Jewish Cemetery, Chisinau

Surprisingly enough, the presence of a very large Jewish cemetery in Chisinau – the largest of its kind in Europe! – is still a little known fact to most locals. Surrounded by a continuous masonry wall with a locking gate, this cemetery measures almost 100 hectares and contains 23,430 graves. The oldest of them dates from the 19th century (some say even the 17th).

Established in the 18th century, the cemetery initially had around 40,000 graves. By the end of the 19th century there had been about 25,000 left, many of which were destroyed by bombing in WWII. After the war the cemetery fell into disrepair, and in 1958 had a good half of it demolished and built over with tennis courts, houses, and a public park with playgrounds.

Ravaged and neglected for decades, Moldova's largest site of Jewish heritage was finally listed as a national monument in 2012. In the early 2000s it saw some care, and in December 2019 the near-total removal of vegetation marked the first phase of a full-scale, state-sponsored restoration of the cemetery, with necessary repairs due to follow.

Inside, a 10-minute walk to the left from the entrance, there is an abandoned synagogue with bullet holes on its walls left by the Nazis. There is also a monument to the Holocaust victims, and the ruins of a late 19th-century pre-burial “tahara” house with the heavy rusty doors bearing the Star of David. The gravestones are inscribed in Yiddish, Romanian or Russian, depending on the date of the burial.

Off the beaten path, the cemetery represents a hidden part of Chisinau’s history and is worth seeing as such. Entry is free and you can easily spend two hours wandering around the grounds, feeling somewhat like Indiana Jones.