CHAPTER I

Odessa from Peace to Occupation

Background

At the end of the 18th century, after the conquest of the northwestern region of the Black Sea by Russia, the small Turkish settlement of Hadjibey was renamed Odessa. On a natural gulf, it soon became Russia' major maritime outlet on the Black Sea. Buy early 20th century, it was a busy center of export and import, it had a fast-growing industry, and it attracted a motley of tradesmen and sailors, artists and immigrants. It was strikingly cosmopolitan and "Western" in character, partly because individual Western Europeans (like de Duke of Richelieu) played a role in its initial development, but primarily because of its location and economic raison d'etre. If St. Petersburg was Russia's northern window to Europe, it southern was Odessa.

To a basic Russian stock had been added a variety of other ethnic groups: Ukrainian, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Germans settled in or outside the city proper, and Jews, Armenians, and Greeks in considerable numbers flocked to the port. There grew an urban middle class with material ambitions and cultural interests, leading to a further intensification of foreign influences and contacts. The first university in the new Russian areas in the south-Novorossiia-had been established in Odessa; foreign teachers, artists, and singers went there either as visiting performers or to settle. Odessa became known as "The pearl of the Black Sea." The vigor of its cultural life, incidentally, continued pronounced - and a source of local pride - in the Soviet era. By 1941, Odessa with population of some 650,000, had 18 academic and 29 technical institutes of higher learning, and 12 theaters.

Odessa had a special place in the history of the revolutionary movement. Here, in 1875, the first Russian labor organization , the "South Russian Union of Workers", was formed; here Leon Trotsky lived as a boy; here a mutiny abroad the legendary battleship "Potemkin" triggered the 1905 Revolution, which found widespread support among Odessa's urban proletariat and student body. During the Civil War, a repeatedly changed hands, being held at different time by Russian "Whites", French, Ukrainian nationalist, and communist forces. In 1920, passed under Soviet control.

Under Soviet rule, Odessa changed. It did not benefit greatly from the industrial construction that expanded the productive potential of certain areas of the USSR and transformed others. Its primary economic asset-the port-declined with the substantial drop in its foreign trade. Odessa attracted few outsiders and had little to offer that was new or unique. In the Soviet melting pot, Odessa, as a major city of Ukrainian SSR, lost some of its specific color and became more like other Soviet cities. Yet, at the beginning of the Second World War, Odessa still had its specific reputation. Not unlike Marseilles, it was half-ironically, half pejoratively held to be at once a source of shame and pride. With its own jargon and humor, with a distinct laxity of morals and interminable jokes suggesting the existence of a semi-thievish fringe, it also stood for a spirit of inquiry and independent judgment, a quest for personal advantage and elbow-room not common under Soviet controls.

Periodically, Odessa had experienced typical Soviet crises-the end of the NEP; the break-neck industrialization-collectivization drive, and the Great Purges. Unlike other Soviet cities, it felt the Spanish Civil War: Soviet shipments to and from Spain went largely through Odessa. Odessa's hinterland, between the Bug and Dnestr Rivers , had undergone an evaluation rather similar to the rest of the Soviet countryside. It was now dotted with collectives and state farms, interspersed with machine tractor stations and electric power stations, the whole system thoroughly supervised from an intricate system of controls.

But of the hinterland included the Moldavian Autonomous SSR which had been detached from the Ukrainian SSR, in the line with early Soviet policy of fostering national groups within the USSR. The Moldavian Autonomous SSR had also been created to keep alive claims to neighboring Bessarabia which united with Romania in the wake of the First World War. It was not until 1940, under the Hitler-Stalin Pact, that the Red Army marched into Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina to "reunite" these areas with the mother country. Moldavia was made the sixteenth full-fledged Union Republic.

Invasion

On June 22, 194, the Germans struck> Like the rest of the Soviet Union, Odessa that day listened with consternation and disbelief to the radio address of Viacheslav Molotov. On the same day, the age classes from 1905 to 1918 were drafted.1* Four days later, the Odessa garrison commander declared that the martial law (voennoi polozhenie) proclaimed on June 22 by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was in effect , and appealed to the population to uncover suspects and turn in violators of the detailed regulations, which ranged from the imposition of a curfew (2400 to 0430) to the prohibition of speculation.2* The local papers, in a wake of Stalin's speech, in July 3, demanded the "voluntary formation of a "mighty people's levee (opolchenie).3* The registration of volunteers and conscription of the opolchenie were entrusted to the oblast and city committees of Party.4* Full-scale mobilization of the other age groups did not begin until a month after the outbreak of war.5*

By then, bombing raids on the city and the port, which had subsided after the initial attack on June 22, had multiplied and increased in effectiveness.6* Perhaps more upsetting than the raids themselves were incidents such as the strafing by German planes of column of students being evacuated by foot on the road to Nikolaev (presumably mistaken for soldiers, since they wore uniforms), and the bombing of port installations, where thousands were waiting to be evacuated by sea.7*

The evacuation of men and material was a major preoccupation of the local authorities during the first two months of the war. The general "scorched-earth policy" made mandatory the removal or destruction of all tools, machines, stocks, and personnel. More specifically, a subsequent account relates, the State Defense Committee (established on June 30) "in the first days of July" ordered the evacuation of Odessa begun , with the removal of major enterprises, stocks of supply, and food stores as priority items."8* That the German advance would continue was scarcely questioned, even if Soviet communiques avoided giving the impression of serious, let alone catastrophic, rout.

Evacuation was rendered difficult by the disruption of communication and transportation lines, which had immediately followed the outbreak of war. Passenger trains did not operate until July 9, and then only sporadically; a few weeks later the rapid German advance to the north of Odessa cut the lines completely.9* Numerous tourist, south for the summer, was another complication. Regular plane flights were canceled. Wires were accepted only on official business. Rather realistically, Valentin Kataev, the Odessa novelist, describes these initial weeks of war; his "hero"- a Moscow boy, trying to rejoin his mother in the capital-was finally put aboard a train; it got no farther than near-by Birzula (now Kotovsk), because a German plane had wrecked the railroad bridge ahead; after three days, the train returned to Odessa.10* It was difficult to get away.

