Monumentul victimelor Holocaustului din satul Pepeni
A monument in the Moldovan village of Pepeni, close to Bălţi in the north of Moldova, commemorates the Jews who were murdered here in a massacre in 1941.
History
Pepeni is a small village in the north of Moldova, about fifty kilometres south of the city of Bălţi. It is located in the historical region of Bessarabia which was part of Romania following the First World War. In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. After invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, German and Romanian troops occupied the region around Bălţi, which was inhabited by many Jews. In 1930, Bălţi alone had a population of about 14,000 Jews. Many of them fled to the Soviet Union or nearby villages before the German and Romanian troops invaded, while many other Jews from Bălţi sought refuge in Pepeni. In mid-July 1941, village residents and Romanian constabulary committed a massacre during which at least 200 Jews were killed: Jewish men, women and children were slain and shot.
Victims
At least 200 Jews from Pepeni and surrounding villages were murdered by Romanian constabulary and locals. Some of the Jews probably originally came from the city of Bălţi.
The country now known as the Republic of Moldova comprises the majority of the historical province of Bessarabia to the east of the River Prut as well as a small area east of the Dniester River belonging to the region of Transnistria (meaning »beyond the River Dniester«). The country is Romanian-speaking. It was formerly part of the Russian Empire but after the First World War it became part of the Kingdom of Romania, with the exception of the Transnistrian area. There were around 205,000 Jews living here in 1939. Following the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact, a secret agreement between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union defining their »spheres of interest« from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Red Army invaded Bessarabia in summer 1940. The Soviet secret service NKWD subsequently deported 11,000 »undesirables« to Siberia, including over a thousand Jews.
As a consequence of these substantial territorial losses, Romania sought an alliance with Nazi Germany. In summer 1941, Romanian troops joined the German Wehrmacht in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Bessarabia and the entire Ukrainian region of Transnistria as far as the Bug River came under Romanian control. Between July and August 1941, members of the Wehrmacht and SS Einsatzgruppe D together with Romanian special commandos and police units murdered over 150,000 Jews from the region and looted the abandoned houses and shops. Any survivors were crammed into ghettos and camps. From September 15 they were deported via the River Dniester to Transnistria, along with political prisoners accused of having collaborated with the Soviet authorities. Between 7,000 and 10,000 Jews who had fled or been deported to the Soviet Union returned to the country after 1945.
After the war, Bessarabia again became part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Liberation by the Red Army and the »victory« in the Great Patriotic War were commemorated. Everything »Romanian« was systematically removed. After the Republic of Moldova gained independence in 1991 there were lengthy discussions about a possible reunification with Romania. However, the majority Russian population in Transnistria blocked reunification. The fundamental conflict between the larger Romanian-speaking region in Bessarabia and the smaller, Russian-speaking region in Transnistria, since a short civil war in 1992 a separatist territory, coupled with major economic and social problems, have marginalised memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War.
However, since the early 1990s a number of towns in Moldova have put up monuments, plaques or memorial stones to remember the massacre in summer 1941 and the murdered Jews. Examples can be seen in Dubossary, in today’s capital Chişinău, in the Jewish cemetery in Tighina or in villages such as Vertujeni and Pepeni.
Remembrance
In 1974, the directors of the local collective farm set up a memorial in the village centre to the Jews who had been murdered in Pepeni. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of an independent state of Moldova, the monument was removed. In 2002, it was reinstated to its original location. The sculpture depicts a woman showing the palms of her hands, behind her is a man, writhing in agony on the ground. A memorial plaque was affixed bearing an inscription in Romanian and in Russian: »Lord, cry for your children…«. An additional inscription in Russian reads: »In memory of the Jews who were murdered in the village of Pepeni in July 1941«.
