The Kishinev Ghetto
More than 40,000 Jews lived in Chișinău (Kishinev) during the interwar period, representing approximately 36% of the city's population.
The troops of the Romanian Army and units of the 11th German Army entered Chișinău on July 17. Thousands of Jews were immediately executed. During July, Einsatzgruppe D executed 551 Jews in Chișinău.
"I was living opposite the last gate of the ghetto, upstairs, so from the window, I could see everything that was happening downstairs, in the street, and part of what was happening over the fence. When the Jews were lined up, ready to go to their deaths, when an old mother was crying and hugging her son, then one of the Christian inhabitants, former lifetime neighbors, or maybe even friends, would rush to snatch the bag of their hands or the hat off their heads. The soldiers laughed half-amused, half-shocked, that they, the poor ones, who were shedding their blood for the country should not have the right to rob as all Christians do."
[Post-war testimony of Marian Michael, undated. Source: Paul Shapiro, The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941-1942, Bucharest, Curtea Veche, 2016, p. 181]
On July 18, 1941, the governor of Bessarabia, Gh. Voiculescu, asked the military commander of Chișinău, Colonel Dumitru Tudose, to hasten the establishment of the ghetto for the Jews in the city.
By July 27, the perimeter of the ghetto had already been established. In just a few days, about 10,000 people were brought here and crammed into houses on several streets, sometimes as many as 25 in a room. The exits from the ghetto were blocked and guarded. Many of the Jews had no means of subsistence, and misery and deprivation made mortality very high. Every day 10-15 people died due to difficult conditions.
On August 1, 1941, the 411 Jews (women and men) taken out of the ghetto for forced labor were taken to Visterniceni and executed.
A few days later, on August 7, another group (about 500 people) taken to forced labor was killed in Ghidighici.
On October 8, 1941, the first convoy of Jews left the ghetto for Transnistria. By October 31, more than 10,000 ghettoized Jews had been deported. Most of them were deported on foot. The vast majority of deported Bessarabian Jews ended up in Transnistria.
In November 1941, there were only 118 Jews left in the Chișinău ghetto.