The city was occupied by Romanian troops on October 16, 1941. The first days the invaders destroyed prisoners of war, communists, conducted raids on "suspicious persons", among whom were Jews. On October 22, 1941, after the explosion of the Romanian military commandant's office, the invaders destroyed 5 thousand hostages, among whom were Jews. The Romanian occupation authorities pursued a policy of extermination of the Jews, which differed from the Nazi one. Odessa became part of Transnistria, where the Romanian authorities sent Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Romania itself to exterminate. For Jews, detention camps were created in the villages of the Odessa region. The registration of the Jewish population of the city was carried out at the end of 1941 after several extermination actions. It testified that approximately 60,000 Jews remained in the city. The Romanian authorities referred to those who had at least one ancestor a Jew. On November 7, 1941, the authorities issued another decree requiring male Jews between the ages of 18 and 50 to report to the city prison. Groups were formed there to be sent to a camp in the village of Bogdanovka. In addition to Odessa Jews, there were Jews from other parts of Transnistria. In December 1941 - January 1942, the invaders destroyed all the prisoners. Only in January 1942 did the Romanian authorities issue a decree on the creation of a ghetto in the Slobodka area - separated from the rest of Odessa by a railway embankment. About 40 thousand Jews were resettled there. They were settled in houses with local residents, placed in administrative buildings or simply in the open. The ghetto was used as a temporary detention facility. There, the invaders formed groups to be sent to concentration camps.

About 600 Odessa Jews managed to survive the Holocaust. A few hundred more escaped by hiding in the catacombs or the city.