Evacuation was directed by special commission including Army, State, Party (and probably NKVD) elements.11* As early as July 5, Communist Party members who were not locally indispensable were ordered to leave with their dependents. On July 8, the evacuation of industrial enterprises began. Other categories followed in the next weeks.12* In early August, as rumors about the approach of the German multiplied, there were frantic efforts to get out "on one's own" The major avenue of escape was by sea, and thousands huddled for days in the port hoping to get aboard ships, knowing that they risked being bombed and strafed by German planes on their sea journey to Matiupol', Berdiansk, or the Crimea.13* Others, younger and more enterprising , loaded their families on rented horse carts, or left by foot or bicycle. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the militia would stop them on the road out of town and force them to return. More frequently, the authorities were happy to see anyone go who wanted to do so.14*

As "Soviet patriots," or from fear, or a sens3 of duty, or from a combination of feelings, perhaps as 15 per cent of the population left volumtarily.15* Others were urged, even compelled to leave. The prominent scientist and eye specialist, Academician V.P. Vilatov, was flown out of Odessa at official behest, reportedly against his will. Among "intellectuals," only exceptional individuals seem to have been accorded such treatment. The university faculty, for instance, was given the opportunity to leave, but only about half took it.16*

A far greater effort was made, from July on, to evacuate the equipment and the key personnel of factories. By early September, German intelligence had ascertained the removal of the large Lenin plant, producing machine tools, with a peace-time contingent of some 6,000 workers, to Ufa; the "January Revolt" factory, which produces cranes and artillery equipment, with normally, some 8,000 workers, was moved to Sverdlovsk; the administration of the Black Sea merchant marine, to Rostov; the giant October Revolution factory and some smaller war plants and chemical installations, to Rostov and Mariupol'. The Anre Marty plant and the turbines from the electric power stations were shipped off to the Urals, while the floating docks went to Mariupol'.17* According to Soviet post war sources, about 190,000 tons (the equivalent of some 10,1000 freight cars) was dissembled and shipped out of Odessa, including equipment, machines, and raw materials.18*

Evacuation, while substantial, went less smoothly than Soviet figures suggest. A number of ships carrying equipment and personnel were sunk on the way out; gossip-ridden Odessa spoke of " two out of three" ships sinking. In the chaos and confusion, a number of small plants and workshops were simply forgotten by the evacuation commission and received no instructions. Some of cattle, fowl, and horses chased eastward on the roads from the farms of Odessa Oblast "safely" made it across the Bug (often, only to be overtaken by German column there or farther east), but considerable number of animals perished There was considerable waste and disorganization in the removal of equipment.19*

What contributed most to popular confusion about evacuation was the uncertainty about the ultimate fate of city. The authorities at first aimed at total removal or destruction of factories, but, as will be seen below, reversed themselves when it became likely that Odessa would be cut off and would have to marshal all that it could of its own resources to withstand a prolonged siege. In mid-August, after most machines were gone-the precise date cannot be established-an order suddenly went out to convert plants into repair shops for armored vehicles and artillery pieces, and to improvise "Molotov cocktails" and other rudimentary weapons.20*

All this could not but have unsettling effect on the local population. There was apparently a goodly measure of pessimism, intensified by the depressing impression created by the passage of retreating troops through the city in early August, and by the appearance of deserters from the frontlines, who sought to hide in the city; and there was some feeling of weary indifference as supplies dwindled, enemy air attacks increased, and hope for the city vanished. In the first days of the war, hoarding of available supplies and foodstuffs had begun on a considerable scale." "Panic" in the sense of frantic and often aimless activity manifested itself primarily among those who sought to leave the city but could not. There was an atmosphere of nervousness and rumors; and individual instances of people being shot for violation of military orders reverberated widely. A Soviet account admits that the destruction battalion formed in the port, among other things, was compelled to "fight with panic -makers". But there is no indication of overt discontent, not the slightest suggestion of any effort to help speed the Germans' or Romanians' arrival, or of actual sabotage. There are hints of dissatisfaction, even in workers' cicles, about the way the Party brass 'take care only of themselves"-similar resentment was reported in Moscow during the crisis in October, 1941.21* Be and large, this resentment remained confined within an axiomatic acceptance of the Soviet side as "one's own". The best indication, perhaps, of the failure of the population to break its ties with the Soviet regime is the "spy mania" which developed in Odessa (as in many other localities) during the first weeks of war. Had there been widespread willingness to break with the Soviets, anxious and zealous "spy hunting" would not have been so widespread. Not only Komsomol activities but ordinary citizens would apprehend "enemy agents." Such activity tended to be nonsensical.

Two beggars were arrested on suspicion of espionage, and two university instructors were "caught" by the crowd because one was smoking a cigar and the other wore a "Tyrolian hat".22*

By mid-August, however, a more stable, more austere mood came to prevail. The crucial factor in bringing this about was the military situation, which left the city no choice but to settle down to a long siege. By the end of July the German Eleventh Army and the Romanian Fourth Army had reached the Dnestr, With quite heavy casualties, the Germans crossed the river and broke through the Soviet defense lines. Once across, the mobile German columns sallied forth rapidly, taking Kotovsk and Voznesensk on August 7 (thus cutting Odessa's two rail links) and racing on across the Bug. The Romanian army-smaller, less skillful, and not so well equipped-lagged behind, but took advantage of the initial crossing to widen the bridgehead and advance southeastward from the Dubosary-Grigoriopol' area toward the Black Sea port.23*

Odessa faced the prospect off being cut off. The Germans, to the north, had already by-passed it.. The so-called Maritime Group of the Red Army had retreated from its positions next the Romanian border but, by August 7, fond itself cut off from the rest of Soviet forces. It was now reorganized into the Maritime Army for the defense of Odessa.24* Rather, its commander, Lt. Gen. G.P. Safronov, initially prepared to abandon the city and ordered the further evacuation of troops and equipment from the port. Yet in fact the was an ambiguity about Soviet plans for the city's future. On August 8, the commander of the Odessa garrison proclaimed a state of siege. Curfew was extended to cover from 2000 to 0600.Entry into the city without special permits was barred. "For all diversionary acts (shooting from attics, giving light signals, operation of radio transmitters) house owners, managers, and superintendents will be held responsible."25* On August 10, when Odessa was practically cut off, the construction of defense fortifications-three concentric semi-circles around the city, with the open side toward the sea, the wider as far as 25 kilometers from the city, the nearest within 6 to 10 kilometers-was hastily begun. Work on anti-tank obstacles, artillery installations, and barricades within the city limits was also started.26*

Evacuation or defense? With Odessa virtually cut off, the decision had to be made. On August 16, Rear Admiral G. Zhukov, commander of the Odessa Naval Base-apparently on his own initiative-countermanded an order of Lieutenant General Safronov, commanding general of the Maritime Army, concerning for departure of four vessels (Dnepr, Azov, Pstel", and Rostov) with the troops and military equipment. Insisting that they were needed to hold Odessa, Zhukov wired detailed plan for the defense of the city to Admiral F.S. Oktiabr'ski, commanding admiral of the Black Sea Fleet. On August 18, Octiabr'ski and another member of the Black Sea Fleet's military council, N.M. Kulakov, reported Admiral Zhukov's plan with favorable recommendation to the Supreme Stavka. The following day this body approved the decision to hold Odessa and decree the formation of the "Odessa Defensive Rayon" (discussed below) under Zhukov's command. Characteristically, Safronov was dropped and replaced by Major General I.E.Petrov as commander of the Maritime Army. On August 20, the Germans intercepted a message signed by Marshal Budennyi , commander of the South Front, to the military council of the Odessa Defensive Rayon: "I order that Odessa must not surrender under any circumstances."27* The siege had began.

