendarmes deported the Roma from Țânțăreni at the beginning of September 1942. The interviewee, along with his mother, sister, and two brothers, was taken from their home (the father was not deported because he was mobilized and serving on the front). The Roma were only allowed to bring the bare essentials (their possessions were nationalized). They were escorted to the train station in Țânțăreni, loaded into freight cars, and transported toward Craiova. These cars were later attached to the special train E8 from Turnu-Severin to Tighina. This train departed for Transnistria on 12.09.1942 and, after a very harsh journey, arrived about a week later (ANI, IGJ fund no. 126/1942: f. 213–214v).

The deportees were moved from village to village until they reached Tchakova (possibly Țvetkova, Berezovka County). They were crammed into a stable and forced to work in a kolkhoz under gendarme supervision. Living conditions were horrific: insufficient food rations, lack of firewood, and the spread of typhus caused numerous deaths. Violence and abuse by the guards (including rape, robbery, and summary executions) contributed significantly to the dehumanization of the Roma deportees, who, according to the interviewee’s testimony, resorted to eating corpses to survive. The same witness recounted sadistic methods used by the guards to terrorize and execute deportees. One group of Roma who had tried to escape was forced onto an improvised raft and pushed into the middle of a river, where the raft came apart and the deportees drowned. This episode resembles the myth of the “paper boats” (for more details, see Furtună 2015: 15–23).

Repatriation to Romania occurred in 1943 or 1944, using false documents obtained from a Roma individual in Craiova. Upon returning to Țânțăreni, the interviewee’s family was unable to recover their nationalized belongings.

A Brief Note about One Aspect of the Roma, e.g., a Group:
Several Roma brickmaker families lived in Țânțăreni.