Cepelăuți

In 1930, the town of Cepelauți (Cepeleuți) was home to 2,828 inhabitants, 175 of whom were Jews; at that time, this settlement lay within the borders of the Kingdom of Romania. In June 1940, following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Bessarabia was occupied by the Soviet Union, and Cepeleuți became part of Soviet Moldavia. On June 22, 1941, Romania, which had allied itself with Nazi Germany, joined the war against the Soviet Union and quickly regained control over Bessarabia. On July 6-7, 1941, in the immediate aftermath of the arrival of Romanian troops, a massacre of the local Jews took place. It was instigated by the Romanian authorities and perpetrated by Romanian soldiers, a dozen inhabitants of Cepeleuți (including two women), and several non-Jewish residents of the neighboring village of Rotunda. As soon as the Romanian army entered the town, a group of locals volunteered to point out the houses of local Jews and kill them. The perpetrators, who were armed with guns, hunted down and killed adults and children throughout the town, with the massacre being concentrated in three particular locations: the “State-mill” on the town's outskirts; the cellar of the former Cepeleuți drugstore, and the Valeia lui Tǎnas forest outside the town. Some of the Jewish victims were residents of the villages of Corjeuți, Edineț, and Lipcani who happened to be in Cepeleuți at the time. After the killings, some residents of Cepeleuți gathered and buried all the bodies in four mass graves. Cepeleuți was liberated by the Red Army in March 1944.