[Page 140]

The monument at Babi Yar was erected in 1966. On the plaque written in Ukrainian is the following: “On this place, we built this monument in memory of the victims of the German Fascist regime 1941–1944.”		The State Museum in Oṥviḙcim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau). The plaque is written in Yiddish: “Four million people suffered and died here at the hands of the Nazi murderers between the years 1940 and 1945.”

From 1956 to 1964, the Treblinka Concentration Camp was made into a museum. On the plaque, we have the inscription: “Never Again” in Yiddish, Russian, English, French, and German.		The monument in Tarnów was erected in memory of the Jews who were murdered in the cemetery during the raid of July 11, 1942. The inscription on this monument is written in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish.

[Page 141]

The monument in memory of the Jewish people of Lublin who were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust. The monument is located in the centre of the town. The official name is the “Memorial to the Extermination of the Jewish Population, Memorial to the Victims of the Ghetto.”

	Memorial plaques written in Russian: People remember! Hundreds of thousands did not have the chance to see the Victory against the fascist German executioners and their helpers. To the innocent victims who were massacred by the Fascist criminals whose hands are full of blood. They killed men, women, and children between 1941 and 1944 in the concentration camp in the village of Pechora. Do not suffer, but be full of hate, and you should swear that you will never allow that this will be repeated again. Their memories will be remembered forever by their descendants. Don't forget! This is the last will that they left us!
The monument in Theresienstadt		Pechora (Vinitsa area) Concentration Camp Monument

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Romanian text and Page 143 Hebrew translation

[Page 143]

Romanian text and Hebrew translation

Article by M. Ianover printed in the Romanian language newspaper in Israel Viaṭa Noastra (Our Life) on April 11, 1991

Mr. Ianover is a new immigrant from Kishinev. He has researched the sufferings of the Bessarabian Jews in the dark years of the Nazi racial persecution. “I collected lots of information about the fate of the Bessarabian Jews,” he wrote to the editor of this newspaper and promised to send more articles.

In this article, I will present a few aspects of the Holocaust in Bessarabia. My parents, my brother, my grandmother, all originally from Kiliya (Chilia Noua), perished in this terrible genocide. The atrocities started when the Jews were rounded up in the Great Synagogue, a wonderful architectural monument that after the Jews were deported, was transformed into a stable for horses and toilets for German officers. Atrocious!

The convoys of Jews, men, women, children, and old people were marched hundreds of kilometers to the source of the Bug River in the Nicolaev region (Ukraine) where they were herded into large concentration camps. I will show some contradictory sources that will illustrate how the truth was distorted for political reasons.

I will first refer to a book by one of the apologists of the Romanian legionnaires, C.V. Gheorghiu, entitled The Banks of the Dniester Are Burning (Ard Malurile Nistrului), Bucharest, 1942.

It was very clear that the deportees in the convoys were starving and thirsty and tormented by the deadly marching under the threat of being shot, but the author of this book refuses to recognize the grim situation. On page 114, he observes that the people “do not look that tired.” From then on, more lies, one more revolting than the next one. On page 115, he calls them a “band of murderers,” and on page 122, they became “criminal Jews.” These odious descriptions oppose the testimonies of the few miraculous survivors. Here are a few fragments from testimonies that were included in Sonia Palty's book: “Along the way, we stepped on corpses of people who died because of the cold, hunger, and exhaustion. The Romanians robbed the best of clothing, and they left the rags to the Ukrainians.” (from Sonia Palty: Jews Cross the Dniester – Notes from the Deportation)

We have another important testimony from a Baptist Christian woman from Kiliya, Mrs. Cravcenco. She recorded what she witnessed in a Makhzor (prayer book) that her neighbour, Mr. Khaim Rozenblat, left with her to keep. Right now, the prayer book is in the possession of his daughter, Riva Berger (see picture on page 138). When the Jews were ordered to gather in the Synagogue and deported, Mr. Rozenblat gave the Makhzor and other items to his neighbor to keep. And this pious woman scribbled on page 690 of the book a very important note, full of compassion. Here is what she wrote: “the Jewish men were taken away on September 25, 1941, but the women and children, on September 30, 1941, poor people doomed to suffering…

To the testimony of this Kiliya woman, we have to add that many Jews from all over Bessarabia, more that 60,000 people, were incarcerated in the camps at Bogdanovka, Domanovka, Golta, and others, near the Bug River and, starting on December 21, three days before Christmas, were all exterminated.

