Recognition of the Roma Genocide

Recognition, official texts

The territory of the present-day Republic of Moldova was under Romanian administration during the Holocaust (1941-1944). Consequently, the recognition of the Holocaust in the Republic of Moldova has followed the publication of the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, led by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. The first activities in this regard carried out by the Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Moldova took place in 2005, following the publication of the Report. The Government of the Republic of Moldova officially recognised the Holocaust on the territory of Bessarabia and Transnistria in 2016 and adopted a national action plan for preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The National Day for Commemorating the Victims of the Holocaust was instituted in 2017, on 27 January. A second national action plan for preserving the memory of the Holocaust and a culture of tolerance in order to combat racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance was adopted in 2021. While there is no separate recognition of the Roma Genocide, this is explicitly included in the official recognition of the Holocaust in the Republic of Moldova. The second national action plan for preserving the memory of the Holocaust includes activities undertaken together with the Roma community in the Republic of Moldova, as well as events commemorating 2 August, the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, in partnership with the International Romani Union.

On 31 October 2025, the Agency for Interethnic Relations organised a consultation with representatives of civil society, Jewish and Roma organisations, with a view to designing a new Action Plan regarding the promotion of Holocaust memory and a culture of tolerance for the period 2026-2029. The document aims to consolidating education for democratic citizenship to promote social cohesion and respect for diversity, continue the good practices of the action plan 2021-2024. It will be aligned with the European Union strategy for combatting racism – EU Anti-Racism Action Plan (2020–2025); EU Anti-Racism Strategy (2026–2030).

During the meeting, the Jewish Community in the Republic of Moldova, “The Voice of the Roma” Coalition, and the Agudath Israel Moldova organisation presented an ample set of proposals for the new Action Plan, focused on education, research, commemoration, the preservation of Jewish and Roma heritage, but also on strengthening of international monitoring and coordination instruments. Specific new initiatives relevant to the Roma Genocide include:

The explicit inclusion of the Roma Genocide in educational curricula and historical research;

The inclusion of 2 August in the national calendar of the Republic of Moldova as a National Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust against Roma in the Second World War.

The development of a systematic thematic bibliography in public libraries dedicated to publications about the Holocaust, including the deportation, suffering, and extermination of Bessarabian Roma at the Bug, in Transnistria (1942-1944);

The establishment of an inter-ministerial committee (including Roma communities and representatives of civil society) to coordinate the implementation of the Action Plan;

The establishment of a compulsory course on the Holocaust in the education system;

The launch of biannual research projects on the topic of the Holocaust, initiated by public authorities, as a new mechanism to stimulate research.

The proposals will be included in a strategic document to be sent to the Ministry of Education and Research. The new Action Plan 2026-2029 will reflect the commitment of the Republic of Moldova to combat antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and all forms of intolerance, in accordance with the standards and values of the European Union.

Data (camps locations, Remembrance places, measures etc.)

The number of Roma victims of the Holocaust in the Republic of Moldova cited by historians and in official state documents follow that of the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania: approximately 25,000 Roma were deported to Transnistria by the government of Ion Antonescu, of whom 11,000 perished. Some historians provide a higher figure of 20,000 Roma victims. It is unclear how many of these Roma were resident on the territory of the present-day Republic of Moldova at the time of their deportation. It is, however, known that 2300 Roma Holocaust survivors in Moldova have benefited from Humanitarian and Social Programmes of assistance of the International Organisation for Migration since 2003.

History

The territory of the present-day Republic of Moldova was part of Romania after 1918. It was ceded to the Soviet Union in June 1940 as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and seized the territories of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and Transnistria. Romanian forces, working with the Germans, deported, or exterminated about 300,000 Jews, including 147,000 from Bessarabia and Bukovina. Of the latter, approximately 90,000 died. Like the Jews, Roma were targeted by special laws, deported and exterminated, partly in Transnistria. According to historical records, 2,237 Roma from Bessarabia were deported in Transnistria in September and October 1942. Many of them died of cold and hunger. It is very difficult to know the number of Roma who survived. However it is known that 2,300 elderly Roma Holocaust survivors in Moldova have benefited from the IOM’s Humanitarian and Social Programmes assistance since 2003.

