Priests and theology students in the Mission and in the Romanian Army contributed as perpetrators in the murders of Jews, or by enabling bystanders to take part in those murders, in Bessarabia and Transnistria. Following in the footsteps of Diana Dumitru, I argue that the genocidal disposition among some Romanian Orthodox clergy reflected interwar antisemitic indoctrination by fascist and antisemitic parties and movements such as the Iron Guard and the National‐Christian Defense League.⁸⁹

Many members of the clergy fell under the spell of far‐right mobilization as antisemitism became an idiom for nearly all social and political discontent.⁹⁰

During the Second World War fascist priests collaborated with the military to foster violence against “Bolshevik” Jews. The policies and practices of the Romanian administration suggested to these priests state endorsement of violence, thievery, and rape—and an opportunity for Legionnaires to prove their allegiance after their recent repression.⁹¹ Violent pogroms occurred once the Romanian troops arrived in Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina early in the war.⁹²

At the settlement of Stânca Rosnovanu the conscripted Legionary theology student Second Lieutenant Mihăilescu, together with his commanding officer Captain Stihi and the Legionary mayor of nearby Sculeni, forced forty Jews from that village to dig their own graves, made them hand over their valuables, and killed them.⁹³ The next day Mihăilescu, acting with Sergeant Vasile Mihailov, had another 311 Jews from Sculeni, freshly deported across the river Prut, machine‐gunned, and their corpses afterwards searched for valuables.⁹⁴

An active killer of Jews in the Berezovca concentration camp was a lieutenant in the field gendarmerie, Dumitru Pandrea. A graduate of Sibiu Theological Academy and a secondary school teacher, Pandrea had been recruited under an order from General Antonescu’s government conditioning ascension to the priesthood upon one year’s military service.⁹⁵

While deployed in the Mostovoi sector, Pandrea took an active part in robbing Jews in ghettos along the Bug.⁹⁶ He also ordered the execution of many, and later, as camp commander, the execution of many Soviet prisoners of war.⁹⁷

Another clerical perpetrator and bystander was Fr. Captain Petre Roșu, chaplain of the 24th Battalion, 1st Mountain Division.⁹⁸ A former priest in Hăpria (Alba County) and then Alun and Ghelari (Hunedoara County), chaplain of the Sebeș garrison (also Alba County), and interwar sympathizer of the National Liberal Party, after deployment Roșu witnessed first‐hand [Axis] soldiers’ abuses of the Jewish population.⁹⁹

Roșu himself played an active part in killing Jews and in the subsequent pillage of their property.¹⁰⁰ These details came out during his 1958 trial for anti‐Communist “agitation” (committed while drunk).¹⁰¹

Upon the arrival in Transnistria of Jews deported from Northern Bucovina, Bessarabia, and some parts of Old Kingdom Romania, the Missionaries continued to paint these former neighbors as “offspring of Satan” and likely “Bolsheviks.”¹⁰² Missionary newspapers continued to feature front pages about the recent persecution of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia under the Soviets.¹⁰³

Scapegoating both the local Jews and the recently arrived deportees as “the enemies of our faith and the friends of Bolsheviks” went hand in hand with the “Nationalization” of Transnistria, presenting its benefits to the ethnic Romanian population in an almost colonialist tone.¹⁰⁴ Following the genocidal policies of the new administration, [Axis] clergymen dressed up ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population and suppression of neo‐Protestant sects like the Baptists, Inochentists, and Adventists as God‐ordained mandates.¹⁰⁵

Metropolitan Puiu of the Transnistrian Exarchate reported confidentially to the Synod in Bucharest his vision of their common mission: “The conquest of a nation begins with weapons, continues with its assignment of administrators, to be completed later on with its complete conversion. The second important point of the mandate given to me in Transnistria was the systematization of social life, a necessary action requiring two immediate steps: an urgent, sometimes surgical one falling in the hands of the civil administration and the Army; and the other of constant spiritual renewal through the Orthodox Church and school.”¹⁰⁶

Puiu was aware that the “surgical” policies of the “civil administration and the Army” would have to precede this “spiritual renewal.”

Nevertheless, by ascribing—albeit implicitly—the killing of the Jews solely to state authorities Puiu’s official correspondence veiled the participation of any of his clergy in murder and robbery. His silence protected not just friends such as Antim Nica, but others irrespective of any personal relationship. To this day official Church historiography leaves out the brutal behavior even of the Army, let alone the clergy, in Transnistria.

Competing with the indigenous ethnic German population to rob the Jews, the Romanian Army and civil administration easily prevailed.¹⁰⁷ Following in their footsteps, Orthodox clergy embarked on large‐scale blackmail, demanding bribes from deported and local Jews under the threat that they might be deported further east, across the Bug into German hands.¹⁰⁸

They offered food and other necessities in return for jewelry, clothing, money, antiques, and other valuables. Some promised exemption from forced labor if Jewish communities turned over money and other valuables to the missionaries, parish priests, and their families.¹⁰⁹

Behaving as feudal lords exploiting their Jewish and Ukrainian serfs, Metropolitan Puiu and the priests around Archimandrite Antim Nica developed into a virtual First Estate, intent on expanding their wealth and influence over Transnistria.¹¹⁰

The priest Fr. Andrei Nicov, who became with Nica’s support dean of Odessa, worked with a clique that included his brother Antim Nica and their friends hieromonk Varlaam Chiriță (abbot of Berșad Monastery) and hieromonk Antim Tabacu (abbot of Osipovca Monastery and spiritual superior of all Romanian Orthodox monasteries in Transnistria).

