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Czernowitz

The Capital of Bucovine
The Capital of the duchy of Bucovine which was Cernauti, Czernowitz, Tchernivtsy, and Chermivtsy: Capital Czernowitz of Bucovine resounds like that of a phantom in the European memory.
Leaned with the Eastern slope of the chain of Carpates, the city is today in Ukraine, very close to the septentrional bordered of Romania.
Czernowitz is its German name that which one still uses by convenience. But for the Ukrainians it is Chermivtsy, for the Cernauti Roumanians and the Tchernivtsy Russians.
Before becoming Ukrainian in 1945, Czernowitz was the capital of the ex-duchy of Bucovine, and then it was yielded by the Othoman ex-empire to the ex-empire Austria-Hungarian.
In 1918, Bucovine, becomes province of ex-Large Romania, it is Ukrainian today after being annexed by the USSR pursuant to the pact germanous-Soviet of 1939.
During nearly three quarter centuries, of the foundation of its university in 1875 to the Second World War, this city was a cultural hearth of a completely extraordinary intensity.
The area is transferred to Moldavia, which was based meanwhile with Romania, independent since 1878.
Czernowitz becomes Cernauti and preserves its population interfered Jews (in majority), of Roumanians, Ruthènes and Germans.
It preserved two official languages until 1924, German and Rumanian, then after this date, Rumanian alone.
The institutional network of the German-speaking culture was destroyed by the rupture of the umbilical cord with the metropolis Viennese.
Despite everything, German remained the language of communication privileged in the families.
This maintenance, to the heart even of a country practising of all its forces the assimilation, was due of the miracle.
The linguistic choice of the families was often influenced by the mothers, whose worship for the German literature went up so far it had acquired force of tradition.
But in the popular districts and the suburbs, it was seldom the punished language which one heard but of the "Hochdeutsch. Those which did not speak Yiddish were expressed in dialectal German, with the multiple accents, the "Bukowinerisch", or "Bukowiner Deutsch".
Forsaking the orthodoxy of the family some had become tradesmen or managers of companies of import-export, trade or banks. They had remained however respectful of a certain tradition: the kitchen was casher, the traditional Shabbat, the principal celebrated Jewish festivals, in the same way which one read the Bible, Cabal and the accounts Hassidic.
In New York, in 1928, nearly 10.000 Bucoviniens this found in the "ghetto" Americano Bucoviniens, a large part of some Bucoviniens of the State of New York is gathered in at least ten associations of nationals of the duchy of Bucovine.
Yes! We still speak about the duchy of Bucovine, the portraits of François-Joseph and of prince Rodolphe decorate the walls of the rooms.
They live in their old thoughts and tell accounts and memories of these disappeared days, like if that was yesterday.
In the streets of Czernowitz, as of April 1933, of the pro-Nazis déambulaientt, arm above arm below with the Rumanian fascists. The local German daily newspaper, "Deutsche Tagespost", endorsed, without any reserve, the policy Nazi. They encouraged the rejection of the Jews of all the professional branches and the boycott of their trade.
In 1938, the Party anti-semite and fascist of Octavian Goga had taken capacity. The Goga-Cuza government had legislated a program anti-semite very similar with that preached by the Iron Guard. Swastika the frontage of the town hall of Czernowitz decorated. All newspapers Jews, of the city were closed. To speak Yiddish or Hebrew in the streets or the public places became an offence. As under other skies, them Jews, it is necessary some, do not transfer all to arrive the storm. Coffees, the theatres and the sports grounds were full. In spite of all, very little left the city.
The Goga government was reversed after a few months. King Carol imposed a dictatorship. Less than one year later, the Second World War burst.
Romania tried to give pledges to Germany, without cutting Occident completely. But after the destruction of Poland and the collapse of France, it could only be aligned on the Axis.
Hitler did not test any need to spare its ally and in a few months dismembered. Bucovine was cut into two, the North delivered to the Russians.
In 1940, during the retirement of the Rumanian troops, operated in a climate of rancour, many Jews were massacred.
With the arrival of the Red Army, initially, the Ukrainians and unquestionable young people Jewish expressed their feelings anti-Rumanian and accepted the Russian troops in the jubilation.
The parents were not also enthusiastic.
A great part of the Jewish Communists (and not Jews) which had seized the ministries and the public institutions, hanging red flags there, were immediately driven out by the Soviet civil authorities.
The economic situation was degraded in a dramatic way; the products of first need missed. Houses, factories, banks and trade were requisitioned. The Russians nationalized all the goods of the day at the following day, the schools became Ukrainian or Russian.
For the Jews, only two schools functioned in Yiddish, they were directed by Police chiefs of Moscow.
June 13, 1941, of the units of the NKVD patrolled in the streets of the city, in the search of middle-class man, Zionists, spies Rumanian and enemies of the capacity. They stopped 3 thus.800 people, of which more half of Jews. The "culprits" were off-set in Siberia, but remained initially three days at the station in bow wagons.
It was the beginning of an operation which the Soviets had the intention to continue. The German invasion, one week later, was to oblige them to change their plans.
June 22, 1941, Hitler tackled the Soviet Union. Eleven days later began the Rumanian offensive. The Soviets had to evacuate Czernowitz. The civil authorities worried especially about the repatriation of the senior officials and the personalities about the Party come from Union Soviet.
At the time of the departure of the last passenger trains, they invited the inhabitants to go to Russia. As for the students, they intimated the order to them to follow them. The Red Army, in addition, enrol surroundings 1.500 men, those which did not present theirs full liking were killed.
The winter 1942 was so hard that the deportations last being stopped, the snowstorms having stopped the railway activity. But in summer, transport began again. The Rumanian fascists and the Germans stopped them Jews directly on their premises, and led them to the sports ground of Makkabi, become place of concentration of the deportees. Then, they were transferred in the southernmost part of the plain of Bug, in a camp called simply: "stone quarry" (a place without name).
At the beginning of the year 1945, the noise ran, in Czernowitz that the Russians intended to expel the Jews. Officially, it was not absolutely necessary of one voluntary displacement for Romania. The border was not very supervised and some had already been able to cross it.
With the autumn 1945, Bucovine, once again, had changed Master. Union Soviet annexed of it the greatest part which was from now on Ukrainian. The Jews took Russian nationality or emigrated.
In Tchernivtsy, the intellectuals, the doctors, the writers or the poets of reputations are not there any more. They emigrated throughout the world, but they have known to transmit to their children, to grandchildren the memory of a city or it made good food... Czernowitz.

Bucovine of North and Ukraine:
In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, the independence of the Ukraine arrived and the septentrional part of Bucovine was shared between the Ukraine and Moldavia.
The annexation of Bessarabia (current Moldavia) inaugurated for a part of the Rumanian population a history different from that of Romania.
Today Bucovine is thus cut in three parts, respectively distributed on Romania, Moldavia and the Ukraine.

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