On October 22, the Romanian command building was blown up and 66 members of the military, including the military governor of Odessa, were killed. In response, the dictator of Romania, Marshal Ion Antonescu, ordered the following: the execution of 200 Communists for each officer killed and 100 for each soldier; the incarceration of all Communists; and the taking of hostages among Jewish families. The next day, some 5,000 people, mostly Jews, were apprehended and executed, most by hanging and a smaller number by gunfire.
That afternoon, the Romanians rounded up another 20,000 Jews in the local prison and led them the next day to the village of Dalnik. Some of the victims were shot; others were locked in warehouses or herded into the harbor square where they were burned alive. After the massacre, many Jews of Odessa were sent to the camps, and another 35,000ΓÇô40,000 who remained in the town were concentrated between October 25 and November 3, 1941, and kept outdoors for ten days. Those who did not die of exposure and starvation, or at the hands of the German inhabitants, were sent to their deaths a month later.
