Hertsa region | |
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 %2cformer_synagogue%2cnow-Culture_palace.jpg)  
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 Map of modernChernivtsi Oblast with historical regions outlined: red: northernBukovina, blue: Hertsa region, green: northernBessarabia | |
| Country |  Ukraine |
| Largest city | Hertsa |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (EET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+3 (EEST) |
TheHertsa region, also known as theHertza region (Ukrainian:Край Герца,romanized: Krai Hertsa;Romanian:Ținutul Herța), is a region around the town ofHertsa withinChernivtsi Raion in the southern part ofChernivtsi Oblast in southwesternUkraine, near the border withRomania. With an area of around 304 km2 (117 sq mi),[1] it has a population of about 32,300 people (as of 2001), 93% of whom are ethnicRomanians.
The territory, historically part ofMoldavia, was one of the five districts ofDorohoi County. Following theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, theSoviet Union issued on June 26, 1940, anultimatum toRomania that threatened the use of force.[2] The Romanian government, responding to the Soviet ultimatum, agreed to withdraw from the territories to avoid a military conflict. A few days later,Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Union, and the Hertsa region was attached to theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.[3][4] As it was not mentioned in the ultimatum, the annexation of the Hertsa region was not consented to by Romania.[2] The region (together with the rest of Bessarabia and Bukovina) was recaptured by Romania during 1941–1944 in the course of theAxis attack on the Soviet Union inWorld War II, until theRed Army captured it again in 1944. Sovietannexation of this territory was internationally recognized by theParis Peace Treaties in 1947.
The number of deportees to the Soviet north and east from the present-day Hertsa raion on June 13, 1941, was 1996; according to some sources, most of the deportees died.[5]
Almost all the Jews who lived in the town of Hertsa (1,204) and in the rest of the Hertsa area (14), which were under Soviet rule in 1940-1941 and in 1944-1991, on September 1, 1941, were deported toTransnistria by the Romanian authorities, where most of them died; only 450 were alive in December 1943, when the repatriation of the Jews to Dorohoi County by the Romanian authorities started, while about 800 Jews died.[6] The Romanian army and authorities killed about 100 Jews on July 5, 1941, before the deportation to Transnistria.[7] The Yad Vashem database lists the names of 102 Jews from Hertsa who were killed in Hertsa.[8] Moreover, 483 Jews from Hertsa and the neighboring villages died in Ukraine, including Transnistria, because of the deportations according to the Yad Vashem website.[8] For the entire Dorohoi County ("Judet"), a large majority of which remained in Romania, 6,425 Jews survived the deportations to Transnistria, while 5,131 died between September 6, 1940, and August 23, 1944, during the Antonescu dictatorship, overwhelmingly due to the deportations of 1941 and 1942.[9]
The Yad Vashem database lists the identities of 843 Jews from Herta who died during World War II.[8] It lists the identities of five Jews from Herta who were killed by the Soviet authorities in Siberia,[8] and of 461 who died in Ukraine, including Transnistria, because of the deportations.[8] For more information on the Holocaust inTransnistria, including on the fate of the Jewish deportees from Romania, seeHistory of the Jews in Transnistria.
Romania andUkraine have signed and ratified a border agreement and are signatories of international treaties and alliances that denounce any territorial claims. Romanian organisations in the region consider Hertsa to be historically Romanian, detached from it by the Soviet Union in 1940 in violation ofinternational law. The correspondent of "New Region", Sergei Vulpe, with reference to theBucharest newspaperZiua reported on April 17, 2008[10] that thePresident of Romania,Traian Băsescu, stated that if Ukraine wants to annexTransnistria, then they should returnSouthern Bessarabia (Budjak) and northernBukovina (Chernivtsi Oblast that includes the Hertsa region) toMoldova.
