Alternative names:Chişinău, Kishiniv, Kishinef, Kishineff, Kishinëv, Kischinew, Chisinau, Kishinev, Kiscinev, Kischinew in Kishinev Raion.at 47°00' 28°51. Capital of the republic of Moldova, in this flourishing 18th century commercial and industrial Jewish center on the trade route from Iasi to Bendery and the Crimea, Jews owned a score of factories employing thousands of Jewish workers. 6 Jewish schools with 2,100 students, and 70 synagogues existed. The town was under Turkish sovreignty and Russian rule. The name Kishinev means a spring, but evokes Easter Sunday 1903 when 49 Jews were massacred by frenzied mobs. See 1903 Pogrom: Triggered by the murder of a boy in the nearby town of Dubossary, anti-Semitic newspapers accused Jews of the crime for a ritual purpose. 49 people were killed, over 500 injured, and 1,500 Jewish houses and shops were plundered. (See "The Pogrom of Kishinev" in the Encyclopedia Judaica quoted on the Dokumentations-Archiv für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte Web site.) Before World War II, 77 synagogues and about 70,000 Jews existed in Kishinev. 53,000 perished during the Holocaust. Nazis completed the devastation of the Jewish community, annihilating 53,000 of the 65,000 Jewish inhabitants of the city. Communism suppressed religion when in 1961, bar mitzvahs were forbidden; in 1964, all synagogues were closed, exceptthe one used today; Jews were harassed and imprisoned on trumped up charges. Today, a Holocaust memorial is prominently located near the national government offices in Chisinau Jewish community information and photos. Jewish community of Kishinev and Moldova website. Currently, as many as 15,000 Jews and Jewish family members reside in Kishinev. Kishinev Jacobs Jewish Campus in Kishinev united key community Jewish organizations under one roof in September 2005. Kishinev Jacobs Jewish Campus stands on the site of the Woodcutters' Synagogue built in 1830's. Under Soviet rule, the building held situated offices, chemical laboratory, and garages. town history [March 2009]

Reference: Goberman, David. Carved Memories: Heritage in Stone from the Russian Jewish Pale. NY: Rizzoli, 2000.

• Str. Milano Cemetery: photo of cemetery. photo. Located on flat land with a continuous masonry wall and a gate that locks, the 1,000,000 sq. m.cemetery has 23,430. The oldest tombstone dates from the 19th century. Welfare fund "Dor le Dor" restored some of the cemetery and pays the caretaker. Contact: Tuev P. (+373-794)15654. Many tombstones are toppled and broken. A Holocaust memorial was desecrated in 1999. During Passover 2002, two teenagers destroyed almost fifty tombstones. The police arrested them, but claimed that their crime was not anti-Semitic. After construction in a Chisinau suburb revealed a mass grave from the Holocaust, the community alerted the government, which halted the construction and erected a memorial. In April 2003, President Voronin unveiled a monument commemorating the Chisinau pogrom on its 100th anniversary. Voronin has condemned anti-Semitism in speeches to Jewish audiences. [March 2009]