Sabin Motora

Sabin Motora (1892 – 12 December 1970) was a Romanian career officer in the Romanian Gendarmerie who protected Jewish political prisoners during the Holocaust in Romania. During World War II, he commanded internment camps at Vapniarka and Grosulovo in the Romanian-administered Transnistria Governorate. As commander of Vapniarka, he improved prisoners' food and treatment and permitted them to obtain food from the local market and contact their families.

As the Red Army advanced toward Transnistria, Motora was ordered to transfer the prisoners eastward, where they were to be handed over to German authorities. Instead, he moved them westward to Grosulovo, closer to the Romanian border. In March 1944, during the evacuation of Transnistria, he succeeded in transferring the prisoners into Bessarabia and arranged for them to be treated as Romanian army employees rather than political prisoners. They were subsequently returned to Romania and interned at the Târgu Jiu camp, where they remained until their liberation following the overthrow of the Ion Antonescu government in August 1944.

For his actions, Motora was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations on 3 March 1983.

In 1920 he transferred to the Romanian Gendarmerie with the rank of captain. By the mid-1930s he had been promoted to major, and from 1934 to 1937 he commanded the Gendarmerie Training Centre at Lugoj. During this period he served alongside military physician Ștefan Odobleja.

During the second half of September 1942, 1,201 Jewish political prisoners were deported to Vapniarka, including 407 from Târgu Jiu, 72 from Caransebeș and 722 arrested in Romanian cities. Prisoners at the camp included Jewish deportees and Romanian Jews detained as communists, anti-fascists, political prisoners or for other alleged offences. Earlier conditions had been extremely harsh, and hundreds of prisoners suffered poisoning and neurological illness after being fed fodder peas containing the toxic amino acid ODAP.

According to Yad Vashem, conditions improved after Motora became commander. Food supplies improved, officers and gendarmes treated the prisoners better, and detainees were permitted to obtain food from the local market and establish contact with their families.

Transfer to Grosulovo

As the Red Army advanced toward the borders of Transnistria, Romanian authorities prepared to evacuate Vapniarka. Motora was ordered to transfer the prisoners eastward, where they were to be handed over to the Germans. Instead, he arranged for them to be moved in the opposite direction, to Grosulovo (present-day Velyka Mykhailivka, Ukraine), which was closer to the Romanian border.

In early 1944, Voicu was twice permitted to travel from Grosulovo to Rîbnița on behalf of the prisoners' underground Communist organization. Motora provided him with official service and railway travel documents and arranged for a gendarme to accompany him nominally as an escort. Voicu recalled that the arrangement allowed him considerable freedom while travelling outside the camp. Matei Gall's account of the March 1944 evacuation was later reproduced by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania.

Motora is also commemorated at the Holocaust Museum in Odesa, where material concerning him has been displayed in the museum's first exhibition room.