Siege

Odessa was under the siege for two months before it fell to German and Romanian forces (see map 1). By agreement between the German and Romanian commands, the Romanian Forth Army was to effect the capture of the city, helped only by small -almost nominal-German detachments, particularly artillery and other specialized services. Initial plans called for its being captured by early September.28* However, as early as August 20 the Romanian command began to realize that the rapid push for Odessa had failed. In spite of their considerable numerical superiority -about 6:1 in manpower and 5:1 in artillery-the Romanian were compelled to dig in and begin systematic attacks and infiltrations.29* Axis artillery began shelling the port.

By mid-September, their supplies low, their casualties high, and morale rapidly dropping, the Romanian troops had failed to seize any of the pivotal points in the defense line. Seeing the difficulties in which their "allies" found themselves, the Germans on September 9 established a new command of "German Troops before Odessa" (Befehlshaber der Deutschen Truppen vor Odessa) under General L'Homme de Courbiere, and provided for a German liaison and advisory officer for each Romanian unit . Hitler had promised the Romanians the loan of the entire LIV Corps but failed to transfer any troops except for one division briefly assigned to rear-area security near Ochakov. The Red Army , meanwhile, had reversed its earlier evacuation policy and was now pouring in troops, ammunition and equipment from Sevastopol' by sea, and the Red Navy maintained vessels (including the cruiser "Komintern") offshore to reinforce the city's defenses with long-range guns and to guard against any Romanian or German landing attempts along the coast.

By mid-September he situation had become so "stable'' that the Romanian command confessed its inability to take Odessa.30* A report of Gen. Courbiere on September 19 aptly summarized the situation After enumerating the Soviet manpower and artillery reinforcements, he commented:

The enemy has fought and continued to fight with extreme bitterness. He has a very active air force, superior to that of the Romanians. He is being supported by naval guns... The Russian have the advantage of the interior line, which they cleverly use by rapidly moving troops by truck to the decisive sectors.

He maintained that the Romanian troops, moreover, were exhausted. The appointment of Defense Minister Iacobici as commanding general of the Fourth Army on September 9 had brought no real change; The Romanian s were, on the whole, badly officered, and the poor supply situation was further complicated by the absence of bridges over the Dnestr. The Romanian command had demanded that Courbiere throw German troops into action to help get the advance going again ; most reluctantly he agreed to participate in the next operations, though he would have preferred to stay out or else first to obtain considerable German reinforcements.31*

Apparently, the attackers underestimated the difficulties of the city's defenders. From the bases along the Adzhalyk, northeast of Odessa, the Axis artillery could shell the port and vessels leaving and entering it. Yet the defense was predicated on the continued operation of the port. "At that moment," a Soviet account frankly acknowledges (referring apparently to September 15) "the Supreme High Command appealed to the defenders of Odessa to hold out a few more days, during which they would receive help in troops and arms." The Stavka ordered a small landing at Grigor'evka (Dovinovka), which was successfully carried out on September 22, knocking out the menacing artillery installations with the aid of two rifle divisions specially brought from Novorossiisk, and causing a few days' confusion in German and Romanian quarters at the front.32* Odessa gained a breathing spell. On September 24, the Romanian dictator, General ( and now, since the Russian campaign , self-appointed Marshal)Ion Antonescu, informed the had of the German Military Mission in Bucharest that he must abandon the siege: casualties were stupendous and he had no replacements or supplies. After some recrimination, By October 1 he had agreed to continue the siege, but only on Berlin's promise of reinforcements in men and heavy weapons. On October 5, Hitler informed Antonescu that, because of the capture of Kiev , he could spare some German divisions to help before Odessa. Troop movements did begin, and by October 17-20 the first additional German contingents were expected at the Black Sea.33*

Achieved at the high price-but, in the process, inflicting severe casualties on the enemy-the successful defense of Odessa was, tragically or paradoxically, just then ordered terminated. By the beginning of October the order was given to prepare to abandon the city.

During the siege the population of Odessa was only vaguely aware of these high-level decisions, which were reflected indirectly and slowly in events within the universe of its own experience. Chiefly, it felt the pulsation, with almost frightening regularity, of Romanian attacks in daytime, and of highly counterthrusts By Soviet troops, especially marine infantry, which (often after considerable quantities of vodka) fought savagely.34* To the roar of artillery in the distance, to the flashes of shells and to the accompaniment of increasingly frequent air attacks by German planes, life within the defensive perimeter continued.

In addition the usual Soviet state and Party organs, there was (as indicated above) the Odessa Defensive Rayon (Odesskii Oboronitel'nyi Rayon, or OOR), created on August 19 by order of the Supreme Command. Its commander of the Odessa Naval Base( which was now also given full control over a part of Black Sea Fleet); its deputy commander, the commanding general of the Maritime Army, which did much of the land fighting in the Odessa area. This merging of land and sea forces to facilitate defense and supply operations and, so far as can be judged, was a successful administrative device.35* The Odessa Defensive Rayon promptly issued new orders providing for greater restrictions, wider draft, the recruitment of forced labor, and severe punishments for evasions and violations.

While the OOR was concerned largely with military matters, civilian affairs seem to have been concentrated in the hand s of a small group of handpicked officials, trusted and elected by the Communist Party. On August 22, the formation of three-man teams-troikas- was approved for the city as a whole and for its rayons. These amounted in effect to a minimum government, to consists of the first secretary of the (city or rayon) Party organization, the chairman of the (city or rayon) soviet, and the chief of the local NKVD (or militia).36* The precise relationship between these organs and the military command remains unknown.

It appears to have been one of distinct division of functions. Evacuation of civilians was in the hands of the Party, while the evacuation of troops and supplies was the responsibility of the military council of the OOR. In fact, however, the Party ( though perhaps later exaggerating its part)37* maintained some preponderance in such fields as the draft of civilians and the registration of volunteers for the army. It also assigned new political commissars to such military installations as the naval base at Odessa, and it barred the military from sharing in the maintenance of law and order, including watch, duty, civilian defense, and fire-fighting, in Odessa.38*

The primary task of government was to do "all to help the front." This involved obviously getting manpower for the army. A resolution of the obkom on August 22 shows the basic approach: all capable of bearing arms must serve in the army.39*. An order issued the next day provided for the mobilization of all males from 16 to 50 (other reports give an age range of 18 to 56 and 17 to 65) Exemptions were hardly ever granted. However, evasions continued-to the point where it was announced they would be punished by shooting. Instances of malingering and self-amputation continued to be reported, as were desertions from the units at the near-by front-perhaps not do much for want of patriotism as for lack of arms, training, and food. Without uniforms, barely instructed in the art of throwing a "Molotov cocktail," the hew recruits were rushed to the frontlines, and inevitably sustained heavy casualties.40*

