Deportation of Germans from Romania after World War II

Plans for transfer of the German population from Romania to Germany existed at least since 1939, but were abandoned during World War II.

The proposal was received favourably by the Romanian foreign minister Grigore Niculescu-Buzești and the Sănătescu government, the only opposition coming from the representatives of the Communist Party.

This was done to put into effect top secret Order 7161 about mobilisation and internment of able-bodied Germans for reparation works in the USSR, which also applied to other countries that were under the control of the Red Army, such as Hungary and Yugoslavia.

Despite their own previous planning for a mass expulsion, the last non-communist government of Romania, headed by Prime Minister Nicolae Rădescu, declared itself "completely surprised" by the order[4] On January 13, 1945, when arrests had already begun in Bucharest and Brașov, the Rădescu government sent a protest note to the (Soviet) Vice-President of the Allied Control Commission for Romania, General Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov.

[citation needed] Statistics regarding the expulsion of Transylvanian Saxons indicate that up to 30,336 individuals were deported to the Soviet Union — some 15% of Transylvania's German population (according to 1941 data).

Between 1946 and 1947, about 5,100 Saxons were brought, by special transports for the sick, to Frankfurt an der Oder, a city then in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.

An article in the newspaper Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien, published on January 13, 1995, revealed that the Romanian government was not in fact "completely surprised" by the deportation order.

Weeks in advance, the state railway, Căile Ferate Române, had begun to prepare cattle wagons to transport the deportees.