For years, Ivette Marzbacher, a Peru native, searched for traces of her family that was uprooted from Bessarabia – a historic European region. The personal search led her to the town of Edineț in northern Moldova – and eventually to the grave of her great-grandmother, Rachel Koifman, who died in 1921. This experience became a turning point for her: she founded "LivingStones," a Swiss organization that leads projects to preserve Jewish cemeteries throughout Moldova and educate against antisemitism.
Moldova's history of antisemitism is long and painful: from the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, through the murder of tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, to recent cases of tombstone vandalism. Recently, a new textbook sparked controversy when the Jewish community claimed it presents the Antonescu regime, which was an active partner in the extermination of Jews in the region, in a positive light.
Alongside the difficulties, the local Jewish community, currently numbering approximately 5,000 people, continues to operate. Four synagogues function in the capital, Kishinev, and there are Jewish educational institutions and aid organizations. The Joint organization, for example, provides food, medicine, and support to over 2,000 elderly individuals and hundreds of families.
Meanwhile, Israel-Moldova relations are growing closer: this year, Israel's embassy opened in Kishinev for the first time, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar even visited the country, where, among others, Meir Dizengoff – Tel Aviv's first mayor – and composer Samuel Cohen, who wrote the melody for "Hatikva," were born.
For Marzbacher, restoration and preservation are both a personal and national mission. "When I found my great-grandmother's grave and placed a stone on it, it was one of the happiest moments of my life," she told the JTA website, "but beyond that – it's also about returning a voice and memory to an entire community that was destroyed, and ensuring that the historical truth doesn't disappear."
The need for such initiatives is particularly striking. In a survey published in 2024 involving approximately 1,000 Moldovan respondents, nearly half admitted they do not like Jews, and some even expressed open hostility. "Antisemitism in Moldova is a deep problem," warned Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA) and chairman of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE). According to him, real change must begin with education, otherwise "the next generation will continue to carry the virus of antisemitism."
