Orhei | Orhei

“(…) When the gendarmes arrived in the courtyard of the police station, (there) were about 500 Jews gathered by military units (…). On July 20, 1941, in the afternoon, Major Bechi and Captain Adamovici called in the courtyard all the leaders of 4 sections of the gendarmerie, as well as the non-commissioned officers to form patrols in order to assemble all the Jews from Orhei and its surroundings, apart from those already gathered in the courtyard of the police station. The found Jews  were placed in the industrial school, in the synagogue and in a house near the legion of gendarmerie. On July 21, 1941, at 2 p.m. the gathering of the Jews was completed. Around 600 Jews were closed in the school, approximately 200 were locked up in the synagogue and in the house near the legion.

Before this operation was carried out, Major Bechi had already killed other Jews. The first batch that were the victims of this order were the Jews from the synagogue and the house near the legion of gendarmerie. The Jews were escorted by non-commissioned officers to the Siliștea forest located on the road leading into the village of Peresecina (Orhei district). After, about 4 km from the outskirts of town, in the Siliștea forest, Sergeant Gheorghe gave the order to shoot all the Jews. The corpses remained until the next day, then they began their burial (…)” RG-25.004M; Selected Records from the Romanian Information Service, 1936–1948 Reel #16 p.26]

Orhei is a town in Orhei District located in central Moldova. Before the outbreak of WWII, there were 19,211 Jews living in the District and half of them lived in the town of Orhei comprising more than 40% of the town’s total population. The Jews from Orhei were merchants, shop owners, businessmen, artisans, craftsmen and doctors, some of them were also farmers, viniculturists and factory owners. The Jewish community from Orhei had several synagogues, houses of prayer, cheders , many cultural, educational and welfare institutions, as well as a Jewish cemetery.

After a brief occupation by the Soviet Union that started in 1940, Orhei was occupied by German-Romanian forces on July 8-10,, 1941. By then many of the wealthiest Jews joined the retreating Soviet Army to flee eastward. Many of them were killed in the bombardments of the Germans as well as from hunger and diseases before they reached the other side of the Dniester River. When the German-Romanian troops arrived in town, they were welcomed by the Jewish delegation but its members were directly killed by occupants. In the following days, many Jews, considered “dangerous elements,” were killed in the whole District of Orhei as a part of the campaign called by occupants “cleansing the territory”. In July 1941, the remaining Jews from Orhei were caught and imprisoned in three locations in town: in a synagogue and a big private building (200-300 persons), in an industrial school building (600 persons) and in a courtyard of the police post office (500 persons). The Jews who were kept in the first location were shot by the gendarmes on the 21st of July near Siliștea. The Jews who had been imprisoned in the school building were executed in Slobozia Doamnă, the suburbs of Orhei, by German and Romanian firing squad. The remaining Jews from Orhei, as well as many Jews from the surroundings, were placed in a ghetto established by Romanian authorities in Orhei, while their houses were looted by the occupants and locals. The ghetto was guarded by armed German and Romanian soldiers. Jews from the ghetto were massively dying from hunger and very severe living conditions. Those who attempted to escape were successively caught by the gendarmes and killed in the Orhei forest (several dozens of victims). The Jews from the ghetto were successively deported to Transnistria starting in August 1941. Only a group of about 250 Jews (Christian converts and those who came from mixed marriages) were left in the ghetto in order to perform forced labor, to be finally deported to Transnistria in May 1942. Most of the Jews from Orhei and surroundings deported to Transnistria didn’t survive the war.

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