In 2001, the population of Hertsa Raion was 32,316, of which 29,554 or 91.45% identified themselves asRomanians, 1,616 or 5.0% asUkrainians, and 756 or 2.34% asMoldovans (out of which 511 self-identified their language as Moldovan and 237 as Romanian), 0.9% asRussians, and 0.3% as being of other ethnicities (see:Ukrainian Census, 2001).[11][12] Hertsa raion, within its boundaries at that time, had 32,316 inhabitants in 2001, including 4.83% Ukrainian-speakers, 93.82% Romanian-speakers, and 1.21% Russian-speakers.[13] In the last Soviet census of 1989, out of 29,611 inhabitants, 1,569 declared themselves Ukrainians (5.30%), 23,539 Romanians (79.49%), 3,978 Moldovans (13.43%), and 431 Russians (1.46%).[14] The decline in the number (from 3,978 to 756) and proportion of Moldovans (from 13.43% to 2.34%) was explained by a switch from a census Moldovan to a census Romanian ethnic identity, and has continued after the 2001 census.[15] By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased (from 23,539 to 29,554), and so has their proportion of the population of the former raion (from 79.49% to 91.45%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census.[15] Some authors have argued that most of the inhabitants of the former Hertsa Raion who had self-identified themselves as Moldovans in 1989 self-identified themselves as Romanians in 2001.[15] Since the Hertsa raion split from the Hlyboka raion after the 1989 Soviet census, we do not have the breakdown of the inhabitants of Hertsa raion by native language in 1989.[15] In 2001, this was Ukraine's only raion in which an absolute majority of the population was recorded by the census as having a Romanian identity, and the raion in Ukraine with the largest proportion of Romanian-speakers.[15]
According to the 2001 census, in the Hertsa urban hromada (urban community) created in 2020, with a population of 17,519, 572 of the inhabitants (3.27%) spoke Ukrainian as their native language, while 16,627 (94.91%) spoke Romanian, including 16,485 who called their language Romanian (94.1%) and 142 who called it Moldovan (0.81%) and 298 (1.7%) spoke Russian.[16] In 2001, in the Ostrytsia rural hromada (rural community) created in 2020, with a population of 13,868, 960 of the inhabitants (6.92%) spoke Ukrainian as their native language, while 12,796 (92.27%) spoke Romanian (out of which 12,428 or 89.62% called the language Romanian and 371 or 2.68% called the language Moldovan), and 89 (0.64%) spoke Russian.[16]
The raion included only three localities in which there were more self-identified Moldovans than Romanians in 1989, all of them historically a part ofBukovina; in two, the population identified its language overwhelmingly as Romanian in 2001 (see below).[17] In the village ofOstrytsia in the Hertsa Raion, in 2001, 93.73% of the inhabitants spoke Romanian as their native language (93.22% self-declared Romanian and 0.52% self-declared Moldovan), while 4.96% spoke Ukrainian.[16] In the Soviet census of 1989, the number of inhabitants of the locality who declared themselves Romanians plus Moldovans was 2,965 (324, or 10.05% Romanians plus 2,641 or 81.92% Moldovans) out of 3,224, representing 91.97% of the locality's population, and there were 205 ethnic Ukrainians (6.36%).[14] In 2001, 893, or 94.4% of the 946 inhabitants of the village ofTsuren of the Hertsa Raion spoke Romanian as their native language (630 self-declared it Romanian or 66.6%, and 263 declared in Moldovan, or 27.8%), with a minority of 50 Ukrainian speakers (5.29%).[16] In the 1989 census, the number of residents who declared themselves Romanian plus Moldovan was 865, representing 96.11% of the locality's population out of 900, including 108 self-identified Romanians (12%) and 757 self-identified Moldovans (84.11%), and there were 31 ethnic Ukrainians (3.44%).[14]
Another locality where a significant amount of identity change from Moldovan and Moldovan-speaking to Romanian and Romanian-speaking was Mamornytsia (seeMamornytsia (in Ukrainian) andMamornița (in Romanian)).
The number of self-declared ethnic Romanians plus Moldovans in the raion (30,310, or 93.79%) was slightly lower than the number of Romanian-speakers (30,337, or 93.88%); 99.65% of the Romanians plus Moldovans used Romanian as their native language, a figure comparable to that of the Romanian ethnic population in Transcarpathia.[15] The number of ethnic Ukrainians in the raion increased from 1,569 to 1,616, but their percentage of the population decreased from 5.3% to 5%.[15] The number of ethnic Ukrainians due to natural increase and because of the identity change of a number of previously self-identified ethnic Romanians or Russians to ethnic Ukrainians from among those who had attended Ukrainian schools.[15] While 51 Romanians and 6 Moldovans declared that their native language was Ukrainian, 89 Ukrainians were speaking Romanian as their mother tongue in 2001.[15]
In 2003/2004, the raion had 10 Romanian middle schools, 7 incomplete middle schools and 11 elementary schools in Romanian, with 315 classes and 5,446 students, and a Ukrainian middle school and a Ukrainian elementary school, with 15 classes and 259 students.[18]
The city ofHertsa has a Romanian-language newspaper,Gazeta de Herța.[19]
(in Romanian)
Banat (1918–)a |
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Dobruja (1878–) |
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Moldavia (1859–)b |
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Transylvania (1918–)ag | |
Wallachia (1859–)b | |
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