Deportations of Roma started later than those of the Jews (which began on 9 October 1941), in May 1942. Both were part of a broader plan of the Antonescu government to ethnically cleanse Romania of ‘unwanted’ minority groups. Most Jews and Roma were deported to Transnistria, a region which was under Romanian military control from 1941 to 1944 and which should not be confused with the breakaway self-proclaimed republic presently located on the left bank of the Dniester. There were 189 concentration camps and ghettos in this area, with 49 concentration camps and ghettos located on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. In the ghettos and camps, many deportees died from starvation or disease, as a consequence of poor sanitation. Tens of thousands of victims were killed in mass shooting operations undertaken by Romanian army units, local Romanian or Ukrainian police, and members of the German Einsatzgruppe D. On 13 October 1942, Antonescu took the decision to suspend the deportations of Jews and Roma; eventually, these were never resumed. Starting in 1943, some Jewish and Roma survivors of the concentration camps in Transnistria were allowed to return to Romania. 

Several Holocaust memorials exist in the Republic of Moldova. The earliest of these was built by the Soviet authorities in the late 1940s at Dubăsari, the site of a mass shooting operation. As was typical in the Soviet Union, the memorial was dedicated to “peaceful Soviet citizens shot by fascists during the Great Patriotic War”, with no information about the identity of the victims and their ethnic background. This focus on “victims of fascism” remained in place until the Republic of Moldova’s independence in 1991. After independence, new memorials were established in Chişinău (commemorating the ghetto), Bender, Orhei, Bălţi, Soroca, Tiraspol, Dubăsari, and other areas that commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in Bessarabia and Transnistria between 1941-1944. All of these memorials were established at the private initiative of Jewish organisations, and many of them are located in Jewish cemeteries. None of the existing sites of remembrance mention the Roma as victims, and there are no memorials of the Roma Genocide in the Republic of Moldova.

Specialised institution, commission, research centre etc., dealing with this issue

The Republic of Moldova has no institution explicitly devoted to the study of the Roma Genocide, nor of the Holocaust more generally, but its Ministry of Education collaborates for this purpose with the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, which is listed as a partner in official government documents.

Official initiatives (campaigns, actions, projects, commemoration days, museums)

Since 2017, the Republic of Moldova observes the National Day for Commemorating the Victims of the Holocaust on 27 January. There is no separate official commemoration of the Roma Genocide. However, the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day (2 August) has been officially recognised since 2016. In recent years, the government has organised activities for 2 August in partnership with representatives of the Roma community in the Republic of Moldova, the International Romani Union, and UN and OSCE/ODIHR agencies.

There are numerous projects on Holocaust education and Holocaust remembrance that either the government of the Republic of Moldova or civil society organisations have undertaken, and the genocide of the Roma is included in some of them. However, the focus is primarily on the mass murder of the Jews, and these projects are often developed in partnership with Jewish organisations. The first such project was implemented in 2005 as a partnership between the Ministry of Education and the Association of Jewish Communities and Organisations in the Republic of Moldova. Teacher trainings have been organised by the Ministry of Education in cooperation with international partners since 2009 and are now held every year.

The Ministry of Education organises a “Holocaust Memory Week” every year on 27-31 January and, following the second national plan for preserving the memory of the Holocaust issued in 2021, representatives of the Roma community in the Republic of Moldova are also involved in this activity. In 2024, the “Holocaust Memory Week” included a public history lecture entitled “The Roma Holocaust / Genocide at the Bug, in Transnistria (1942-1944)”, delivered by Dr. Ion Duminică, scientific researcher and coordinator of the “Ethnology of the Roma” group at the Centre for Ethnology of the Cultural Heritage Institute. On 31 January 2025, a national conference organised on the occasion of the National Day for Commemorating the Victims of the Holocaust included a lecture entitled “The Invisible Tragedy: The Ignored Holocaust of the Bessarabian Roma at the Bug, in Transnistria (1942-1944)”, which discussed the Roma Genocide in conjunction with the present-day marginalisation of the Roma.

