Edineț
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Edineț ( rum. ) Единец ( Russian ) |
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| State : |
 Moldova
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| Administrative unit : | Edine district | ||
| Coordinates : | 48 ° 10 ′ N , 27 ° 18 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 192 m. ü. M. | ||
| Area : | 14.5 km² | ||
| Residents : | 18,400 | ||
| Population density : | 1,269 inhabitants per km² | ||
| Telephone code : | +373 246 | ||
| Postal code : | MD-4601 | ||
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Edineț ( Russian Единец Jedinez ) is a city and the administrative center of the raion of the same name in the north of the Republic of Moldova . The city with a population of 18,400 (2015 calculation) is a bustling regional market center and a light industry location with food production and wood processing. A Jewish majority lived in Edineț until they were expelled or murdered in 1941.
location
Edineț is located around 200 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital Chișinău along the M 14 highway , which first leads from Chișinău to Bălți , the largest city in Northern Moldova (61 kilometers from Edineț), and on to Briceni just before the Ukrainian border (29 kilometers northwest of Edineț ). It is about 15 kilometers on a side road in a south-westerly direction to the village of Brinzeni. Behind Brinzeni begins a special hill formation with limestone cliffs that extend parallel to the Pruth River, which forms the border with Romania . Traces of settlement from the Stone Age (from 35,000 BC) and Bronze Age (4000–1000 BC) were discovered in a cave near Brinzeni. In the opposite direction, a road leads via Ocnița along the Ukrainian border to Otaci in the far northeast of the country. The E 583 connects Edineț directly with Otaci.
On the gently rolling, 100 to 300 meter high hills of North Moldau with natural grass cover, wheat, maize and sunflowers thrive in fields with predominantly brown soil. Apple trees are also grown on large plantations around Edineț. Apple juice concentrate is - after wine that does not thrive in the north - an important export product in the field of food production. Cattle and sheep are also farmed in the area.
history
A settlement called Edineț was founded in the early 19th century, probably in 1820. The rule over the region of Bessarabia , in which the place was located, changed several times between Romania and Russia until the end of the Second World War . After the victory of the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War in 1812, Bessarabia passed from the Ottoman to the Russian sphere of power. Since then, many Jewish artisans and traders from Poland, Ukraine and Galicia migrated to Bessarabia, which was one of the selected areas in which Jews were allowed to settle in the Russian Empire. Jews had a share of 7.9 percent (83,900) in 1859 and 11.8 percent (288,168) in 1897 of the population of Bessarabia. Many of them were settled in their own agricultural colonies. In 1897, of the 10,211 inhabitants of Edineț, 7,379 were Jews.
The founders of Edineț included Jews, Ukrainians , Moldovans and certain Russians who were persecuted because of their minority beliefs. Around the middle of the 19th century, Jews made up about two thirds of the town's population. As everywhere, they were mainly active in trade and handicrafts. Eight Jewish houses of prayer were already in place when the construction of a large synagogue began in 1878 . However, it was never completed. There was a Jewish ritual bath ( mikveh ), which was also used as a general bathing place by non-Jews. The relationship between Jews and the rest of the population is also otherwise described as good during this period. In the 1880s, there was unrest between individual ethnic groups in rural areas, which is why many Jews were forced to move to the cities, where they made up over a third of the population by 1900. Other Jews emigrated to the United States, compelled, among other things, by a pogrom that took place in Chișinău on Easter Sunday 1903 . After the February Revolution of 1917 , the social situation of the Jews temporarily improved. At the end of the First World War , the Romanian army marched into Bessarabia in January 1918, and on March 5, 1918 a Romanian unit reached Edineț. Their commander ordered the residents to send a seven-person delegation to greet the troops. This was the pretext for holding the group hostage. After a Jewish businessman was arrested the following day and only released against a large ransom, further attacks against Jews followed.
In 1930, 90.4 percent of Edine's residents were Jews (5341 out of a total of 5,908). In the 1930s, the economy flourished, largely due to the Jewish businessmen exporting agricultural products. Chickens and eggs from Edineț were sent to Palestine , animal skins and hides as far as the United States. Factories were established that produced sunflower oil and soap. Shoes, carpets and clothing were made in craft workshops. Zionist Jews were left unmolested, while Communist Jews were repeatedly persecuted. The latter formed in 1935/36 under the guise of a professional organization and advocated improved working conditions.
