During World War II, Axis-allied Romanian troops occupying Transnistria claimed to have discovered in April-August 1943 a mass grave on a lot of 1,000 square meters in Tatarka, near Odessa. Allegedly, 42 separate common graves of several dozen bodies each were identified, containing ca. 3,500 bodies, of which 516 were exhumed, studied, and buried in cemetery before the region became a front line. The Romanians claimed that among the dead were persons arrested in the Moldavian ASSR in 1938-1940, and in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940-1941.

From spring till June 1943, in Tatarka, in the Romanian occupied Transnistria, a group of specialists from Odessa (Dr. K. Shapochkin, deputy chief of the Medical-Sanitar Direction of the Government of Transnistria, N. I. Grubianu, the administrator of the disinfection section, docent I. I. Fidloveski, chief of medical-legal expertise and Grigore Tatarciuc, gendarme representative of the Odessa pretorial office) have searched a lot of land of 1000 sq meters, were a big number of bodies was allegedly found. At first, it was claimed these were victims of NKVD repressions from 1938-40, and of deportees from Besarabia and Northern Bukovina, shot by the Soviets because they could no longer transport them. In order to facilitate the putrefaction process, the lot was covered with animal excrement.