1941 Romanian census

{{Infobox census

| name = 1941 Romanian census

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| country = Romania

| date = 1941

| population =

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| previous_year = 1930

| next_year = 1942

| authority = National Institute of Statistics

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}}

The 1941 Romanian census ({{langx|ro|Recensământul General al României din 1941}}) was conducted on 6 April 1941 in all territories still remaining in the Kingdom of Romania, following the loss of land to Hungary (Northern Transylvania), Bulgaria (Southern Dobruja), and the Soviet Union (Bessarabia, Hertsa, and Northern Bukovina).{{cite book |title=Enciclopedia de istorie a României |publisher=Editura Meronia |year=2002 |pages=358 |language=ro |chapter=Recensămintele României: 1899–1992}} After the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Romania retook control of its lands that the Soviet Union had invaded, in which it conducted the census separately in the autumn of 1941. Later, Romania also annexed the Transnistria Governorate, finishing the census by conducting it there in December 1941.Publikationstelle Wien, Die Bevölkerungzählung in Rumänien, 1941, Vienna, 1943 (in German){{Cite book |last=Golopenția |first=Anton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fybaAAAAMAAJ |title=Românii de la est de Bug |publisher=Editura Enciclopedică |year=2006 |isbn=9789734505470 |location=Bucharest |language=ro |trans-title=Romanians from the east of Bug |via=Google Books}}{{Cite book |title=Fondul Conferința de Pace de la Paris |publisher=Arhivele MAE |year=1946 |volume=125 |location=Paris |page=472 |language=ro |trans-title=Paris Peace Conference Holdings}}

The census-taking process was overseen by {{interlanguage link|Friedrich Burgdörfer|de|Friedrich Burgdörfer}}, the chairman of the Bavarian Statistical Office of Nazi Germany. After a six-day trip across multi-ethnic Romanian regions, he reported to Sabin Manuilă and Ion Antonescu (then the leader of Romania), praising the methods of the census and predicting that it would offer an accurate count.{{Cite book |last=Fahlbusch |first=Haar |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vBYW0uYved8C&pg=PA145 |title=German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919-1945 |date=2005 |publisher=Berghahn Books |isbn=978-1-57181-435-7 |pages=145 |language=en |via=Google Books}} Hungarian statistician {{interlanguage link|Varga E. Árpád|hu|Varga E. Árpád}} has stated that the data, specifically with reference to ethnic Hungarians in Southern Transylvania, is quite correct.{{Cite journal |last=Árpád |first=Varga E. |date=1998 |editor-last=Orbell |editor-first=Rachel |others=Translated by Tamás Sályi |title=Hungarians in Transylvania between 1870 and 1995 |url=http://www.kia.hu/konyvtar/erdely/erdang.pdf |journal={{Interlanguage link|Magyar Kisebbség|hu|Magyar Kisebbség (folyóirat)}} |series=4 |location=Budapest |publisher=Teleki László Foundation |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=331-407 |access-date=20 May 2022 |quote=The 1941 Romanian census data with respect to Hungarians in South Transylvania are quite correct, since most ethnic groups whose identity was debated were found north of the border and were thus recorded by the Hungarian census. |via=The Cultural Innovation Foundation's Library}} Despite this, several other Hungarian ethnographers and demographers continue to dispute the numbers found by the census.{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=R. Chris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hvh7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA184 |title=Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority's Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–1945 |date=2019-01-08 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |isbn=978-0-299-31640-2 |pages=184–185 |language=en |via=Google Books}} The provisional results of the census were first publicly released in 1944 by the National Institute of Statistics.

Notably, it was the first Romanian census to include ethnic origin as a separate category. The census, on Manuilă's direction, also included a special section cataloguing all Jewish-owned property, a summary of which was sent to the German Main Security Office.{{Cite journal |last=Wedekind |first=Michael |date=2010 |title=The Mathematization of the Human Being. Anthropology and Ethnopolitics in Romania in the Late 1930s and Early 1940s |journal=New Zealand Slavonic Journal |volume=44 |pages=62}}

Results

File:RECENSAMANT 1941 JUDETE.png

The ethnic structure of Romania, in its April 1941 borders, was as follows:{{Cite conference |last=Stanescu |first=Iulian |date=May 2018 |title=General aspects regarding the quality of life in Romania during 1940-1947 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330760893 |conference=Economic Scientific Research - Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches |location=Bucharest |publisher=ESPERA |via=ResearchGate}}

class="wikitable"

!Ethnicity

!Percentage

!Number

Romanians

|87.38%

|11,827,110

Germans

|4.01%

|542,325

Hungarians

|3.01%

|407,188

Jews

|2.23%

|302,090

Others

|3.38%

|457,044

Total

|100%

|13,535,757

The ethnic structure of Romania, in its December 1941 borders, was as follows:

class="wikitable"

!Ethnicity

!Percentage

!Number

Romanians

|73.31%

|13,987,494

Germans

|3.53%

|674,307

Hungarians

|2.13%

|407,188

Jews

|2.01%

|384,397

Others

|19.01%

|3,626,821

Total

|100%

|19,080,207

The ethnic structure of the Transnistria Governorate, which was the last territory Romania annexed in which this census was undertaken in December 1941, was as follows:

class="wikitable"

!Ethnicity

!Number

!% of Rural

!% of Urban

Ukrainians/Ruthenians

|1,775,273

|76.3

|79.9

|57.4

Romanians

|197,685