During these years Jews established a hospital and a home for the elderly. There was general compulsory education. In addition to state schools, there were three Jewish educational institutions, one of which was set up on the initiative of the Tarbut Organization ( Tarbut , Hebrew “culture”, supra-regional, secular, Zionist educational initiative). There were also eight religious schools ( cheder ) in which predominantly Hebrew was taught. Young people from Zionist groups began hachshara work at the age of 18 , through which they were to be prepared for emigration ( Aliyah ) to " Eretz Israel ". The agitation against Jews suspected of communist or communist activities reached a temporary climax in Greater Romania at the end of 1937 with the brief takeover of government by the two united anti-Semitic parties of Octavian Goga and Alexandro Cuza, who are known as Goga-Cuza by the name combination of their two leaders . As a result, the Jewish mayor of Edineț lost his office and tensions between Jews and non-Jews increased.
On June 28, 1940, the Romanian government of Bessarabia withdrew from the advancing Red Army . Edineț belonged to the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) on the side of the Axis Powers until Romania entered the war on June 22, 1941 . On this day Romanian and German troops crossed the Prut and captured the place Sculeni . After the withdrawal of the Soviet army, which had evacuated Edineț on June 21, 1941, the first German and Romanian parachutists landed near the city on July 2. The war in Bessarabia had no clear front line; it was waged with great cruelty against the civilian population and with an anti-Jewish attitude. Several hundred civilians were killed in the capture of Edineț alone, which was under the direction of Captain Nicolescu. As a justification for the high number of civilian casualties, Gheorghe Barbul, the secretary of Ion Antonescu , claims in his memoir, published in Paris in 1950, that Nicolescu acted out of revenge for an event he had seen a year earlier while withdrawing from the Russian armed forces. According to Barbul's account, in June 1940 Nicolescu found Captain Enescu tied to a mast in a deplorable condition. The Jewish and Ukrainian residents of Edineț had stained Enescu and poured urine over him to humiliate him. Enescu told the soldiers what had happened to him and then withdrew to put a bullet in the head. Regardless of whether the story was fictitious or a mixture of several events, the mere fact that such a story was in circulation indicates the attitudes of the attackers towards the population at the time. The soldiers not only wanted to conquer an area and drive out the enemy, they also wanted to destroy parts of the civilian population or destroy their livelihoods.
Except for a few Jews in high administrative positions, the majority of Jews had no opportunity to flee with the Soviets. Only after the arrival of the German and Romanian soldiers did some Jews venture to flee towards Otaci on foot. Hundreds of Jews who remained in the city were killed by Romanian soldiers shooting around within the following days. Romanians, incited residents of Edine and small farmers from the surrounding area raped Jewish women and jointly plundered Jewish property. Jewish property was confiscated by the Romanian occupiers. 1000 of the 5000 Jewish residents were murdered within two weeks. The other Jews in Bessarabia , who were deported to Transnistria in the autumn on the blanket pretext of being pro-Soviet, fared similarly to Edineț . A large number of them perished there at the latest. The Romanian soldiers divided the Jewish residents of Edineț into two groups. The first group was sent directly to Transnistria, the second group had to move in a circle between Sokyrjany (Secureni in Romanian), Briceni and Edineț.
A transit camp was set up in Edineț for the systematic general expulsion of Jews from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina , which was in operation from August 20 to the end of November 1941. Some 1,000 Jews had fled to Edineț on their own initiative to save their lives because they did not know that there were no Jews left in the city at that time. According to a report that a commission commissioned by General Ion Antonescu, presumably in January 1942, 25,000 Jews were interned in this camp and in the Secureni camp. On August 9, 1941, the Romanian Colonel Poitevin reported to General Ioan Topor that during his visit to the camp he had seen 10,000 Jews who were living in ruined houses without food, sick and under poor conditions. The camp consisted of five streets, which were fenced with barbed wire. According to an estimate over 12,000 Jews trapped therein suffered most from a lack of drinking water. In the Edineț camp, 70 to 100 people died of starvation or exhaustion every day, and child mortality was 85 percent. The evacuation of the camp and the deportation of the Jews to Transnistria took place between October 1st and 18th in convoys of 2500 people each. At the end of 1941 there were practically no more Jews living in Bessarabia.
In August 1944, the Soviet troops returned to Bessarabia and restored the MSSR, which existed until independence in 1991. In 1940 Edineț was granted city status. From 1998 to 2001 Edineț was the capital of a district ( județ ) that included the districts of Briceni, Dondușeni and Ocnița. In a territorial reform, the above-mentioned districts were spun off as separate districts ( rajon ) alongside the Edineț Rajon .