The Roma community was involved in a state project that took place between 2021 and 2024 and was tasked with identifying and marking (with commemorative plaques, memorials, etc.) the places associated with the repression and mass murder of Jews and Roma during the Second World War. National conferences, roundtables, and other commemorative projects about the Holocaust on the territory of the Republic of Moldova and in Europe more generally, organised starting in 2021, also include the Roma as a victim group, typically listed as the second largest group after the Jews. In the context of the Republic of Moldova's exercise of the Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (November 2025 – May 2026), the Interethnic Relations Agency, in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Research and the National Youth Agency of the Republic of Moldova, the Youth Department – Directorate General of Democracy & Human Dignity, Roma and Travellers Division, Anti-discrimination Department – Directorate General of Equal Rights and Dignity of the Council of Europe, organised the workshop "Memory, Responsibility and Solidarity: Youth Facing the Lessons of the Holocaust". The workshop took place in Chişinău on 17-18 February 2026 and aimed to provide young people with a space for learning, reflection and dialogue regarding the history of the Holocaust and its impact on Jewish and Roma communities; the connection between historical memory, hate speech and contemporary discrimination; the role of young people in promoting tolerance, non-discrimination, and civic responsibility.

In January 2014, the National Museum of History of Moldova hosted the exhibition “The Holocaust in Photos”, which displayed 32 historical pictures of Jews exterminated during the Second World War. It was organised by the US Embassy in the Republic of Moldova. This exhibition had four sections: "Ascensiunea Germaniei naziste” (The Rise of Nazi Germany), "Holocaustul ia amploare in Europa” (Holocaust Takes Proportions in Europe), "Masacrul din Basarabia” (The Bessarabian Massacre), and "Reactia lumii: Niciodată!” (The World’s Reaction: Never again!). On 30 January 2025, the National Museum of History of Moldova organised an interactive activity entitled “Holocaust: lessons of history and for life”.

 Teaching about the Roma Genocide

Inclusion of the topic in the school curriculum

In 2018, in cooperation with the OSCE Mission in the Republic of Moldova, the Ministry of Education created and approved the curriculum of the optional course “The Holocaust: History and Life Lessons”. This course is taught as part of the high school curriculum between the 9^th and 12^th grades (corresponding to pupils approximately 15-18 years of age). According to the data provided by the Ministry of Education, in the school year 2023-2024, 95 schools from 28 cities and counties opted for this course. A total of 1,809 students chose this discipline from the list of 42 optional disciplines approved by the Ministry. Additionally, the history of the Holocaust is taught as part of the discipline “History of the Romanians and universal history”, also in grades 9-12. Between 2020 and 2022, the Ministry of Education elaborated and approved a pedagogical manual for teachers and worksheets with exercises for students. In 2024, the Ministry of Education, in cooperation with the OSCE Mission to Moldova, also developed an interactive resource to be used by secondary school students for the study of the history of the Holocaust course.

These materials provide outlines of the main events of the Holocaust, generally and in Romania, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, and in Transnistria. There are two main modules: “The Holocaust: essence, legislation, stages, consequences”, dealing with the Holocaust in Europe, and “The Holocaust in Romania and Romanian provinces” which is more focused on local realities. The materials provide teachers and students with glossaries of key terms; the legal and institutional framework in the Republic of Moldova; key historical works on the subject and sample texts from these works; excerpts from testimonies of Holocaust survivors; visual material (photographs, maps); presentations of Holocaust memorials on the territory of the Republic of Moldova; the importance of the Holocaust for human rights education and the legal definition of genocide in international law, etc. They also include methodological considerations, recommended activities – including instructions for carrying out an oral history interview with a Holocaust survivor – and potential topics for student debates adapted to the local context. The interdisciplinary potential of Holocaust education is elaborated, with specific links to disciplines such as civic education, Romanian language and literature, geography, religion, philosophy, music, visual art, biology, and mathematics clearly articulated. 