Another major task was getting manpower for the construction of fortifications around and within the city. On August 13, it was decreed that each city rayon must supply at least 3,000 men and women for this task.41*. Five weeks later the local soviets, defense posts (MPVO), and other public organizations were empowered to draft any resident for urgent defense construction and for repairing bomb damage. In theory every able-bodied citizen was to give thirty days' labor (presumably, per year) to public duties. For the moment, everyone was to spend five days at such tasks. In many instances, workers were marched in troops, directly from work, to dig trenchers or erect barricades. Sometimes such construction brigades would be supplemented by accidental groups; for instance, all passengers would be taken off a streetcar and put to work-to get excused one needed a written exemption. Such work might involve a few hours of lugging sacks of sand or taking up the macadam.42* Within the city a giant network of defensive installations arose: 243 huge barricades of rocks, pieces of pavement, and steel girders, or sand bags, often many feet high, across the main thoroughfares.43*

Odessa-like the rest of the Soviet Union-established destruction battalions (istrebitel'nye battaliony) in line with NKVD orders issued before the end of June from Moscow.44* The city was divided into nine militia districts, and each was to establish its own unit. These battalions were to mine and destroy important facilities that could not be evacuated-key plants, buildings, and bridges; presumably they were thereafter to operate as stay-behinds.45* Each unit, it may be noted, had its NKVD representative and was staffed largely by Party and Komsomol members.46*

War production, improvised as it was, inevitably occupied a good deal of attention and was the major task of those unable to fight- women and old men. There were almost no tanks of the Soviet side before any improvised armored vehicle or train, and repaired machine guns or mortars of help to the troops. One is led to suspect, however, that-given the evacuation of most and some of the personnel, and the lack of raw materials and supplies-local production made a rather minor contribution to the defense of the city.47*

The distribution of food and other goods was further area of official preoccupation. Because of the initial hoarding and failure to obtain ration-card system was introduced, providing, among other items, from the daily issuance of 400 grams of bread per capita; the adjacent farms and mills were enjoined to speed the harvesting and milling of corn and grain for the city. Meat, fats, and sugar were likewise rationed. While there were shortages, there was no wholesale famine.48*

Other problems were more acute. The water had been a sore for many a year. Odessa drew is water
from a reservoir some 15 miles from the city; and often, particularly during the summer, some city sections or the higher floors of buildings would run out of water. The Romanians seized the reservoir in the late August and cut off the supply. As a result of a systematic drive to dig artesian wells.,58 wells were functioning before the siege was over. Strict regulations forbade the waste of water (for instance, the use of fresh water to flush toilets). In late August the daily quota was 1/4 pail per person; in mid-September the city instituted a card system for water, allowing one pail a day per person. There were, however, variations from section to section, and shortages continued to the end.49*

One official decision did not involve restrictions and shortages. In the words of refugee, "given the lack of water and suitable shelters, the big sources of relief was that they put supplies of export goods and foodstuffs from the port store houses on public sale. For the first time in a long time, people had plenty to eat and wear." Evidently realizing that it would be impossible to evacuate some of the stocks, the authorities decided to raise morale by throwing open for distribution ( at the end, apparently, without cost) huge quantities of goods. According to German source, 15 million rubles' worth of textiles were involved; a refugee speaks of distribution of prodigious quantities of tea, destined for sale all over the Soviet Union but stuck in Odessa when the war broke out.51*

Officials in the field of propaganda were kept constantly busy. To counter Axis propaganda, it was
forbidden to pick up German and Romanian leaflets, though actually their content soon became known. According to Soviet sources, there were about " thousand" agitators working on the defense plants, barricades, antiaircraft points and other installations in Odessa.52*Soviet sources state that radio, and also movies, continued to operate under the siege. Individual radio receiver sets had been ordered turned in , under threat of severe penalty, early in the war, and all that was left was the system of centrally-controlled piped radio-tochki. Refugees from Odessa, incidentally, unanimously stress the role of rumor during the siege, and agree on the surprising reliability of the rumors and the speed of the "grapevine" system of transmission.53*

When the siege began, the Party obkom (oblast committee) sounded the alarms: the enemy is at the gates; every house must become a fortress, every means must be used against the enemy-not merely conventional weapons, but even "boiling water poured on the heads of the cannibals." A new publication, In the Fight for Native Odessa (V boiakh za rodnuiu Odessu), published articles, reports of accomplishments by military and civilian personnel, and verses composed to fit the occasion. In slogan, repeated time and again, was: "Odessa was and will remain Soviet." Soviet propaganda stressed examples of individual heroism and reiterated exhortations to steadfastness, bravery, and self-sacrifice, On September 16 a decree of the Supreme Soviet awarded decorations to about forty officers and men fighting before Odessa, this was widely publicized in the beleaguered city.54* There was little attempt to conceal the seriousness of situation; yet, to the end-even after decision to leave had been taken -there was no official hint of abandonment:

The sacred task of every citizen (read leaflet-poster widely distributed about the end of September) is to give all his strength, and if need be his life, for fatherland and our native city. Odessa was, is, and will be impregnable fortress of Bolshevism on the Black Sea.55*

Subsequent Soviet accounts stressed the "agitation" work conducted in the port area. All the devices of indoctrination were used: arousing hatred for the enemy, fostering pride in accomplishment, and eulogizing individual heroes. The media ranged widely from "thematic discussions, news reports, and brief addresses to intimate talks." Admittedly there was a "differentiated approach:" the major effort of Party and political personnel was concentrated on key elements in production and security such as crane operators and foremen.56*

The effect of all this on the population cannot be gauged reliably. According to one informant (who proved to be generally astute but whose contacts were limited to intellectual circles), people were "influenced, but confused by the conflict between accounts of heroism and of the apparently smooth course of events given in Soviet propaganda, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rumors of Soviet retreats and failures, the stories of mass surrenders, and visible evidence of military difficulties." As the siege progressed, lower-level Party officials frankly doubted the optimistic official line but could not perceive the actual trend of events. Few people believed that the city could hold out indefinitely, but vague rumors and fantastic stories circulated about impending Soviet help or even of a British landing in the Balkans that push up the coast of the Black sea to join the defenders of Odessa.

Some residents moved from the port or the center of town to the less exposed western and eastern coastal peripheries (such as Bol'shoi Fontan). In the center of the city banditry developed. Groups of teenagers and others-including apparently some deserters but chiefly "professional " criminals and near-criminals from Odessa-attacked stores, buildings, and individual passer-by, particularly at night under the protection of total darkness.57* Post-Stalinist Soviet accounts have admitted that agitators in Odessa had the job of "stop(ping) treasonable chatter and exposing provocateurs' rumors." The last night before the city was yielded, it is asserted, "diversionists" started fires in the workshops in the harbor, presumably to alert enemy aircraft. Such instances appear to have been exceptional.58*

Everything seemed to contribute to insecurity-lack of news, night made sleepless by the air attacks, a changed pace and changed set of values. Many of the most stalwart civilians, on whom the Soviet authorities could have relied, had left with the Red Army or had been evacuated before the siege began. Paradoxically, the regime sought to hold a city whose population included more than. the usual proportion of inhabitants who were indifferent or hostile to the system. There was certainly no evidence of the determined fanaticism needed for a long siege. Yet most residents continued day after day to trudge to their assigned places of work and fulfill their duties, both hoping for and fearing the inevitable change ahead.