Cityscape
In the 2004 census, Edineț had 15,624 inhabitants, divided according to their ethnicity into: 8,747 Moldovans , 3,394 Russians , 2,682 Ukrainians , 490 Roma , 131 Romanians , 37 Bulgarians , 23 Gagauz , 18 Jews, 11 Poles and 91 others.
The intersection of the highways is in the south of the city, a good two kilometers from the center. The road continuing to the north bypasses the city in a large arc on the west side. The road from the bus station, 500 meters north of this intersection, first leads through a rural settlement until it becomes the city's main axis ( Strada Independenței ), which runs from southeast to northwest . The large inner-city residential and business district extends along parallel side streets to the west of the main street. In the central area there is a large market for vegetables and fruits from the area as well as clothing and household goods in several side streets in the morning.
A special feature of Edineț is the city park named after the Romanian poet Vasile Alecsandri (1821–1890), which extends east of the main road over an area of 34 hectares. The amusement park, established in 1963, is shaded by tall trees. Footpaths lead past several natural lakes, the banks of which are densely overgrown with bushes and shrubs.
In addition to wood processing, Edineț is an important center of food production. Dairy products, sugar, flour, canned food and tobacco are manufactured. Foreign direct investment in the city's businesses from independence to around 2005 totaled around $ 17 million. There are several high schools and a district hospital ( Centrul Medicilor de Familie ).
literature
- Edinets . Chapter in History of the Jews of Bessarabia. In: Jean Ancel , Theodore Lavi (eds.): Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Romania, Volume 2 (Edineţ, Moldova). Jerusalem 1980.
- Mordehkai Reicher, Yosel Magen-Shitz (Ed.): Yad l'Yedinitz; memorial book for the Jewish community of Yedintzi, Bessarabia (Edineţ, Moldova). Yedinitz Society, Tel Aviv 1973.
- Klaus Bochmann, Vasile Dumbrava, Dietmar Müller, Victoria Reinhardt (eds.): The Republic of Moldau. Republica Moldova. A manual. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-86583-557-4 .
- Andrei Brezianu: Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Moldova (= European History Dictionaries. No. 37). The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) / London 2007, p. 133.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Populatia stabila, la 1 ianuarie dupa raioane si orase si ani . Biroul Național de Statistică al Republicii Moldova (Romanian).
- ^ Martin Petrick: Agriculture. In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): The Republic of Moldova. P. 493.
- ^ Mariana Hausleitner: Germans and Jews. The legacy of the disappearing minorities. In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): The Republic of Moldova. P. 218.
- ↑ "Единцы" in: Jewrejskaja enzyklopedija Brockhausa i Jefrona. St. Petersburg, 1908–1913.
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↑ Yedinitz in the Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, p 85;
other figures for 1930: 4,341 Jews (90.3 percent) in: Jean Ancel: The History of the Holocaust in Romania . (The Comprehensive History of the Holocaust) University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2011, p. 253. - ^ Itamar Levin: His Majesty's Enemies: Great Britain's War Against Holocaust Victims and Survivors. Praeger, Santa Barbara 2001, p. 46.
- ↑ Gheorghe Barbul: Memorial Anton Francesco: Le III-e homme de l'Ax. Éditions de la Couronne, Paris 1950.
- ↑ The June / july 1940 Romanian Withdrawal from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and Its Consequences on Interethnic Relations in Romania. Elie Wiesel Commission Report, Yad Vashem.
- ↑ Armin Heinen: Violence - Culture. Romania, the Kireig and the Jews (June to October 1941). In: Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, Juliane Wetzel (eds.): Romania and the Holocaust. On the mass crimes in Transnistria 1941–1944. Metropol, Berlin 2001, p. 36 f.
- ^ Memories of the Holocaust: Kishinev (Chisinau). Special Report (1941-1944). Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ Jean Ancel: The History of the Holocaust in Romania (The Comprehensive History of the Holocaust) University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2011, pp. 253 f.
- ↑ Vladimir Solonari: The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Second World War (1941-1945). In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): The Republic of Moldova. P. 93.
- ↑ Demographic, national, language and cultural characteristics. (Excel table in Section 7) National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldoca.
- ^ Frieder Monzer, Timo Ulrichs: Moldova. With Chișinău, all of Bessarabia and Transdnestria. Trescher, Berlin 2013, p. 209.
- ↑ Andrei Brezianu: Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Moldova. P. 133.