The Memorial to the Victims of Fascism has been reopened in Dubossary after reconstruction. It is located on the site where more than 18000 civilians were executed in the fall of 1941.
The Nazis established two large ghettos in Dubossary. One of them occupied 25th October and Kirov Streets, where the Jewish population had lived compactly before the war. Jews from surrounding villages were herded here. The second camp was established at a local tobacco fermentation plant, where Jews from Chisinau, Grigoriopol, Tiraspol, Kotovsk, Balta, Ananyev, and Krasnye Okna were escorted under the guard of Romanian gendarmes. Sergeant Major V. Keller, who led a German punitive detachment, was in charge of the town. Eleven 16-meter-deep pits, each 4 meters deep, were dug on the eastern outskirts of Dubossary in September 1941 on his orders. The future mass graves were essentially prepared by local residents and Jewish prisoners, who were told the pits were supposedly for storing potatoes. Mass executions began on the morning of September 12, 1941 and continued until September 28. Men, women, children, and the elderly members of nationalities undesirable to the Nazis were killed. They were shot in groups of 20-30. During the exhumation of remains, approximately 1500 bodies were counted in one of the 11 execution pits. The executioners did not bother to compile lists of the victims, so there is no precise data on the number of those killed in Dubossary and nearby villages. However, it has been reliably established that at least 18000 innocent victims were killed.
The site of the mass execution of Jews and residents of Dubossary was designated a memorial after the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War. The area was fenced off in 1949. A monument to the Liberator Soldier and the rescued children was erected. On May 9, 1988, a granite plaque was installed with a commemorative inscription in Russian and Moldovan. Reconstruction work was carried out in the early 1990s. The number of memorial plaques increased, and informational signs in Yiddish were added. Restoration and repair work, including strengthening the perimeter of the mass graves and installing a dignified fence, were carried out in 1991, 1995, 1996, and 1998. Thanks to the dedication and active research of members of the Dubossary Jewish community, the names of three thousand executed victims were identified and immortalized on granite plaques.
A reburial ceremony was held at the Dubossary memorial on September 13, 1998. The 12th mass grave has been created. It contains the remains of victims of fascism, whose bodies were found during construction work in Kirov Street.
The "Requiem" monument was ceremoniously unveiled at the "Victims of Fascism" memorial complex on May 7, 2017. The idea for its creation dates back to the 1980s. The initiator was renowned sculptor Lazar Dubinovskyi, who designed the model for the future monument. The concept was brought to life by Serhiy Gonenko, a native of Dnestrovsk, who created the 2.5-meter bronze statue and raised it onto a pedestal of the same height. The figure of a praying Jew stands frozen in grief above the graves. There is emptiness inside. The man is gone. He was killed, but his soul lives on. It is immortal, as is the question, which is carved in stone in three languages Russian, English, and Yiddish and in the souls of people in the language of pain and eternal memory. "Requiem" is a monument not only to the executed Jews of Dubossary, but also to all the victims of the Holocaust, whose number runs into the millions.
The memorial complex was reconstructed again in 2025. With the support of the country's leadership and funds from the state capital investment program, extensive work was carried out. The site of the tragic events has become a true memorial complex.
A memorial ceremony was held today. The PMR President Vadim Krasnoselsky arrived to honor the memory of the victims of fascism.
"Standing at this site, you clearly understand the course of historical events, the depth of the tragedy of this land. It is perfectly clear who the liberating soldier is. He is a soldier of the Red Army. It is clear that the victims are those who lie in this soil.
It is clear that the aggressor was the Romanian fascist occupiers, infected with the virus of Nazism. There were no losing states in that war in reality. The Nazi-fascist ideology that lost was the one that enslaved the peoples of those states that fought against the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. It was the Red Army and its allies who liberated the peoples of Western Europe from fascism and Nazism, from oppression. You know, it's truly terrifying when, 80 years after the end of World War II, someone tries to rehabilitate the executioners, the Nazis, and the fascists, suggesting they knew nothing and were essentially good people. This is dangerous. They call the Red Army soldier an occupier. I am deeply convinced that any nationalism stems from Nazism, and any Nazism ends in execution pits, like here in Dubossary. This cannot be proven. We simply need to fight it, and remind ourselves of the results of the international tribunal and the court following World War II.
I would like to draw attention to the unacceptability of calling our blessed land by the shameful name "transnistria". Let me remind you that "transnistria"was an occupied region, and its capital was Odessa. But Odessa isn't called "transnistria" now. Why are we called "transnistria"? "Transnistria"existed between 1941 and 1944, and it was designated specifically by Antonescu and his henchmen—those who organized the Dubossary Holocaust, those responsible for the deaths of 400000 people in the so-called "transnistria", those who created 150 ghetto-concentration camps. That's "transnistria". Therefore, "transnistria"means Holocaust, genocide, death. And when we, Pridnestrovians, are called "transnistria," it's insulting and unacceptable. "In memory of those who lie in this land. There is a wonderful word for this region: Pridnestrovie. There can be no other," Vadim Krasnoselsky emphasized.
The President expressed gratitude to everyone who participated in the reconstruction of the memorial complex, who invested their time, money, and, most importantly, their souls in it. Vadim Krasnoselsky noted that this site of tragic events cannot leave anyone indifferent. He shared that after one visit to the memorial complex, he wrote a poem about the Dubossary Holocaust.
