The Jews in Soroca during the Holocaust

The earliest mentions of the settlement of the Jews in Soroca date from 1499. The existence of a community is attested in the 16th century, a period from which several tombstones were discovered. In 1775, the main synagogue in the city was built. In the 19th century, there were several Jewish agricultural colonies. Over the course of several decades, the number of Jews increased from 4,135 in 1864 to 8,783 in 1897, representing 57.2% of the town’s population. For interwar Romania, some sources mention that half of the town’s population was of Jewish origin. The Jews had occupations in agriculture, in the bread, beer, and sparkling water industries. In 1939, 5,452 Jews lived in Soroca. In 1941, about 4,000 Jews lived in the city. Of the approximately 1,500 missing Jews, several hundred were deported by the Soviets between 1940 and 1941. The importance of the community is also indicated by the numerous cultural, religious, and health facilities that existed in Soroca during the interwar period. In those years, there was a ritual bath in Soroca, a hospital with 40 beds, a “Talmud-Torah” school, a middle school for boys, as well as a Jewish high school.

The persecution of Jews in Soroca began in 1940, as soon as the city came under Soviet administration. That year, several hundred Jews were deported to Siberia for class-related reasons or political choices. The deportees came mainly from entrepreneurs, bourgeois Jews, or those known as sympathizers of Romanian political parties.

After the entry of German and Romanian troops, June – July 1941, a systematic operation of “purification of the territory” began. Jews and communists were targeted. At the same time, throughout the Bessarabia, the picking up of the Jews began, including those in Soroca. The Jewish inhabitants of the city were arrested by the police forces and initially interned in two camps, improvised at the synagogue and in the perimeter of the hospital. For several weeks, they were kept without food and in overcrowded conditions. At the same time, Jewish property and community cultural buildings were vandalized.

No fewer than 200 Jews were shot by German troops in Soroca after entering the city. The units of the Romanian army also participated in the extermination activities, in the localities neighbouring the city.

For a short time, a ghetto was set up in the city’s Jewish quarter, bringing Jews imprisoned in synagogue camps and the Jewish hospital. After that, the Jews from the localities of the county were transferred to the synagogue of the city, including those from Zgurița. During the transfer, those from Zgurița were systematically mistreated by soldiers from the escort troops.

The repressive measures increased in intensity in August 1941. In that month, by an order of the commander of the IV Territorial Command, General Cernătescu, it was imposed that the Jews from Iași, Baia, Botoșani, Roman, Bălți, and Soroca wear on the left side of the chest. the star in six corners. Those who did not submit to that obligation risked being imprisoned for a period between 6 months and 5 years and paying a fine of between 2,000 and 20,000 lei.

From August 11th, 1941, the action of deporting the Jews from Soroca to the camps from Vertujeni, Mărculești and from Cosăuți forest began. In the Cosăuți camp, Jews were subjected to violence and torture. One of the purposes pursued by the torturers was their dispossession of the goods they had on them. In that place of death, many Jews from the city and county of Soroca died of starvation, disease, or were shot. Also, some of them, in order to get rid of the torments, chose to commit suicide.

Those in the Vertujeni camp had a similar fate. From October 8th, 1941, after a few weeks of detention, they were deported to Transnistria.

In Soroca, during 1943, there was also a forced labour camp for Jews brought from Romania. During the war, persecution was directed against other religious groups, such as Old Calendarists or Inochentists. The latter were also deported to Transnistria in August 1942.

Edith Kertzman, originally from Zgurița locality, Soroca county, deported when she was 14 years old, left us the experience of those days. Her memoirs were written in 1945. In 1941, Edith was with 1,600 other orphans in a home in Romania, awaiting “repatriation” to the Soviet Union. The tragedy of her and the other Jews in Soroca County began on July 3rd, 1941. The silence of the day was replaced by the sounds of bullets and the cries of mothers and children running in the streets, trying to find a place to take shelter. Having taken refuge on a nearby hill, Edith hid in a pit, over which she pulled grass, so as not to be discovered by the soldiers. From that place, she heard “the cries of the wretched who had remained in the city and were now burning alive and of those who were shot”. Four years later, she confessed in her memoirs that she would never forget that day: “The air was all just smoke, I couldn’t even breathe, and the sky was red with flames. I will never forget this day, it will remain in my mind as the beginning of a long series of misfortunes that were coming one after each other. And now, after four years, when I remember, I shudder with fear, especially since I think that this was just the beginning and that what I experienced, then, was increasingly awful”.

For little Edith and the rest of her Jewish contemporaries, it was just the beginning of their ordeal. A few days later, the survivors of the bloody assault were gathered by the soldiers, freed from valuables, and in the evening “the rapes began”. For five days, hell descended on that place. After that, all the Jews were picked up and deported by marching on foot, to the city of Soroca, and from there to the camps in Transnistria.

AINSHR-EW, Fond 25.004, Rolă 15, dosar 582, vol. 3.

Ovidiu Creangă, Soroca, in Geoffrey P. Megargee (general editor), Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018, pp. 767-768. 

Marius Mircu, Pogromurile din Basarabia și alte câteva întâmplări [The Pogroms in Bessarabia and a Few Other Events], București, Editura Glob, 1947, pp. 30-33. 

Wolf Moskovich, Soroca, accessible online at https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Soroca 

***. Comunitatea evreiască din Soroca, între evoluție și declin [The Jewish Community of Soroca, between Evolution and Decline], accessible online at https://observatorul.md/proiecte/moldova-plus/2019/08/20/61122_comunitatea-evreiasca-din-soroca-intre-evolutie-si-declin 

Interview with Matvey Gredinger, accessible online at https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.233.0042_trs_en.pdf