Deportation of Nomadic Roma from the Commune of Uda – Translated

Name of the village: Uda (commune, Argeș County)

Region, country: Oltenia Region (Romania)

Date of deportation: June – August 1942

Excerpt from testimony:

“They arrived [in Transnistria] in a ‘camp’ surrounded by barbed wire, and later they were separated and sent to a camp called Moldovka. They were given three loaves of bread per cart, and everything they had in their carts was taken from them. They were placed in dugouts. They did not go outside because it was very cold. There were policemen guarding them. They wore uniforms and were armed. They remained in this place for one year and seven months.

At first, they were given some food. The food was distributed by the gendarmes, who, in turn, gave it to a bulibașă (Roma leader), who then redistributed it to the families. Many people died. After winter passed, many more died, and the army would come to collect the dead and bury them in a mass grave. The Roma themselves were forced to dig the graves. The pit was not far from the dugouts. It was about two meters long […].”

Romanian archives (if available): N/A

Historical note on the Roma:

The commune of Uda is located in the southwest of Argeș County, about 45 km from Pitești. Around 1890, two separate communes existed in the area, with a combined population of about 1,900 inhabitants (MDGR 1902, II: 684). In 1931, the two communes were merged under the name Uda, forming a new commune with a population of approximately 2,500 people. Only one sedentary Roma was recorded in the village of Greabănul (RGP 1930, II: 26-27).

Historical note on the deportation:

The interviewee’s family was likely registered in May 1942 and included on the list of deportees. Local gendarmes from Uda took the family in the summer of that year and told the Roma to prepare for deportation because the German troops that were about to arrive would shoot them. The gendarmes escorted them from post to post, forming a convoy of carts with other nomadic deportees as they approached Romania’s eastern border. Upon crossing the Dniester River, the gendarmes confiscated their belongings from the carts.

Once in Transnistria, the Roma were placed in a camp surrounded by barbed wire and sorted. According to the interviewee’s testimony, their family was housed in dugouts in the village of Moldovka. The deportees received minimal food rations, for which they had to work at a nearby kolkhoz (collective farm), harvesting potatoes and building silos under the strict surveillance of the guards. The mortality rate was high due to cold and hunger. The number of corpses was so great that they were thrown into mass graves dug by the deportees themselves. The interviewee heard from the gendarmes that a group of Jews had been drowned in the Bug River.

The return to Romania likely occurred in the spring-summer of 1944, following the retreat of Romanian-German troops from Transnistria. The interviewee’s family walked as far as Moldova, where they boarded a truck that transported them back to Romania.

A brief note on an aspect of the Roma community, for example, a group:

The Căldărari Roma from Uda commune specialized in making household utensils and copper cauldrons.