According to the proceedings of the trial of a group of war criminals in Bucharest in 1945, it was learned that these war criminals were not satisfied only with the killing of the Jews, they also took pictures of the goriest scenes. The most hurtful thing was that the gendarmes and the policemen who committed these atrocities were decorated. The newspaper Pravda from May 17, 1945, printed the minutes of the trial proceeding.

It took almost 30 years to have the last trial of the war crimes in Domanovka, this time the trial of the Ukrainian war criminals.

It is very heartbreaking that in the Soviet Union the new generations know very little about the Holocaust and there is complete silence about the fact that the Jewish people were the target of extermination. In one of the articles that appeared in Izvestya on April 10, 1986, Professor A. Samsonov, member of the Academy, writes: “The Nazis intended to wipe out many people, but especially the Russians.” It is strange to see that Samsonov is trying to cover up exactly what the Nazis planned to do in this war, to annihilate the Jewish people. We have to emphasize that the Nazis have used their practical skills to carry out this barbaric plan and succeeded to destroy a third of our people.

I highlight that, because even today, we have many Holocaust deniers in the world.

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The symbolic gravestone on the grave of Nekhemiah Safris and his wife. This grave is located two meters from the mass grave, The Brotherly Grave, in the Kiliya cemetery.

		The Murders in Kiliya The Romanian army entered Kiliya in July 1941, and immediately, the killings started every day. Beside the murders in the Great Synagogue, Jews were killed on the streets or in their homes. More than one hundred people died this way. Nekhemiah Safris and his wife were among the first victims. We regret that we do not have any pictures of them. Nekhemiah was born in 1855, father of Rafael and Volodya Safris and of Riva, wife of Itskhak Katz. His nickname was Nekhemiah the Soldier, because he walked straight as a soldier. His grandson Lyova (the son of Volodya) survived the Holocaust and after the war moved to Dnepropetrovsk. He visited Kiliya a few times, and, in 1973, he put a small monument on the mass grave where the Russians buried the Jews. The grave location was determined from the testimonies of local witnesses.
Khaim Rozenblat z”l, one of the eight people from Kiliya who survived the Bogdanovka camp. He passed away in Chernovitz.

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Hebrew text:

On the 4^th of July 1990, I travelled to Kishinev to meet with Dora Axelrod, who studied with me in high school until 1936. Dora (Dvora) is one of the eight survivors of Bogdanovka and suffered many tragedies and poor health. She lives in a small apartment, and a Russian woman, paid by the local authorities, takes care of her. I sat with her for about two hours, and it was difficult to record all she was recounting, because she was sobbing, and tears ran down her face. Therefore, I asked her to write her story and to send it to me. Here are fragments from her letter. The Editor, L. K.

Hebrew/Russian text:

When the Romanians invaded Kiliya, they turned the Great Synagogue into a closed prison run by Ilyusha Tabachnik, a local thug, who had ties to the Romanians and the Germans. He delivered to them first the men, who were forced to perform various labor until they perished and, after a short time, they came for the young women. I was together with my father, and my mother used to bring us food. I was not allowed to go home. Mama and I were forced to work^[1] even though we were very sick. The Romanians treated us like animals. The local authorities also treated us that way and beat us.^[2] They did everything to make it so we would not survive.

Tabachnik had lists of all the Jewish people, and he treated us with immense cruelty. There were many deaths^[3], among them Roza Weinberg and Largman, who was hanged because he tried to exchange some belongings for some food scraps for his family. They sent us out as a group of prisoners. On the route to Bogdanovka and Domanovka^[4], they killed lots of people. I cannot remember all the names, but I remember Blechman, Shelya Shterman, Kitsis, and many others. The rest were murdered in the camps. Many committed suicide in order to end their suffering. I myself was a witness to this misery.^[5] Only a few survived, all of them sick…^[6]

It is very difficult for me to think about this past; I would have preferred to die with my beloved parents.

