Singer Model 15 sewing machine and table used by Jewish Romanian woman who was massacred

Ratza (Reyza) Solomonskaya (1896-1941) was born in Pepeni, Russia (now Pepeny, Moldova). Following World War I, the region became part of Romania. Ratza was a seamstress and sometimes went by the name Roza. She was married to Mark Solomonski (1898 –1941), a shoemaker from Pepeni. They had two daughters, Khayka (1927 -1941) and Ita (1929–1941). The Solomonski family was part of a small Jewish community spread across several neighboring towns in the region just south of Bălți.

On June 28, 1940, Romania was forced to cede Bukovina and Bessarabia, where Pepeni was located, to the Soviet Union. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in summer 1941, Romania, a German ally, recaptured the region and many of the Jews in Bălți took refuge in smaller towns, including Pepeni. Romania had a long tradition of anti-Semitism, and the government sought to remove Jews from its provinces by “cleansing the terrain”, a codename for mass-execution. On July 13, Romanian soldiers and gendarmes entered Pepeni and organized small groups of local residents to help them force Jews like Ratza and her family from their homes and into the local town hall. Many carried their valuables with them, but before leaving her home, Ratza entrusted her sewing machine to a neighbor for safekeeping. Ratza’s family was locked into the building along with approximately 250 of their Jewish neighbors, refugees from Bălți, and many others from neighboring towns. The doors were locked and no one was allowed to have food or water for four days. On the fourth evening, shots were heard from a nearby town, and the leader of the Gendarme said the Red Army and Jews from further away were threatening to enter the village, set fire to the buildings, and release those Jews being held. The leader tossed a grenade into the town hall and then some of the men under his control opened fire on those inside. Others wielded bats to keep people from trying to escape out the open windows, though a few people did manage to get past them and survive. Ratza, Mark, Khayka, and Ita were murdered during the massacre.

That night, the gendarmes ordered that anyone still living be killed and that all the bodies in the town hall be carted off and dumped in nearby stone mines. The following day, local women and draftees were forced to wash out the blood soaked town hall. Several days later, a commission consisting of high ranking locals, including the mayor and head of the tax department, was formed to requisition the property left behind by the murdered Jews and distribute their valuables to those locals considered distinguished and others that had helped carry out the massacre. Ratza’s neighbors already had her sewing machine in their possession and it was not among those items redistributed by the commission. After 1944, many of the perpetrators, including 19 locals and the gendarme in charge, were brought to trial and held accountable for the mass murder, though some did receive amnesty following the death of Stalin.