Location: Moldova

The Story of Tamara Koblik

The story of how a Jewish family from Rezina was torn apart during the Holocaust.

When World War II came and the Germans approached, Tamara and her parents fled on a train to Makhachkala. But while Tamara and her mother survived in evacuation, her father was taken to the Gulag, where he perished. Tamara’s Grandmother and cousins were first forced to live in the Rybnitsa Ghetto and were killed later in Transnistria.

When Soviet troops had liberated Bessarabia in 1944, Tamara and her mother returned to Chisinau, where they started a new life, and where Tamara Koblik eventually raised her own family.

Read the complete biography of Tamara Koblik here.

Find more information in our comprehensive Study Guide.

Ivan Barbul: A life reborn

A film about Ivan Barbul from Chisinau in Moldova.

Ivan Barbul was born as Isaak Rybakov in 1929 in Rezina, which was a mostly Jewish town in Bessarabia at that time. He grew up in a poor Jewish family, with his father working at the local Jewish school. During World War II, his family was deported to Bogdanovka, an infamous labor camp in Transnistria. While his siblings and parents were killed, Isaak, now 14, managed to survive thanks to Ivan Ilich Barbul and his wife Agafia, who adopted Isaak and gave him a new name, and a new life.

Read the whole biography of Ivan Barbul here.

Find more information in our comprehensive Study Guide.