The End

In September the commandant of the Odessa area had ordered preparations made for winter warfare.59* The situation was becoming increasingly difficult, but there was no likelihood that fighting would soon be over, if replacements and supplies continued to arrive from the Crimea. It was therefore a considerable shock when OOR received orders from the Stavka to prepare to abandon Odessa.

The evidence on the Soviet decision to yield the city is contradictory. A contemporary article by Major General I.Petrov60* stated that the evacuation was ordered on October 6,to be completed on the 15th. For eight days, he asserts, rear area troops, artillery, trucks, tanks, staffs, and miscellaneous equipment were being removed right under the Romanians' noses. The dates and perhaps other details conflict with subsequent Soviet accounts. According to Borisov's semi-official booklet on the defense of Odessa (written, it is true, in 1954, and inclined to endow the decision retrospectively with greater wisdom than may have inspired it at the time) the factors influencing the Soviet High Command were the Germans' seizure of Perekop, which threatened to doom the Crimea, and the renewal of the German offensive to thee north. The Axis advance into the Crimea and along the Black Sea shore was especially a threat:

The Supreme Command (writes Borisov)...concluded that the time had come when the further defense of Odessa had lost its usefulness. With the retreat of our troops who had operated in the Crimea, the situation in which the Odessa Defense Rayon found itself worsened considerably. In case of enemy penetration to Mariupol' and Rostov, Odessa would find itself far in the enemy rear. Besides, for reasons of terrain, it could not be utilized by the Soviet command as bridgehead for powerful counter-attack against the foe.61*

Other sources assert that the Stavka;s decision to yield Odessa was taken on September 30 and that withdrawal was to be completed by October 15. 62*. The decision for the transfer of all troops and equipment to the Crimea, to strengthen the lines there. Despite this, on October 2 the Soviet troops started a counter-attack of their own in the Dal'nik sector, which failed; in turn, on October 9 the Romanians staged an all-out offensive, which yielded but little. To explain the mounting of a Soviet attack after the decision to leave had been taken-and, at that, one costly in men and material-postwar Soviet historiography had been compelled to assert that the attack was a maneuver calculated to confuse Axis forces.63* This purpose at least was achieved. To the end, the Germans and Romanians had no idea of the Soviet evacuation; not until the 15th, the night before it ended, did German aerial reconnaissance seem to have spotted the embarkations, which, of course, became more obvious toward the end. The withdrawal was difficult to plan and even more difficult to execute. A detailed evacuation schedule was drawn up including time-tables and sequences according to which equipment, troops, and civilians were to be loaded. Artillery and troops capable of going into action immediately in the Crimea (there were intended for the vulnerable Ishun position rated priority in removal. Then came valuable factory equipment and army rear units. In actual fact, however, the plan was disrupted: "The worsening situation in the Crimea," a Soviet account admits, "made it necessary to shorten the original time span for evacuation of Odessa."64* Yet the abbreviated schedule was not met. The special commission in the port supervising the evacuation-and consisting of representatives of the army, navy, local civilian (presumably State and Party), and port authorities-took even a day longer than the original plan called for.

Kataev correctly states:
Almost all citizens of Odessa guessed that the city had been ordered abandoned. Rumors about this had been circulating for a long time. They were confirmed by the fact that nightly transports left the harbor with troops, goods, and artillery.65*

The chaos and destruction were apparent to all, particularly in the last 24 hours. What could not be taken along was wrecked. Horses were shot in the port and their corpses piled up near the piers. The town was littered with abandoned equipment and parts of uniforms-some from soldiers who had hidden and changed in civilian clothes. For several days the city was full of the ashes of burned papers. The dams from some neighboring limans (river mouths and inlets), particularly to the northeast of the city, already had been blown up earlier during the siege to obstruct the Romanian advance-the old workers' section of Peresyp', on the outskirts of the city, was flooded, and the streets, even the lower stories of buildings had been under water for months-and this added to the picture of destruction. The harbor was full of wreckage-materiel dumped to prevent its being captured. by the enemy ,or ships sunk by enemy action; port facilities were either evacuated or blown up. In the city the barricades loomed monstrous and utterly useless, since Odessa was being abandoned without any fight within its limits.66* The night of October 15, the local daily, Chernomorskaia Kammuna, appeared for the last time with the banner headline," Odessa was, and will be Soviet." Then the artillery duel suddenly stopped as the last Soviet forces embarked and left at dawn. A mysterious sense of suspense pervaded the city as news spread that "they"-the militia chief, the admiral, the local Party officials, the troops holding the nearest sector-had left.67*

Only the Romanians didn't know it. Startled by the sudden silence and the ease with which their detachment s suddenly managed to advance, they entered Odessa on October 16 But their attack was into a void What they gained in captives and booty was trivial. They pushed down to the port, and found nothing remaining but wreckage.

Reports of Soviet atrocities in connection with the evacuation deserve at least passing mention. They come, of course, entirely from hostile sources, and while perhaps partially based on fact, remain unproven. One informant, a lawyer in Odessa until 1944, asserts that it was common knowledge that the Soviet authorities shot the political prisoners in the local jail (or in the custody of the NKVD) before leaving.68* Another account, reported in September, but apparently not fully accepted by the Germans in Kirovograd, had it that in late July, while the railroads were still operating,800 political prisoners had been sent out from Odessa in sealed cars. One version had them maliciously starved on suffocated en route-only corpses arrived in Kirovograd; another version accepted the "facts," but did not elaborate on Soviet intention. There was a kind of corroboration in the two versions about a "shipment" having taken place.69* It was also claimed that the NKVD shot some Volksdeutsche-ethnic Germans -before Odessa was abandoned.70*

Perhaps the most widespread, most tenacious, yet most fantastic tale tells off the discovery, during the Romanian incumbency, of corpses in Odessa harbor. None of the refugee informants presented the story as fact and these is at least the suspicion that it was a Romanian propaganda plant.71* As apparently reported in Odessa newspaper under the Romanians, corpses of wounded Red Army men were discovered in the course of repair work in the harbor. It has been suggested that the Soviets were attempting to evacuate them, but were frustrated by a German attack that sank the boat. The wartime version, however, insisted that the wounded were tied down and must have been deliberately drowned. The most detailed postwar reconstruction of these allegations appear in a Ukrainian book recently published in Canada.72* It includes testimony from two independent sources that a closed ambulance bearing Soviet wounded soldiers was found in Odessa harbor. As to whether this was an accident in the rush of evacuation or, as some allege, a fanatical attempt to keep the wounded from falling in to enemy hands, one can but speculate.73* Some doubt remains, moreover, whether the entire incident ever really did take place, since Tarapanov, the scavenger who reported the "discovery" at the bottom of Odessa harbor, had himself been a victim of Soviet terror and was violently anti-Soviet by conviction.74*

Originally, as has been shown, there were few if any overt manifestations of popular dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime. What strictures were made-and they were voiced more freely and frequently with the passage of time-were rooted in a deeper loyalty to the homeland-and, inevitably and implicitly, to its government.

