Img. ID: 364669

Bălţi, Romania (today Moldova) was "the second-largest populated city in Bessarabia, with the second largest number of Jewish inhabitants after Kishinev, and the economic center of the region. In the official 1930 census, Bălţi was listed as having 14,229 Jewish residents, about 60% of its total population. Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement, Bălţi was absorbed into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, coming under Soviet rule. On 22 June 1941, the Germans invaded the USSR. On 9 July, Bălţi was occupied by German and Romanian armies." By September 1941, there were no Jews in Bălţi anymore as they were either killed or deported [The story of Bălţi, Yad Vashem].

According to Lev Shvartsman,  a former head of Bălţi's Jewish community, the history of the monument started in 1989, when an Israeli rabbi David Ben Haim arrived in the city for the High Holidays of 1989 (5750) and arranged a mass bar and bat-mitzvah ceremony for 28 boys and 25 girls. As a part of the ceremony boys, girls and their parents put flowers at the place "near a church," where "Jewish hostages" were shot in July 1941. For the next several years the local Jewish organization made attempts to get a permit for a memorial sign at the place or near it. Finally, the Holocaust monument was erected on a different spot in 1997. 

In 2009, the monument was renovated by the Jewish community. In August 2013, the municipality named the park around the monument Park of Memory (in Russian "сквер Памяти"). The monument is a meeting ground on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). 

The monument and site are recognized as a protected historical site and kept in good condition.