Shifting perspectives on Jewish built heritage in former Moldavian towns and townlets of Romania (1940–1971)

Romania’s network of former shtetls in Moldavia remains far less known than comparable Jewish sites in Central and Eastern Europe. War and post-war interventions transformed these landscapes: “unsanitary” areas were demolished for civic centres, while emigration and neglect eroded the Jewish urban fabric.Although ghettos were not established in Moldavia during the Second World War, antisemitic policies under Ion Antonescu targeted Jewish inhabited areas through expropriation and segregation. After 1945, abandonment and selective rediscovery shaped the fate of urban and semi-urban sites, while general heritage debates, although limited, did not emerge until the 1960s.The paper examines three overlapping perspectives: the autocratic state, which prioritised national identity; professional debates that engaged with international preservation discourses from 1966 onward; and Jewish researchers’ efforts to sustain communal memory. These narratives reveal the contradiction between heritage protection and systematic urbanisation, as well as the communist regime’s refusal to acknowledge Jewish heritage. Today, built remnants attest to the layered history of former Moldavian towns and townlets, only partially integrated, even now, into heritage frameworks.