A certain breakdown of loyalty did develop, but it was more of a gradual corrosion than anything expressed in hostile acts.75* Soviet failures in the war produced a breakdown of public respect for Soviet authority. The moment when the Red Army (along with the "leading Party and State cadres")76* left coincided rather closely with general popular disillusionment in the system; this disillusionment did not, however, produce any hopefulness about impending Romanian rule.
Even without a willingness to turn one's back on the Soviet order-though obviously already some were willing to-there were harbingers of it in unorthodox and spontaneous behavior. Even Kataev implies, in his mass scene at the pier, that Soviet controls no longer sufficed to keep order among the thousands milling and pressing to get aboard boats.77* Families were separated and their belongings lost.78*

One refugee suggests the general atmosphere in the last weeks; "Somehow a weakening of Soviet power was felt; the people dared more." Just what they dared remains a bit vague. In the last day or two, looting assumed major proportions; the Soviet militia no longer sufficed or wished or dared to maintain order; looting, however, did not reach its peak until the Red Army had gone. The expectation of defeat was voiced far more publicly and loudly than would normally have been safe.79*The only known "political" action resulting from the breakdown of Soviet authority was an incident which occurred a full month before surrender, immediately after German planes had dropped virulently anti-Semitic leaflets. A group of "young hooligans"-about 16 or 17 years old, appearing to be students or apprentices -ran through the streets of poorer section of Odessa, shouting the old pogromist slogan, Bei zhidov, spasai Rossiiu ('Beat the kikes and save Russia'), The militia failed to intervene, either because it was afraid to court trouble or because it felt too weak.80*

From the military point of view, the siege had lasted so long largely because both sides were weak. The Red Army had over a period of two months tied down a considerable number of enemy divisions, diverted some forces from other sectors of the front, and inflicted heavy casualties. However, almost all victims were Romanians, not Germans; the equipment tied down included scarcely any heavy weapons and minimum of planes and armor; and the siege did less to upset the German military timetable than did other engagements elsewhere.

Paradoxically, the decision to yield was made just as German troops were about to be diverted to Odessa. If German-Romanian intelligence was so poor as to permit the escape from the beleaguered city of the entire garrison and most of its supplies, Soviet intelligence was equally poor in prompting the command to yield precisely when holding out for extra few weeks would have tied down an entire German corps.

The siege of Odessa permitted the Soviet propaganda mill to build a new myth. Odessa along with Sevastopol'. Leningrad, and other Russian towns, was elevated in December,1942, to the status of a "hero-city," and there was a wholesale award of decoration to its defenders.

During and even at the end of the siege the prevalent state of mind of the population was exhaustion and confusion. Evacuation was no index to loyalty: many stayed who were normally in no sense anti-Soviet and some who left were deposed to turn against the regime. Nor was "loyalty" itself a constant: condition s and circumstances were apt to make yesterday's Communist tomorrow's ardent advocate of a new order. Yet it can be stated that, politically, the siege and evacuation left considerably fewer friends of the Soviet order in Odessa than had been there before the war. At the same time, the Romanian troops who entered the city had undergone an extensive, unaccustomed experience of strain, shock, and deprivation scarcely more pleasant than that experienced by the city's own inhabitants. This, one may suggest, tended to make them apt to react as weak and beaten troops, disposed to seek comfort and help, and unlikely to impress their new "subjects" as superior. By a peculiar concatenation of circumstances, the siege had contributed to the creation of situation in which the psychological gap between victor and vanquished was small. Both yearned for spell of normal life, a respite, a breath of clean air.
______________
1* Odessa, Obl.komisiia po istorii Otechestvennoi Voiny, Odessa v velikoi otechestvennoi voine, Odesskoe obl. izdat., Odessa,1947-1953 (hereafter cited as OVOV), vol.1,p.14.

2* Ibid.,pp.28-29.

3* ibid.,p.36.

4* Anatolii Fadeev Geroicheskaia oborona Odessy v 1941 g., Politizdat, Moscow,1955.p.15.

5* Interviews A (Compulsory military training was decreed throughout the USSR on September 18,1941).

6* Only a few bombs fell in June 22 raid; the damage was chiefly in the outskirts. Though a crop of rumors grew out of the raid-Odessa seemed to generate them easily-an observer reports that the raids also gave rise to the feeling that perhaps air attacks were not so terrible as other forms of bombardment. When heavy air raids began in August, this attitude changed, Because they were more unpredictable in timing and impact, air attacks were generally feared more than artillery shelling (Interview G. To preserve anonymity, informants are identified throughout this paper by alphabetical letter only). Soviet postwar assert that attacks, sometimes as fourteen a day, aimed particularly at the port installations. During the period before Odessa's fall, the Germans reportedly made 360 air raids on the city. (Ia.M.Shternshtein, "Rabochie odesskogo porta v 1941 g.,"Voprosy istorii, Moscow,1956, no.6,p.100; Anatolii Fadeev, Geroicheskaia oborona Odessy v 1941 g., Politizdat, Moscow,1955, p.31).

7* Mikhail Manuilov, "Odessa during World War II" (MS in Russia), Research Program on the USSR, New York, 1952 hereafter cited Manuilov), pp.9-11; and Ia.Peterle, "Odessa -stolitsa Transnistriii," Novoe tusskoe slovo, New York, June 1,1952.

8* Ia M. Shternshtein, "Rabochie odesskogo porta v oborone goroda v 1941g.,"Voprosy istorii, Moscow, 1956, #6, p.99.

9* Interview A. The last train to get though left Odessa on August 13 (Voprosy istorii,1956,#6, p.101).

10* Valentin Kataev, Za vlast' sovetov, Detizdat, Moscow,1949, pp.77-78.

11* Manuilov,p.9.

12* Interview A, OVOV, Vol.2 p.IV.

