Jewish Kishinev

All my attempts to find out where are there remnants of the Jewish presence in Chisinau, once 50% Jewish, and also the place of one the first and most violent pogroms in Tsarist Russia in 1905, were met with rather suspicious questions from the organizors and even some participants: "Are you Jewish? Why are you interested?". Or " Why would you want to see the remnants of something from the past? (duh!) There isn't anymore a Jewish Chisinau."

There was one who said yes to my proposal. Oliver, our German guy. Great! A Romanian and a German togeher in the quest for Jewishness in Chisinau. One of history's ironies... It was the Romanian and German troops that sent the Jews from Chisinau to Transnistria during the Second World War and killed most of them. Antonescu's Romania considered that all Jews from Bessarabia ( =today's Moldova) were in cahoots with the communist Soviet Union and therefore enemies of the Romanian state. That explains why, while the Jews from the rest of Romania were spared their lifes, the Jews from Bessarabia were brutally removed and killed. A tragic history about which only now Romania dares to speak...

We found a Jewish school converted into a pharmacy, many houses that once probably housed Jewish merchants, and then a small street with a small synagogue, the last surviving one from Chisinau's prewar seventy synagogues. An old man inside, with a looong beard. Reading a newspaper. He seemed not to care that we are inside. Continued to read undisturbed by our intrusion. We looked around, and then, we approached him. He asked if we spoke Russian. Sorry... I started using my three Rusian words...

"Pa rumunski? angliski? italienski? ( I avoided to say nemecki...)
"Niet. *** Pa russki!"
"Ok... Awkward pause. Skolka Evrei w Kishniow?"
" Osemi **** ( I presumed 8000)
" I skolka byla ?"
" semi ******" ( 70000?)
" Gdie jest sgodnia? Israel"
" Gitler! ( = Hitler...). Israel, Amerika..."
"aha..."
"Gdie **** ty? "
" W Bukharest..."
"aaa... Rumunia... Bukharest... Constanta... Antonescu..."
I had no idea how to say I'm sorry, I tried to mime my disagreement with Antonescu. And then he asked...
"Gdie *** on? "
Oh God, let's see now..
" W Ghermanii..."
"Ghermania... Ia *** yddish!!"
Thank God he did not say Hitler again. Oliver seemed very uncomfortable anyway. It is quite interesting to have a Romanian-German duo speaking with this guy, who probably lost a lot of his family because of fascist Romanians and Nazis...
No yiddish was unfortunately spoken, despite my attempts to use German words...
And then:
" Ivrit?"
"Da.. Lehaim, Shalom, Hava Nagila!" I said, ready to sing...
"Gdie toya Yeshiva?"
Based on my knowledge of the Yeshiva University in NYC, ( Yeshiva means some kind of university), I answered:
" W Ameriki. Stanach Ziednoczonych."
That's my Polish coming in handy. I guess.
" Aaaa! "
Very happy reaction.
My vocabulary was emptied at that time.
" Dobro Shabbath! Da sfidania!
And we left, meek and sullen, while he continued to read his newspaper.