Last Jews of Radauti
In the late 1930s, 8,000 Jews lived in Rădăuţi (RA-da-uts), a small town in the Bukovina region of Romania. They were shopkeepers and tradesmen-shoemakers, barbers, hat makers, tailors, jewelers-a vital community spanning several generations. They considered themselves Jews first and Romanians second. Six thousand Romanian Jews perished during World War II; some died in concentration camps in Transnistria, but most did not survive the initial hardships of deportation. At the end of the war, a few returned, only to find their homes gone and the life they had known swept away. |