Commemorative exhibition on 120th anniversary of Chisinau Pogrom from 1903 staged at Chisinau-based museum
19:47 | 20.04.2023 Category: Culture
Chisinau, 20 April /MOLDPRES/ - The Museum of History of the Chisinau City, under the aegis of the Culture and Cultural Heritage General Department, in cooperation with fine artist Fazya Igor Șerbina, today inaugurated a commemorative exhibition titled, In mourning days. 120 years since the Chisinau Pogrom from 1903.
Contacted by MOLDPRES, the museum’s director, Valeria Suruceanu, said the exhibition approached an important subject for all ethnic groups of the capital and Moldova. The exhibition shows this painful page of the history, so that the visitor feels eye witness of that tragic event and the consequences of the Pogrom should have an echo in everybody’s hearts.
According to Suruceanu, the 1903 pogrom was a turning point for many Jews from the Russian Empire, who felt the events occurred as a deep humiliation. Many of them left the country, the others remains and backed activists Jews who set up self-defence units. It was regarded that the violence and genocide are inadmissible; unfortunately, this happened, nevertheless. The 1903 Chisinau Pogrom is regarded by some historians as a precursor of the Holocaust.
The book, In mourning days. 120 years since the Chisinau Pogrom from 1903, signed by the head physician of the Chisinau-based Jewish hospital Moisei Borisovich Sluțkii (1851-1934), has become the only memorial published by a direct witness of the tragedy. The exhibition’s details are built based on the materials of this book. ‘’Materials of the archive of the Museum of History of the Chisinau City are presented at the exhibition: documents, photographs, household appliances of that age. Also, materials from the archive of the National Agency of Archives, as well as of the Jewish Electronic Encyclopaedia and other sources in free access were used. We thank those contributed to the research of the subject of the Chisinau Pogrom from 1903 and involvement in the staging of the exhibition: public personalities, historians, researches, writers, artists,’’ the director of the museum also said.
The exhibition will be open till 10 May.
The Chisinau Pogrom took place against the local Jewish population on 6-8 April 1903. At the pogrom, 49 Jews were assassinated, about 500 were wounded, 2,000 Jewish families remained without shelter and 1,500 shops and houses belonging to Jews were ruined.