A ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Kishinev program of April 1903 was held in the capital city. The ceremony started with a moment’s silence after which the names of the 49 Jews who were killed during those events were read, IPN reports.
Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu said that now more than ever it is important to speak about peace and the future generations should be told the truth about those tragedies.
“120 years ago, Chisinau, which was home to representatives of different national minorities, witnessed a massacre, atrocities. Those atrocities shocked the whole world, the Jewish community by their cruelty. Everything started from a false report. As they say, the word can elevate and can also cause an irreparable tragedy. It is important to keep the memory of those victims and to not allow such events to repeat again,” stated Igor Grosu.
The Ambassador of Israel to the Republic of Moldova Joel Lyon said that today’s event reminds of the atrocities that happened in 1903, when a fake news item and a plan coordinated by the tsarist authorities made the Jewish tragedy possible.
“Forty-nine Jews were killed, hundreds of women were raped during the Kishinev program of 1903. During centuries, the Jews have suffered due to anti-Semitism, but that pogrom was different. It wasn’t only the starting point for an anti-Semitism campaign, but also a turning point when the Jewish community all over the world started to seek rights,” stated Joel Lyon.
The head of the Jews community in the Republic of Moldova Alexander Bilinkis noted that the tragic events of April 1903 shook the world and put different camps face to face. There were hundreds of press articles, demonstrators in support of the Jewish community and fundraising campaigns. “The Kishinev program of 1903 was the first event of the kind in the 20th century staged with the aim of liquidating Jews. The Holocaust followed in several decades. Today, in the 21st century, with a war close to the border, we need to realize that there is no foreign tragedy and pain,” stated Alexander Bilinkis.
Mayor of Chisinau Ion Ceban said that a series of events to commemorate the victims of the Kishinev massacre are held these days. “I hope these events will enable us to seriously talk about tolerance, peace and coexistence. Nature on these days matches our mood,” he noted.
The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chisinau, then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on April 19–21, 1903 (April 6-7, 1903 according to the Julian calendar). About 110,000 people lived in Chisinau then and approximately 50,000 of them were Jews. The pogrom in which 49 Jews dead and more than 500 injured, 700 houses looted and destroyed, 600 businesses looted, and 2,000 families left homeless aroused universal condemnation and protest. Those events amplified a new wave of emigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe to Western countries.