13* Soviet vessels and sea transports made a total of 648 trips between Odessa and Sevastopol' alone during the six week's peak of evacuation (Krasnyi chernomorets, April 10,1945, cited in Akademiiia nauk, Inastitut istorii, Ocherki istorii Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941-1945, Moscow,1955, p.93). From the first weeks of the war on, later Soviet accounts claimed the port of Odessa assumed the function of intermediary in the removal of plants from Ukrainian and Moldavian hinterland to Novorosiisk, Mariupol', and Rostov. Not enough shipping was available to carry out this task. Passenger vessels (normally on the runs to the Crimea and Caucasus) were commandeered, but actually were used largely for evacuation of the wounded.(Shternshtein, op. cit., p.99).

14* Peterle,op. cit.; interviews A and C.

15* These estimators cover the entire period of evacuation, including those who left during the subsequent siege. In addition. of course, mobilization had removed a substantial number of adult males.

16* Interview C. (The university was officially evacuated to Maikop, in the North Caucasus, and in 1942, when the Germans advanced into Caucasus, removed to Central Asia).

17* (OKW/Abwehr) MaresII, Zusammenfassung aus Gefangenenvernehmungen aund anderen Meldungen uber Odessa und den Sector vor Odessa," August 29,1941, Captured Records Section (hereafter cited as CRS), AOK II, 35774/2; and (OKW/Abwehr) Mures II to AOK II,Ic, October 9,1941,CRS, AOK II,35774/2.

18* Odessa, Obl.Komissiia po istorii Otechestvennoi Voiny, Odessa v velikoi otechestvennoi voine (hereafter cited as OVOV) Odesskoe obl.izdat.,Odessa,1947-1953, Vol. 2,p.IV Shternshtein, op. cit.,pp.10,103,106-107. The Lenin plant reopened and resumed partial war production after three months, in Sterlitamak; in 1943 it received a special government award. The Kirov plant went to Sol'iletsk (Chkalov Oblast) The Khvorostin (jute) plant evacuated from Odessa in July,1941, went through Novorosiisk to the Kuibyshev area. The Vorovsky sewing (tailoring) shop wound up in Irkutsk Oblast. The Lysenko Agricultural Institute was in Uzbekistan; the Filatov institute worked with eye injuries, first in Piatigorsk, later in Tashkent. Some of the evacuees from stage and opera were evacuated to Kirghizia, then toured the Briansk Front and performed in Kuibyshev (OVOV,vol.2,pp.IX-X,91-129; Izvestiia, April 12,1944). On the evacuation of the university, see below, Ch.IV.

19* Manuilov,pp.9-12; interview C.

20* Some pertinent details on this reversal and the difficulties connected with the operation of the improvised war plants are described in one of the few Soviet memoirs dealing with the siege of Odessa, G.I.Penezhko, Zapiski soveyskogo ofitsera, Sovetskii Pisatel, Leningrad,1949.

21* Shternshtein, op. cit., p.100. See also Leon Goure and Herbert S.Dinerstein, Moscow in Crisis, Free , Press, Glencoe,III,1955.

22* All the forgoing, interview A; Manuilov, pp.11-14; Mares II, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit., See also Fred Virski, My Life in the Red Army, Macmillian, New York.

23* For the most detailed accounts of military operations before Odessa, see , on the Soviet side, A.D. Borisov, Odessa gorod geroi, Voenizdat, Moscow,1964 (hereafter cited as Borisov), and, on the German side, Deutsche Heeresmission in Rumanien, "Beobachtungen aus dem Felszug gegen Odessa," MS, 1941-1942, CRS, DHMR 17058.

24* M.A. Stepanov (ed.), Deistviia voenno-morskogo flota, Voenizdat, Moscow,1956,p.97; Fadeev, op. cit.,p.19.

25* OVOV, Vol.1, p.67.

26* Borisov, pp.13-15.

27* Shternshtein, op. ct., p.102; Budionnyi order, intercept, August 20, 1941, CRS, DHMR 27/38/3. (Soviet histories tend to date the beginning of the siege as of August 10).

28* CRS, DHMR 27/638/3; and Deutsches Verbindungenskommando 2 bei 4, rum. Armee, "Richtinien fur Finsatz deutscher Truppen," n.d., CRS, 132 ID 13907/10.

29* The Romanian forces amounted to about eighteen divisions, the Soviet forces to about three divisions.

30* Ibid.; G. Barbul, Memorial Antonescu-le 3 homme de l'Axe, Ed. de la Goronne, Paris,1950, vol.1,p.136; Borisov, pp.16-36; Antonescu to Hitler, August 17, 1941, CRS, DHMR 76152.

31* Bfh. deutscher Truppen vor Odessa, Ia, to HGr. Sud and AOK II, September 19, 1941, CRS, Russland 13103/2.

32* Stepanov, op. cit., pp.103-107; Sternshtein, op. cit.,p.107; Fadeev, op. cit.,p.50;Koruck 553, "Betrifft Landung russischer Krafte bei Grigorjewka ander Nordkuste des Schwaren Meers ca.25 km ostlich Odessa," September 24, 1941, CRS, Koruck 20383/8; Borisov, pp.36-40.

33* Deutsche Heeresmission in Rumanien, "Gliederung und Zustand des rumanischen Heeres," CRS, DHMR 18026; Ion Gheorghe, Rumaniens Weg zum Satelitenstaat, Welsermuhl, Wels, 1952, pp.188-190
Earlier Antonescu had opposed having Germans participate in the capture of Odessa, because they would reduce the glory the Romanians would gain by seizing it alone. The following excerpt from the diary of Halder, the Chief of the German general Staff, is indicative of this problem:
18 August 1941: Colonel Metz (liaison officer AOK II); Attack on Odessa will run into trouble if there is no German Hq on the scene.... Outrages by Romanians soldiers."
21 August: "The Romanians think they cannot take Odessa before the beginning of September. That is too late. NoOdessa -no Crimea... Sodenstern (on phone): Field Marshal von Rundstedt emphasizes necessity for speeding the capture of Odessa. Antonescu obstinately refuses any help from us. The Fuhrer must step in."
Franz Halder, Diary, English mimeographed ed., vol.7, pp.50, 54, and 58).

34* Interview C; Borisov, p.19; Bolshaia Sovetskaia Enztsiklopediia, 2d ed., Moscow, vol.30,p.525.

35* Borisov, p.28; Stepanov, op. cit., p.101.
This device perhaps merits special attention as it is unlike both other forms of total local wartime control adopted in the Soviet Union: Moscow and Leningrad defense operations and decisions were directly in the hands of the State Defense Committee (GKO), while from mid-October 1941, the defense of other cities (for instance, Sevastopol', Tula, Rostov, Stalingrad) was entrusted to special City Committees representing "total" State, Party, and other public authority responsible to the GKO. (A.M. Sinitsyn, "Chrezvychainye organy sovetskogo gosudarstva v gody velikoi otechestvennoi voiny," Voprosy istorii, 1955, no.2,p.35.

36* OVOV, vol.1.p.74.

37* Soviet postwar sources tend to overstress the role of the Communist Party in all these endeavors, and in assessing these claims this tendency should be borne in the mind. In fact, however, the Party appears to have played far more important a role than the somewhat denatured organs of the state.

