LIPCANI JEWISH CEMETERY

The Jewish cemetery of Lipcani dates back to the 19th century and covers an area of 10,000^m2. It has 1,000 tombs, the oldest of which are more than 150 years old. Some of the stelae are decorated with plant motifs. There are numerous inscriptions in Yiddish written in the Hebrew alphabet. The tombs provide some information about the history of the local Jewish community and its members. The area had many Jewish villages or towns with a large Jewish community (Briceni, Edineț...). This community sometimes had to face pogroms. During World War II, members of the Jewish community in and around Briceni were deported to Transnistria and many lost their lives. After the end of the Soviet Union, many Jews emigrated abroad and to Israel, further reducing the size of the Jewish community in Moldova and particularly in Lipcani. The Lipcani cemetery was damaged in 2014 by a fire and has suffered other acts of vandalism in the past. It is one of the last testimonies of the historical presence of the Jewish community in Lipcani.

Lipcani is known as the birthplace of Eliezer Steinbarg (1880-1932), Yiddish language teacher and poet. This scholar is not buried there but at Cernăuți (currently Chernivtsi in Ukraine). The ancestors of Professor Randy Schekman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2013, are from Lipcani.