Tighina

Jews settled in Tighina (Bender in Yiddish) in the second half of the 18th century. The first Hasidic court in Bessarabia was established in Tighina by Rabbi Arieh Leib Wertheim, the son of Hasidic leader Shim‘on Shelomoh of Savran, in the early 19th century. In 1897, under the Russian Empire, the Jewish residents of the town comprised 33.8 percent of its total population. In 1918, after the end of World War I, Bessarabia was incorporated into the independent Romanian state and, thus, Tighina came under Romanian rule. According to the 1930 census, Jews comprised 26 percent of the total town's population of 31,384. The situation of the Jews under Romanian rule deteriorated with the rise of antisemitism as Tighina became one of the centers of the antisemitic movement led by Alexandru Cuza. Nevertheless, during the interwar era the town had numerous Jewish-owned industrial enterprises, mills, stores, a Jewish hospital, a Jewish old folks home, and a private Jewish highschool.

In June 1940, following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union, with Tighina becoming one of the towns of Soviet Moldova. The Soviet authorities suppressed all political and communal institutions, including Jewish ones. Numerous wealthy Jewish individuals and Zionist activists were arrested and deported in June 1941.

After the beginning of Operation Barbarossa when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, a significant number of Jews of Bender fled eastward. Numerous young Jewish men, along with men of other nationalities, were drafted into the Red Army. However, much of the Jewish population remained in Bender. On July 23, 1941, Romanian and German troops entered the town. Within several days a ghetto was established.

During the first days of August 1941 several dozen Jewish men, women, children, and elderly people were shot to death by an SS unit at the Bender fortress, located on the edge of town. Later in the same month and in September 1941, troops of the occupying armies participated in a number of killings of Bender’s Jews in various locations throughout the town and around it –11 victims were killed in various locations in the town and 3 Jews - in an area called Kavkaz. Other Jews were killed on Tkachenko Street, on the bank of the Dniestr River.

On August 31, 1941 in Tighina, Romania and Nazi Germany signed an agreement regarding the deportation of Bessarabian Jews to Transnistria. As a result the surviving Jews of Tighina were later deported from the town and imprisoned in various locations in Transnistria.

Tighina was liberated by the Red Army on August 23, 1944.