On September 28-30, seminar as part of program “Tolerance – Lessons of Holocaust” was held in Kishinev. The program is realized by Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and is designed to bring up positive national consciousness, form capability to protect human rights and protest against any forms of discrimination, thus contributing to the formation of the foundations of national and religious tolerance, responsibility and mercy.
Participating in the seminar were representatives of Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, leaders of Jewish communities from Pridnestrovie and Moldova as well as historians, regional specialists and educators. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PMR was represented by Chief of Public Communications Department Igor Shornikov.
The seminar was focused on tragic events on the territory of Moldova, Pridnestrovie and Ukraine during Romanian occupation in 1941-1944 and on contemporary interpretations of those events.
Mikhail Tygliy, historian and executive editor of “Holokost i suchasnist” Magazin, told participants of the seminar about regional peculiarities of the “Final Solution” of the Jewish problem by Nazi and Romanian invaders. Facts about history of the Holocaust in Moldavia which were little known even to the experts in this field were revealed by Chairperson of the Coordination Council of Jewish Organizations of Bendery Lev Bondar. A lecture about contemporary perversion of history in Romania and Moldova was delivered by Executive Director of the Institute of Jewish Sciences Yevgeny Brik.
Separate topic of the seminar was Dubossary tragedy of 1941. This topic remains one of the insufficiently studied episodes of the Great Patriotic War. There was a real “conveyor of death” in Dubossary from the12th till 28th of September. More than 18 thousand of Jewish people were killed by the Nazis. Contemporary Holocaust researches, however, not always know about the tragedy of such scope. Moreover, some authors who write about the “history of Romanian people” try to overlook the facts of participation of Romanian occupation authorities in mass murders. Head of the Dubossary Jewish Community, Ozias Ukshtein, gave evidence of the witnesses of this tragedy. Igor Shornikov delivered a report “The problem of Dubossary tragedy of 1941 in modern historiography”. He told participants of the seminar that currently his paper dedicated to this tragedy and anti-fascist struggle in the region during Romanian occupation is being prepared for the publication with the support of the Dubossary State Administration, Foreign Ministry of the PMR and Jewish communities of Dubossary and Rybnitsa. According to Igor Shornikov, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PMR is intended to further contribute to promotion of data about Holocaust on the territory of Pridnestrovie.
