History of the Jews in Chișinău


The history of the Jews in Chișinău dates to the early 1700s, when Chișinău was located first in Moldavia and later from 1812 onwards in the Bessarabia region of the Russian Empire. Chișinău is now the capital city of Moldova and is the center of the country's Jewish population. As of 2022, around 10,000 of the 15,000 Moldovan Jews reside in Chișinău.

History

Chișinău was historically part of Moldavia. In 1812, the region was annexed by the Russian Empire and became known as Bessarabia. The earliest Jewish presence in Chișinău dates back to the early 18th century. By 1774, Jewish people were 7% of the total population of Chișinău. In 1774, a Jewish burial society was founded in the city with 144 members.
A [Jewish Jewish cemetery, Chișinău|cemetery, Chișinău|cemetery] was established in the early 19th century.

The Holocaust

According to Dr. Avigdor Schachan, who wrote a book about the Transnistrian ghettos, and was himself brought up in the Bessarabian part of the present-day Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine, about 2,000 northern Bukovinian and 4,000 Bessarabian Jews were deported by the Soviet authorities to the Soviet east in June 1941. From 1941 to 1942, 120,000 Jews from Bessarabia, all of Bukovina, and the Dorohoi county in Romania proper, were deported by the Romanian authorities to ghettos and concentration camps in Transnistria, with only a small portion returning in 1944. 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; out of these, 50,741 still survived by September 1, 1943. A further 4,000 Chernivtsi Jews were deported to Transnistria in June 1942. According to the Romanian gendarmerie, on September 1, 1943, 50,741 Jewish deportees survived in Transnistria, including 36,761 from Bukovina, including Dorohoi County, and 13,980 from Bessarabia. According to the statistics from the office of the Romanian prime minister of November 15, 1943, by province of origin from Romania and of county of residence in Transnistria, in the latter area there were 49,927 Jewish deportees who had survived, including 31,141 from Bukovina, 11,683 from Bessarabia, 6,425 from Dorohoi County, and 678 from the rest of Romania. According to the foremost Israeli scholarly study on the Holocaust by Leni Yahil, almost 60,000 Jewish deportees survived in Transnistria. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 55,000 to 60,000 of the Jewish deportees to Transnistria survived the Holocaust. Another estimate of the total number of Bessarabian Jews who survived the deportations to Transnistria was 20,000, which also indicates that a large majority of the deportees died in Transnistria. The ones who died did so in the most inhuman and horrible conditions. According to Wolf Moskovich, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the article "Bessarabia", in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, "Only a third of the deported Jews survived Transnistria." According to Wolf Moskovich in the same article, "In all, some 100,000 Bessarabian Jews perished during World War II." According to the Yad Vashem database, 60,732 Jews whose names are listed who had lived in Bessarabia before the war were killed during World War II, while 133 died indirectly in relation to the Holocaust.
Wolf Moskovinch wrote about the Holocaust in Chisinau: "In the first days following the German attack on the Soviet Union, many of Kishinev’s 70,000 Jews became victims of the intensive aerial bombardment of the city. Thousands escaped to the east. The returning Romanians showed no mercy to Bessarabian Jews, considering them to be Communists and Russian sympathizers. When the Romanians entered Kishinev on 16 July 1941, they staged a pogrom that continued for several days, and then established a ghetto with more than 11,000 prisoners, some of whom were murdered in the following months; indeed, 837 Jews were executed at the city cemetery. On 4–31 October 1941, the remaining Jews were deported to Transnistria in several groups, followed in May 1942 by the last 200 Jews who were hiding in the city. Few Jews from Kishinev survived the camps." According to the Yad Vashem database, 5,987 Jews who were living in Chisinau were killed in the city. Among the Jews who lived in Chisinau before the war, Yad Vashem has a list of 16,522 who were evacuated to the Soviet east in 1941. The deportation of the city's Jews to Transnistria, which was done by peasant carts and on foot reduced its Jewish population from 11,388 in the fall of 1941 to 177 in 1943; a large majority of the deportees died according to Jean Ancel.
The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Holocaust was 16,530 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian city of Balta was 86 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian city of Bershad was 6 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian city of Odessa was 300 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian concentration camp of Bogdanovka was 81 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian city of Mogilev-Podolski was 24 according to the Yad Vashem database. The number of Jews whose names are known who lived in Chisinau before the war who died in the Transnistrian concentration camp of Domanivka was 63 according to the Yad Vashem database. For more information on the Holocaust in Transnistria, including on the fate of the Jewish deportees from Bessarabia and Chisinau, see History of the Jews in Transnistria.

Post-Soviet era

Since 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Moldovan Jews have made aliyah to Israel or have emigrated to Western countries such as the United States. The population of Moldovan Jews is disproportionately elderly, with between a quarter to half of the community being elders.
Chabad maintains a synagogue in Chișinău. Agudath Israel, led by Rabbi Pinchas Zaltsman, operates the Torat Emet yeshiva.
In 2022, Ukrainian-Jewish refugees found refuge in Chișinău's four main synagogues, including the Sinagoga Sticlarilor.

Notable Jewish people from Chișinău