The day when time stopped in Bucharest
On April 4th
1944, as a major event of World War II, the British-American air
forces bombarded for the first time, the Romanian Capital. Until
August 23rd
1944, two bombardments a day were registered. It was then, that the
King decided to set Antonescu aside and withdraw from the Axis (made
up of Germany, Italy and Japan). After Rommel had lost the war in
North Africa, the allies disembarked in Europe and continued the
battle in the territory of its enemy. The Allied Aircrafts were
leaving from an airbase in South Italy, they were crossing the Balkan
Mountains (both protected by their hunting aircrafts) and not only
were they dropping their bombs over Bucharest, but over other cities
as well, especially, over Ploiești and over the petroliferous areas.
The Eastern Romanian cities were also bombarded by the Soviet air
force, but compared to the British-American, the Soviets had a weaker
air force and, therefore, the damages had not been that important.
Not only were the British-Americans bombarding
military objectives, but civilian ones as well – and this was not a
simple coincidence, but a deliberate action meant to generate terror
among the people (Wikipedia even calls them ‘terror bombings’)
and to weaken the troops’ resistance offered to the enemy. And, at
that moment, Romania’s sole enemy was the Red Army, that had again
occupied Bucovina and was reaching for Bessarabia as well. The
Americans were bombing Bucharest during the day (generally at noon),
while the British completed the Americans work during the night.
Everything very well planned and executed.
Bombing on Bucharest, April 1944
My
mother was working as a shop assistant at the well-known ‘Sora’
store, the one near the North Railway Station, an area aimed at by
the 4th
of April Bombing. Luckily, she was not there when the bombs were
released. She faced the disaster the next day, when heading, as
usually, towards the store, she could no longer advance because of
the disaster provoked by the bombs. In the railway station, there
were laying hundreds of Bessarabian refugees who paid, with that
occasion, a bloody tribute. They had died, being burnt alive, crushed
or turned into pieces on the rails, in the proximity of which they
were found, on the platforms or in the waiting rooms. There were old
people, women with children that had come to Bucharest in railway
carriages, on railway carriages and under railway carriages, in such
conditions that were dramatic beyond our imagination, just to save
themselves. According to someone’s confession, in this horror
journey, a woman travelled for hundreds of kilometres on some wood
boards under the railway carriages and she had to see her youngest
child dying, crashed by the wheels of the train. We are still
mourning the Syrian boy drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and we think
that the evil comes from one part only, because we have taught
ourselves to judge unilaterally. The Bessarabian refugees feared that
if they had remained in the occupied area, the special troops of
NKVD, representing the Red Army, (which were similar to the German
famous Einsatzgruppen,
but
more powerful and feared than these, since Stalin was not risking a
Nürnberg after the war)
would have killed them or would have deported them in cattle railway
carriages to the Siberian working camps just because they were
Romanians. No western eco-pacifist organization would have protested
for their cause. This was also the story of those ten thousands
Bessarabians, who could not leave their country. Those who were more
successful, almost never came back. All Russians’ actions were
hiding a real genocide. The extent of it is still unknown and will,
probably, remain so forever.
Sometimes, as soon as the bombings
ended, the air crafts did not return to Italy, but firstly, they
headed to the Soviet Union, where they were provided with airports
for refuelling. Back over the same objectives, they were again
releasing bombs, while reaching for South Italy from where, they were
coming back to drop even more bombs over Romania. During my
childhood, a distinguished old man, who had been working in the USA,
but had returned to Romania, had a house on Griviței
Street, near to the rail ways that were connecting the North
Railway Station to Basarab Railway Station, was showing me a wooden
table which he kept in his small yard besides a wall of a destroyed
house, telling me that there had fallen a bomb.
In 1944, my father’s youngest sister and her fiancée
were studying at the Conservatory. Next autumn, she would have
probably, become a Music teacher, but on the 4th
of April, she was eating at a students’ canteen near the North
Railway Station. When the alarm went off, she and her fiancée found
refuge in a closed-by anti-aircraft shelter which they shared with
hundreds of other people. But that day, the bombs of Arthur Harris,
Marshal of the Royal Air Force, (also known as Bomber
Harris or Butcher Harris, 1892 - 1984)
worked without mistake and destroyed everything in their way. One
bomb was dropped over a building under which laid the anti-aircraft
shelter. The remains of that building covered the only air duct of
the shelter and all the people hiding there (mostly students) died
asphyxiated. ‘Universul’ newspaper published during the next
days, lists with the names of the hundreds and thousands of dead
people in the destructive British-American raid.
Commemorating 72 years that have passed since that
event, I have found, this month, some document photos from April
1944. One is downloaded from the Internet and it manages to depict
very well the aftermath of the bombing in an area near Herăstrău
Park, shortly after the 4th
of April raid. The other one was taken with the occasion of my
father’s sister funeral. It took place two weeks later, on April
20th, close to
Bucharest, where she was born.
Funeral, April 1944
On the faces of the participants at
the funeral – many peasant women and peasants’ children, whose
fathers were fighting on the front line, dead, alive, disappeared or
taken as prisoners – you could read one thing: Romanians deep lack
of hope in an era when the war started shredding the lives of people
without any consideration. Even though, they were all saying that
they were fighting for people’s sake.
Traducere de
Iulia Andreea Anghel
Universitatea din Bucureşti
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