Monument to victims of the Holocaust
Памятник жертвам Холокоста
The memorial to Holocaust victims: history and documents.
The square is located in the former Jewish part of the village; it is now landscaped and maintained; you can return here at the end of the tour, have a picnic and rest before heading back.
This memorial was erected in 2017. It is made of polished black granite in the shape of an open book – «Book of Memory». Its initiators were two natives of the village - Semen Glickman and Jan Milter. They no longer live in Rashkov: the first moved first to Odessa and then repatriated to Israel; the second lives in Canada. But the people of Rashkov remember them, and they remember and honor their native land. The newer Jewish cemetery features the graves of their relatives who survived the war and died after it ended.
The monument is erected in memory of all Jews who suffered during World War II, which was part of World War II. They were shot, drowned, hijacked, or tortured in the ghetto. On it are carved the names of 126 people whose names could be restored, although in fact the number of victims was much higher.
There are several documents, one of which is «act on the victims of Nazi terror over the inhabitants of Rashkov» compiled November 18, 1944. It says that on August 4, 1941 a German-Romanian punitive detachment, with the help of gendarmes, drove 65 men and women into the Dniester River and shot them. The corpses of all the people shot floated away. There is evidence that before killing these people they were harnessed like horses to carts loaded with stones and chased with sticks and belts.
According to another document from the National Archives of Moldova - «List of citizens of the village Rashkov, taken away by Nazi occupants into German slavery» - 71 people were taken and almost no one returned. Only one woman returned to the village after the war; she was undocumented and was identified by fellow villagers who had known her before.
On August 17, 1941, Romanian gendarmes killed 38 men, residents of Rashkov. They were taken to the river at night, bound with barbed wire three or four at a time, driven into the water and shot. There were no corpses left; they drifted downstream.
On September 5, 1941, three men and three women were killed by Romanian gendarmes.The relatives buried them in the cemetery. Their names are not listed anywhere, but according to residents of Rashkov, they were all Jewish.
The memorial often has memorial stones.
And now we cross the road and find ourselves in front of two former 19th century Jewish houses, though later rebuilt and now being rebuilt.