1941, Alexianu attended the meeting of the Antonescu Government when it was decided to declare war on the Soviet Union. On August 19, he was appointed by Ion Antonescu as governor of Transnistria. In this position, Alexianu was an "ex officio" member of the Council of Ministers. Following a bomb attack launched on the evening of October 22, 1941 by Soviet partisans against the Romanian Army located in Odessa, Alexianu, as a government representative, ordered and supervised the retaliation and massacre of November 1941. As governor of Transnistria, Alexianu organized ghettos and concentration camps to place the deported Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and 25,000 Gypsies. He ordered endless marches in which Jews and Romas (including women, elders and even children) were forced to walk through the huge frozen steppes, leaving behind rows of corpses; he also enforced compulsory work for every "undesirable". By Ordinance no. 35 of January 2, 1942 Alexianu ordered the deportation of all Jews from Odessa to the Berezivka region, where they were massacred. According to the historian Raul Hilberg, Antonescu's orders required German interventions: "There were situations in which the Germans would intervene to restrict and slowdown the Romanian measures. At that time, the Romanians were moving too fast for the German bureaucracy." About half of the 25,000 Roma deported to Transnistria were killed. Alexianu administratively divided the occupied territories of Transnistria into counties, demanded the sending of a Romanian Orthodox Mission to this territory and re-established churches that have been previously transformed into grain depots or cattle stables by the soviet authorities. On December 7, 1941, on Alexianu's initiative, a University in Odessa was reorganized and reopened in place of the old University that had been evacuated to the east during the war by the Soviet authorities. Although in Transnistria the majority population was Ukrainian, during Alexianu's administration, priority was given to Romanian schools. There were then 57 high schools (26 Romanian, 13 Ukrainian, 18 Russian), of which 34 practical high schools (5 Romanian, 13 Ukrainian, 16 Russian) and 23 theoretical-practical high schools (21 Romanian and two Russian). On January 26, 1944, Alexianu was replaced as governor of Transnistria by General Gheorghe Potopeanu. On February 5, the new Odessa University awarded Alexianu the title of "doctor honoris causa", "as a gratitude of the support given to higher education in Odessa during his administration." On this occasion, the university assumed municipal positions and granted Alexianu a