In September 1940 Romania's King Carol II was forced to abdicate, a coalition government of right-wing military officers , under General Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard came to power, and requested the dispatch of a German military mission to Romania, on November 20 1940, Romania decided to join the Axis alliance.
On taking control of government, Antonescu and the Iron Guard quickly introduced a number of restrictive measures against the Jewish population [ 757,000], the thuggish Iron Guard robbed and seized Jewish property, and assaulted, and sometimes killed Jews on the streets. The Iron Guard then rose up against the regime, at the same time committing further atrocities against Jews, but eventually the uprising was defeated by Antonescu.
Romania led by Antonecu, fully participated in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Soon after the invasion the Romanian's staged a Pogrom against the Jewish community in the city of Lasi, the regional capital of Moldavia, Romanian police shot hundreds of Jews in the courtyard of the police headquarters, many more were killed on the streets or in their homes, in total, at least 4,000 Jews were murdered and thousands more were arrested , packed into freight trains and deported, many died in transit.
As German and Romanian troops advanced, Romania re-annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and after further conquests , Romania was given the territory between Dniester and Bug rivers, they established a military administration, and called the region Transnitria. Both in support of German SS and police units, and on their own initiative the Romanian army and police carried out mass killings of Jews.
Between 1941 and 1944, around 220,000 Romanian Jews were killed or died from mistreatment, this included at least 90,000 in Northern Transylvania who were deported to Auschwitz by the Hungarians.
The Soviet army overran most of Transnistria in the spring of 1944, Bessarabia was conquered at the beginning of the summer offensive, and as defeat confronted the Romanians, a group of opposition politicians, supported by Romania's King Michael, overthrew Antonescu and signed an armistice with the Soviets on August 23 1944.Romanian troops then fought alongside Soviet troops, through Hungary and Germany. Antonescu was handed over to the Soviets as a war criminal, and was returned to Romania in 1946 to stand trial. A tribunal found him guilty of war crimes, he was executed on June 1 1945. .
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