Archimandrite Nica accumulated considerable wealth by trafficking gold watches and other readily fenced valuables stolen from the Jews; precious icons lifted from Ukrainian Orthodox churches (Romanian carpetbaggers “presumed” that the priests of any Ukrainian or Russian Orthodox churches still standing must have been collaborators with the “Bolsheviks”); and from the large mass of the majority‐Ukrainian population.

Members of all these groups “voluntarily” handed property to the ecclesiastical and other authorities as “gifts” in return for favors and dispensations.¹¹¹ Some of the Orthodox clerics’ occasional female counterparts engaged in the same extortion, as the nun Pahomia Marinescu, serving as a nurse in the Queen Mary military hospital, trafficked in icons, tapestries, and other precious objects received from the local population.¹¹²

Many local Moldavians felt that the Mission overcharged for religious objects like crosses, prayer books, and calendars, or for performing various services and rites: “With the [insert slur here] gone, their place was taken by the priests.”¹¹³

In other cases (for instance, that of the hieromonk Varlaam Chiriță) foodstuffs coerced from the Jews and Ukrainians did in fact make their way via the administration in Odessa to poor, orphaned, and sick Moldavians.¹¹⁴ Under an order of the Romanian Gendarmerie, Metropolitan Visarion Puiu and his subordinate Father Ioan Vască received clothing and other goods confiscated from the Jewish population in Transnistria for distribution by twenty missionary priests to needy parishioners.¹¹⁵

Newly elected Bishop of Ismail (January 14, 1944), Antim Nica left Transnistria with three train‐wagons of booty.¹¹⁶ Eager to evade the civil authorities—especially after King Michael’s August 23, 1944 coup overthrowing Marshal (since August 22, 1941) Antonescu brought Romania onto the side of the Allies against [the Axis]—Nica appealed to friends for help.

Varlaam Chiriță, Antim Tabacu, Archimandrite Flavian Alexe (abbot of Cocoșu Monastery), and Salomea Iordache (former abbess of the Ferapont convent in the Bessarabian village of Satu‐Nou, destroyed by the Soviets after the war), transferred the loot to the Cocoșu and Celic‐Dere Monasteries, all to be sold off piece by piece on the black market.¹¹⁷

A similar case was that of Fr. David Postase‐Prut, assistant dean of Slobozia department of Râbnița County (September/October 1941–January 1943) and right‐hand man of Antim Nica.¹¹⁸ A rabble‐rouser for the ultranationalist press in Bessarabia before its cession to the USSR in 1940, Fr. David was one of the first to cross the Prut in August 1941.¹¹⁹

On the recommendation of Archimandrite Antim Nica, Metropolitan Puiu appointed Portase‐Prut to the central administration of the Exarchate as an inspector to oversee the work of missionary priests among their parishioners, and to oversee their support of the “Romanianization” of the region.¹²⁰

Profiting from Nica’s extensive “expertise” on stripping local Jews and Ukrainians of their property, Postase‐Prut mobilized large numbers of cattle and sheep for the Romanian war effort.¹²¹ Cleverly bribing policemen and civil officials, however, this mastermind got most of the livestock back across the Dniester, sold it on the cheap, and pocketed most of the proceeds for himself.¹²²

Under the Communist‐led cabinet of Petru Groza (est. March 1945), the police found approximately one hundred Astrakhans (Karakul hides) in Portase‐Prut’s new home in Galați¹²³ despite the new government’s law requiring that all goods pillaged in Transnistria be handed back to the Soviets [as reparations]. (It remains unclear whether any reached their actual original owners.)

On Portase’s tail for some time, the Securitate eventually determined that the crooks had long been converting valuables confiscated from the Jews and others into German or Romanian currency, subsequently invested in livestock, furs, art, and real estate.¹²⁴ This laundering had enabled clergymen to accumulate small fortunes under the very noses of the police.¹²⁵

[…]

Looting local Jewish communities included conscription of Jewish men for labor on behalf of the Transnistrian Exarchate, service rendered possible by the Conducător’s November 11, 1941 Directive no. 23 to the Government of Transnistria permitting the employment of the Jews at public or agricultural works.¹³²

Archival records reveal that Archimandrite Nica, hieromonks Antim Tabacu and Varlaam Chiriță, and many other monks and priests in Transnistria used Jewish forced labor to re‐build or refurbish churches and monasteries destroyed or damaged by the Communists or the war.¹³³

(Emphasis added. Omitted from this excerpt is what the anticommunists did with women and girls, the details of which you can read in the full document.)

In some cases, I highlighted parts so as to help you avoid falling into the antitheist trap of presuming that the causes for these atrocities can all be boiled down to ‘Christianity’, an explanation that is almost as dissatisfying as proposing that the perpetrators simply weren’t truly Christian.

These anticommunists did not merely read scripture and go straight to committing war crimes, similarly to how some have argued that playing violent video games makes us violent. Rather, economics played a crucial rôle, and Christianity was nothing more than a convenient, culturally specific justification. Considering that many Fascists already oppressed certain minorities (e.g. Roma) without regularly appealing to Christianity, it is absurd to suggest that an irreligious justification would have been impossible.