On June 1, 1942, Marshal Ion Antonescu started the deportation of the Rroma, Rumania’s gypsy population, sending them to labor camps in Transdnestr. The number of people involved varies in estimates between 25,000 and 38,000, of which around 1,500 survived the war. Living and working conditions were dire, and the terrible death toll was mainly due to dysentery and typhoid fever. In spite of protests from the king Mihai I and Queen Mother Elena, the Antonescu government neither set the Rroma free nor improved their living conditions. The official line was that nomadic Rroma were a social peril.
