Cemetery Vandals Torment Moldova’s Shrunken Jewish Community

The Jewish community in Moldova is a shadow of its former size, having being devastated by waves of pogroms before the Nazi Holocaust struck in the 1940s.

"About a century ago, almost half of the population in Moldova was Jewish," Rabbi Izakson recalled.

"If you ask around in the Jewish community in Australia or Argentina, you might find that half of them came from Moldova - or Lithuania," he continued.

The Chief Rabbi of Moldova, Shimshon Daniel Izakson. Photo: personal archive

Today, only about 15,000 Jews remain in Moldova, about 12,000 of them in Chisinau, though other Jews pass through on business.

Despite their decimation over the years, the rabbi says the community still experiences hostility or mockery in Chisinau.

"I walk dressed like this [as a rabbi] every time and everywhere. At least five times per week, I hear jokes in the street about me. In this regards, nothing changed," he says.

A land that was once half-Jewish

In the first part of the 20th century, when almost half of the population of Chisinau was Jewish, the prosperous Jews of the city owned factories with thousands of workers, ran 16 Jewish schools and worshipped at no less than 70 synagogues.

Moldova was then part of Tsarist Russia. A growing mood of anti-Semitism, including pogroms, began in 1903, when the Tsarist secret police orchestrated campaigns against the community and turned locals against Jews, hoping to defuse rising revolutionary feeling in the Russian Empire.

A pentagram was draught on a Jewish monument in the cemetery. Photo: The Chief Rabbi, Shimshon Daniel Izakson

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