Traian Popovici: The Man Who Saved Jews in Czernowitz

Traian Popovici: The Man Who Saved Jews in Czernowitz

This article relates to The Blood Years

The Blood Years by Elana K. Arnold tells the story of Frederieke "Rieke" Teitler, a young Jewish girl trying to survive the atrocities of Nazi-controlled Romania. Throughout the war, many of Rieke's friends are deported to Transnistria, a small country to the east where Jews were sent to live in camps and ghettos. Rieke and her family, however, are exempt, as her grandfather and brother-in-law are deemed to be essential city workers and thus granted authorizations to stay. While their authorizations are signed by the governor, many others are signed by the mayor, Traian Popovici, whose heroic role in the book reflects a true story.

Traian Popovici was born in 1892 in a small village in Austria. His father and grandfather were Orthodox priests, and while his family generally disliked foreign rule—the Bukovina region was occupied by various countries throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, changing culture and laws and causing friction between individuals from different nations who immigrated to the area—Popovici himself was known to respect other ethnic groups. After earning a law degree in Czernowitz (the German name for the city and the name preferred by the Jews; now Chernivtsi in Ukraine) in 1919, he practiced for many years in the city before moving to Bucharest after the Soviets invaded in 1940.

In 1941, Romanian dictator and Prime Minister Ion Antonescu requested that Popovici return and serve as mayor of what was now called Cernauti. Popovici initially refused to serve under a fascist government, but he was eventually persuaded by friends to accept the position and began to push back against antisemitic decrees already in place. Popovici was then ordered to create a Jewish ghetto within Cernauti; he considered leaving his position but ultimately decided he couldn't abandon the Jewish people, so he tried to defy the order. However, his efforts failed to stop the creation of the ghetto, and Jews continued to be deported to Transnistria, upwards of 28,000 by November 1941.

Popovici was disturbed by the Jews' suffering and wrote a passionate letter to the governor asking, "Do you really want to go down in history along with someone like Robespierre?" in reference to the amount of blood on his hands. The governor agreed to let Popovici nominate 200 Jews for exemption from deportation, but Popovici responded that many Jews held essential positions in the city and that they were necessary for the economy to function. The governor allowed Popovici to expand the list, which came to include the names of 20,000 Jews who received authorizations that exempted them from deportation and allowed them to leave the ghetto and return home.

Although authorizations were meant to be given only to essential workers and their families, Popovici provided them liberally, using his position to keep as many Jews as possible out of Transnistria. However, in the spring of 1942, his actions caught up with him; he was removed as mayor for granting "unnecessary" permits and deported to Bucharest. Approximately 5,000 Jews were deported shortly thereafter. A total of around 189,000 perished in Transnistria. After the war, Popovici lived in Bucharest until his death in 1946.

In the following decades, he received several honors for his heroic efforts, although his work remains largely unknown outside Romania and among the Jewish people. In 1969, he was recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial for Holocaust victims, as Righteous Among the Nations. This honor acknowledges non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, and Popovici was the first Romanian to receive it. A street in Bucharest was named after him in 2000, and in 2009, a memorial plaque was placed on his home in Chernivtsi; the memorial was created through the activism of Mimi Taylor, a Jewish woman who was saved as a child from deportation by Popovici's authorizations. Taylor, like the fictional Rieke, had her life changed by the efforts of Popovici and others like him who risked everything to help the Jews during the horrors of the Holocaust. The Blood Years shines a light not only on those bent on destroying the Jews but also on those who stood up for the lives of others.

Traian Popovici, 1934, from Gazeta ilustrată

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Blood Years. It originally ran in January 2024 and has been updated for the October 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.