On Tuesday, October 25, we headed for Piatra Neamt.  Len and I were picked up by a driver who took us to Kishinev.  We left Piatra Neamt at 5:00 p.m. and arrived in Kishinev at 11:00 p.m.  The border crossing from Romania to Moldova took only one hour.  Moldova is its own Republic now. It was previously Bessarabia (the northern province), belonging to Russia, and Transylvania (the southern province) belonging to Romania.

On Wednesday we were met at the hotel by the archivist, Alla, who walked with us to the Jewish Community Center.  We sat down to review her genealogical findings and reviewed my notes and then we met an elderly lady who worked at the Center.  She was 84 years old, but could not remember any of my relatives, although she spoke Yiddish and we could communicate.  We were then introduced to Olga, one of the educators at the Center who gave us a complete tour of the facility and told us about the Jewish community.

We met three classes of very young children (who were learning in Russian), and who spoke to us in English.  We saw the libraries; the Center museum and the computer room, the music room, the drama area.  They have one lending library and one library for Jewish and non-Jewish students who come in to study at the Center from the University.  Olga explained to us that since part of their income comes from the state, the Joint has cut back on the amount they used to fund.  Many of the children’s programs were now in need of funding.  It’s a very old building, but there is a lot of pride here.  There are 15,000 Jews in this large city of Kishinev, with a population of 750,000 people.

Olga was so lovely and so hospitable, and then prepared a package for us:  books that the children use, DVDs of music and the history of Moldovan Jews, and brochures for us to take home.

My tour guide, Natalie, met Len and me at the Center and took us on a walking tour of old Kishinev.  We were reminded that the most infamous of all the pogroms was the massacre in Kishinev on Easter Sunday 1903.  We visited the site of the Jewish ghetto, the old Kishinev Jewish cemetery, the Chabad Lubavitch shul, and monuments in the city.  Natalie had arranged for the keeper of the cemetery to meet us and help me locate the graves of some of my ancestors.  Unfortunately, during the timeframe that I am searching, people were buried without surnames.  So, no luck in Kishinev.

We went on to Orhei, a 40-minute drive, where Simeon Rapaport was waiting for us for lunch at his home.  Simeon is quite a character.  He loves life and, fortunately for us, he spoke Yiddish fluently.  Simeon is the president of the Jewish community, and the fourth generation in Orhei.  Anna had prepared the lunch for us.  Anna had been the cook for the old age Jewish home.  She prepared all kinds of bagelach for us—potato bagelach, cheese bagelach, pumpkin bagelach—and they tasted just like my bubbe had baked.  She had all kinds of eggplant salad, beet salad, home baked pastries for dessert.  It was all delicious.

From Left to Right: Myrna Simon, Simeon Rapaport (Current head of Jewish Community and Myrna's host), Natalia Alhazov (Myrna's guide), Anna (Simeon's cook), Simeon's friend and future head of the Jewish Community

Simeon had some home made wine that he insisted we drink.  When we had tasted enough red wine, he insisted on white wine. He was a very interesting person. His wife and two grown children are already living in Israel, and here he is in this very old home, which by the way, had been used by the Nazis during the war.  He had just been granted possession of another home that his family had owned.  It had taken ten years for him to regain possession from the Moldovan government.

We went off to visit the Orhei Jewish cemetery, and again, no luck in finding my ancestors.  Since Simeon was the president of the Jewish community, he had the journal of the listings of the graves in the cemetery.  There was not one name that I could identify.  It was, however, so amazing to be in the cemetery where my ancestors could very well be, and to be in Orhei where my grandmother and great grandparents had lived and walked.  We stopped to take an exterior photo of the old synagogue in Orhei.  There are only about 100 Jews living in Orhei now, a shtetl from the past.  By the way, this is the birthplace of Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv.