The history of the Jews in Moldova extends back several centuries. According to some accounts, Jews first appeared in the territory of modern Moldova with Roman legions in the first century, although documented Jewish activity in the region dates from the medieval period. Jewish merchants are documented using a trade route through Moldavia during the second half of the 15th century. The first Jewish settlements in central and northern Bessarabia were probably established in the 17th century.
Prior to the Second World War, violent antisemitic movements across the Bessarabian region badly affected the region's Jewish population. In the 1930s and '40s, under the Romanian governments of Octavian Goga and Ion Antonescu, government-directed pogroms and mass deportations led to the concentration and extermination of Jewish citizens followed, leading to the extermination of between 45,000-60,000 Jews across Bessarabia. The total number of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews who perished in territories under Romanian administration is between 280,000 and 380,000.
Today, the Jewish community in Moldova has been revived and are primarily represented by the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova (JCM) organisation. The group was registered in its current form in 1997, but its roots stretch back to founding of the Union of Jewish Communities in Bessarabia on 3 November 1935. The group estimate that the total population of Moldovan Jews in 2022 to be approx. 20,000. The World Jewish Congress (of which the JCM is an affiliate member) states that there has been "a widespread development of a national self-consciousness and a return to their roots by the Jews of Moldova, with Jewish identity and culture being celebrated in a number of forms". Diplomatic relations with Israel began in 1992 and the Israeli consulate is located in the capital city, Chişinău. Since 2014, Moldova has been an observer country to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and since 2019 has adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism for official use. The Museum of Jewish History was opened in Orhei on 30 January 2023.
There is one Jewish kindergarten in Chişinău, two Jewish schools and a municipal Jewish library named after Itzik Manger. A Jewish newspaper, Nash Golos ("Our Voice"), is published twice a month by the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova. There is a Jewish Cultural Center in Chişinău, as well as seven synagogues, with synagogues also present in Orhei, Soroca, and Tiraspol, and "Memorials to the Kishinev ghetto, to the Victims of Fascism, to the Victims of Chişinău Pogrom are sites for remembrance in Chişinău." Other organisations include Chabad Lubavitch Moldova and Kedem.
The constitution of Moldova guarantees the right to freedom of religion and the total separation of church and state, while noting the "exceptional importance" of Orthodox Christianity. Holocaust denial and insulting the memory of the Holocaust are criminal offences. The "production, sale, distribution, or public use of fascist, racist, or xenophobic symbols or ideology, unless used for art, science, or education. The law prohibits the promotion of xenophobia, racism, fascism, and hatred and violence on ethnic, racial, or religious grounds." Since 2015, 27 January is annually recognised as the National Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2016, the Moldovan parliament endorsed the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania by Elie Wiesel. Discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation is illegal, and incitement to religious and ethnic hatred was made illegal in May 2022.
Bessarabian Jews
Early history
1889: There were 180,918 Jews of a total population of 1,628,867 in Bessarabia. 1897: The Jewish population had grown to 225,637 of a total of 1,936,392.Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Распределение населения по родному языку, губерниям и областям. Бессарабская губерния . 1903: Chișinău (Kishinev) in Russian Bessarabia had a Jewish population of 50,000, or 46%, out of a total of approximately 110,000. While almost non-existent in the countryside, Jews had been present in all major towns since the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. Jewish life flourished with 16 Jewish schools and over 2,000 pupils in Chișinău alone. 19 - 21 April 1903: The Kishinev pogrom occurs. 1920: The Jewish population had grown to approximately 267,000. 1930: Romanian census registers 270,000 Jews.
Kishinev pogrom
In 1903, a young Christian Orthodox boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubăsari (Dubossary), 37 km northeast of Chișinău. A Russian language antisemitic newspaper "Bessarabian", published by Pavel Krushevan, began to disseminate rumors about the murder being part of a Jewish ritual. This newspaper had been publishing rumors about the Jews that brought ruin to the local Jewish population. As for the murder, it reported that the victim visited the shop of a Jewish tobacconist before his disappearance. Other anti-Semitic newspapers called for a pogrom. Although the official investigation had determined the lack of any ritualism in the murder and eventually discovered that the boy had been killed by a relative (who was later found), the unrest caused by these and other rumors had resulted in a major pogrom during the Easter holidays. The pogrom lasted for three days, without the intervention of the police. Forty seven (some say 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses destroyed.
