Pepeni

In 1897, when it was part of the Russian Empire, the town of Pepeni was home to 62 Jews, who lived alongside 1,741 Moldovans. In 1918, after World War I, Pepeni was incorporated into the independent Kingdom of Romania. According to the census of 1930, the village had 176 Jewish residents, who made up 7 percent of its total population. Some local Jews practiced agriculture, while others engaged in commerce, or made their living as artisans. In 1940, in the aftermath of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Bessarabia was annexed to the Soviet Union, and Pepeni became part of the Moldavian SSR. Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, numerous local Jews managed to flee eastward, while Jews from elsewhere came to Pepeni to stay with their relatives, or else made a stopover there on their way to the Soviet interior. On July 13, 1941, shortly after the establishment of Romanian rule in the village, all the Jews found in Pepeni were locked in the town hall building in the village center, and were held there for three days without food or water. On July 15, 1941, on the orders of Ion Bordei, chief of the Romanian Gendarmerie, Romanian gendarmes, with the assistance of local peasants, shot 200-350 Jews in the town hall building and around it. Most of the victims were women, elderly individuals, and small children. The bodies of the victims were buried at a stone quarry. Pepeni was liberated by the Red Army in March 1944.