This letter was received on December 1, 1990, from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Hebrew text:

Tabachnik is not mentioned in any other documents, and he has never been brought to trial.

Maccabi. Youth were active in Maccabi for many years. I remember Michael Goldman, Srulik Gurvits, Iona Shwartsman, H. Pivovar, Dizhur, and Duvidke Shulimovich. My mother was active in Maccabi and also in the Jewish drama club. At Purim time, the orchestra came to play at the dances and played many Jewish folk songs.

When the Soviets annexed Bessarabia on June 28, 1940, they immediately closed all the Jewish organizations and even the four synagogues, and in the tragic days of September 1940, we did not have even High Holiday services as in other years. The Soviets deported many Jews from Kiliya, and I remember Yosef Weinberg, Abramovich, Kitsis, Brailovsky, and Shaibich who never returned.

[Page 146]

On this page, we print cover pages of books dedicated to the Holocaust of the Bessarabia Jews:

Itskhak Koren, The Jews of Bessarabia 1950		Picture of a young Sonia Palty. Sonia Palty (1928-2015) lived in Tel-Aviv, Israel, where she and her late husband, Nicu, worked together as journalists, editors, and publishers. Sonia has made it her life's mission to raise awareness about the tragedy of the many camps in Transnistria and, in particular, the 284 people who were deported from Bucharest. Her book Jews! Cross the Dniester! was published in Romanian in Tel Aviv, in 1980.		Sonia Palty. Evrei treceti Nistrul! Insemnari din deportate, Tel Aviv, Papyrus, 1980

International Association of Bessarabia Jewry. The Jews of Bessarabia, Jerusalem, the Encyclopedia of Diasporas, vol 11

Vinitsky, David. The Jews of Bessarabia		Shakham, Avigdor. The Burning Kippur; the Transnistrian Ghettoes		Butnaru, I.C. Holocaustul Uitat

[Page 147]

A fragment from Sonia Palty's book Jews cross the Dniester based on the story of a survivor from Bogdanovka, Ester (Fira). Her picture, printed here, shows her in 1932. Her entire family was murdered in Bogdanovka.

The priest of the village screamed to us to leave. The Romanians started to retreat. The Germans will kill us. The Russians are coming.

Then I saw for the last time Mr. Weiss from Kiliya and Mr. Ackerman from Tighina, his wife, Lia, and the others. The four rooms that were our shelter emptied out. I am running too, I am running …

On February 24, 1976, the trial of the ten Ukrainian policemen, war criminals, took place in Domanovka.

I went to Domanovka to testify. I recognized most of them, the killers of Bogdanovka. Of course, on the accused bench, the Romanian criminals, officers and gendarmes, were missing, and the Germans, too. Even the one who beat my mother, the one who killed Abraham, the one who was herding the people toward the smoking pit, the ones who killed thousands were there on the accused bench.

The Russian judge was overwhelmed, and the state prosecutor was very severe. The criminals, who were tried here, were given the death sentence. They were all executed. I left Domanovka very distressed and sad. I thought I would feel better to know that justice was done, but no! The suffering was the same. The death of the criminals did not alleviate my sorrow.

A few years ago, before making Aliyah to Israel, I went to Bogdanovka. I felt the need to see the places where I lost all my loved ones. I was in shock. The pit is still there. Among the bushes, on the steep ridge, I saw bones, bones of the people murdered there. They were whitened by the rains and snow and dried by the sun and wind. I cried bitterly…

When I returned to Kishinev, I wrote to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, and I demanded in the names of the 60,000 Jews killed there by the Romanian, German, and Ukrainian fascists, that a monument be erected.

Only a few stones mark the place where these appalling crimes took place.

The earth of Bogdanovka is soaked in blood, the blood of our Jewish brothers. Just a few of us are still alive. Tomorrow, after tomorrow, these martyrs, whose only blame was that they were born Jewish, will be forgotten.

1. Hebrew text: beaten with sticks and forced to work Return
2. This sentence is not in the Hebrew text. Return
3. Hebrew text: in one month Return
4. The Hebrew text does not mention Domanovka. Return
5. This sentence and the prior one are not in the Hebrew text. Return
6. Hebrew text: Only a few survived, and maybe if all of us were together, we could better remember. Return

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