Monumentul Victimelor din Ghetoul Evreiesc Rîbniţa
The industrial city of Rybnitsa (Romanian: Rîbnița) has since 1992 been part of the predominantly Russian-speaking breakaway region of »Transnistria«. Several monuments in Rybnitsa honour the city's Jews who perished during the Holocaust between 1941 and 1944.
History
Rybnitsa lies on the east bank of the river Dniester in the north of what is today the Republic of Moldova, directly neighbouring the historical region of Bessarabia. Between the world wars, the city was part of the Soviet Union. In 1930, there were about 3,600 Jews living in Rybnitsa, representing over a third of the overall population. On August 5, 1941, German and Romanian troops occupied the city following their attack on the Soviet Union. Many Jews had previously fled to the east together with the retreating Soviet Army. 1,500 Jews probably remained in Rybnitsa, which was now part of Romanian-occupied »Transnistria«. A further 1,500 Jews from other regions were brought to Rybnitsa, prior to being deported to the east of Transnistria by the Romanian authorities. All of the Jews were concentrated in a ghetto, yet their later fate remains unclear: many were murdered or died of hunger and illnesses.
Victims
It is not exactly known how many Jews perished in Rybnitsa. Up to 3,000 Jews, half of them from other regions of Romania, were forced to live in a ghetto. Rybnitsa was moreover a transit point for Jews who were deported from other parts of Romania and Bessarabia across the river Dniester to »Transnistria«: over 24,000 Jews were deported via Rybnitsa to ghettos and forced labour camps in »Transnistria«.
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
A memorial on the former ghetto area honours the »Martyrs and Victims of the Rybnitsa Ghetto«. The memorial was dedicated on the 60th anniversary of its liberation, on March 30, 2004.
