Kishinev Jewish Cemeteries
Kishinev Main Cemetery (Skulyany)
The Kishinev Main Cemetery is the largest Jewish Cemetery in Europe. Located on flat land with a continuous masonry wall and a gate that locks, the 1,000,000 sq. m. cemetery has 23,430 graves.
The exact date of its foundation is unknown, but it is believed that the first burials began appearing here in the early 19th century (1812 according to some sources).
Location: Milano Street.
Contact: Tuev P. (+373-794)15654.
Aerial view of the Main Cemetery - Open view on Google Maps
Bessarabia SIG Project for Main Cemetery
(Feb. 2017)
Sector 2 was photographed and indexed. 1341 burials recorded with 1165 photos. Also there are 48 photos of Unknown Graves available at the website and from Kishinev Jewish Cemetery report. Please see the overview, maps, photos, and more at
Skulyani Cemetery Project Report on Sector 2 (pdf)
48 photos from unknown graves
(Feb. 2014)
Agreement is signed with the publisher of the Burial registry for the cemetery who allowed us to translate the records into English. We have also found a person who will start this year to photograph the tombstones. There are about 18,000 standing.
Project is started and the images started to arrive.
Visit the cemetery
(review from tourist visitor in 2012) The cemetery is worth seeing while in Chisinau. Entry is free and you can easily spend 2 hours wandering around the large grounds.
Be sure to find and visit the abandoned synagogue. From the entrance to the cemetery it's an immediate left and about a 10 minute walk.
The graves that are quietly being eaten by the surrounding earth and trees deep inside. Several headstones stuck out, a pilot's with a large propeller atop for instance, along with this synagogue that barely remains.
Aside from the few beers bottles around and those who had drank them, it's evident these graves don't get many visitors.
Main Cemetery Gate
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View of the old Synagogue
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From the entrance, a walk left to the Old Synagogue takes one to the oldest and most beautiful part of the cemetery
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The Synagogue is in ruins...but there is still something majestic in them!
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Overview of the cemetery with the Old Synagogue behind
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Overview of the cemetery
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See a Facebook photo gallery of the cemetery
Go to the Kishinev Kehilalinks Jewish Cemetery Photo Gallery
Other Informations
Welfare fund "Dor le Dor" restored some of the cemetery and pays the caretaker.
Many tombstones are toppled and broken. A Holocaust memorial was desecrated in 1999. During Passover 2002, two teenagers destroyed almost fifty tombstones.
The police arrested them, but claimed that their crime was not anti-Semitic.
After construction in a Chisinau suburb revealed a mass grave from the Holocaust, the community alerted the government, which halted the construction and erected a memorial.
In April 2003, President Voronin unveiled a monument commemorating the Chisinau pogrom on its 100th anniversary. Voronin has condemned anti-Semitism in speeches to Jewish audiences.
[IAGJS Cemetery Project, March 2009]
Heavy damage in Moldovan Cemetery Blamed on Loggers 5 April 2013 - Unlicensed loggers may be to blame for damage to a Jewish cemetery in the capital, Chisinau.
Unidentified individuals broke into Chisinau's Metropolitan Jewish Cemetery and caused "serious damage" to graves.
Russia's Jewish News Agency reported dozens of headstones and graves were destroyed in what appeared to be the work of unlicensed loggers who had felled dozens of healthy trees.
Falling timber apparently smashed some headstones. The paths are still blocked by debris and fallen branches.
[IAGJS Cemetery Project, Apr 2014]
It is famous like the place of the burial of Radautithe victims of Kishinev Pogrom in 1903; in the years 1960, the lower part of the cemetery deliberately was devastated by the authorities.
[Wordpress.com, Feb 2013]
Chisinau, Moldova hopes to restore tahara house at Jewish cemetery - City Hall in Chisinau, Moldova is seeking international funding to restore the ruined tahara, or pre-burial, house at the city’s sprawling monumental Jewish cemetery, the news site Jurnal reported.
"We have examples of how other synagogues and cemeteries were restored, and i if the Jewish community agrees, it could be gradually rebuilt," it quoted Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca as saying.
The cemetery, at Milano st., though ravaged and long-neglected, is the single largest Jewish heritage site in Moldova and was listed as a national monument in 2012. A clean-up action took place there in November.