Many of the younger Jews, including Mendel Portugali, made an effort to defend the community. There was outcry from prominent Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Maksim Gorky, as well as protests from Jews and non-Jews in Europe and the United States. Haim Nachman Bialik wrote about the pogrom in his poem, "The City of Slaughter", and Vladimir Korolenko in his book, House No. 13.
The Holocaust
During the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, around 30,000 Jews fled from the Soviet-annexed territories to Romania, while around 9,500 Jews fled from Romania to the USSR.
Up to two-thirds of Bessarabian Jews fled before the retreat of the Soviet troops. 110,033 people from Bessarabia and Bukovina (the latter included at the time the counties of Cernăuţi, Storojineţ, Rădăuţi, Suceava, Câmpulung, and Dorohoi – approximately 100,000 Jews) – all except a small minority of the Jews that did not flee in 1941 – were deported to the Transnistria Governorate, a region which was under Romanian military control during 1941–44.
1941: The Einsatzkommandos, German mobile killing units drawn from the Nazi-Schutzstaffel (SS) and commanded by Otto Ohlendorf entered Bessarabia. They were instrumental in the massacre of many Jews in Bessarabia, who did not flee in face of the German advancement. 8 July 1941: Ion Antonescu, Romania's ruler at the time, made a declaration in front of the Ministers' Council:
... With the risk of not being understood by some traditionalists which may be among you, I am in favour of the forced migration of the entire Jew element from Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be thrown over the border. Also, I am in favor of the forced migration of the Ukrainian element, which does not belong here at this time. I don't care if we appear in history as barbarians. The Roman Empire has made a series of barbaric acts from a contemporary point of view and, still, was the greatest political settlement. There has never been a more suitable moment. If necessary, shoot with the machine gun.Quote from "The Stenograms of the Ministers' Council, Ion Antonescu's Government", vol. IV, July–September 1941 period, Bucharest, year 2000, page 57 (Stenogramele şedinţelor Consiliului de Miniştri, Guvernarea Ion Antonescu, vol. IV, perioada iulie-septembrie 1941, București, anul 2000, pagina 57.)
The killing squads of Einsatzgruppe D, together with special non-military units attached to the German Wehrmacht and the Romanian army were involved in many massacres in Bessarabia (over 10,000 in a single month of war, in June–July 1941), while deporting other thousands to Transnistria. From 1941 to 1942, those Jews deported to territories to distant regions of USSR and war zones on orders of Marshal Antonescu reached 56,089. A huge number of this population perished during the occupation of those territories. The number of Jewish deportees to Transnistria sent there in 1941 who reached the latter province included 110,033 people, including 55,867 from Bessarabia, 43,798 from Bukovina, 10,368 from Dorohoi County (minus the Hertsa area); out of these, 50,741 still survived by September 1, 1943.See Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of the Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), p. 174.Excerpts from the (Romanian) Ministry of Internal Affairs document ("Referat") that provide these numbers may be found in Centrul Pentru Studiul Istoriei Evrilor din Romania ("The Centre for the Study of the History of Romanian Jewry), Martiriul Evreilor din Romania, 1940-1944, Documente si Marturii ("The Martyrdom of the Jews in Romania, 1940-1944: Documents and Testimonies"), with a foreword by Dr. Moses Rosen (Bucuresti: Editura Hasefer, 1991), p. 231-232. On May 20, 1942, 204 Jews from Chisinau were deported to Transnistria, while on July 10, 1942, other 27 Chisinau Jews were deported to Transnistria; the total number of Jews deported from Chisinau to Transnistria in 1942 was 231.Jean Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 2011), p. 466. In 1942, it was decided that 753 Bessarabian Jews (96 urban and 657 rural) would not be deported, while 26 Bessarabian Jews who were slated for deportation were not deported.Jean Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 2011), p. 540, 542. According to Jean Ancel, hundreds, probably thousands, of Bessarabian and Transnistrian, and to a lesser extent Bukovinian Jewish children were handed over by their parents to non-Jews in order to guarantee their survival.Jean Ancel, Transnistria (Bucuresti: Atlas, 1998), vol. 3 (in Romanian), p. 159.