On this day in 1941, shortly after Odessa, Ukraine, was occupied, a bomb exploded in the Romanian military headquarters; 67 people were killed, including four German naval officers. The blast was used as an excuse for the Romanian army units to murder Jews en masse. 19,000 Jews were assembled in a public square near the harbor and many were shot, while others were doused with gasoline and burned alive. In addition to this, 20,000 other Jews were sent to the local jail and were then taken to the Dalnik village. Once in Dalnik, the Jews were shot or locked in warehouses that were set on fire. In 1939, Odessa had a Jewish population of about 180,000, or 30% of the total population. In just two years, that population changed very quickly following the advent of Operation Barbarossa. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and other Axis parties invaded the Soviet Union. One month later, Romanian troops sieged Odessa and the city officially surrendered to the Axis parties on October 16, 1941. Although at least half of the Jewish population fled Odessa before the occupation, between 80 and 90,000 Jews remained before the bombing of the headquarters. In November 1941, the remaining 35,000 Odessa Jews, who survived arrests and murder by the Romanian forces, were placed into two ghettos: Dalnik and Slobodka. Many of them perished due to extreme hunger and brutal weather conditions. At the beginning of 1942, 19,295 Jews from the ghettos were rounded up by Romanian personnel and sent to Romanian-administered camps and ghettos in the Berezovka region in Transnistria, located in what is known today as Moldova. Odessa was liberated by the Red Army in April 1944.The Romanians and Nazis likely destroyed information on the massacre not only because this tactic allowed them to cover their tracks, but because in the case of Odessa, there was only one known survivor. Mikhail Zaslavsky, was 16 years old when he was brought to an artillery warehouse, while his mother and four younger siblings ended up in a different barrack. The buildings were soon doused in gasoline and set on fire; Mikhail was one of the few people who managed to escape without being shot. Though he ended up in the Slobodka Ghetto, he was able to escape shortly thereafter, due to help from a Ukrainian woman who risked both their lives by hiding Mikhail in her home. After liberation, Mikhail enlisted in the Red Army and helped liberate six countries from Nazi Germany. Mikhail returned home and raised a family, choosing to stay in Odessa to protect his family’s memory.