Bălți

Jews began to settle in Bălți during the mid-18th century. In 1897, under the Russian Empire, they numbered 10,348 and comprised 56 percent of the total population. The predominant occupations of Jews were commerce, handicrafts and, to a lesser extent, agriculture. In 1918, after World War I, Bălți was incorporated into the independent Romanian state. The town's Jewish population continued to grow. According to the 1930 census, the Jews comprised roughly 60 percent of the total population of 30,570.

During the interwar period Jewish communal life in Bălți thrived economically, politically, and educationally. The town became an important regional trade center as well as a center of Jewish political activity. Zionist parties and their youth movements (such as Beitar, Gordonia, and Hashomer Hatzair), along with a HeHalutz pioneering training commune were active in the town. Educational activity also thrived. Tarbut, the Zionist Hebrew-language network of educational institutions, operated the Hebrew Lyceum of Bălți, the largest Jewish school in the whole Bessarabia District.

On June 28, 1940, with the arrival of the Red Army following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Bălți became part of Soviet Moldova. All the Jewish community institutions were closed, while local schools (including Hebrew-language ones) were compelled to adopt the Soviet curriculum. The Soviet regime banned private commerce and industry and confiscated private enterprises. In June 1941 some wealthy Jews of Bălți, as well as Jews who were former members of Romanian political parties, including Zionist ones, were arrested by the NKVD and deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

Allied with Nazi Germany, Romania entered the war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and soon regained control over Bessarabia. Most of the Jews of Bălți succeed in fleeing eastward before the arrival of Romanian troops (on July 8 or 9, 1941), but many were caught on the way by the advancing Axis armies. During the first days of the war the town was heavily bombarded by the German air force. The Gendarmerie (Romanian police) and German SS rounded up the remaining Jewish population of Bălţi and, on orders from Colonel Koller and his aide Captain von Prast, the chief of the German military police, interned them into two temporary ghettos - one located in the area of the former Ismanschi sugar factory (then the yard of the Moldova Bank) and the other - in the yard of the local jail. At the same time, following von Prast's order, a committee of 12 Jews, headed by Bernard Walter, was set up to deal with food and sanitary conditions in both parts of the ghetto.

On July 10, on the orders of Romanian army, 400 Jews of the town (including women, children, and elderly people), were rounded up in order to be shot to death. Due to German intervention, the women and children were released. However, several dozen Jewish men were shot by the Romanian army unit at the Ioffe windmill in Slobozia, on the outskirts of the town.

On July 11 or 12, 10 Jewish intellectuals from among the ghetto inmates were handed over to the Germans on the pretext that they had committed an act of sabotage against the German army. Those victims were killed by Einsatzgruppe D unit in the square (central park) of Bǎlți, near the old Nikolayevskyi Cathedral. Apparently at the same time, approximatively 300 men were shot to death in the Romanian Gendarmerie building (the former Peasants’ Bank) in Slobozia. Three days later the ghetto committee members refused to follow von Prasts's order to provide a list of "20 Communist Jews" to be executed. As a result all of the comittee members (with the exception of the head of the Jewish committee Walter), along with 44 other Jews were shot to death by Einsatzgruppe D unit at the Flǎmînda quarry in Slobozia.

During the night of July 15-16, 1941 another 20 Jewish men were shot in the square near the old Nikolayevskiy Cathedral.

Apparently at the same time, a number of executions of smaller groups of Jews took place throughout the town. Thus, 40 Jews were shot in a cattle pasture outside of Chişinǎu Street, 12 Jews were shot in the yard of the Perets distillery on Leningrad Street, and 30 Jews were shot at the end of Chişinǎu Street, behind the house owned by a certain Sergian. In the same month Romanian Gendarmerie men shot approximately 80 Jews from the Ismanschi ghetto at Movila Aviatiei, on the outskirts of Bǎlți.

In late July 1941 Romanian General Ion Gradu transferred the remaining Jews of Bǎlți from the ghettos to the camp that had been set up in the Rǎuțel Forest, 12 kilometers outside Bǎlți, where they were incarcerated in dilapidated houses. Some detainees from other places of Bessarabia were also sent to the camp, which proved to be among the most horrific camps in Bessarabia. On August 30, 1941 about 3,000 surviving Jews of the town were deported by the Romanian Gendarmerie to the town of Mǎrculeşti and, then, further into Transnistria.

Bălți was liberated by the Red Army on March 26, 1944.