38* Fadeev, op. cit., pp.16,62; Shternshtein, op. cit.,pp.101,103; Stepanov, op. cit.,p.110.

39* Ibid.

40* Manuilov,pp.15,23,25; interview C; Peterle, op. cit., ;(OKW/Abwehr) Mares II, "Zusammenfassung," September 3,1941, CRS, AOK II, 35774/2' Borisov, p.17.

41* OVOV, vol. 1,pp. 71-72.

42* Ibid., pp.71,183-184;,Borisov, p.17; Peterle, op. cit.,; Mares II, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit.

43* Fadeev, op. cit.,p.24; Paul Werner, Ein schweizer journalist sieht Russlan, Walter, Olte, 1942, pp.176-177. For photographs of the Odessa barricades, see also OVOV, vol.1, pp.215,245; Bolshaia Sovetskaia entsiclopediia, 2d ed., vol.30,fool.532; and (AOK II,Ic), Bessarabien-Ukraine-Krim, Eric Zander, Berlin,1943.
The construction of Odessa fortifications was under the direction of Arkadii Khrenov, who was credited a crucial part in the Soviet breakthrough in Finland in early 1940.(Soviet War News, #51, September 8,1941,p.3) Soviet accounts have stressed, apparently with some factual basis, the inventiveness and ingenuity of port and city technicians and engineers in improvising loading, production, and assembling without the requisite parts and facilities. More dubious are Soviet postwar claims about systematic over fulfillment of work norms in besieged Odessa.

44* For background and details see, War Documentation Project, Organization and Control of the Partisan Movement in World War II, " by John A. Armstrong and Kurt DeWitt, HRRI, Maxwell AFB,1954.

45* The establishment of destruction battalions was begun in Odessa as early as July 2. See Appendix).

46* (OKW/Abwehr) Mares II to AOK II, Ic, op. cit.,; Fadeev, op.cit.,p.16.

47* Among Soviet accounts, see, above all, Penezhko, op.cit.
Soviet account claimed that the Odessa workers "build and handed over to the Red Army command two armored trains." (Soviet War News,#44, London, August 30,1941). Others speak of mortars and hand grenades produced in Odessa.

48* Mares II, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit.,; Borisov, p.24; Fadeev,op.cit.,p.33.

49* Mares II, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit.,; OVOV, vol.1, pp.73,135; A. Chekaniuk, Narodne opolchennia v heroichnyi oboroni Kyeva i Odesy, Ukrvydv., Moscow,1943,p.33.

50* Peterle, op.cit.

51* Mares II to AOK II, Ic, op. cit.; "Zusammenfassung," op. cit.; interview A.

52* Chekaniuk, op. cit., p.31.

53* Ibid.,p.34; interviews B and C; Mares, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit.

54* OVOV, vol.1, pp.67-68, 100-101, 138-141, 151-153.

55* OVOV, vol.1,p.133.

56* Shternshtein, op. cit., p.104.

57* Manuilov,pp.16-17; interviews A and C; Peterle, op. cit.

58* Shtershtein,op. cit.,p.109; Fadeev, op. cit.,p.17.

59* Borisov,p.41; Fadeev,op.cit.,pp.60-61.

60* Major General I.Petrov, "Pravda o bor'be za Odessu, "Krasnaia zvesda, October 22,1941.

61* Borisov, p.41.

62* Fadeev, op. cit., p.62; Shternshtein, op. cit., p.107.

63* Borisov, pp.42-43. See also F.D. Vorob'ev and V.M. Kravtsov, Pobeda sovetskhich vooruzhennykh sil, Moscow, 1953, pp 101-103.

64* Steranov, op. cit., p.109.

65* Kataev,op.cit.,p.106; Shternshtein, op. cit.,p.108.

66* An Additional irony was that the obstacles, erected well in advance of Soviet departure, permitted not pedestrians but cars to pass through. (Karl Sedlatzek, "Siegreicher Einzug in Odessa," Hamburger Femderblatt, October 18,1941.

67* Manuilov,pp.9-10; Borisov, pp.43-44; Mares, "Zusammenfassung," op. cit. Petrerle, op.cit.; Werner ,op. cit,; G.Costa, in Corriera della Sera, October 18,1941 reprinted in Rumanisches Blut fur das neue Europa, Bucharest,1943,pp.82-83; Fritz Zierke, "Jenseits des Dnjestr," Volkisscher Beobachter, Berlin, July.
19-20,1943; LIV AK, Ic, "Gefangenenvernehmung," October 29, 1941, CRS, AOK II, 22409/121.

68* Interview B.

69* Deutshes Vibindungskommando, op. cit.

70* Manuilov,p.27.

71* Interviews A, B,$ C; Manuilov,p.32.

72* Fedor Fihido, Veyka vitchyznianna viina, Novy Sliakh, Winnipeg, 1954, pp.112-114.(Pihido asserts that some nonpolitical criminals in Odessa prisons were released a few days before the city abandoned, while others were shot by NKVD (pp.114-115).See also Petr Ershov, "Strannyi konets," MS, p.61.

73* Another atrocities take concerns a mass grave at Tatarka, near Odessa. In early May of 1943, various foreign officials, including the Italian consul (whose report on the visit is available), were shown the corpses at Tatarka, in different states of disintegration but entirely unidentifiable. Witnesses produced by the Romanian claimed that the victims, was buried with their personnel effects, had been killed by the Soviet authorities in 1939. (Italy, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, file "Fossa di Tatarca,"Maurilio Coppini, dispatch, May 8,1943, Italian War Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C..,Box 1267, frame 104833). There are reasons to doubt the Romanian version: 1) the Tatarka story was never publicized ; the Axis propaganda machine would not have failed to use it if the evidence were solid; 2) the above visit came on the heels of the Katyn and Vinnitsa atrocity publicity, and the Romanian may well have been led to the Tatarka story in search of further propaganda of a similar nature; 3) the Tatarka is known to have been locate of some anti-Jewish atrocities perpetrated by the Romanians themselves in the fall of 1941; 4) both date,1939, and the fact that the victims were buried with personnel effects, permit some doubts even if the above factors were not involved.

74* Interview G.

75* The only ones who were obviously disloyal to the Soviet regime were the deserters from the Red Army, many of whom hid in the city. By and large, they seem to have been helped by the local residents. There were instances of soldiers hiding in private apartments in daytime and risking to live only at night, or not at all. On the other hand, some denunciation of such hiding deserters are also known. But protection and informing appear to have been motivated more often by human emotions that by any pervasive political sense of duty or lack thereof.

76* The problem of stay-behinds is discussed in Chapter VI.

77* Petia was carried away by the crowd and pressed against the very gangplank."

78* Kataev, op.cit.,p,78.

79* Interview C.

80* Interview C. See also Manuilov, pp.23,28; and interview A.