[jewish-heritage-europe.eu, Feb 2015]
The destroyed part
There used to be about 40,000 graves in the cemetery (out of 23,430 today).
In 1958, the Chisinau Jewish cemetery was divided into two parts, one of which was designated by the authorities as a market square. In the 1960s, the second part of the cemetery was completely destroyed. The destroyed part was converted into a park (now "Alunel"), a tennis court, and high-rise residential buildings. The tombstones were used as building material for the fence of the surviving part of the cemetery, as well as for the fence of the Central Orthodox Cemetery, the Armenian Catholic Cemetery, the fence of a military unit, and others. They were also used to pave the alleys of Alunel Park.
(source oldchisinau.com)
in pink highlighted the destroyed part of the cemetery, in green the preserved one
The destroyed section of the cemetery (today Alunel Park), photographed in the 1950s taken from what is now Kalya Yesilor Street
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In some places in the park you can still see fragments of gravestones sticking out from under the ground
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Fence of the Jewish Cemetery
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Fence of the Armenian Cemetery
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Doyna (Saint Lazarus) Cemetery
This is not a "Jewish Cemetery" but a town cemetery. Jewish Quarters were opened at the cemetery in 1977, on May 5.
The Doyna Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in Eastern Europe with a size of 200 hectares and the Jewish section counted, in 2013, 21 sectors from a total of 268.
Location: 189 Doyna Street.
Contact: Tuev P. (+373-794)15654.
Bessarabia SIG Project for Doyna Cemetery
(October 2014)
Kishinev Doyna Cemetery Jewish sectors were photogrpahed and indexed. 9630 records were uploaded with 9333 photos. There is a part left to be done with about 1000-1500 graves which are located in non-Jewish sectors of the cemetery.
You can review the following informations:
Images
Overview Jewish Graves
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Overview Jewish Graves
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Below is the sign on the first Jewish grave at the cemetery (in Russian): 1977, May 5 opened Jewish Quarters at the cemetery “Doyna” SMOLYAK, A.M. ZELTSER, M, Ya.
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Overview Jewish Graves
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Go to the Kishinev Kehilalinks Jewish Cemetery Photo Gallery
Jewish Cemetery on Izmail Street (destroyed)
This cemetery was founded in the 18th century (17th according to some sources). It was located in the area of today's streets Izmail and Albishiora.
It disappeared in 19 century.
In the book by I. Khalippa, "THE CITY OF CHISINAU during the time of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's life there. (Topographic, episodic and everyday sketches for the 100th anniversary of the poet's birthday, May 26, 1889)" there is a mention of this Jewish cemetery: "Cemetery Street, so named because of the old Jewish cemetery that was at its southern end; later, the name of the abolished "Widow's Lane" was transferred to it." In the book, the cemetery is referred to as "former"
After the war, the cemetery was razed to the ground.
Now, the site of the old Jewish cemetery is occupied by the Romanian embassy, a high-rise residential building, a library, a petrol station and other buildings.
Map from 1871 showing the cemetery
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German aerial photo of the cemetery in the spring of 1944.
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Borders of the former Cemetery on a modern map.
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Modern view of the former cemetery
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Visterniceni Jewish Cemetery (destroyed)
The cemetery was established in 17-18 century.
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the site of the cemetery is situated in the Ryshkani district next to the Chisinau State Circus (performance hall), on the crossroad between bd. Grigore Vieru and stradela Petrariei 2.
It was demolished in Soviet times.
The site oldchisinau.com mentions the cemetery in the Chisinau suburb of Riscani near the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena but doesn't label it as "Jewish". It states "Some tombstones of famous people were moved to the church itself, but the vast majority were lost forever. Members of many famous and influential Bessarabian families were buried here".
It is not clear then if we are talking about a town cemetery with a Jewish sector or a different cemetery.
According to this site, the process of destruction of the Riscani cemetery began as early as the 1950s. Private homes began to be erected on the sites of old graves.
In the 1970s, the decision was made to build a high-speed road. This construction finally sealed the cemetery's fate. Residents of Chisinau whose relatives were buried here were offered the opportunity to rebury their remains in the new city cemetery (now St. Lazarus) within a set time. Everything else was leveled or dug up during road construction.