The Roma Genocide is mentioned in all of these documents, including in the curriculum, and Roma are typically identified as the second largest victim group in the Holocaust, after the Jews. However, references to the Roma are typically sparse (there is only one reference to the Roma in the curriculum, among “other victims of the Third Reich”, and – mistakenly – associated with the Nazi euthanasia program) and underdeveloped. Only the general outlines of the Roma Genocide on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, such as the deportation of Roma and the total number of deportees – 25,000 Roma, of whom 11,000 were murdered or perished due to starvation and disease – are mentioned. There are numerous individual stories of Jewish survivors provided as examples to the students, but not a single Roma one. As such, the presentation of the Roma remains at the level of a group, without being individualised.

Inclusion of the topic in the school textbooks

There is one textbook on the history of the Holocaust in the territory of the Republic of Moldova, coordinated by Sergiu Nazaria and published in 2005, entitled “Holocaust: Pages of History (on the territory of Moldova and the neighbouring regions of Ukraine, 1941-1944)”. It was the first initiative of the Government to make available a textbook on this subject, and nearly “every school of the Republic received this fundamental monograph”. The Holocaust is also included as a topic in the current edition of the 12^th grade manual for the discipline “The History of Romanians and Universal History”, issued in 2024. “The Roma Holocaust” is a case study within the manual (p. 143), providing accurate information on the persecution, deportation, and mass murder of the Roma in the “Romanian space”. There is also a teaching guide on the Holocaust in Romanian language, which is available online and has been presented in detail in the previous section. This teaching guide also includes references to one of the manuals for “History of the Jews. The Holocaust” – a new compulsory course in the Romanian high school curriculum (11th grade) introduced in 2023 and published in 2024

Training of teachers and education professionals

According to the Second Report submitted by the Republic of Moldova pursuant to article 25, paragraph 1 of the Framework Convention of National Minorities, received by the Council of Europe on 14th of May 2004, the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities in the Republic of Moldova organized special Holocaust seminar trainings in 2003, as follows: in May, 138 schools from the southern part of the country, and locations such as Edineţ, Briceni, Ocniţa, and Donduşeni were involved in lessons entitled “The Genocide against the Jews and Roma in the Second World War”; a summer seminar on the same issue was organized for 100 history teachers in the village of Holercani; in November 2003, a seminar was held in Chişinău with 40 educational inspectors. In 2003, a brochure entitled “Holocaust: informative materials for history teachers” was edited in both Romanian and Russian, with the financial support of the Jewish Congress of Moldova.

Since 2020, trainings for teachers and other education professionals have been organised by the Ministry of Education, in partnership with the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (Braunschweig, Germany), the International Centre for Training and Professional Formation, the Oral History Institute in Moldova, the OSCE Mission in Moldova, and the Jewish community in the Republic of Moldova. These trainings are now organised on an annual basis. It is not clear if and to what extent the Roma Genocide is included in these trainings. 

Particular activities undertaken at the level of education institutions

In addition to teaching the history of the Holocaust as part of Romanian and world history, teaching the optional course “Holocaust: History and Life Lessons”, and providing teacher trainings, educational institutions in the Republic of Moldova engage in commemorations of the Holocaust, round tables, competitions for students, etc. The annual solemn events on the occasion of the National Day for Commemorating the Victims of the Holocaust on 27 January are organised by educational institutions and the Ministry of Education in partnership with representatives of both the Jewish and Roma communities in Moldova. These are also involved in the annual “Holocaust Memory Week”, which takes place every year after 27 January. A national competition for students entitled “The Holocaust: History and Life Lessons” is organised annually. Guided tours of places linked to the history of the Holocaust in Chişinău and other places in the country, for students and teachers, are organised periodically. More recently, the 2 of August, the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, is also commemorated by education authorities in partnership with representatives of the Roma community in the Republic of Moldova and the International Romani Union. The International Day of Tolerance, on 16 November, is also commemorated annually. According to the second national plan for preserving the memory of the Holocaust issued in 2021, the National Agency for Archives is cooperating with representatives of the Roma community in Moldova in the design, launch, and updating of an online electronic platform with documents and other materials facilitating remote instruction and research into the Holocaust in the Republic of Moldova. The State University of Moldova is involved in developing and editing materials and pedagogical recommendations on working definitions of antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, hate speech, and instigations to discrimination that would be utilised in the initial and continuing training of teachers and public servants in the fields of education, culture, and justice.