1) “On 11 November [1941] Gheorghe Alexianu, the Romanian Governor of Transnistria, made public Decree No. 23 concerning the organization of Jewish life; this decree became the ‘constitution’ of the ghettos and camps. According to the decree, Jews were confined to those villages and towns where local Jews or Russians had lived before. The local gendarmerie was authorized to select the places of residence. The decree further limited their movement and stipulated that they had to earn their living by forced labor for the benefit of the authorities (in the Agreement of Tighina, clause 7 referred to Jewish forced labor for the German Army). A fixed wage of one mark per day for simple workers and two marks for professionals and specialists was to be paid by allotment of food, which was to be supplied by the authorities. The decree also dealt with the internal structure of the community (called ‘colonie’ in the text). Every community had to choose a ‘head’ from among the deportees to serve as its spokesman, pending the approval of the pretor of the region (usually a Romanian officer). The ‘head’ was personally responsible for fulfilling all the demands for labor set by the Romanian authorities and for detailing workers for different tasks, some of them very difficult. The workers were divided into groups of twenty, headed by a chief who also had to be approved by the pretor. Decree No. 23 was little more than deception. It gave the impression that there was a clear Romanian Jewish policy for Transnistria, and it referred to what might be considered as the ‘normal life’ of deported people in war conditions. But, although the decree covered elements of regular daily life-dwelling, food supplies, work and self organization- in reality the physical and material condition of the deportees was completely disregarded.”
“The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the Ussr, 1941-1945.” Lucjan Dobroszycki. Page 141. Online book, Accessed on 10/10/2012
2) “The official determination of living conditions for all Jews in Transnistria—deported and local—was set out in decree no. 23 issued by Gheorghe Alexianu, Governor of Transnistria, on 11 November 1941. Here, the term colony (colonie) was introduced to describe those communities of Jews living in towns and villages. Later, in the language of official reports, as we shall see in respect of Golta county, ‘ghetto’ and ‘colony’ were sometimes interchangeable—the ghetto comprising no more than three or four houses—while the distinction between ‘colony’ and ‘labour camp’ (lag-r de munc?) was occasionally blurred, the term ‘labour colony’ (colonie de munc?) being employed.”
“Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940-1944, Chapter 8, Transnistria: The Fate of the Jews and Romas.” Dennis Deletant, Palgrave-Macmillan. 2006, Pages 198-99. Online, Accessed on 12/31/2013