A Forgotten History: the Jews of Moldova

Starting with perestroika at the end of the 1980s and continuing during the collapse of the Soviet empire, up to fifty thousand Jews emigrated to Israel, leaving many of the remaining historical Jewish sites virtually abandoned.

For many centuries, several hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the entire region of what was once called Bessarabia, a territory whose borders broadly correspond to contemporary Moldova. The once thriving community however almost completely disappeared from this land because of the Nazi persecutions and the brutal stance of Ion Antonescu’s Romanian regime towards the Jewish population, between 1941 until 1944.

Starting with perestroika at the end of the 1980s and continuing during the collapse of the Soviet empire, up to fifty thousand Jews emigrated to Israel, leaving many of the remaining historical Jewish sites virtually abandoned. Only a few thousand Moldovan Jews live in the country, mostly in the capital, Chisinau.

“The Moldovan Jewish community feels safe nowadays. There have been episodes of antisemitism during the past few years, but overall we are well respected. Most of the Holocaust memorials, in the area of the former ghetto, are regularly maintained, but there is no money to preserve the architectural heritage, especially outside the capital”, says Evgheni Brik, a member of the Gleizer Sheel Synagogue in central Chisinau, the only Jewish worship site in the country working during Soviet times.

The main entrance of the largest Jewish cemetery in the country can be found in Strada Milano, Buiucani sector. Despite being largely deserted today, it is an impressive example of funerary art, with many of the burials dating back to the nineteenth century. It extends for one hundred hectares, amongst gravestones carrying carvings of the Lions of Judah and the hands representing the blessing of the kohanim, the Jewish priests. The more recent graves have inscriptions both in Cyrillic script and Yiddish, with black and white pictures of the deceased in dignified postures.

Driving in the country, it is possible to find many similar burial places, such as in Leova, Balti, Ribnita and Edinet. They are often adorned by hundreds of old gravestones, but a good number of them are toppled as a result of negligence and vandalism. Yet the most impressive piece of Jewish architectural heritage is probably the synagogue of Rascov, in Northern Transnistria.

Built in the eighteenth century in Baroque style, the building is in total disrepair and abandoned. The roof has collapsed but the walls are standing and it still retains a somehow magnificent aspect. The Aron-Ha-Kodesh, the receptacle that used to contain the Torah scrolls, is still standing almost intact. Climbing on narrow stairs built within one of the synagogue’s walls, it is still possible to reach the top of the crumbling building and to have a view of the nearby village, largely inhabited by people of Jewish faith before the Second World War.

During the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia between 1941 and 1944, the authorities established several concentration camps in Transnistria, where dozens of thousands, mostly Jews and Roma, perished.

Also situated in the Transnistrian region of Moldova, the Tiraspol Jewish Cemetery is one of the most impressive Jewish burial sites remaining in the area, some of the tombs dating up to the nineteenth century. It is relatively well kept, since Jews from America, Australia, Germany and Israel are donating money through the local organisation Tirasfeld in order to allow some local workers to tidy up the garden and the graves.

The caretaker Nuhim Kamenker, an affable seventy-four year-old man from Tiraspol, is at work during our visit. “I have been working in a factory for fifty years and now I am retired. Therefore, I spend some of my spare time at the cemetery. There are 2,200 graves, but almost 2,800 people are listed as buried here.” This is due to the Second World War and the Nazi persecutions. During the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia, between 1941 and 1944, the authorities established several concentration camps in Transnistria, where dozens of thousands, mostly Jews and Roma, perished. After the conflict ended, many massacred Jews were reburied in common graves in places such as the Tiraspol Jewish Cemetery.

Nuhim invites us to follow him deep into the overgrown vegetation, eager to show us a remarkable tomb. It is an almost surreal sight, shrouded in mystery: the gravestone of a woman named Mira Vladimirovna Gershenzon. She was born in 1839 and lived for one hundred and twenty-six years, till 1965.