Murder story of Bălți Jews in the Old St. Nicolas Cathedral Square in Bălți

On July 11 or 12, 1941 the German police ordered the Romanian gendarmes who had been in charge of guarding of ghetto to hand over ten members of the intelligentsia who were inmates of the ghetto to be executed. The alleged crime was that the Jewish population had committed acts of sabotage against the German army in Bălţi by firing at a German military vehicle. On the same day, ten inmates from the Ismanschi (Moldova Bank) ghetto were handed over to the Germans and executed by the members of Einsatzkommando 10a, probably with the cooperation of the Siguranța (Romanian secret police) and some Romanian Gendarmerie members, in the central square (park) of Bălţi on Leningrad Street near the old Nikolaevskyiy Cathedral. During the shooting those victims who remained alive after being shot were finished off with stones and then buried. During the night of July 15-16th another 20 Jewish men from the 150 Jews who had been taken hostage earlier were taken from the cellar of the former Moldova Bank, brought to the same square, and then shot to death by Einsatzkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D, again on the pretext that Jews had fired at some German army vehicles.