The remainder of the 270,000 Jewish community of the region survived World War II. Mostly these were Bessarabian Jews who wisely retreated before the departure of the Soviet troops in mid-July 1941. However, the only good thing that can be said about their fate during 1941–1944 was that they survived, because the conditions under which they traveled to the interior of the USSR (e.g., to Uzbekistan) in the summer of 1941 and their conditions at their arrival were very bad. Around 15,000 Jews from Cernăuţi and further 5,000 from elsewhere in Bukovina were saved by the then-mayor of the city Traian Popovici. Nevertheless, he was not able to save everyone, and some 20,000 Bukovinian Jews were deported to Transnistria. At the end of the war, the remaining Jewish community of Bukovina decided to move to Israel.